Creepy Disclosures Weblog

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Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#39

  • Titanic volcanic eruption seen on Io
    14 November 02
    NewScientist.com
    Successive views show the dramatic eruption on Io

    A titanic volcanic eruption has been spotted on the surface of Jupiter's volatile moon Io using a telescope back on Earth. Astronomers believe it to be the most powerful eruption ever witnessed in the entire Solar System.
    The volcano spewed lava kilometres into the sky during its most explosive period, say the researchers. The consequent lava flow is thought to have spread many hundreds of square kilometres across the surface of Io.
    "It is clear that this eruption is the most energetic ever seen, both on Io and on Earth," says Franck Marchis, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who analysed the images.
    The eruption was recorded in February 2001 during routine monitoring of Io's volcanic activity by a telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. But the images were only recently analysed.
    Fire fountains
    Ashley Davies, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, adds: "The kind of eruption to produce this thermal signature has incandescent fire fountains of molten lava which are kilometres high. They are propelled at great speed out of the ground by expanding gases, accompanied by extensive lava flows on the surface."
    The images were produced using three wavelengths of mid-infrared light. The researchers also used a technique called adaptive optics to automatically correct visual distortions caused by the Earth's atmosphere. This process has made it possible for Earth-based telescopes to produce images that could previously only have come from space-based instruments.
    The technique meant the captured images had a resolution of about 100 metres per pixel. This is similar to the quality of photographs produced by NASA's probe Galileo, which is orbiting Jupiter.
    Big wattage
    The volcano is far more powerful than any eruption recorded by scientists on Earth, with an estimated power output of about 78,000 gigawatts. By comparison, the power produced by the last significant eruption of Mount Etna in Italy in 1992 was just 12 gigawatts.
    But geological records indicate that there may have been some comparably large eruptions many millions of years ago, in India and Siberia for example.
    The observations will also help reveal more about the nature of Io, says Lionel Wilson at the Planetary Science Research Group at Lancaster University, UK.
    "These results may be the first to allow us to make a good estimate of the volume eruption rate of lava on Io in a large volume eruption with a high eruption rate," he says. "Building up statistics on the range of eruption conditions that can occur on Io will allow us to deduce much more about the structure of the crust and mantle than we understand at the moment."

  • SEISMIC activity at Yellowstone

     
  • Homeshchooled Boy's research finds tainted water on planes; Wall Street Journal investigation confirms it
    (CharlotteObserver)
    Sat, Nov. 09, 2002
    He finds
    LINDA DAVIS
    Knight Ridder
    ALAMO, Calif. - The questions of a 13-year-old science prodigy helped launch an investigation into the safety of airplane tap water.
    The Wall Street Journal found salmonella, fecal coliform and other bacteria in water tests after its interest was piqued by the Alamo, Calif., boy's report. The newspaper's article ran Nov. 1.
    Zach Bjornson-Hooper, a home-schooled student, is a seasoned flier who has traveled to the South Pacific, Europe, Mexico and other exotic destinations with his family. On a trip to New Zealand in March, he saw flight attendants pouring water from pitchers to serve passengers.
    A light bulb went on in this science-minded boy's head.
    "I've been on some long flights where there isn't enough bottled water on the airplane," Zach said. "On our family's sailboat we never drink water from the tank, even if it comes from a clean source. Once it's contaminated, it's hard to clean it again."
    Zach and his family have had a few stomachaches after long flights, but they passed them off as the effects of jet-lag, foreign water or spicy food.
    The bacteria first found by Zach and then by the Journal reporters could sicken airplane passengers if they were present in sufficient levels, the Journal said.
    With his small thermal cooler packed with petri dishes, filters, agar, vials and a syringe, Zach took samples of water from the airplane's galleys and lavatory taps, just to see what it might contain.
    He tested the waters on nine different flights and found seven were contaminated with E.coli, fecal coliform or salmonella. In one, he even found insect eggs.
    "It was pretty gross," said Zach, now a high school freshman at Las Lomas High School in Walnut Creek, Calif.
    During each trip, he drew water samples, tucked them in his cooler and processed them later.
    "It's pretty simple stuff," he said. "You draw the water sample through a filter, then deposit what's on the membrane in agar in a petri dish and let it grow. The colonies are big enough you can see them. It smells really bad, like rotten peanut butter."
    The dye turns different colors for salmonella and the other bacteria, he said. He froze the petri dishes so the samples would stay fresh on the flight home.
    His mother, Sheri, thought her son's findings interesting enough to post on an on-line bulletin board for travelers. It was there, she said, the Journal spotted Zach's experiments and contacted the family.
    "Zach is the most exceptional person I've ever met," said Karen McLucas, his home-school teacher for fifth through eighth grade. "It makes sense that somebody would pick this up as a story. He gets to the bottom of every question, with no fear of failing."
    Zach said he did his first science experiment -- crafting a light switch from scissors, wire and batteries -- when he was 3.
    "He's always thinking," his mother said.
    Recently, he was growing an E.coli colony in the refrigerator to explore the possibility of an E.coli micro fuel cell that would power a car, communicating on-line with a University of Florida professor.
    "Yeast is a sluggish bacteria, so I stepped up to E.coli," Zach said.
     


  • Sun's Rays To Roast Earth As Poles Flip
    (The Observer - UK)
    11-11-2
    Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically.
    Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years.
    The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate.
    'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before - as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping over, when north becomes south and vice versa,' said Dr Alan Thomson of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh.
    'Reversals happen every 250,000 years or so, and as there has not been one for almost a million years, we are due one soon.'
    For more than 100 years, scientists have noted the strength of Earth's magnetic field has been declining, but have disagreed about interpretations. Some said its drop was a precursor to reversal, others argued it merely indicated some temporary variation in field strength has been occurring.
    But now Gauthier Hulot of the Paris Geophysical Institute has discovered Earth's magnetic field seems to be disappearing most alarmingly near the poles, a clear sign that a flip may soon take place.
    Using satellite measurements of field variations over the past 20 years, Hulot plotted the currents of molten iron that generate Earth's magnetism deep underground and spotted huge whorls near the poles.
    Hulot believes these vortices rotate in a direction that reinforces a reverse magnetic field, and as they grow and proliferate these eddies will weaken the dominant field: the first steps toward a new polarity, he says.
    And as Scientific American reports this week, this interpretation has now been backed up by computer simulation studies.
    How long a reversal might last is a matter of scientific controversy, however. Records of past events, embedded in iron minerals in ancient lava beds, show some can last for thousands of years - during which time the planet will have been exposed to batterings from solar radiation. On the other hand, other researchers say some flips may have lasted only a few weeks.
    Exactly what will happen when Earth's magnetic field disappears prior to its re-emergence in a reversed orientation is also difficult to assess. Compasses would point to the wrong pole - a minor inconvenience. More importantly, low-orbiting satellites would be exposed to electromagnetic batterings, wrecking them.
    In addition, many species of migrating animals and birds - from swallows to wildebeests - rely on innate abilities to track Earth's magnetic field. Their fates are impossible to gauge.
    As to humans, our greatest risk would come from intense solar radiation bursts. Normally these are contained by the planet's magnetic field in space. However, if it disappears, particle storms will start to batter the atmosphere.
    'These solar particles can have profound effects,' said Dr Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. 'On Mars, when its magnetic field failed permanently billions of years ago, it led to its atmosphere being boiled off. On Earth, it will heat up the upper atmosphere and send ripples round the world with enormous, unpredictable effects on the climate.'
    It is unlikely that humans could do much. Burrowing thousands of miles into solid rock to set things right would stretch the technological prowess of our descendants to bursting point, though such limitations do not worry film scriptwriters. Paramount's latest sci-fi thriller, The Core - directed by Englishman Jon Amiel, and starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart - depicts a world beset by just such a polar reversal, with radiation sweeping the planet.
    The solution, according to the film, to be released next year, involves scientists drilling into Earth's mantle to set off a nuclear blast that will halt the reversal.
    Given that temperatures at such depths rival those of the Sun's surface, such a task would seem impossible - except, of course, in Hollywood.

  • RAGNAROK:THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.
    BY IGNATIUS DONNELLY,
    [1883]
    (review by http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/rag/)
    This companion book to Donnelly's Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, published one year later, is less well known today. Ragnarok is out of print except through specialty print-on-demand publishers, while Atlantis, the Antediluvian World is in print and fairly easy to obtain. Ragnarok, The Age of Fire and Gravel, proposes that a comet impacted the Earth several tens of thousands of years ago; the impact produced the 'Drift' layers of gravel which have been attributed to the Ice ages; this event destroyed a civilization which had high technology, a civilization which vanished completely except for some myths; the disaster was accompanied by catastrophic fire followed by years-long cloud cover and extreme cold. Humanity survived only by hiding in deep caves; when they re-emerged they had to restart civilization from scratch. Donnelly provides extensive geological, archeological, astronomical and mythological evidence for this theory. The book is not academic and often sensationalistic, but his populist style does not seem to detract from the argument.
    Today, mass extinction from cometary impact is considered mainstream science, supported by a huge body of physical evidence. In Donnelly's time it was unknown that cometary or asteroid impacts had even occurred on this planet. There was very little knowledge of the structure or nature of comets. Today, we have sent probes into Halleys' comet, landed a probe on an asteroid, and witnessed the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter. We also have extensive data about impact craters on the Earth, Moon, Mars and other planets and moons. The impact event which wiped out the dinosaurs has been validated by a layer of iridium, an otherwise rare element, which appears in the strata in the layer just above the dinosaurs, and a recently discovered impact crater in the Yucatan. There have also been other mass extinctions in the geological past, for instance the Permian extinction before the age of the dinosaurs which also wiped out nearly all life on earth. This growing knowledge of the risk of impact events to our civilization was popularized recently in a pair of big-budget disaster movies: Deep Impact and Armageddon. However, the theory that such an event occurred in the recent geological or even historical past is still considered speculative.
    Immanuel Velikovsky (Worlds in Collision, London 1950) proposed that a mass broke loose from Jupiter and became Venus after a near-encounter with Earth in classical antiquity, and used it as a mechanism to justify a literal interpretation of Biblical episodes. In the stifling atmosphere of the 1950s there was a severe backlash by the scientific establishment, which made a rational debate over the merits of his theories impossible. It seems to this writer that Velikovsky's use of Biblical texts was a step backwards from Donnelly, as Donnelly did not insist on a literal, particularly chronological interpretation of the material; Ragnarok constructs a radical rearrangement of Genesis and the Book of Job, and places the events they describe in the prehistoric past. Velikovsky dismisses Donnelly in one paragraph in a footnote.
    In addition, Velikovsky's astromechanics still seem unbelievable, in particular, the proposal that the 'Earth stood still' as described in the Book of Joshua, due to tidal effects of the near encounter. The late Carl Sagan, to his credit, analyzed this hypothesis, and concluded that while this is feasible, the ambient temperature would have been raised by 100 to 240 degrees Kelvin worldwide, depending on the latitude, which obviously would have led to the extinction of life on earth.
    More recently the book When the Earth Nearly Died by D.S. Allan and J.B. Delair [1995] (reissued as Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.), brought together a mass of evidence that a catastrophic impact of extrasolar material occurred in 9,500 B.C. They believe that this body was ejected by the Vela supernova. They present a compelling amount of physical and other evidence of multiple impacts, giant tidal surges, massive rearrangements of the surface of the Earth, overnight mountain-building, as well as a polar shift. However, this begs the question as to how humanity could have lived through a catastrophe of this dimension, even if advanced technology was on hand. If this sort of event occured today we would be hard-pressed to survive it. Allan and Delair's book, however, is academic to a fault, and much better put together and docmented than Velikovsky. I heartily recommend it as a worthy successor to Ragnarok.
    The truth of this hypothesis has yet to be determined. However, if even a 'moderate' impact event occurred in 9,500 B.C. and destroyed an unknown prehistoric civilization it would explain a great deal--for instance the radical fluctuations in climate and sealevel at that time; the Piri Reis map as well as other anomolous maps, not to mention many otherwise mystifying myths such as the Icelandic Voluspa and the Zoroastrian Vendidad. Other texts worth examining can be found elsewhere at this site including the Ancient Near East myths of war in heaven, and Native American stories of emergence from the underworld.
    While Donnelly quoted from Zoroastrian scriptures as supporting evidence, there is one item that he missed which has taken on additional relevance in the light of advances in genetics and our knowledge of the effect of cometary and asteroid impacts. Here is a short extract from the Zoroastrian Vendidad, in which the Deity, Ahura Mazda, commands a man, Yima, to build a shelter:
    And Ahura Mazda spake unto Yima, saying:
    'O fair Yima, son of Vîvanghat! Upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall make snow-flakes fall thick, even an aredvî deep on the highest tops of mountains.
    And all the three sorts of beasts shall perish, those that live in the wilderness, and those that live on the tops of the mountains, and those that live in the bosom of the dale, under the shelter of stables....
    Therefore make thee a Vara {an enclosure}, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires.
    Therefore make thee a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be an abode for men; a Vara, long as a riding-ground on every side of the square, to be a fold for flocks.
    There thou shalt make waters flow in a bed a hâthra long; there thou shalt settle birds, by the ever-green banks that bear never-failing food. There thou shalt establish dwelling places, consisting of a house with a balcony, a courtyard, and a gallery.
    Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth.
    Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth; thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest of odour. All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara.
    While at first this appears to be similar to the story of Noah, it has two aspects which until recently would have been baffling.
    First of all, the nature of the disaster, which sounds a lot like the prolonged 'nuclear winter' following an impact event, possibly lasting years or decades. If this cold period was simply a very deep winter why go to all this trouble? The text mentions the phrase 'the fatal winters' twice, which implies a duration of at least several years, which is not normal weather even at the worst of times.
    Secondly, the inventory which Yima is commanded to store in the shelter: the seeds of humans, animals and plants. While storing seeds of plants might be a reasonable extension of the Noah myth, who (prior to the recent advances in biology) would think of storing seeds of humans and animals? Or even that fauna have 'seeds'? And how would this genetic material be reanimated after emerging from the shelter, which the Vendidad does not explain? Note also the (hydroponic?) gardens and provision for livestock in the shelter; it sounds a lot like a Biodome-style environment, which would be needed to survive the extensive period after an impact event. This sounds strangely like a specification for a shelter that a civilization with a level of technology close to ours (or slightly more advanced) would build to survive an impact event.
    As always, the reader is invited to make up their own mind.


  • Simultaneous solar flares on opposite sides of sun intrigue scientists
    Nov. 11, 2002
    (Associated Press via http://www.sunspot.noao.edu/sunspot)
    SUNSPOT, N.M. -- Scientists say they have made the unprecedented discovery of solar flares erupting almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the sun.
    The flares -- massive eruptions of hydrogen from the sun's surface -- were observed by researchers at the National Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico on the morning of Oct. 31.
    Simultaneous solar flares have been seen in the past, but never so far apart. Scientists at the observatory are trying to determine whether the eruptions were linked or a coincidence, said solar physicist Don Neidig.
    Experts said the discovery could have far-reaching consequences if more cases are observed.
    "Now we have only one example of two flares that go off simultaneously that far apart, so it could be an accident. If we see more of these ... then it becomes extremely important," said Stephen Greggor, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico.
    Observatory researchers speculated that magnetic fields may have primed the flares to erupt seconds apart. They cautioned, however, that there is too little data even to put forward a theory.
    Solar flares are the largest known explosions in the solar system and are driven by magnetic fields. Neidig said the ones observed on Halloween had an explosive force equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs.
    The New Mexico scientists said they did not know if the flares had been observed anywhere else in the world.
    The researchers were using a new solar telescope being developed by the Air Force to help predict dangerous conditions in space.

  • The Sharpest View of the Sun

    Credit: SST, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
    (http://bellman.astro.su.se/solar/NatureNov2002/images/AR10030_4877_color.jpeg)
    Explanation: This stunning image shows remarkable and mysterious details near the dark central region of a planet-sized sunspot in one of the sharpest views ever of the surface of the Sun. Just released, the picture was made using the Swedish Solar Telescope now in its first year of operation on the Canary Island of La Palma. Along with features described as hairs and canals are dark cores visible within the bright filaments that extend into the sunspot, representing previously unknown and unexplored solar phenomena. The filaments' newly revealed dark cores are seen to be thousands of kilometers long but only about 100 kilometers wide. Resolving features 100 kilometers wide or less is a milestone in solar astronomy and has been achieved here using sophisticated adaptive optics, digital image stacking, and processing techniques to counter the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere. At optical wavelengths, these images are sharper than even current space-based solar observatories can produce. Recorded on 15 July 2002, the sunspot shown is the largest of the group of sunspots cataloged as solar active region AR 10030.

  • Deadly 100ft Rogue Waves Destroy World's Giant Ships -Scientists Baffled By Giant Walls Of Water
    The Observer - UK
    11-11-2
    They are the stuff of legend and maritime myth: giant waves, taller than tower-blocks, that rise out of calm seas and destroy everything in their paths.
    For years scientists and marine experts have dismissed such stories as superstition. Walls of water do not rise out of the blue, they said. But now research has revealed that 'killer waves' do exist and regularly devastate ships around the world. They defy all scientific understanding and no craft is capable of withstanding their impact.
    'Rogue waves in the past have been ignored and regarded as rare events,' said Jim Gunson, the Met Office's expert on ocean waves. 'Now we are finally getting a handle on them and finding out how common they are.'
    These mammoth events are not tidal waves or tsunamis, however. Nor are they caused by earthquakes or landslides. They are single, massive walls of water that rise up - for no known reason - and destroy dozens of ships and oil rigs every year.
    The story of the super-tanker M¸nchen is a classic example. She was one of the biggest ships ever built - the length of two-and-a-half football pitches - and unsinkable, it was claimed.
    But on 7 December, 1978, the pride of the German merchant navy, en route to America, disappeared off the face of the earth. Despite the biggest search in the history of shipping, all that was found of the M¸nchen and her 26 crew was a lifeboat that had suffered an incredible battering.
    'Something extraordinary' had destroyed the ship, concluded an official inquiry, which dismissed the Munchen's sinking as a highly unusual event that had no implications for other forms of shipping.
    Now scientists believe this calm assurance may be dangerously misguided. The destruction of the Munchen was anything but uncommon, as a BBC2 edition of Horizon, Freak Waves, will point out on Thursday.
    'Ships are going down all the time,' said MP Eddie O'Hara, chairman of the parliamentary committee on maritime safety. 'If you read the maritime press there is a boat going down at least once a month, with the loss of crew usually measured in dozens of lives.'
    In the past, bad maintenance or poor seamanship were blamed. Now scientists suspect the truth may be far more bizarre.
    It is now known that the Queen Mary was hit by a 75ft wall of water while carrying 15,000 troops in December 1942. 'The ship came within an ace of capsizing, but it was all hushed up at the time,' O'Hara told The Observer.
    And only two years ago the British superliner Oriana was struck by a 70ft wave that smashed windows and sent water cascading through the ship, swamping six of its 10 decks. A month later eight men were killed when a freak wave struck the Anorient trawler 87 miles west of Loop Head in Co Clare, and two Britons taking part in the world's toughest yacht race last March were seriously injured after a 50ft wave swept over their vessel 70 miles off the Australian coast.
    These giant waves cannot be predicted by standard meteorology. Waves - even in the worst of storms - should not reach much more than 40ft. The fact that walls of water up to 100ft are being observed regularly suggests that something is worryingly wrong with meteorology theory.
    Waves are normally caused by high winds whipping over the sea surface, but the origin of the freak waves baffles scientists. One theory suggests that waves and winds heading straight into powerful ocean currents may cause these huge walls of water to rise up out of the deep. Another suggests that, under certain conditions, waves can become unstable and start to suck in energy from neighbouring waves and so grow massively and rapidly.
    Researchers are still arguing over these ideas, but what is indisputable is the fact that the design of modern ships is inadequate for dealing with the freak waves.
    The point will be emphasised this week when O'Hara tables a Commons motion expressing concern over ship safety in freak weather. Hatches need redesigning, he says, while the resistance of windows to the impact of freak waves has to be considerably improved.
    Massive improvements - that could cost merchant fleet owners billions of pounds - may have to be carried out on ships if they are to survive the freak waves. 'Ship design is simply not good enough,' said Douglas Faulkner, a Royal Navy ship designer and chairman of naval architecture at Glasgow University. 'Although you can never legislate for everything, you can make the best attempt possible to reduce the risk. The issue of unusual waves is something we really can't ignore.'

    Emerging Threats of Biological Terrorism: Recent Developments
    Co-Sponsored by The Terrorism Studies Program at The George Washington University
    and
    The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
    June 16, 1998
    The Disaster Train
    PROF. BRENNER: We'll now hear from Dr. Steven J. Hatfill. He's been connected
    with the National Institutes for Health for some time, working on child health
    development and the laboratory for cellular and molecular biophysics. He's
    a medical doctor with certification in hematology and pathology. He has a
    Ph.D. degree in molecular cell biology. He has a diploma in aviation medicine.
    He has a diploma in diving and submarine medicine. He has served with the
    U.S. Army Special Forces. He was on a 14-month duty as medical officer and
    science team leader at the Antarctic research station. He also conducted
    research while there for the NASA Johnson Space Center Solar System Exploration
    Division. He's been involved in research involving serious problems such
    as Lyme disease, Ebola and the Marburg virus. Dr. Hatfill.
    [Slides cited were not in the original.]
    DR. HATFILL: We've heard the threat today from Dr. Alibek, Dr. Patrick, and
    Dr. Huggins for biological threats of biological terrorism. We've heard
    conventional countermeasures. We've heard of a number of programs of advanced
    countermeasures. It now becomes necessary to discuss worst-case scenarios
    and that concerns ways of management, or possible ways of management, of
    large areas covered by biological agent.
    I've been working with Brigadier General [sic] Third Army Medical
    Command in the United States Army Reserve to try to develop a system for
    flexible and rapid transportation of mass casualties from a contaminated
    area to a rear area while maintaining life support and critical care functions
    for the casualties.
    When we're dealing with a large area of coverage event, this can be exceedingly
    complex. A single area of a city may be affected or multiple areas of the
    city at the same time or closely thereafter, and terrorists may be involved
    with both chemical weapon release as well as with the biological agent.
    One of the most dramatic open source experiments that have been described
    for a large area of coverage occurred on September 21, 1950, where a naval
    vessel did an open air simulation test releasing spores of the same size
    and weight as anthrax, but nonpathogenic to humans, over the city of San
    Francisco. This was conducted off a naval vessel two miles offshore and the
    results are illustrated in this diagram. Had this occurred with actual anthrax,
    there's a possibility that several hundred thousand people could have contracted
    a fatal pulmonary infection.
    These types of dispersal scenarios in the most part are covert. There's no
    indication that a biological agent release has occurred until the incubation
    period for the particular disease has expired. This is a typical case history.
    An emergency department, normal operations and patients begin to appear.
    The terrorist event has occurred the week before. The incubation period for
    the agent is now open and these previously healthy individuals start coming
    in requiring rapid intensive care including mechanical life support, mechanical
    ventilation.
    The situation of a large area of release in many ways would resemble a modern
    battlefield, disrupted lines of communication, poor coordination. Any changes
    that were apparent in peacetime would tend to be amplified during their affect
    during the natural biological agent pattern.
    Consequently it is illustrative to look at how massive casualties have been
    handled on the battlefield before. In the 1850s, we saw the first large-scale
    systematic development of ways of transporting casualties from a high
    concentration on the battlefield to a low concentration in rural areas. This
    was during the Crimean War. The British Army instituted an eight-mile railway
    line during this conflict. This was also the time when the Florence Nightingale
    nurses came into effect in the first early field ambulances.
    This concept became so effective that by the early 1900s during the Boer
    War in South Africa, the British army had prepositioned a number of specialized
    hospital trains all along the areas of fighting. Each of these passenger
    cars has been converted to handle up to 25 stretcher cases, and these were
    prepositioned along different areas of the conflict. Patients were brought
    to these trains and taken to various treatment centers.
    The concept was further developed and by the onset of World War I, was in
    a highly effective manner. Patients could be taken directly from the trenches
    in the battlefields moved by an organized ambulance system, and deposited
    in what had now become hospital trains.
    Some of these cars contain surgery units or supporting care to stop bleeding,
    regain respiration, and resuscitate the patient. There were also provisions
    for walking cases and for other casualties. The system was so effective that
    during the four days of the battle of the Somme, there were 13,392 cases
    that were transported from the front-line battlefields to rural hospital
    areas in France.
    Special frames were developed to cushion the patients as they rode on the
    trains. This is one of the first hospital trains in operation.
    By World War II, a number of trains were in operation both on the battlefront
    and for cities, because of advances in air power, cities now became a target,
    specifically London. Hospital trains were used to evacuate thousands of
    casualties from London hospitals to outlying areas, in addition to receiving
    casualties from across the channel and redistributing it within the country.
    This is an interior of one of these trains. It's a three-tiered system to
    provide adequate access to the patients for their transportation.
    This was even continued up until the 1950s with the British Army of the Rhine.
    This was the advent of federal medical transportation medication; the hospital
    trains went into disuse. At this time there's only one in use in England
    which is used by a reserve army medical unit.
    With a biological attack, these patients are going to require even more intensive
    care than trauma management. This is a slide of inhalational anthrax. We
    only have a few hours once predominantly respiratory symptoms develop. The
    patient needs to be intubated; they need to be mechanically ventilated. Their
    blood pressure needs to be supported with medications.
    Some cutaneous cases may appear. This is cutaneous anthrax, the vegetative
    bacteria multiplying in the blood stream and the tissues release a number
    of toxins, with a massive edema, malignant edema.
    Over 50 percent of those exposed to the agent plume end up with inhalation
    anthrax. Over 50 percent of the inhalation anthrax develop cases associated
    with hemorrhagic meningitis. This is the membrane covering the brain. A great
    deal of these patients will be brought in as casualties probably all having
    epileptic fits. Surrounding area and surface contamination is possible as
    well as intestinal cases may appear. This is hemorrhagic infection of the
    lymph nodes and intestines and a small destruction section of the bowel through
    disruption of his blood supply.
    Until recently, the medical trains would not have been sufficient for the
    mass evacuation of casualties from a high concentration attack area to rear
    definitive area treatments. Recently, Northrop Grumman has come out with
    a specialized stretcher. This is called LSTT stretcher. It stands for Life
    Support and Trauma Transport. Essentially, this is a self-contained unit
    with a giant ventilator I.V. fluid infusion pump and with full monitoring
    capability. Patients put on the stretcher can be intubated, stabilized, and
    transferred.
    The second concept that's become important is that of intermodal transportation.
    This is the use of containers of goods or contents by a variety of different
    methods.
    This can be by land, air, and sea in standardized containers. There's a whole
    subsection of the container transport industry, and they will make containers
    how you want. If you want a bathroom in it, they'll put a bathroom in it.
    If you want it a certain size, they'll construct it a certain size, economically
    and standardized. There are some methods for unaccompanied freight, and at
    the bottom slide you can actually have these on lorries, semi-trailer trucks,
    that are driven on and then off again.
    By combining the systems, it becomes possible to design a disaster car, a
    disaster evacuation train. The train would look something like this. Head
    cars are the ones that stay with the containers. They transport the rest
    of the train. This is a locomotive, a container for medical personnel. Bulk
    stores, which could feature antibiotic stores or injectors with deployable
    vaccination stations. And a staff and manned control communications and
    intelligence sections.
    The staff car could act as the nucleus of a command center to coordinate
    effectively with first responders.
    For a proper coordinated response, it's envisioned that the first responders,
    the fire, police, and ambulances need to be connected with military resources,
    with government and state resources, and with satellite.
    Currently, a piece of technology called the alert system has been developed
    by the Texas Department of Transportation. Essentially, this is a laptop
    computer built into the trunk of a patrol car. It's digital and operating
    on the mobile system. Already digital images have been transmitted from a
    patrol car in Florida to a patrol car in Alexandria. This allows some
    interoperatability between all first response vehicles.
    By linking into the Internet, a commonality can be provided. A previous mass
    casualty or possible mass casualty incident such as the World Trade Center
    or Oklahoma City bombing shows that the cellular system tends to go down
    right after an accident. Everybody's trying to log on and use it, and the
    system collapses. The train would carry a useful piece of technology with
    it. Manufactured by Celltel, this is a mobile system. Unless you have a chip
    for your cell phone, you cannot talk.
    This entire system provides a satellite link to other federal responders
    in transit to the site as well as coordinating local first responders. This
    will cover about a 60-mile radius.
    Maps of each area can be used so all response forces are clearly in contact
    with each other. You can play road status, you can put meteorological and
    weather information on these maps and GPS coordinates are part of the alert
    system.
    Defense Special Weapons Agency have an enormous amount of experience modeling
    downwind areas. They have computer programs that can model fairly quickly
    possible downwind affected areas.
    The second section of the train would be the intensive care patient cars.
    The intensive care ward coaches would be specially built containers with
    a shock absorbing system able to handle the LSTT stretchers. It can be mounted
    on lorries or it can be driven on and off with a semi-attached tractor-trailer.
    Patients would be brought from out of the WMD site on the LSTT stretchers.
    They would then be loaded into these special containers. A center monitoring
    station, this has already been designed, and one doctor and five or six orderlies
    could effectively monitor 40 or 50 patients. These things can be driven off
    or taken straight to the facility.
    The last portion of the disaster train would consist of cutout cars. These
    would be left on-site. It features a security element, another command control,
    communications information element, ambulance trucks with the LSTT stretchers
    already loaded that can drive into the site and bring the patients back to
    the side of the train and a deployable field hospital.
    The inside of these hospital cars can be made to different sizes. Along with
    this comes a mortuary embalming station. This was originally developed by
    Arms Corps in South Africa with the concept that patients are embalmed onsite.
    This negates mass burials or graves. The remains are preserved. It can handle
    800 bodies an hour. The bodies are embalmed, put into body bags, and stored
    at room temperature for later burial when the incident is over.
    The system would work like this: If these trains are placed -- and we'll
    estimate you'll need somewhere around 27 trains to cover the United States
    -- but if all other traffic is cleared off of the rails, you'll be no more
    than four to six hours rail travel to a major metropolitan area.
    Notification. We are estimating this will be the Reserves or the National
    Guard handling these trains. The train would travel to the disaster site
    to a predetermined spot. It will be loaded. Ambulances and a helipad will
    be set up back on the train, and an on-site army field site hospital would
    be deployed. The patients would be brought out on the LSTT stretchers and
    then loaded onto the train. From there, the train would leave full.
    This is an artist's conception of such an incident. This deploying field
    hospital is covered with a charcoal and peroxide blanket. Patients are brought
    out of the area by air or by ambulances on the train on the LSTT stretchers.
    These can be at a positive pressure or negative pressure. We show the assistants
    here in Level A gear because a chemical attack could have occurred at the
    same time, and the patient is loaded onto the containers and we distribute
    it out of the incident site.
    The disaster train concept could provide a number of things. The ability
    to rapidly transport large quantities of antibiotics, vaccines, personnel
    and protective equipment to a WMD site within a matter of hours, the ability
    to rapidly transform sitting stretcher and critical care patients on life
    support from congested nonfunctional hospital areas to health care facilities
    outside of the target area.
    And this response capability would be independent of normal road transportation.
    Some scenarios suggest that with a large area of coverage, one third of the
    population may attempt to flee the city. This could mean both sides of the
    beltway congested. Bringing these medical facilities in by train, that avoids
    this traffic jam. The country could be at war at the same time. There could
    be limited air assets. It provides, above all, a starting point to coordinate
    other federal response forces. Thank you very much.

  • Britain to advise public on surviving gas warfare
    The New York Times
    November 16, 2002
    Britain plans to begin an education campaign using warning posters, mock-emergency drills and other devices to advise the public on how to respond in the event of a biological or chemical attack, the government's chief medical officer said Friday.
    The posters, which are likely to be distributed sometime next year, might contain such poison-gas-attack tips as running away from the gas while leaving other casualties in the hands of emergency workers; not breathing too deeply; or using handkerchiefs as improvised gas masks, the medical official, Liam Donaldson, said.
    "However disturbing it may be for some, we must take up the challenge and the unprecedented step of giving the public more 'protect and serve' information," Donaldson said. "It is impossible to guard against all the potential risks but simple procedural advice could save lives."
    In a series of interviews with the British news media, Donaldson has sought to allay concerns about Britain's possible lack of preparedness for a large-scale terrorist attack. A report by the National Audit Office published Thursday found that many of Britain's state-run hospitals and ambulance services do not have adequate plans or sufficient equipment in place to deal with an assault involving chemical, nuclear, biological or radiological weapons, or one with casualties of 500 people or more.
    The situation is particularly acute in London, where more than 20 percent of the hospitals surveyed for the report said that they were unprepared for a large-scale biological attack. According to the report, a third of the hospitals surveyed, and half of the ambulance services, said they did not have proper protective equipment or decontamination facilities for health-care workers who might be caught up in such an emergency.
    John Lister, director of London Health Emergency, a lobbying group, said that the city would find itself helpless in the face of an attack like the recent siege on the theater in Moscow, which left hundreds of people needing intensive medical treatment to counter the effects of the poison gas deployed to end the standoff.
    "The authorities needed hundreds of intensive care beds to cope with the victims of the gas," Lister told the Evening Standard. "If something like that happened in London, we simply wouldn't have those beds in place, or the facilities or the training to cope."
    Prime Minister Tony Blair added to the general jitteriness here by warning earlier this week that Britain should be on heightened alert for a terrorist attack. Nor did the recent audiotape featuring the probable voice of Osama bin Laden, and carrying a raft of warnings for Britain and other countries allied with the United States, help matters much in a country nervous, however obliquely, that it might be the next terrorist target.
    All this has left the government trying to negotiate a tricky path between raising people's concerns and not inciting panic. Among other things, Britain has amassed millions of doses of smallpox vaccine, which could be distributed in the event of an attack, first to health-care workers and then to civilians in the area of any outbreak. It has also began storing antibiotics that could be used to treat people infected with anthrax and the plague.
    The health department is also planning to organize simulated terrorist attacks, complete with large numbers of mock casualties, to test the readiness of the country's emergency services personnel.
    "It will be alarming for people to see exercises in which pretend casualties are carried away by people in protective equipment and decontaminated, but they will get used to it," Donaldson said.

  • Earth is inside a solar wind stream flowing from a coronal hole on the Sun. Sky watchers should remain alert for Northern Lights on Nov. 5th 2002 as solar wind gusts continue to buffet our planet's magnetic field.

  • On Nov. 4th, Brian Whittaker saw this display out the window of a jet flying over Canada. "It was an amazing show--at times very bright and dynamic," says Whittaker.

  • Spooky Aurora seen over Finnish Lapland.

    (Spaceweather.com)


  • Paul Wellstone, Fighter
    by JOHN NICHOLS
    http://www.thenation.com
    May 27, 2002
    Paul Wellstone is a hunted man. Minnesota's senior senator is not just another Democrat on White House political czar Karl Rove's target list, in an election year when the Senate balance of power could be decided by the voters of a single state. Rather, getting rid of Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the special-interest lobbies that fund the most sophisticated political operation ever assembled by a presidential administration. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide confides. "This one is political and personal for them."
    That has made it political and personal for Wellstone. The man who decided to abandon a self-imposed two-term limit on his Senate service at least in part because of his determination to block Bush's conservative agenda wears the target with pride. At a moment when most Democrats are still trying to figure out how to challenge a popular President, the former college wrestler is leaping into the ring. Wellstone is not running for cover; he is running to deliver a message about politics in a state and a nation that he believes to be far more progressive than the readers of political tea leaves in Washington could begin to imagine.
    "This race is going to be a case study of whether you can maintain liberal, progressive positions and win in this country in 2002," says Wellstone as he campaigns among Laotian immigrants on a sunny spring morning in St. Paul. "We're not running a race that asks people to vote for me because, as a Democrat, I will be a little more compassionate, a little better for working families and children and immigrants, than a Republican. We want to draw the lines of distinction. I'm saying that there is a big difference between the America the conservatives want and the America I want." He adds, "I don't want this to be just about me. This race has to be about basic questions of whether liberals and progressives can flourish in national politics. That means there is a lot more on the line than whether Paul Wellstone wins or loses."
    Wellstone is right. His race is being read as a measure of the potency of progressive politics in America. If he wins, a blow will be struck not just against the Bush machine but against those in the Democratic Party who argue for tepid moderation. With Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and House minority leader Dick Gephardt still struggling to identify the themes on which Democrats will stake their claim for control of Congress later this year, Wellstone is refreshingly different--he knows where he stands and he stands there proudly. For years, progressives have argued that Democrats will win big only when they distinguish themselves from Republicans on fundamental economic and social justice issues. Here is Wellstone--arguably the most prominent elected progressive in the country--doing just that.
    Yet even as he follows the progressive playbook, Wellstone is no sure bet. In a state that gave America liberal Democratic icons like Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Walter Mondale, and that has not backed a Republican for President since 1972, current polls show Wellstone running roughly even with Republican challenger Norm Coleman, a former mayor of St. Paul. To be sure, Coleman has benefited from being "Bush's best boy" and from steady infusions of campaign cash that are available to the Administration's chosen ones. But the full explanation for Wellstone's tight spot is found in a more complex calculation that involves Wellstone himself, the changing character of the upper Midwest, the flux in which the Democratic Party finds itself and the machinations of the people who manipulated Bush into the highest office in the land. "Sure, the Bush Administration is targeting Paul this year, but Paul is never a shoo-in," says Myron Orfield, a Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) state senator widely regarded as one of the nation's top experts in the study of voting patterns. "Paul's a controversial guy. He's the little guy who takes on the big guys. That is not something the political process is designed to reward these days. If you take strong stands you put yourself at risk--and Paul takes more strong stands on more issues than just about anyone else."
    Virtually alone among Senate Democrats, Wellstone sees himself not just as a member of Congress but as a member of a movement. He identifies with progressives, organizes family-farm rallies in Washington, marches with striking hotel workers and dares to title a book The Conscience of a Liberal. That does not mean that Wellstone is the unbending leftist that his critics allege and that many of his supporters would prefer. The man who began burning bridges with the Bush family when he challenged then-President Bush's Persian Gulf War preparations on their first meeting ("Who is this chickenshit?" Bush Sr. asked) may be the Senate's boldest foe of the Star Wars national missile defense program and of increased military aid to Colombia. But he disappointed peace activists when he joined a unanimous Senate vote to authorize an ill-defined military response to the September 11 attacks and dismayed civil libertarians when he refused to join Senator Russell Feingold's solo opposition to constitutionally dubious antiterrorism legislation.
    Still, Wellstone has few rivals on the left side of the Senate aisle. Congressional Quarterly says no senator had a more consistent record of voting against Bush Administration proposals during the new President's first year. Wellstone racks up 100 percent ratings from the AFL-CIO, Americans for Democratic Action and the League of Conservation Voters. He is the veteran grassroots organizer hailed by consumer activists for waging a three-year battle to temper the draconian "bankruptcy reform" bill pushed by the credit card industry. He is the former college professor who has been the chief Senate voice of those who maintain that education-reform initiatives must involve better measures of success than standardized tests. He is the crusader for disability rights and healthcare reform who--since he was diagnosed in February as having a mild form of multiple sclerosis--is in demand not merely as an advocate but as a very human example of what the struggles are about. The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently described him as "the go-to guy to advance the causes of educators, environmentalists, consumer and labor groups, the elderly and the poor."
    For many progressives, that still sounds like a recipe for electoral success. But this "Democratic" state has not elected a DFL governor since 1986, its Senate seats have switched partisan hands twice in twelve years and while Minnesota still backs Democrats for President, it does not do so by much. "This idea that Minnesota is an easy Democratic state is overblown," says Robert Richman, a veteran Democratic campaign aide. "Gore barely won the state in 2000"--prevailing over Bush by fewer than 60,000 votes out of almost 2.5 million cast. Minnesota Democrats note that when Green candidate Ralph Nader's 126,696 votes--5 percent of the total--are added to Gore's, the numbers look better. But Democrats didn't used to have to resort to such calculations in a state that swam against rougher Republican tides to back Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
    Some of the slippage has to do with signals sent by national Democrats. The 1990s saw the Democratic Party relying more on the upper Midwest than ever before for Congressional ballast, yet DC Democrats get low marks for addressing the region's traditional concerns. "This is the part of the country that has saved the Democratic Party in the Senate," says Neil Ritchie, a DFL precinct activist and one of the savviest analysts of farm-state voting patterns in the country. "But, when you've got Clinton, Gore and the Democratic Leadership Council promoting free trade and helping corporate agribusiness, it makes it hard for Democrats out here." Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota have ten Senate seats, nine held by Democrats who, for the most part, preach a farm-and-factory populism with which the technocratic Al Gore was never comfortable. Eight years of Clinton/Gore centrism sucked a lot of air out of the "us against them" populist rhetoric that was long the currency of Democrats in the region. That's a big part of why Bush beat Gore by an overall margin of more than 80,000 votes in these states, and why the shift of relative handfuls of votes would have given Bush an additional twenty-eight electoral votes--making the Florida recount fight irrelevant.
    Now, Rove is gambling presidential prestige and Republican dollars on the prospect that the upper Midwest is the key to taking back a Senate that went Democratic last spring after Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords exited the GOP. "Midwestern voters don't feel the connection with the Democrats that they once did," crows Rove. To that end, Wellstone, South Dakota's Tim Johnson and Iowa's Tom Harkin, all up for re-election, are getting what GOP insiders call "the Rove treatment": recruitment of high-profile Republican challengers, major-league fundraising assistance and regular presidential visits. All other things being equal, picking off either Johnson or Harkin would be enough to split the Senate 50-50 and again allow Vice President Cheney to break partisan ties. But beating Wellstone would be the sweetest win. "They have made it very clear that if they could beat one Democrat this year, it would be Paul Wellstone," says Minnesota political consultant Richman. "Paul gets under their skin."
    "When I first met the President, he called me 'Pablo,'" Wellstone jokes. "That lasted a day or two. Then they started trying to figure out how they were going to get rid of me." While other Democrats approached the new Administration cautiously, Wellstone raised hell. In one of the first confrontations between the Administration and the newly Democratic Senate, Wellstone used his chairmanship of a subcommittee on worker safety to demand that Bush Labor Department officials justify the Administration's rejection of federal ergonomics standards. And Bush aides are still smarting over a Wellstone amendment to the President's tax cut plan that diverted $17 billion to veterans programs.
    For Bush and Rove, payback takes the form of Norm Coleman. A weathervane politician, Coleman switched from Democrat to Republican in the late 1990s. That and his too-slick-by-half style ("I've changed my party, my hair, my smile," he boasts) have never endeared him to the Republican faithful. But he plays well in the burgeoning suburbs of the Twin Cities, where voters know him from two terms as mayor of St. Paul and where Rove thinks the race could be decided. In a state where politics traditionally followed urban and rural lines--the DFL's "Farmer-Labor" tag recalls the populist party that merged with the Democrats in the 1940s--Minneapolis and St. Paul suburbanites now represent 44 percent of the state's population. That, explains DFL State Senator Jane Krentz, who represents suburbs northeast of St. Paul, "is shifting the way people look at politics."
    Coleman's 2002 plan had been to avenge his 1998 loss of the Minnesota governorship to Jesse Ventura, the wrestler-turned-third-party-pol who has yet to decide whether he will seek a second term this year. (There was speculation at one point that Ventura might challenge Wellstone on the Independence Party ticket, but the talk fizzled. If Ventura seeks a new term, an Independence Party Senate candidate might still draw votes--most likely from Coleman. By the same token, a Green candidate could shave some votes off Wellstone's total. But third-party candidates are not expected to gain much traction arguing that voters lack a choice between Wellstone and Coleman.)
    When Coleman switched ambitions under pressure from the White House, even Republicans said he would not be helped much by being identified as "Bush's boy" in a state that tends to favor politicians who think for themselves. But things changed after September 11. As Bush's approval ratings soared, Coleman wrapped himself in the cloak of presidential popularity--and perks. When Bush made his second Coleman-promoting trip to the state this March, banners announced Minnesota Is George W. Bush and Norm Coleman Country. The ex-mayor stepped off Air Force One with Bush, and stuck by his supporter-in-chief like glue through a day that culminated with Bush's raising $1.2 million for Coleman and another $800,000 in soft money for GOP efforts on his behalf. Former President George Bush headlined an October fundraiser in St. Paul for Coleman, and Cheney signed a fundraising appeal. Rove steered special-interest contributions--especially those from an energy industry angered by Wellstone's decadelong battle against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--toward accounts established to aid the man Minnesota media call "Bush's favored-son candidate." Minnesota political observers predict Coleman's campaign will spend $10 million, while another $5 million will be spent by the GOP and anti-Wellstone interests. Anti-Wellstone attack ads are already on TV, and the hits will keep on coming. Republicans say Wellstone's decision to seek a third term--after having stated years ago that he only planned to serve two--is evidence that the maverick Senator has "gone Washington." It's a tough sell, considering Coleman's party switch, but Richman says, "They'll hit Paul from now until November--above the belt and below the belt."
    In this most intense of all Senate contests, Wellstone knows he will not win re-election simply by unfurling old Farmer-Labor banners. To counter Coleman's claim that a Republican can get more done for Minnesota, Wellstone is showcasing legislative accomplishments and the coalitions he has forged with Republicans to increase funding for teacher training, vocational education and environmental protection. Those efforts got an unexpected boost in April when Bush broke with Republicans to endorse Wellstone's proposal to make corporations provide mental healthcare coverage for employees.
    But while he will make the case that he can forge coalitions with the best of 'em, Wellstone is not selling himself as a centrist. No one would believe him. Besides, he says, the winning message is still a populist one. Wellstone is determined to "draw real lines of distinction" in this year's campaign, and that will serve him well in the DFL's urban and rural strongholds--where he can energize voters who were unenthused about Gore. Yet, like Democrats in rapidly changing states across the country, Wellstone understands that he must craft a message that adds suburban votes to his base. He would have a comfortable lead today were it not for the margin--twelve points in a recent poll--that Coleman has in the nine suburban counties around the Twin Cities. One of the primary tasks of the Wellstone campaign this year is to find the populist bone in the suburban body politic. Orfield, the expert on suburban voting patterns, thinks it will succeed. "Some of the issues Paul has fought hardest on--healthcare, protecting pensions, environmental protection--play very strongly in middle-income suburbs where people are feeling squeezed," Orfield argues. "I think that Paul is going to do a very good job of reaching them, and I think that his success will provide a very important lesson for Democrats in other parts of the country."
    Wellstone says the strategy is to reach across lines of class and community to focus on issues that are universal--like education. So what's the populist twist on the education debate? Wellstone's first television ads explain that Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans will dry up money needed to educate urban, rural and suburban kids. Scrap the cuts, Wellstone argues, and free up $121 billion for education programs over ten years. While most Senate Democrats shy away from such talk, and while Coleman claims the Senator is engaging in "class warfare," Wellstone says, "This is a message that gets people excited because it rejects the Administration's line that there isn't enough money to educate our children, care for our seniors, clean up the environment and provide healthcare benefits to people who need them."
    Coleman and Rove are betting that while Wellstone's message may play in rural and urban areas, it won't excite suburbanites. But Krentz, the suburban state senator, thinks Wellstone is on to something. "Paul understands that he's got to connect with suburban parents who know that their kids' schools are not being funded adequately, and he's got to get them thinking about why that is happening," she says. "It's tough because people like to believe that it's possible to settle things without a fight. Paul's challenge is to convince people that there are issues worth fighting for."
    With the Enron scandal fresh in America's memory, Wellstone will also push the idea that there are interests worth fighting against. "When the oil company money comes in, we're going to talk about it," he says. "We're going to fight like hell."
    Wellstone means it when he says "we." Despite Bush's aid to Coleman, Wellstone is keeping pace in fundraising thanks to an activist base that has provided 70,000 contributions averaging $48. But that does not mean that he is mounting a standard campaign. While campaign manager Jeff Blodgett says Wellstone will try to match Coleman's advertising blitz, the campaign will devote more than half its budget to the sort of people-to-people networking that can deliver Wellstone's message to every precinct in the state. Labor, farm and education groups are helping to organize 25,000 volunteers, 7,500 of whom are expected to take time off from work to help on Election Day. Says precinct activist Ritchie, "You're going to see a campaign where the Bush money gets beat because Wellstone is so damn strong at the grassroots that--no matter how many lies they try to tell--there will be a network to get the truth out." Wellstone is devoting tremendous time and energy to expanding the network far beyond the traditional DFL base. "This really is the new Minnesota," he says as he enters Pooh Phetnongphay's Laotian restaurant in St. Paul. "Paul's a sweetheart," Phetnongphay says. "Everyone is registering to vote to help him win."
    Even as Phetnongphay speaks, Wellstone is working the other side of the crowded room. The candidate is limping because of his multiple sclerosis. But the disease, which by all accounts is both under control and of little concern to Minnesotans, has stolen none of his thunder. At 57, he is running harder than ever before. His state and his country are changing. But his faith that a progressive populist message can reach a new Minnesota--and a new America--is unshaken. "The President can come in. The Vice President can come in. The big money can come in. But I'm not worried. I've got you with me," Wellstone roars, as he rallies his troops. "I am a proud progressive senator from Minnesota. I am a proud liberal senator. I am a labor senator. I am an environmentalist senator. I am an education senator. I am a civil rights senator. And that's how we win this election. That's the politics that wins this year."
     
  • Alaska Quake Triggers Multiple Yellowstone Quakes, Too
    11-4-2
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A big earthquake that cracked roads and closed an oil pipeline in rural Alaska has spawned shudders thousands of miles south in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, researchers said on Monday.
    More than 200 small earthquakes have been detected throughout the park, the team at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations said.
    They were all tiny -- ranging in magnitude from 0 to 2.5, the researchers said. A few were felt by rangers, they said in a statement.
    This "confirms what we are beginning to see worldwide -- that earthquakes can be triggered by other earthquakes at great distances, more so than we had though before," Robert Smith, a University of Utah professor of geology and geophysics, said in a statement.
    "While the data are preliminary, they suggest that the Yellowstone earthquakes may have been triggered by the passage of large seismic waves generated by the Alaskan earthquake almost 2,000 miles from the park," the university added in the statement.
    "Scientists once believed that an earthquake at one location could not trigger earthquakes at distant sites. But that belief was shattered in 1992 when the magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in California's Mojave Desert triggered a swarm of quakes more than 800 miles away at Yellowstone, as well as other jolts near Mammoth Lakes, California and Yucca Mountain, Nevada."

  • Attack Iran the day Iraq war ends, demands Israel
    November 05, 2002
    (LondonTimes)
    ISRAEL’S Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has called on the international community to target Iran as soon as the imminent conflict with Iraq is complete.
    In an interview with The Times, Mr Sharon insisted that Tehran — one of the “axis of evil” powers identified by President Bush — should be put under pressure “the day after” action against Baghdad ends because of its role as a “centre of world terror”. He also issued his clearest warning yet that Israel would strike back if attacked by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons, no matter how much Washington sought to keep its controversial Middle Eastern ally out of any war in Iraq.
    He made clear that western Iraq would be one of the first areas targeted by the US in any invasion, saying that lessons had been learnt from strategic mistakes of the 1991 Gulf War when Iraq successfully fired 39 Scud missiles into Israel.
    Mr Sharon, 74, was speaking as he conducted high-level negotiations to keep his Government afloat after the desertion of his centrist coalition partners. Last night he survived three no-confidence votes, giving him more time to forge a coalition with small right-wing parties. He rejected calls for early elections.
    The Knesset also approved the appointment of Shaul Mofaz, the hawkish former Israeli Army chief, as Defence Minister.
    But even as the Knesset voted, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up inside a shopping centre in central Israel, killing at least one other person and injuring 20.
    In other significant changes of tone and policy, Mr Sharon told The Times that:
    Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, could have an ongoing role as a “symbol”, but could not have a role overseeing financial or security functions. This was a departure from previous statements that Mr Arafat was entirely “irrelevant”.
    Mr Sharon himself would continue to lead the country, elections willing, for up to five years. There had been widespread speculation that he would retire within two years.
    The Israeli Government is considering an unprecedented crackdown on the Islamic movement within its own borders, fearing that a “small minority” of Israeli Arabs are turning against the country.
    He asserted that while Washington was inevitably focusing on Saddam Hussein — whom he called “insane” — the White House shared his concern that Iran was also seeking weapons of mass destruction, and developing missiles capable of striking Israel and even Europe.
    “I talked about these things with Vladimir Putin a few days ago and I have been to Washington and one of the things I talked about was what will be (sic) later, if Iraq is going to be disarmed.
    “One of the things I mentioned is that the free world should take all the necessary steps to prevent irresponsible countries from having weapons of mass destruction: Iran, Iraq of course, and Libya is working on a nuclear weapon.”
    He accused Tehran of sponsoring the Lebanese Shia militia, Hezbollah, which he claimed had up to 10,000 short-range missiles stationed in Lebanon ready to strike Israeli towns, of smuggling weapons to the Palestinian Authority, and of trying to turn Israel’s one million Arab citizens against the Jewish state. “Iran is a centre of world terror and Iran makes every effort to possess weapons of mass destruction on the one hand and ballistic missiles,” he said. “That is a danger to the Middle East, to Israel and a danger to Europe.
    “They are working now on a ballistic missile of 1,300km. They have almost reached this range already. They were talking in the past about 2,500km and even 5,000km.”
    Mr Sharon made it abundantly clear that he would not hold back from retaliating, as Israel did at Washington’s behest in 1991, if his nation came under serious attack. “First, we understand the sensitivity. We are living here, we were born here. Israel will make every effort not to interfere,” he said.
    But he warned: “If Israel, and I made it very clear, is attacked by weapons of mass destruction . . . Israel will react. Is it clear? I believe that they understand that Israel will not be able not to defend itself.”
    Mr Sharon reiterated that he was willing to work toward the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, but demanded that progress toward it be measured by concrete improvements in security on the ground.

  • Earthquake Tremors Rattle Britain
    LONDON (AP) - Residents of Manchester felt the ground shake for a second day Tuesday in a series of tremors that caused no damage or injuries.
    A tremor measuring 2.9 on the Richter scale was felt in north Manchester before dawn, followed shortly by an aftershock measuring 2.0 and three smaller ones, said Julian Bukits, assistant seismologist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh.
    Two further tremors were registered, but their magnitude was not immediately available.
    Manchester experienced several tremors on Monday, the largest measuring 3.9 on the Richter scale.
    Damage to homes in the Monday quakes including fallen chimneys, the Fire Brigade reported. Some stores in the city center also were damaged.
    Between 200 and 300 earthquakes are detected in Britain each year by the geological survey, but few are strong enough to be felt. The largest known earthquake in Britain was the North Sea quake of 1931, with a magnitude of 6.1.

  • Why there is conflict between Russia and Chechnya
    (YellowTimes.org)
    October 27, 2002
    ''Human rights take a backseat in the 'war on terrorism'''
    In an October 1st letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, regarding his impending meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Human Rights Watch (HRW) asked the leader to address the international human rights community's concerns about Moscow's abuses in Chechnya.
    The letter read: "The Russian government was among the first to seek to exploit the September 11, 2001 attacks and their aftermath, suggesting that the West and Russia alike face 'a common foe' that would justify Russia's abusive operation in Chechnya. The subsequent muting of criticism by U.K. and other European leaders of human rights violations in Russia allowed the government to enjoy its new role as ally in the global campaign against terrorism and remain confident that it will face no diplomatic or other consequences as a result."
    But aside from receiving occasional tough talk on Chechnya, not much of substance has ever been done to dissuade Moscow's efforts in the region; HRW is correct in pointing out that September 11th has provided a pretext for such activities though, even well before that day, Russia was carrying out what many felt to be one of the most bloody and protracted wars in the last fifty years.
    The Chechen conflict is essentially one of sovereignty and began long ago. The Chechen people, indigenous to the Northern Caucasus for millennia, have been actively engaged in bitter conflict with the various Russian regimes for centuries.
    In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia desired control of the region to solidify its boundary with their then enemy, the Ottoman Empire, to the southwest.
    Today, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union - the event that spearheaded the Chechens' most recent proclamation of independence - the new Russian Federation has sought control over Chechnya for similar, if not more complex, reasons.
    The tiny isthmus of land is still strategically key to regional influence, bordering both the Caspian and Black seas. The territory is also home to a myriad of proposed and existing oil pipelines streaming westward from Central Asia. The more Russia maintains its grasp over Chechnya and the six other semi-autonomous republics, the more say Moscow will have regarding the routes of future pipelines.
    Additionally, Russia has strong interest in maintaining maximum influence over three of her former satellites: Georgia (most importantly), Armenia, and Azerbaijan, as the Middle East and Central Asia are gradually reshaped. U.S. military presence in Georgia has not gone unnoticed.
    Significantly, Chechen resistance has proved more than enough to balance Moscow's fierce desire to bring the region under its control. For the past decade, highlighted by two major wars, Russian troops have been held at bay by rebels who are second only to Afghanistan's Mujihadeen for their tenacity.
    Indeed, Chechnya has seemingly become another Afghanistan for the fiercely proud former superpower. Once again, Moscow is being thwarted by what many consider a rag-tag band of guerrillas.
    The West has never overly concerned itself with the Russian/Chechen conflict and attitudes aren't about to change. Especially with the "war on terrorism" well under way and promises of its indefinite timetable, human rights abuses in a tiny republic in Asia aren't the main concern of the U.S. and Great Britain. The West is able to muster up even less concern knowing that Islamists have sought refuge with, fought alongside, and funded the Chechen resistance. The overwhelming majority of Chechen fighters are indigenous Chechen Muslims fighting for their independence and not intimately linked to fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
    This stance of relative indifference, however, differs greatly from the one taken by George W. Bush during pre-election campaigning when he said that, if he were elected, he would say to Putin, "I think in order for you to have standing in the world of nations that you ought not to be bombing innocent women and children, and you're causing refugees to flee from your country, and therefore, until you decide not to do so, we won't continue with IMF aid and/or export/import loans."
    Such comments aside, the situation in Chechnya resembles other conflicts that the U.S. has been involved with and traditionally backed the aggressor, such as East Timor's fight for independence from Indonesia or western Sahara's struggle under Moroccan rule.
    Such struggles for independence have traditionally been feared by imperialist powers due to the inherent potential they possess for setting off strings of such secessions and inspiring other "breakaway republics," so Western policy towards Chechnya is transparently pro-Russia by default.
    Russia and President Putin also occupy one of the five permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. This fact is not lost on the administration of George W. Bush, who knows best its own plans for future military endeavors and, quite understandably, will seek Moscow's approval of them - if only to show the international community that they still respect the idea of multilateralism.
    Washington wants at least the semblance of a coalition for its actions and will trade this for ignoring other countries' human rights violations as long as they don't hit too close to home.
    An example of this is Uzbekistan, who HRW has deemed one of the most grievous of human rights violators. Yet for purposes of territorial strategy, Uzbekistan is a perfect partner for Washington in the Central Asian theatre of the "war on terrorism."
    Moreover, witness HRW's latest observations of Russian operations in the North Caucasus: "Russia's war in Chechnya has continued to be plagued by severe human rights and humanitarian law violations perpetrated against the civilian population in Chechnya. Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous military sweep operations in which Russian troops arbitrarily detained, tortured and killed civilians in a climate of lawlessness. The war is also characterized by sexual violence, including rape, by Russian servicemen against women in Chechnya. Human Rights Watch documented five such cases in connection with sweep operations in winter-spring 2002."
    So it remains clear that, until a geostrategic shift occurs or until Washington finds Russian troops undesirable in the North Caucasus, Moscow will continue to have carte blanche in Chechnya and human rights will continue to take a backseat as the major players jockey for position in the new global order now focused in the Middle East and Central Asia.

     

  • What's Up in Space -- 21 Oct 2002
    (Space Weather News)
    SOLAR WIND: Earth is inside a high-speed solar wind stream that could trigger auroras if the interplanetary magnetic field tilts south. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for Northern Lights.
    EMERGING SUNSPOT: Sunspot 162, which has just appeared over the Sun's eastern limb, is a big one. It stretches 10 Earth-diameters from end to end and poses a threat for M-class solar flares. You can easily see this active region using safe solar projection methods.

  • West Nile Infects Four La. Dogs
    Sat Oct 19, 2002
    NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Four dogs with encephalitis-symptoms had the West Nile virus (news - web sites), state officials said in one of the first signs the disease may be becoming more widespread in animals.
    Three of the dogs died, state veterinarian Martha Littlefield said Friday. They had symptoms that included seizures, trouble walking, "stargazing," and flinching at a gentle touch.
    The virus may not have caused the disease, but veterinarians should consider West Nile as a possible cause of brain or central nervous system trouble in dogs, Littlefield said.
    Mostly spread through mosquito bites, West Nile virus has infected 2,768 people in 34 states and Washington, D.C. so far this year and killed 146 people, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) said.
    It has also infected more than 110 species of birds, including the bald eagle and the endangered Mississippi sandhill crane. Horses have also been susceptible. The American Veterinary Medical Association has estimated at least 40 percent of the horses infected with West Nile during a 1999 outbreak died.
    But the disease has been rarer in dogs and cats. Officials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported last month the deaths of a 3-month-old wolf and an 8-year-old dog were linked to West Nile.
    The American Veterinary Medical Association's Web site reported three cats who died in 1999 and 2000 were believed to be infected.
    "The biggest thing right now is that so many people have been told it's not a big deal in dogs, so a lot of veterinarians don't look for it," Littlefield said.
    None of the dogs in Louisiana was old or otherwise ill, she said.
    The youngest was a 5-month-old German shepherd. The oldest, a 6-year-old Dalmatian, has recovered.

  • Tale of big bird catches some air
    SOUTHWEST: Letterman, radio stations have some fun with Alaska sighting.
    Southwest Alaskans see bird they say is Super Cub-sized
    Steller's sea eagle
    By Peter Porco
    Anchorage Daily News
    (Published: October 18, 2002)
    A newspaper story this week about the sightings of a large bird in Southwest Alaska turned out to have wings.
    The tale of villagers seeing an eaglelike bird with a wingspan as long as a Dodge van brought dozens of e-mails from readers in Alaska and the Lower 48 and one from the Netherlands.
    The online newsmagazine Drudge Report posted links. The San Diego FM radio program "Smooth Jazz" talked it up. And David Letterman joked about it.
    John Bouker, the Dillingham pilot who saw the bird while flying into Manokotak recently and who was mentioned in the story, said he was getting "bummed out" from all the calls he received from news organizations.
    "They're calling from all over the world," Bouker said Thursday. "The London Telegraph, a Los Angeles radio station, Seattle TV -- I could go on and on and on."
    Some people have written to the paper to say they know what the folks in Manokotak and Togiak have really seen around the hills and valleys west of Dillingham in recent weeks.
    "I believe this is a possible Dragon Sighting," wrote "Anonoumous." "I believe that it is a Northern Ice Dragon."
    People who, like Bouker, have actually seen the bird have said it is like an eagle but enormous, with a wingspan of up to 14 feet. Even people who say the bird is more modestly sized still say it is huge.
    Scientists were somewhat skeptical. They said the bird could be a Steller's sea eagle, one of the largest eagles, a creature native to northeast Asia and sometimes seen in Alaska but whose wingspan is not known to exceed 8 feet.
    But to some e-mailers, what do the biologists know?
    "There was a recent sighting of a giant raptor in the Coastal Bend region" of Texas, writes a woman from the Houston-Galveston area. "Don't let the scientists blow this off. It could be the biological discovery of the century."
    "There's a theory that these are relict (sic) teratorns, the giant scavenger bird that is found widespread in Pleistocene deposits," one man wrote. "Obviously, biologists don't like the idea of a large bird they don't know about."
    On Wednesday night's show, David Letterman flapped his arms during his monologue and said Alaska has nothing to compare with New York. The TV screen then showed the image of a giant winged rat over Manhattan's Central Park.
    A writer from Palmer said a large bird showed up early last week.
    "As I was driving to work on Bodenburg Loop in Palmer I saw a huge object in the sky looking like it was coming in for a landing," the person wrote. "As I got closer and it came across the river and got lower, I realized that it was not a plane but a very, very large bird."
    Similar sightings have taken place apparently in Illinois, where a mother had to smack the giant bird so it would drop her child from its beak; Erie, Pa.; and Evanston, Wyo. A North Carolina author and other people said the bird could be the famed Thunderbird of Native American legend.
    Another author said his book "Hollow Planets" advances "the theory of an unknown/suppressed island in the Arctic" and implied the bird may originate from there.
    A man remembers an astonishing sight as he crossed the equator on a troop transport in 1944.
    "It was not a sea bird in any form," he writes. "I did some research just a few years ago to try to determine what I had seen. I came onto some information on a flying animal called a Pteradon, which is of the Pteradactyl family. These animals are thought to be extict over 150,000 years ago."
    Despite the skepticism of some people, Bouker, the Dillingham pilot, said he knows what he has seen and agrees with some scientists that it's likely a Steller's sea eagle.
    "People in Alaska can appreciate this stuff," Bouker said, adding that those in the Lower 48 cannot understand Great Land dimensions. "In Alaska, we see big birds, big moose, big fish, things you don't see down south."

  • Sex with a Twist ... Lemons Provide Protection
    Wed Oct 9, 9:23 PM ET
    CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian scientists believe they have rediscovered an effective use for lemon juice -- as a contraceptive and also a killer of the AIDS (news - web sites) virus.
    Reproductive physiologist Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne's obstetrics department, said a few drops of lemon juice can be a cheap, easy-to-use solution to protect women from both HIV (news - web sites) and pregnancy.
    The juice should be squeezed onto a piece of sponge or cotton wool and placed into the vagina before sex, he said.
    "We can show in the lab that lemon juice is very effective in immobilizing human sperm and also very effective in killing HIV," Short told Australian Broadcasting Corp television in a science program to be shown later on Thursday.
    He said lime juice, which has similar acid levels, can also be used, with both fruits often freely available in poor countries where contraception is hard to come by.
    Short said laboratory tests found not only does lemon juice kill sperm, it also kills the AIDS virus itself.
    Short said using lemon juice as a contraceptive was not a new idea but it had fallen by the wayside over the years.
    The ancient douche-style contraceptive was encouraged by such luminaries as Casanova, renowned for his sexual prowess.
    "This has been used for hundreds of years and we've just forgotten about it," said Short, who is planning to conduct some field trials in Thailand.
    "About 300 years ago, Mediterranean women used lemon juice as their main method of contraception."

  • 'Frying Squad' Swoops on Drivers in Fuel Scam
    Wed Oct 9, 7:43 AM ET
    LONDON (Reuters) - A Welsh police team dubbed "the Frying Squad" has been formed to sniff out motorists who fuel their cars with cooking oil from fish and chip shops in a bid to avoid paying high government fuel taxes.
    Three Welsh motorists have already been caught and fined for using waste oil from restaurants selling Britain's favorite deep-fried dish, the Times newspaper reported Wednesday.
    "I have halved my motoring costs since I started running my Subaru on cooking oil," the paper quoted one of those stopped as saying.
    "The car runs just as well and even smells a lot better than diesel."
    The drivers were fined 500 pounds ($780) and warned that persistent offenders may face up to seven years in jail.


  • UK denies nerve gas tests on soldiers after 1960s
    LONDON, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Britain, which acknowledges having tested deadly Sarin nerve gas on soldiers in the 1950s and 1960s, denied a Sunday newspaper report that the tests had continued until as late as 1983.
    The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen British Defence Ministry documents which showed that the chemical warfare agent was tested on a soldier in 1983, and that he was denied an antidote by scientists studying the chemical's effects.
    But a British Defence Ministry spokesman, asked if Sarin had been used in 1983, told Reuters: "It was not."
    "It was used in the 50s and 60s. That is part of the public record," the spokesman said.
    The Sunday Telegraph said it had seen the documents, which it said would be made public in two months, when 500 ex-servicemen launched a legal case against the authorities, claiming they had been used as human guinea pigs.
    The Defence Ministry says it has seen no evidence that soldiers who participated in experiments at the Porton Down research centre have suffered long-term health problems, but is cooperating with a two-year inquiry into the practice.
    People exposed to small quantities of Sarin suffer symptoms including difficulty in breathing, nausea, jerking, staggering and loss of bladder and bowel control. Exposure is frequently fatal.
    One Porton Down test subject, Ronald Maddison, died in 1953.
    Maddison's death was ruled a "misadventure" at the time, but Britain's top legal adviser, the attorney general, has given permission for a second inquest to be held five decades later.
    Servicemen say they hope to show that Maddison died as a result of an illegal Sarin test.


  • Sat Oct 12, 4:57 PM ET
    Plum Island, off the northern shore of Long Island, N.Y., is seen in an aerial file photo, date taken unknown. The island is home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, where scientists study some of the world's most infectious animal diseases. A strike by maintenance workers at the facility enters its third month on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2002, and a U.S. senator is demanding the parties reach a settlement over concerns the impasse may pose a national security risk. (AP

  • Babesiosis: The Latest Tick-Borne Thorn. Fatal in about 5 percent of cases, the blood-borne illness is transmitted by the same tick that gave us Lyme disease.
    Sun Oct 13, 7:06 PM ET
    By Amanda Gardner
    HealthScoutNews Reporter
    SUNDAY, Oct. 13 (HealthScoutNews) -- Haven't yet heard of babesiosis, a potentially deadly infection transmitted by ticks?
    Chances are good you will.
    Fatal in about 5 percent of cases, the blood-borne illness is transmitted by the same tick that gave us Lyme disease. In most cases, the parasite causes mild flu-like symptoms, such as aches and fever lasting for about a week.
    However, some victims end up on life support.
    "It's the same tick, but a different bug," says Andrew Spielman, a professor of tropical public health at Harvard University's School of Public Health. "The severity of the illness increases with age and immune system status."
    Basically, babesiosis (pronounced bab-EE-see-OH-sis) causes a destruction of red blood cells, which can lead to moderate to severe anemia.
    "The health impact is not insignificant," says Dr. Peter Krause, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine who has studied the disease. "Some 25 percent [of victims] have no symptoms and 75 percent have symptoms from mild to death. We also know that this can be transmitted through the blood supply."
    That has health officials worried. More than 30 cases of blood-transmitted babesiosis have been identified, some resulting in mild symptoms, and some in more severe illness comparable to malaria, Krause says.
    Krause and some colleagues recently did a study looking at the risk of babesiosis transmission through the blood supply. They took blood from 155 cardiac patients both before and after surgery. No one developed the antibody for Lyme disease, but one person did develop the babesiosis antibody, indicating they'd been infected with the parasite.
    From an infectious diseases point of view, that's not inconsequential, he says.
    The Red Cross is not taking blood from people who have had the disease, and is considering conducting a screening of the nation's blood supply. Although most people have no trace of the parasite after three months, Krause says, some carry it for longer. One man had it in his blood for two years.
    "These people who are asymptomatically infected can give blood not realizing they are infected," Krause says.
    There may be many more infected people than health officials realize.
    The disease is an ancient one, probably millions of years old. The first reference is thought to be in a passage from Exodus in the Bible: "Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain." Here, "murrain" seems to refer to what we know as babesiosis, Krause says.
    The disease was first discovered and described as an organism that broke down red blood cells in cattle by Victor Babes in Romania in 1883. The first human case was described in 1957 when a Yugoslavian farmer contracted the disease from a tick and died.
    In 1969, a Nantucket, Mass., woman acquired an infection that was initially misdiagnosed as malaria. Later, it was identified as rodent babesia. In 1973, a friend and neighbor of the woman also became ill with similar symptoms.
    It was at this time that Spielman visited Nantucket and spoke to all the physicians on the island about the disease. The next year, a newly educated medical community reported five or six cases.
    Right now, the disease is primarily limited to the Northeast -- especially southern Connecticut, New York's Long Island and coastal islands such as Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Block Island -- and the northern Midwest.
    However, like Lyme disease, its spread to other regions is inevitable because of the rise in the deer population. In fact, some cases have been reported as far west as California.
    "Every year we are getting more deer and they are more suburbanized. And it's just increasing as we speak," Spielman says.
    "Deer provide a sort of shelter, a blood meal for the (ticks') adult stage," he adds. "We call the deer traveling motels because that's where the ticks also have babies."
    Babesiosis is more insidious than Lyme disease because it's more difficult to recognize and diagnose. Lyme usually presents with a red rash. Babesiosis is associated with a flu-like illness that is similar to the symptoms caused by many viral infections, Lyme disease or West Nile virus (news - web sites). Only a laboratory can make a firm diagnosis, Krause says.
    The disease is treated with a combination of antibiotics. In extreme cases, doctors will perform an exchange transfusion, replacing a person's entire blood supply.
    Prevention strategies are the same as for Lyme disease.
    Keep your grass cut short -- ticks love tall grass. Avoid walking through tall glass. Also, wear long sleeves, long pants and tick repellant with DEET when you go outside. Do a "tick check" when you come back indoors. Light-colored clothing can make such checks easier.
    Finally, don't underestimate the tick population. One deer can carry hundreds, even thousands, of ticks.
    Even if a tick isn't carrying the Lyme or babesia parasite, you don't want to be near one.
    "These diseases are out there, and almost certainly this tick is carrying something we don't know about yet," Krause says. "It's just a matter of serendipity as to what is found."

  • Drugmakers' gifts to doctors finally get needed scrutiny
    (USAtoday)
    Mon Oct 14, 2002
    Christmas trees. Free tickets to a Washington Redskins game, with a champagne reception thrown in. A family vacation in Hawaii. And wads of cash. Such gifts would trigger a big red ''bribery'' alert in the mind of just about any public official or government contractor. But not, it seems, in the minds of many doctors. They have been raking in jaw-dropping gifts from pharmaceutical firms battling to give their products an edge in an increasingly competitive market.
    Bad enough that the practice taints the independence of doctors who are supposed to advocate for patients, not drug companies. But the ''marketing'' costs are built into skyrocketing drug prices, which have risen more than 15% a year on average since 1999. Those who pay for prescription drugs ultimately foot the generous inducements, including patients, employers and taxpayers, who spend $30 billion for drugs through Medicare and Medicaid.
    Yet government regulators have largely ignored pharmaceutical-company practices that would have set off ethical and legal alarms in other industries. Until now, that is. In a welcome case of calling a bribe a bribe, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) (HHS) is warning drugmakers that gifts or payments to doctors could violate federal fraud statutes.
    A credible threat of fines and jail time is needed to halt the multibillion-dollar effort to buy doctors -- and drive up consumers' drug costs in the process. Ending the marketing tactics also would help restore patients' trust in the integrity of doctors.
    The need for change is great. An April survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health-research group, estimated that pharmaceutical companies spent $13.2 billion last year on promotional activities for doctors, more than $15,000 per physician. The survey found that 61% of physicians had received free meals, travel or tickets to events from pharmaceutical salespeople, 13% had accepted money, and 12% had been paid to participate in drug trials.
    Such abuses mock voluntary guidelines the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted in 1990 to discourage gift taking. It bans doctors from accepting presents from pharmaceutical companies that have no patient benefit or are worth more than $100. Examples: New York Mets tickets or golf balls with company logos.
    In anticipation of the critical HHS report, the pharmaceutical industry rushed out a voluntary code of ethics based on the AMA guidelines that took effect July 1. The effort has had an impact. According to ImpactRx Inc., a pharmaceutical promotion-research group, meetings between drug representatives and doctors at entertainment venues such as casinos and sports events fell from 10% of all get-togethers in May to about 1% from July to September.
    Still, the code leaves big loopholes. Companies can cover some physicians' expenses at educational conferences and pay doctors as consultants. And without tough penalties, incentives are lacking to deter drug companies from reverting to bad practices once the spotlight fades.
    That's what happened after the AMA issued its guidelines, which is why the threat of legal action is needed. Until the legal bribery of doctors ends, too many patients will keep paying inflated prices for medicines they might not even need.

  • How Mobile Phones Let Spies See Our Every Move
    By Jason Burke and Peter Warren
    The Observer - UK
    10-14-2
    Government's secret Celldar project will allow surveillance of anyone, at any time and anywhere there is a phone signal...
    Secret radar technology research that will allow the biggest-ever extension of 'Big Brother'-style surveillance in the UK is being funded by the Government.
    The radical new system, which has outraged civil liberties groups, uses mobile phone masts to allow security authorities to watch vehicles and individuals 'in real time' almost anywhere in Britain.
    The technology 'sees' the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked. Previously, radar needed massive fixed equipment to work and transmissions from mobile phone masts were thought too weak to be useful.
    The system works wherever a mobile phone can pick up a signal. By using receivers attached to mobile phone masts, users of the new technology could focus in on areas hundreds of miles away and bring up a display showing any moving vehicles and people.
    An individual with one type of receiver, a portable unit little bigger than a laptop computer, could even use it as a 'personal radar' covering the area around the user. Researchers are working to give the new equipment 'X-ray vision' - the capability to 'see' through walls and look into people's homes.
    Ministry of Defence officials are hoping to introduce the system as soon as resources allow. Police and security services are known to be interested in a variety of possible surveillance applications. The researchers themselves say the system, known as Celldar, is aimed at anti-terrorism defence, security and road traffic management.
    However civil liberties groups have been swift to condemn the plan.
    'It's an appalling idea,' said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. 'The Government is just capitalising on current public fears over security to intoduce new systems that are neither desirable nor necessary.'
    The system, used alongside technology which allows individuals to be identified by their mobile phone handsets, will mewan that individuals can be located and their movements watched on a screen from hundreds of miles away.
    Prototypes have been effective over 50 to 100 metres but the developers are confident that range can be extended.
    After a series of meetings with Roke Manor, a private research company in Romsey, Hants, MoD officials have started funding the multi-million pound project. Reports of the meetings are 'classified'.
    Whitehall officials involved in radar confirmed that the MoD was 'very interested' last week. 'It's all about resources now,' said one.
    Private security specialists have also welcomed the new technology.
    'It will be enormously useful,' the director of one private security firm said. 'Instead of setting up expensive and cumbersome surveillance equipment, police or the security services could start work quickly and easily almost anywhere.
    'For tracking a suspect, preventing a potential crime or a terrorist strike or simply locating people [the system] has enormous advantages.'
    It is likely that the technology would be used at first to protect sensitive installations such as ports and airfields.
    The perimeter of a nuclear power station or an RAF base could be watched without having a bank of CCTV screens and dozens of expensive cameras.
    If the radar picked up movement then a single camera could be focused on a specific area.
    Celldar could also monitor roads when poor visibility due to bad weather rendered cameras useless.
    'The equipment could pick up traffic flows towards an accident site and the details of a crash; who is where and so on,' said Peter Lloyd of Roke Manor.
    Lloyd also outlined a number of military applications for the technology. Individual armoured vehicles or even soldiers could carry the detectors which could tell them where enemy troops were.
    Security specialists point out how useful personal radars would be in siege situations. However there are significant concerns that the technology might be abused by authorities or fall into the wrong hands.
    'Like all instrusive surveillance, we need to be sure that it is properly regulated, preferably by the judiciary,' said Roger Bingham of Liberty.
    Bingham expressed concerns that the new equipment, which would be virtually undetectable, could be used by private detectives or others for personal or commercial gain.
    Modern technology has brought massive opportunities for wider surveillance. Since the 11 September terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, the government has been pushing through a package of anti-terrorism legislation which targets electronic communications.
    Senior police officers are now allowed to access mobile telephone and email records without judicial or executive assent. Within two years, all mobile phones are expected to have satellite-locating devices built into them.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,2763,811034,00.html

       

  • Underwater Cuba City-Like Shape A Major Mystery
    Fri, Oct. 11, 2002
    It may not be Atlantis, but it's big, 2,000 feet down and not natural
    KEVIN SULLIVAN
    Washington Post
    HAVANA - The images appear slowly on the video screen, like ghosts from the ocean floor. The videotape, made by an unmanned submarine, shows massive stones in oddly symmetrical square and pyramid shapes in the deep-sea darkness.
    Sonar images taken from a research ship 2,000 feet above are even more puzzling.
    They show that the smooth, white stones are laid out in a geometric pattern. The images look like fragments of a city, in a place where nothing man-made should exist, spanning nearly eight square miles of a deep-ocean plain off Cuba's western tip.
    "What we have here is a mystery," said Paul Weinzweig, of Advanced Digital Communications, a Canadian company that is mapping the ocean bottom of Cuba's territorial waters under contract with the government of President Fidel Castro.
    "Nature couldn't have built anything so symmetrical," Weinzweig said, running his finger over sonar printouts aboard his ship, tied up at a wharf in Havana harbor. "This isn't natural, but we don't know what it is."
    The company's main mission is to hunt for shipwrecks filled with gold and jewels, and to locate oil and natural gas reserves in deep water Cuba does not have the means to explore.
    Treasure hunting has become a growth industry in recent years as technology has improved allowing more precise exploration.
    Advanced Digital operates from the Ulises, a 260-foot trawler that was converted to a research vessel for Castro's government by the late French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
    Since they began exploration three years ago with sophisticated side-scan sonar and computerized global-positioning equipment, Weinzweig said they have mapped several large oil and gas deposits and about 20 shipwrecks sitting beneath ancient shipping lanes where hundreds of old wrecks are believed to be.
    The most historically important so far has been the USS Maine, which exploded and sank in Havana harbor in 1898, an event that ignited the Spanish-American War.
    It was later scuttled, its precise location unknown until Ulises' sonar spotted it two years ago.
    Then, by sheer serendipity, on a summer day in 2000, as the Ulises was towing its sonar back and forth across the ocean like someone mowing a lawn, the unexpected rock formations appeared on the sonar readouts.
    That startled Weinzweig and his partner and wife, Paulina Zelitsky, a Russian-born engineer who has designed submarine bases for the Soviet military.
    "We have looked at enormous amounts of ocean bottom, and we have never seen anything like this," Weinzweig said.
    The discovery immediately sparked speculation about Atlantis, the fabled lost city first described by Plato in 360 B.C. Weinzweig and Zelitsky were careful not to use the "A" word and said that much more study was needed before such a conclusion could be reached.
    But that has not stopped a boomlet of speculation, most of it on the Internet. Atlantis-hunters have long argued their competing theories that the lost city was off Cuba, off the Greek island of Crete, off Gibraltar or elsewhere.
    Among those who suspect the site may be Atlantis is George Erikson, a California anthropologist who co-authored a book in which he predicted the lost city would be found offshore in the tropical Americas.
    "I have always disagreed with all the archaeologists who dismiss myth," said Erikson, who said he had been shunned by many scientists since publishing his book about Atlantis. He said the story has too many historical roots to be dismissed as sheer fantasy and that if the Cuban site proves to be Atlantis, he hopes "to be the first to say, `I told you so.' "
    Manuel Iturralde, one of Cuba's leading geologists, said it was too soon to know what the images prove. He has examined the evidence and concluded that, "It's strange, it's weird; we've never seen something like this before, and we don't have an explanation for it."
     
    27 MILLION Pounds Of Cooked Chicken & Turkey Recalled
    Food Safety Inspection Service
    FSIS.USDA.gov
    10-14-2
    WASHINGTON - Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, doing business as Wampler Foods Inc., a Franconia, Pa., establishment, is voluntarily recalling approximately 27.4 million pounds of fresh and frozen ready-to-eat turkey and chicken products that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced today.
    The products were produced between May 1 and Oct. 11. In addition, the establishment has voluntarily suspended operations.
    The turkey and chicken products were distributed to retail stores, restaurants and institutions nationwide.
    "We want consumers to be aware of the recall because of the potential for foodborne illness," said Dr. Garry L. McKee, FSIS administrator. "Diners may also wish to ask if their meals contain the recalled products."
    Today's recall, an expansion of the Oct. 9 recall of 295,000 pounds of turkey and chicken products, is the result of FSIS' continuing scientific investigation into the cause of illnesses, deaths and miscarriages in the Northeast from Listeria monocytogenes.
    The Oct. 9 recall was prompted by a product sample taken by FSIS at the facility that tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes. The strain found in the product does not match the strain common to illness victims. FSIS continued its investigation by taking additional product samples, as well as a large number of environmental samples from multiple locations in the plant.
    Results of the product sampling from various days of production were all negative. However, environmental sampling demonstrated the presence in the plant of the Listeria monocytogenes strain matching the Oct. 9 recalled product.
    FSIS has been working continuously since early September with other federal and state public health agencies in an attempt to discover the source of Listeria monocytogenes illnesses in the Northeast.
    As part of that effort, FSIS' Microbial Outbreaks and Special Projects Branch (MOSPB) laboratory in Athens, Ga., has conducted more than 400 tests on products that the agency regulates. The environmental samples were analyzed at the FSIS field lab in St. Louis, Mo.
    In addition, more than 50 scientists at FSIS' laboratories, regional epidemiologists, consumer safety officers, compliance officers and personnel in the field and at USDA headquarters have been dedicated to the investigation.
    While the investigation into Listeria monocytogenes illnesses continues, Dr. McKee commended the agencies that have participated thus far in the effort, saying that their cooperation has helped FSIS greatly.
    "While I am very proud of our scientists and investigators for their skill and dogged determination, I am also heartened by the degree of cooperation FSIS has received from other public health agencies," Dr. McKee said. "This investigation can be held up as a model for how agencies should act in concert with one another to protect public health."
    Consumption of food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, an uncommon but potentially fatal disease. Healthy people rarely contract listeriosis. Listeriosis can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea. Listeriosis can also cause miscarriages and stillbirths, as well as serious and sometimes fatal infections in those with weak immune systems - infants, the frail or elderly and persons with chronic disease, HIV infection, or taking chemotherapy.
    Anyone concerned about an illness should contact a physician.
    Consumers with questions about the recall may contact the company's consumer information recall hotline at (877) 260-7110. Media with questions about the recall may contact Ray Atkinson, public relations manager, Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, at (540) 896-0406.
    Consumers with other food safety questions can phone the toll-free USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-800-535-4555. The hotline is available in English and Spanish and can be reached from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Eastern Time), Monday through Friday. Recorded food safety messages are available 24 hours a day.
    The brand names of the recalled products are attached. All of the products bear the establishment code "P-1351" inside the USDA mark of inspection unless otherwise noted.
    LISTERIA PRECAUTIONS
    USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline
    1-800-535-4555 or visit www.fsis.usda.gov
    People at risk for listeriosis and their family members or individuals preparing food for them should:
    Reheat until steaming hot the following types of ready-to-eat foods: hot dogs, luncheon meats, cold cuts, fermented and dry sausage, and other deli-style meat and poultry products. Thoroughly reheating food can help kill any bacteria that might be present. If you cannot reheat these foods, do not eat them.
    Wash hands with hot, soapy water after handling these types of ready-to-eat foods. (Wash for at least 20 seconds.) Also wash cutting boards, dishes, and utensils. Thorough washing helps eliminate any bacteria that might get on your hands or other surfaces from food before it is reheated.
    Do not eat soft cheeses such as feta, Brie, Camembert, blue-veined or Mexican-style cheese. You can eat hard cheeses, processed cheeses, cream cheese, cottage cheese, and yogurt.
    Do not drink raw, unpasteurized milk or eat foods made from it, such as unpasteurized cheese.
    Observe all expiration dates for perishable items that are precooked or ready-to-eat.
    USDA RECALL CLASSIFICATIONS
    Class I This is a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.
    Class II This is a health hazard situation where there is a remote probability of adverse health consequences from the use of the product.
    Class III This is a situation where the use of the product will not cause adverse health consequences.
    For Further Information Contact
    * Consumers: Meat and Poultry Hotline,
    1-800-535-4555 (voice); 1-800-256-7072 (TTY)
    * Media: (202) 720-9113
    http://www.fsis.usda.gov/oa/recalls/prelease/pr090-2002.htm

  • Bush Blamed in Meat Recalls, Pilgrim's Pride Drops
    Mon Oct 14, 2002
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer groups blamed a "business-friendly" Bush administration for lax food safety policies on Monday, in the wake of the largest U.S. meat recall ever that prompted a 34 percent drop in shares of Pilgrim's Pride Corp. .
    Pilgrim's Pride, the No. 2 U.S. poultry producer, on Sunday recalled 27.4 million pounds of fresh and frozen ready-to-eat turkey and chicken products under its Wampler brand, after pulling 295,000 pounds of turkey and chicken products from the market last week due to listeria concerns.
    The recall surpasses the previous record of 25 million pounds of ground beef set by Hudson Foods in 1997.
    The company said the recall occurred after environmental tests at its Franconia, Pennsylvania, plant found a strain of listeria similar to the one identified in an outbreak in the U.S. Northeast that has caused at least 23 deaths and 120 illnesses.
    The company halted production at its Pennsylvania plant and recalled meat products it made between May 1 and Oct. 11. It said most of the turkey and chicken were purchased nationally at grocery stores and restaurants and already consumed.
    U.S. consumer advocates blamed the Bush administration for the massive recalls, saying hundreds have fallen ill because Washington eased food safety standards.
    The No. 2 U.S. poultry producer joins ConAgra Foods Inc. , Smithfield Foods Inc. and privately held Cargill in withdrawing massive amounts of meat in recent months because of fears they may be tainted with harmful bacteria.
    The Pittsburgh, Texas-based company's stock tumbled $2.36, or 34 percent, to $4.65 in mid-afternoon trading at the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites). They ended the day's trading at $5.28.
    Pilgrim's Pride said on Monday, however, that it did not expect the recall to have a material adverse effect on its financial condition.
    "I think, with the market environment we are now in, any news regarding a company causes the reaction to sell first, ask questions later," said Richard Cogdill, the company's chief financial officer.
    "We stand by our products that they are 100 percent safe and wholesome."
    CONSUMER GROUPS BLAME BUSH ADMINISTRATION
    Consumer groups blamed the Bush administration for not putting stricter food-testing regulations in place.
    "There are proposed listeria regulations dating back to the Clinton administration that may have prevented this, but the Bush administration is sitting on it," said Karen Mitchell, executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority.
    Last year, the USDA proposed rules, written by the Clinton administration, to require makers of ready-to-eat meats to test for listeria in their plants. The comment period ended in May 2001, but the Bush administration has yet to act on it.
    "There is no excuse for the Bush administration to hold back needed improvements in food safety," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
    The USDA routinely tests products at meat plants for listeria, but separate industry testing is voluntary.
    LISTERIA OUTBREAK
    The Pilgrim's Pride recall was discovered by USDA while investigating a listeria outbreak that has caused at least 23 deaths, three miscarriages and 120 illnesses in the U.S. Northeast. The company and USDA have said no illnesses could be linked to the recalled poultry.
    The USDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) have been unable to pinpoint the source of the Northeast listeria outbreak in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Michigan and Massachusetts.
    The CDC has suspected turkey deli meat as one likely source. Despite more than 400 tests on lunch meats and deli products, USDA has not been able to find the cause.
    Eating food contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, leading to miscarriages and stillbirths, as well as potentially deadly infections in those with weak immune systems.
    At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, live cattle futures prices were mixed due to concerns the huge recall may hurt consumer demand for meat. Live cattle contracts for October delivery closed on Monday off 0.325 at 68.150 cents per pound.
    Pilgrim's Pride has voluntarily closed its meat processing plant about 25 miles north of Philadelphia, but hopes to reopen it on Wednesday. USDA said its inspectors must recertify that the plant meets federal food safety standards before it can return to operation.
    "We are not going to open the plant until we are absolutely confident it's in the shape we want it in," Cogdill said.
    Pilgrim's Pride said the amount of product covered by the recall was about 7 percent of the company's annual turkey production and less than 1 percent of its total poultry production.
    About 2,500 cases of listeriosis occur each year in the United States. Listeria can be destroyed by cooking meat to a temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit (71 C).

    Object Found Beyond Pluto's Orbit
    Mon Oct 7, 20002
    AP
    A billion miles beyond Pluto, astronomers have discovered a frozen celestial body 800 miles across — the biggest find in our solar system since the ninth planet was first spied in 1930.
    Astronomers do not consider the newfound object a planet. Instead, it is believed to be icy debris left over from the formation of the solar system 5 billion years ago.
    The object was provisionally named Quaoar (pronounced KWAH-oh-wahr) after a creation force in Southern California Indian mythology.
    It is about one-tenth the diameter of Earth and orbits the sun once every 288 years at a distance of 4 billion miles. It is only about half the size of Pluto, which some astronomers believe should never have been called a planet in the first place.
    But "it's about the size of all the asteroids put together, so this thing is really quite big," said planetary astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
    Brown and postdoctoral scholar Chadwick Trujillo used a telescope at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego to spot the object in images taken June 4. Follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites) confirmed its size.
    They announced their discovery Monday in Birmingham, Ala., at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's division of planetary sciences.
    Archival research showed Quaoar had been captured on film as long ago as 1982 but was never noticed, Brown said. He and Trujillo went back and pored over the older images to help pin down the circular path it travels around the sun.
    Quaoar lies in the Kuiper Belt, a swarm of objects made of ice and rock that orbit the sun beyond Neptune. The objects are considered fossil remnants of the swirling disk of debris that coalesced to form the solar system. It is also believed to be the source of some comets.
    The Kuiper Belt (pronounced KOY-per) contains as many as 10 billion objects at least one mile across; astronomers estimate five to 10 of those are jumbo-size.
    "This new discovery fits right in with our expectation that there should be a handful or two of objects as large as Pluto," said astronomer David Jewitt of the University of Hawaii. Jewitt, with then-colleague Jane Luu, discovered the first Kuiper Belt object just a decade ago.
    As larger Kuiper Belt objects turn up, the case for Pluto as a planet weakens, astronomers said. Pluto lies within the Kuiper Belt and is considered by many merely among the largest of the bunch, and not a planet in its own right.
    "It's pretty clear, if we discovered Pluto today, knowing what we know about other objects in the Kuiper Belt, we wouldn't even consider it a planet," Brown said.
    NASA is considering launching a spacecraft to explore Pluto, its moon, Charon, and at least one Kuiper Belt object, but whether it will be funded remains unclear. The New Horizons mission could launch as early as 2006, and would take about a decade to reach Pluto.

    Artist's rendering of the Kuiper Belt object known as Quaoar, superimposed over a satellite view of North America, contrasting its size. The object measures approximately 800 miles in diameter, compared with the Earth's diameter of approximately 8,000 miles. It is the biggest object found orbitting the sun since astronomers discovered Pluto in 1930. REUTERS

    Su Hua-Hsieh from Taiwan attempts her lift during the Asian Games women's 75kg weightlifting competition in Busan, South Korea, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2002. Su finished 6th in the competition. (AP)

  • 'Meteorite' hits North Yorkshire girl
    27 August, 2002, 12:27 GMT 13:27 UK
    Siobhan Cowton: "I saw it fall from above roof height"

    The odds against being hit by a meteorite are billions to one - but a teenager in North Yorkshire may have had one land on her foot.
    Siobhan Cowton, 14, was getting into the family car outside her Northallerton home at 1030 BST on Thursday when a stone fell on her from the sky.
    This does not happen very often in Northallerton
    Siobhan Cowton
    Noticing it was "quite hot", she showed it to her father Niel.
    The family now plan to have the stone analysed by scientists at Durham University.
    "I saw it fall from above roof height," Siobhan told BBC News Online.
    "It looked very unusual, with a bubbled surface and tiny indentations like volcanic lava.
    'Shiny'
    "It was shiny on one side and looked rusty as if it contained iron.
    "I've seen shooting stars before - but nothing like this. This does not happen very often in Northallerton."
    Mr Cowton, 45, told BBC News Online he would take the stone to be analysed himself.
    The stone may have come from Mars
    "It is not going to leave my sight because it is a very rare find," he said.
    "It is worth a lot to Siobhan.
    "We will have it mounted in a glass presentation case so she can keep it for the rest of her life.
    "After all it is not every day you get hit by a meteorite.
    "The odds of winning the Lottery are better."
    The stone could have come from Mars, according to expert on Earth impacts Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University.

    "It could be billions of years old and come from the earliest formation of the solar system," he told the Daily Mail newspaper.
    Most meteors are between five and 60 centimetres (1.95 in and 1 ft 11.5 in) long, according to Durham University physical geography lecturer Dr Ben Horton.
    "Sometimes they have shallow depressions and cavities," he said.

  • 'Meteor' lights up Midlands UK
    Sunday, 6 October, 2002
    A burning object seen streaking across West Midlands skies on Sunday morning may have been a meteor, astronomers have said.
    The streaking fireball was seen heading south shortly before 0600 BST.
    Its passage was followed by a bright flash which lit up the sky.
    Sightings of the object were reported at sites including Coventry, England's south coast and Wales.
    Andy Salmon, from the Birmingham Astronomical Society, said it may have been a meteor - space debris burning up in the atmosphere.
    Space junk
    A meteor is a particle entering the Earth's atmosphere and burning up at high speed
    Many meteors are the size of a sand grain
    Larger objects do not burn up completely, hit the ground, and become a 'meteorite'
    He also suggested it may have been a man-made object, such a satellite re-entering the atmosphere, or a rocket being launched.
    "Meteors can happen at any time... there's no predicting when it may happen," he said.
    One witness said the object had a tail.
    He also suggested it may have been a man-made object, such a satellite re-entering the atmosphere, or a rocket being launched.
    "Meteors can happen at any time... there's no predicting when it may happen," he said.
    One witness said the object had a tail.
    "All of a sudden I've seen this light streak across the sky... the front of the light was much larger than what you would call the tail," he said.
    'Like a film'
    The BBC's Ben Godfrey saw the fireball as he arrived at work.
    "It was reminiscent of a meteor you might see in a film... it was huge," he said.
    Local aviation authorities confirmed the object was not aircraft-related.
    It has been an eventful period for the West Midlands in nature terms, with the region shaken by an earth tremor on 23 September.

  • Large Meteor Strikes Southern Siberia
    10-4-2
    (EFE News) -- Residents of several villages in the Russian region of Irkutsk watched, with a mixture of awe and fear, the fall of an enormous luminous object in this southern Siberian area. Scientists have identified the object as a meteorite.
    Several witnesses to the skyfall immediately sounded the alarm and contacted the Institute of Solar Physics of the Western Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Science. In turn, the Emergency Situations Ministry was notified due to the commotion that the object's fall caused among the region's population.
    According to residents of the villages of Bodaibo, Balajniniski, Mama and Kropotkin, the alleged meteorite left a long trail in the sky before crashing violently against the taiga or Siberian forest.
    Witnesses some 100 to 150 kilometers away from the point of impact noted that when the object collided, it caused a huge tremor similar to that of an earthquake, amid a deafening noise. They also remarked that following the impact, sporadic flashes of light were seen in the forested hills. Guelii Zherebtsov of the aforementioned Institute of Solar Physics noted that the celestial body must have been a very large meteorite. He added that preparatios are being made to explore the impact site, located between Baljninski and Kiajta.
    This meteor strike was reminiscent of the Tungunska incident, which occurred in another Siberian region located to the north. On June 30, 1908, an unknown object crashed against the taiga and razed thousands of hectares of forest. The alleged meteorite--the explanation given by conventional scientists--had a mass of approximately 100,000 tons and impacted with a force of 40 tons of TNT: 2000 times the power of the Hiroshima A-bomb. The Tungunska object, identified by some as an extraterrestrial spacecraft, razed nearly 2150 sq. km of forest and, as occurred with today's phenomenon, lightning and strange lights were seen at its epicenter hundreds of kilometers away.

    Iraq's Dr. Germ - the deadliest woman alive-during the first Gulf War, 166 bombs and 25 long-range missile warheads had been loaded with biological agents, ready to rain agonizing death on U.S. troops.
    Sun Oct 6, 2002
    (NY DAILY NEWS)
    WASHINGTON - She is a middle-aged mom, a cultured woman with a British accent and doctorate who married well, to a general.
    In a rare picture, she has chipmunk cheeks, thick gray-streaked black hair and cradles a handbag as she squints at the camera from under carefully plucked half-moon eyebrows.
    Dr. Rihab Taha, 47, is said to be the most dangerous woman in the world.
    Dubbed Dr. Germ by the press, Saddam Hussein's biological weapons chief has made enough doses of enough lethal germs to kill every human on the planet. Her handiwork is a large part of the reason America is planning to go to war again.
    Taha, widely described as shy and unassuming, has spent most of the last two decades spinning a web of horrors: bugs that make eyes bleed, bacteria that peels skin off the body, viruses that cause fever and pox and lingering, agonizing death.
    Little has been heard of Taha since the United Nations Special Commission weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998. She may be there to greet them if they go back in the next few weeks.
    Popular student
    The product of a well-heeled family, Rihab Rashida Taha graduated from the University of Baghdad and went to England in the late 1970s to study microbiology.
    She spent five years studying plant diseases at the University of East Anglia and received her doctorate in tobacco pathogens in 1984.
    Though quiet, she was well liked by fellow students and brought back gift-wrapped boxes of Iraqi dates from trips home. She went to the theater, read poetry and never joined political discussions in the lab. As the Iran-Iraq war dragged into its third year, she rented a flat with two Iranian girls.
    Her mentor and friend, chief of East Anglia's biology department John Turner, remembered her as shy, hardworking and not markedly gifted.
    Taha returned to Baghdad in 1984 and became the protege of top microbiologist Abdul Nassir Hindawi, who was urging the government to relaunch its long-defunct bioweapons program.
    With the war against Iran going badly, the government decided it wanted germ weapons and put Taha in charge of making them.
    The United States sent Taha her first bugs in April 1986.
    Back then, secular Iraq was an ally against Iran's Islamic fundamentalists, and the Reagan administration okayed the mailings of dozens of samples of anthrax, botulinum toxin, E. coli, a gangrene-causing bacteria and West Nile virus .
    Five years later, when UN weapons inspectors first arrived in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War , Taha told them only a tiny number of biological weapons had been produced and all had been destroyed.
    They didn't believe her, and when they pressured her, she frequently turned to theatrics, bursting into tears, and storming out of rooms, inspectors reported.
    (One of these stormy meetings took place in 1993 in New York, where Taha and Iraqi oil minister Amer Rashid spent time discussing UNSCOM (the now-defunct inspection agency) problems with the UN. Romance apparently bloomed, because Rashid subsequently left his wife to marry Taha. They have an 8-year-old daughter.)
    In a bold stroke in March 1995, Taha took a group of Western reporters to the al Hakam plant to show them it was just a chicken farm.
    But a few weeks later, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, defected and told Western intelligence what Taha and her research counterparts were really up to.
    Iraq then gave the UN 600,000 pages of documents outlining its weapons program. It turned out the Iraqis had made thousands of gallons of toxins.
    Iraq also admitted that during the Persian Gulf War, 166 bombs and 25 long-range missile warheads had been loaded with biological agents, ready to rain agonizing death on U.S. troops. They were never used because Iraq feared nuclear retaliation.
    Still, UNSCOM was skeptical that the whole truth was being told and they didn't believe Iraq's claims that all the biological agents were destroyed in the summer of 1991.

  • NY Area Labs Have Long Studied West Nile Virus - Yale And Rockefeller Began Test In The '50s
    Newsday 09-29-1999 page A28
    "Epidemiologists suspect that the West Nile virus has for the first time been isolated in humans or animals in the Western Hemisphere, but the virus has for decades made its home in several U.S. research laboratories, including Rockefeller University in Manhattan and Yale University in New Haven, Conn. In fact, investigators there were the first to grow and study the West Nile virus in the United States. The work began in the 1950s when unidentified viral samples from around the world arrived at Rockefeller on a steady basis."

  • Alibek believes the West Nile Virus is a bio-terror attack - outbreak compares with nothing he has seen before for this type of biological agent. (NEWSMAX no link)


  • "Russia has researched the genetic alteration of smallpox," Alibek told me. "In 1990 and 1991, we engineered a smallpox at Vector. It was found that several areas of the smallpox genome" -- the DNA -- "can be used for the introduction of some foreign genetic material. The first development was smallpox and VEE. VEE, or Venezuelan equine encephalitis, is a brain virus. It causes a severe headache and near-coma, but it is generally not lethal. Alibek said that the researchers spliced VEE into smallpox. The result was a recombinant chimera virus. In ancient Greek myth, the chimera was a monster made from parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. "It is called smallpox-VEE chimera," Alibek said. It could also be called Veepox. Under a microscope, Alibek said, the Veepox looks like smallpox, but it isn't.
    According to Alibek, there was one major technical hurdle to clear in the creation of a workable Veepox chimera, and he says that it took the Vector researchers years to solve the problem. They solved it by finding more than one place in the smallpox DNA where you could insert new genes without decreasing smallpox's ability to cause disease. Many researchers feel that the smallpox virus doesn't cause disease in animals in any way that is useful for understanding its effects on humans. Alibek says that the Russians tested Veepox in monkeys, but he says that he doesn't know the results.
    More recently, Alibek claims, the Vector researchers may have created a recombinant Ebola-smallpox chimera. One could call it Ebolapox. Ebola virus uses the molecule RNA for its genetic code, whereas smallpox uses DNA. Alibek believes that the Russian researchers made a DNA copy of the disease-causing parts of Ebola, then grafted them into smallpox. Alibek said he thinks that the Ebolapox virus is stable -- that is, that it will replicate successfully in a test tube or in animals -- which means that, once created, Ebolapox will live forever in a laboratory, and will not uncreate itself. Thus a new form of life may have been brought into the world.
    "The Ebolapox could produce the form of smallpox called blackpox," Alibek says. Blackpox, sometimes known as hemorrhagic smallpox, is the most severe type of smallpox disease. In a blackpox infection, the skin does not develop blisters. Instead, the skin becomes dark all over. Blood vessels leak, resulting in severe internal hemorrhaging. Blackpox is invariably fatal. "As a weapon, the Ebolapox would give the hemorrhages and high mortality rate of Ebola virus, which would give you a blackpox, plus the very high contagiousness of smallpox," Alibek said.
    Bill Patrick became exasperated. "Ken! Ken! I think you've got overkill here. What is the point of creating an Ebola smallpox? I mean, it would be nice to do this from a scientific point of view, sure. But with old-fashioned natural smallpox you can bring a society to its knees. You don't need any Ebolapox, Ken. Why, you're just gonna kill everybody."
    "I suspect that this research has been done," Alibek said calmly.


  • Threat Assessment: Countries May Bioengineer Weapons: Iraq has the 100% lethal Genetically Modified Ebolapox says Alibek
    Global Security Newswire
    Friday, November 30, 2001 issue.
    Iraq and Iran are believed to be developing genetically altered biological weapons that could resist vaccines or antibiotics, thereby making them much more deadly, a wide range of intelligence sources told Global Security Newswire in recent interviews.
    Baghdad and Tehran might not only possess mutant strains of anthrax or smallpox, they may already have the ability to weaponize and deliver such devastatingly lethal bioagents, according to lawmakers, Pentagon officials, U.N. inspectors, scientists, analysts and a former CIA director.
    “It’s a 50-50 possibility that Iraq and Iran have genetically modified biological weapons and may have some of the potential to weaponize them today to be used as weapons of mass destruction,” U.S. representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said yesterday.
    “I would expect it,” said microbiologist Gary Long, a government consultant who was in the last group of U.N. Special Commission inspectors to leave Iraq in 1998. “It would prudent for us to assume that they are developing these types of awful weapons.”
    “It’s the perfect weapon,” said Ken Alibek, the former Soviet scientist who headed the Soviet civilian biological warfare agency, Biopreparat, a gigantic, once-secret organization whose experimentations since 1973 created dozens of new harmful and antidote-resistant organisms. “For now, we have no treatment whatsoever for genetically modified weapons.”
    While officials at the White House, CIA, State Department and the newly created Office of Homeland Security refused to comment on grounds that the topic is classified, Undersecretary of State John Bolton last week publicly accused Iraq, Iran and four other countries of pursuing biological weapons (see GSN Nov. 20).
    Former Soviet Support?
    Biological weapons are banned by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention although several countries are thought to have violated the treaty to develop them, including Russia, which according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists also has worrisome stockpiles of genetically modified agents.
    Most officials and analysts believe that any large-scale advanced biological weapons programs in Iraq, Iran or elsewhere—particularly those that manufacture altered organisms—would be spearheaded by Russian scientists who are disgruntled or simply lured away by hefty salaries. Such programs could also be aided by wayward scientists from many other countries, they add.
    According to Alibek, a Kazakh native who defected to the United States in 1992, there are 1,000 to 2,000 former Soviet scientists who know how to make deadly biological agents. Of these, “hundreds” have the “ultimate knowledge”—the ability to not only to grow biological organisms but also to effectively dry, mill, weaponize, deliver and disperse them over wide areas. Out of these hundreds, 100 to 200 know how to create genetically modified life forms resistant to vaccines or antibiotics, he said.
    Asked where these potentially dangerous scientists are now, Alibek said, “I don’t know. It would not surprise me if some were in Baghdad or somewhere else other than Russia.”
    Focus on Iraq
    During a blunt speech in Geneva during a treaty conference Nov. 19, Bolton singled out Iraq as the main biological weapons threat.
    Although Bolton stopped short of accusing Iraq of developing genetically altered biological diseases that could be used as devastating weapons, the State Department official who wrote the speech told GSN that “it’s a concern” and that “if they have [such] a program and we know where it is, we’re going to get it.”
    U.S. analysts say the United States is actively seeking and collecting evidence on Iraqi biological weapons programs—including those that splice the gene of one bacteria into that of another, creating a new and potentially unstoppable plague—so that President George W. Bush could justify toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.
    The administration is also probing Iran and other nations for such evidence but none with the vigor it is apparently investigating Iraq, which was caught with biological weapons by UNSCOM inspectors throughout the 1990s, analysts note.
    One reason White House officials are so concerned about Iraq is that its government openly applauded the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in New York and Washington, analysts add. There has been much speculation that Saddam Hussein had a hand in either the hijackings of the four commercial jetliners or the mailings of anthrax across the United States that so far have infected 18 people and killed five.
    Because the creation of genetically modified weapons is so difficult—even with knowledgeable scientists, the right equipment and sizeable funding, such a task is very painstaking—analysts believe only countries with sizeable infrastructures can accomplish this. Besides Russia, Iraq is believed to have the largest and most comprehensive biological weapons facilities, according to intelligence estimates.
    Iraq is a prime suspect for developing genetically altered biological weapons not only because it attempted to hide its biological weapons arsenal from UNSCOM inspectors—investigators found some stockpiles and believe there are many more—but because Saddam Hussein has shown a willingness to use such weapons. In the late 1980s Iraqi forces gassed Kurdish villagers in Iraq with chemical weapons, probably Sarin.
    According to UNSCOM inspectors and former CIA Director James Woolsey, Iraq protected its biological sites with more zest than its nuclear facilities—a strong indicator that they have something to hide.
     “Even while we were there, under the most intrusive inspections, Iraq continued working on their biological weapons programs,” said Tom O’Brien, an immunologist who was a senior UNSCOM scientist. “They’re very good at hiding and deceiving.”
    Why Alter Biological Weapons?
    Many analysts dismiss the possibility of Iraq, Iran or other nations splicing the genes of biological agents that could be used as weapons.
    Smallpox, anthrax and other diseases are deadly enough without being modified, so a country with limited resources and funds would not want to endure the time, expense and uncertainty of trying alter these agents, said several analysts, including those who also think it is plausible Iraq has done so anyway.
    “Why would you want to go through all that trouble? I don’t think they’d bother,” said William Patrick III, the former head of the U.S. biological weapons program until 1969, when then-President Richard Nixon announced the United States would end its offensive biological weapons program and destroy its stockpiles.
    While smallpox itself is believed to kill 30 percent of the people it infects, it could be rendered ineffective if dispersed among populations that are vaccinated, many officials said.
    Currently only small numbers of the U.S. military are vaccinated against smallpox, but plans are underway to include troops in the nationwide vaccination efforts being readied by health officials.
    If U.S. troops are sent to fight in the Persian Gulf region, it is likely that deploying soldiers would receive vaccinations in order to prevent mass-casualty biological attacks by Iraq or, less likely, Iran, Pentagon officials said.
    Analysts observe that it is for this particular reason that Baghdad and Tehran are believed to be genetically modifying biological agents—so they can overcome any defenses U.S. troops may possess.
    “If you’re practicing bioterrorism, [genetically altered agents] may not be considered more dangerous because people are not vaccinated and they would die anyway,” said Long, the former UNSCOM inspector. “But if you’re going to use it against an army that’s vaccinated then yes, it may give you a little more bang for your buck.”
    Number of Altered Biological Weapons Could be Infinite
    The possibilities of mutant life forms that could be used as weapons are technically endless, although through decades of experiments the Soviet Union and Russia focused on just a handful, according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists. Many genetically altered agents turn out to be less harmful than intended, but others have proven to be extremely lethal, they said.
    Perhaps the most lethal genetically modified biological agent is “blackpox,” a cross between smallpox and the Ebola virus, Alibek said.
    Alibek said blackpox would combine the two most dangerous aspects of Ebola and smallpox—it would have the contagiousness of the latter and produce the severe internal hemorrhaging of Ebola.
    “The only purpose of this is to kill,” Alibek remarked.
    Alibek said Russia has worked on several other genetically modified bugs, including the mixture of smallpox with the Venezuelan equine encephalitis, known as “Veepox.” Like blackpox this strain would most likely be able to overcome any known vaccines or antibiotics. And Veepox, according to Alibek, would only cost “a few million dollars.”
    Russia has also developed modified versions of anthrax, including the so-called Obolensk anthrax, a strain said to be resistant to known vaccines and antidotes. In December 1997, Russian scientists openly published the recipes and methods for making Obolensk anthrax in the British journal Vaccine.
    Analysts note that it would be naive to believe that scientists in countries such as Iraq and Iran have not copied these procedures.
    Are There Responses to New Weapons?
    Pentagon officials refused recent requests for interviews on this subject, but in March, a top military medical official said his office has been working feverishly to learn about genetically modified agents so that they can learn how to defeat them.
     “When it comes to genetically modified agents, there’s almost nothing we can do to protect ourselves until we know what it is—and by then it’s probably going to be too late, at least for the people that have already been infected,” said Army Col. Bob Thompson, the program manager for the Defense Department’s Office of Health Affairs. “This stuff scares the hell out of us.”
    D. A. Henderson, the newly-appointed director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Public Health Preparedness, has spent a few decades studying how to eradicate diseases for a variety of U.S. and U.N. agencies. He said there is a chance that the current vaccine might turn out to be effective against genetically altered life forms.
    “It protects against a whole range of biological agents. It provides a very broad base of immunity.” Henderson said. “We’re not exactly sure what it is about this [vaccine] that makes it work, but it works.”

  • ANNALS OF WARFARE:THE BIOWEAPONEERS
    New Yorker, March 9, 1998
    In the last few years, Russian scientists have invented the world's deadliest
    plagues. Have we learned about this too late to stop it?
    By Richard Preston
    KEN ALIBEK is a quiet man, forty-seven years old, with youthful looks and an attractive, open face. He lives in a rented condominium in Arlington, Virginia, a five-minute walk from his office at a private consulting firm. Alibek has dark hair and Asian features, and a dimpled scar on his nose, which he got in an accident that was "not heroic," he says, involving a machine in a biowarfare plant.
    Before he arrived in the United States, in 1992, Ken Alibek was Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, the first deputy chief of research and production for the Soviet biological-weapons program. He was the top scientist in the program, a sprawling, clandestine enterprise known as Biopreparat, or The System, by the scientists who worked in it. Biopreparat research-and-production facilities were flung all across the Soviet Union. As Dr. Alibekov, Ken Alibek had thirty-two thousand scientists and staff people working under him.
    Alibek has a Doctor of Sciences degree in anthrax. It is a kind of superdegree, which he received in 1988, at the age of thirty-seven, for directing the research team that developed the Soviet Union's most powerful weapons-grade anthrax. He did this research as head of the Stepnagorsk bioweapons facility, in what is now Kazakhstan, which was once the largest biowarfare production facility in the world. The Alibekov anthrax became fully operational in 1989. It is an amber-gray powder, finer than bath talc, with smooth, creamy particles that tend to fly apart and vanish in the air, becoming invisible and drifting for miles. The Alibekov anthrax is four times more efficient than the standard product.
    Ken Alibek is part of a diaspora of biologists who came out of Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Government funding for research decreased dramatically, and scientists who were working in the biowarfare program found themselves without jobs. Some of them went looking abroad. A few have come to the United States or Great Britain, but most went elsewhere. "No one knows where they are," Alibek says. One can guess that they've ended up in Iraq, Syria, Libya, China, Iran, perhaps Israel, perhaps India -- but no one really knows, probably not even the Russian government. No doubt some of these biologists have carried the Alibekov formula in their heads, if not master seed strains of the anthrax and samples of the finished product in containers. The Alibekov anthrax may be one of the more common bioweapons in the world today. It seems plausible that Iraqi biologists, for instance, know the Alibekov formula by now.
    One day, Ken Alibek and I were sitting in a conference room near his office talking about the anthrax he and his research team had developed. "It's very difficult to say if I felt a sense of excitement over this. It's very difficult to say what I felt like," he said. "It wouldn't be true to say that I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought I had done something very important. The anthrax was one of my scientific results -- my personal result."
    I asked him if he'd tell me the formula for his anthrax.
    "I can't say this," he answered.
    "I won't publish it. I'm just curious," I said.
    "Look, you must understand, this is unbelievably serious. You can't publish this formula," he said. When I assured him I wouldn't, he told me the formula for the Alibekov anthrax. He uttered just one sentence. The Alibekov anthrax is simple, and the formula is somewhat surprising, not quite what you'd expect. Two unrelated materials are mixed with pure powdered anthrax spores. It took a lot of research and testing to get the trick right, and Alibek must have driven his research group hard and skillfully to arrive at it. "There are many countries that would like to know how to do this." he said.
    UNTIL last week, when Ken Alibek was interviewed on "PrimeTime Live," he was known in this country only to a few government officials and intelligence experts and defense-industry figures. What he told the C.I.A. and other people with national-security clearances was usually classified. Sometimes the information was so secret that even he couldn't look at his reports once they were issued. "The first report I wrote, I only saw it once from across a room. It was sitting on a table. They wouldn't let me go any closer to it," Alibek says, with a tiny smile.
    What Alibek describes is shocking, even to those who thought they had a pretty good idea of what bioweapons are out there and who has them. But it is particularly timely now that the public's attention has suddenly focussed on the possibility of biological terrorism, which gained a peculiar intensity in late February, when Larry Wayne Harris and William Leavitt, Jr., were arrested by the F.B.I. outside Las Vegas with what was thought to be weapons-grade anthrax in the trunk of a car. The repeated news reports -- which turned out to be a false alarm -- that they were planning a terrorist attack on the New York City subway system clarified what had seemed to be a vague threat hidden in Iraq. Bioterror had come home.
    I first heard about Ken Alibek in 1995, although at that time none of my contacts would tell me his name. He was referred to only as No. 2. (Biodefector No. 1 had come out in 1989.) Last fall, when I finally figured out that No. 2 was Alibekov, I called up a source who has connections to British intelligence and told him I thought I knew who No. 2 was. He cut me off. "Don't say a name," he said. "I can't confirm anything. Have you forgotten that we are talking on an open telephone line?" That source went nowhere, but then I had an idea. For several years, I have known a man named William C. Patrick III, who in certain important respects is the leading American expert on biological weapons. Before 1969, when President Richard Nixon shut down the American biowarfare program, Bill Patrick was the chief of product development for the United States Army's biological-warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The "products" that Patrick and his research group developed were powdered spores and viruses that were loaded into bombs and sophisticated delivery systems. Patrick was arguably the top bioweaponeer in the United States. He and several hundred other scientists and research-staff members lost their jobs when the biowarfare facilities at Fort Detrick were closed down. (Today, to the best of my knowledge, the scientists at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick don't make offensive bioweapons. They develop vaccines and treatments to defend against them. As far as I can tell, the United States has no bioweapons, and one piece of evidence for this is that government officials today are remarkably ignorant of them.)
    Bill Patrick, who is now seventy-one years old, is one of only two or three scientists still alive and active in the United States who have a hands-on technical understanding of bioweapons. As he explained to me, "There's a hell of a disconnect between us fossils who know about biological weapons and the younger generation." In 1991, on the eve of the Gulf War, he was summoned to the Pentagon to take part in a discussion of anthrax. Patrick sat in silence while a group of intelligence analysts, young men and women dressed in suits, discussed anthrax in knowledgeable-sounding voices. "I reached the conclusion that these people didn't know what the hell they were talking about," Patrick recalls. He said, "Have any of you fellows actually seen anthrax?" and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar of amber-brown powder, and chucked it across the table. It rattled and bounced toward the analysts. They jerked away, some leaping to their feet. The jar contained anthrax simulant, a biopowder that is essentially identical to anthrax except that it doesn't kill. It is used for experiments in which properties other than infectivity are being tested. "I got that through security, by the way," Patrick observed.
    Later, Bill Patrick was the oldest United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. The Iraqis knew exactly who he was -- the former top scientist in the former American bioweapons program. Iraqi intelligence people started calling his hotel room in Baghdad at night, hissing, "You son of bitch, Patrick," and then hanging up. "It was kind of an honor, but it kept me awake," he says.
    Today, Bill Patrick is a consultant to many government agencies -- the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the City of New York -- on the use of biological weapons in a terrorist attack. Jerome Hauer, who is the head of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management -- the group that would handle a bioterror event in New York, should one ever happen -- said to me once, "Bill Patrick is one of the only guys who can tell us about some of these biological agents. We all wonder what we're going to do when he decides to light up a cigar and go sailing." Patrick is able to tell emergency planners what will happen if a biological weapon is released in an American city -- how many people will die, where they'll die, what the deaths will look like. His reports are classified. Bill Patrick and Ken Alibek were counterparts. They had been two of the top scientists in what had been the best biowarfare programs on the planet. I speculated that Patrick might know Alibek.
    "Do I know Ken?" Patrick boomed over the telephone. "We're close friends! My wife and I had Ken over for Christmas this year with our family, because we think he's kind of lonely."
    Then I thought I understood: Patrick must have participated in the long government discussions with Alibek -- the debriefing -- that would have taken place after his arrival in the United States. No one else in the U.S. government, not a single soul, would have understood so clearly what Alibek was talking about. The two scientists had become friends during the process.
    I DROVE down to Bill Patrick's house, in Maryland, on a misty day in winter, when leafless white-oak trees and poplars lay in a haze across the slopes of Catoctin Mountain. The clouds pulled apart and the sun appeared, gleaming through cirrus like a nickel. Patrick's house is a modern version of a Swiss chalet, with a view of Fort Detrick and rolling countryside.
    "Come in, young man," Patrick said genially. A small dog was yapping around his feet. Patrick has a gentlemanly manner, a rather blocky face, with hair combed over a bald head, and penetrating greenish eyes. He glanced at the sky and seemed to sniff the air before ushering me into the house. He is exquisitely sensitive to weather.
    Alibek arrived a short while later, driving a silver BMW. After lunch, we settled down around the kitchen table. Patrick brought out a bottle of Glenmorangie Scotch whiskey, and we poured ourselves a round. It seemed a very Russian thing to do. The whiskey was smoky and golden, and it moved the talk forward.
    "You know, I'm disappointed the agency didn't do better by you, Ken," Patrick remarked. He turned to me. "They let him sign up for all these credit cards."
    Alibek smiled wryly. "This was a problem." The C.I.A. had introduced him to Visa. "I could buy things with the cards, but it didn't seem like money. Then I found out you have to pay for it later."
    Alibek speaks English with a mild Russian accent that makes his serious manner seem almost gloomy. He often has a cigarette smoldering between his fingertips, but he works out at a health club, and he has broad, firm shoulders. His brown eyes seem sombre, and he wears black wire-rimmed eyeglasses. He favors linen shirts with band collars, and soft wool-pique jackets in dark, muted colors. He has a calm expression, with a downward-glancing gaze, and he looks vaguely Chinese. Ethnically, he is a Kazakh. He was born and raised in Kazakhstan. In Russia, he was twenty-five pounds heavier, really quite stout, but he says that he is a different person now, even physically.
    I asked Alibek how he feels about living here. "I'm happy I'm not doing the work," he said. He paused. "I'm not one hundred per cent happy. I know how people feel about me in Russia. Some of my scientific colleagues feel I am a betrayer." Alibek keeps his emotions well hidden, perhaps even from himself. He does not laugh easily. When he does laugh, he is clearly enjoying himself, but his body is slightly rigid. He quit Biopreparat in 1991, left Russia with his family, and abruptly ended up in the United States. According to Alibek, some of his former colleagues at Biopreparat -- which was privatized -- sent word through intermediaries that "if you ever come to Russia you can expect some problems."
    "I've got no desire to go to Russia," Alibek said, shrugging. He recently separated from his wife, although they enjoy a cordial relationship. She lives near him with their two boys, whom he sees almost every day. His oldest child, a daughter, is studying architecture at an Ivy League university. At times, Alibek has suffered from loneliness and a sense of dislocation, and he has had some concerns about how he will support his wife and children in the United States. The Alibeks had a privileged life in Russia, with drivers to take them everywhere and all the money they could use. The United States government paid him consulting fees while he was briefing scientists and officials but now he is on his own.
    KEN ALIBEK was raised in Alma-Ata, then the capital of Kazakhstan. Alma-Ata is in central Asia, not far from the Chinese border, on the medieval silk route. His first language was Kazakh, and he learned Russian at school. He got a medical degree at the military medical institute at Tomsk. His special interest was infectious-disease epidemiology. At some point while he was still in medical school, he was chosen to work for Biopreparat. Since it was a secret system, you didn't really apply; you were approached and brought in. He rose fast. In 1982, at the age of thirty-one, he became the acting director of the Omutninsk bioweapons-production plant, a major facility in the Kirov region of Russia. Eventually, he ended up working in Biopreparat's headquarters, a large building in Moscow -- the same building where Biopreparat is situated today.
    In early April of 1988, Ken Alibek received a telephone call in his office in Moscow. It came from his friend and colleague Lev Sandakhchiev, the director of a Biopreparat facility called Vector, a huge, isolated virology-research campus in the larch forests outside Novosibirsk, a city in western Siberia. In the late nineteen-eighties, Vector was devoted largely to the development and production of virus weapons. (Dr. Sandakhchiev denies this.) Dr. Sandakhchiev reported that there had been an accident. He was reluctant to discuss it on the telephone.
    "Send me the details in a cryptogram," Alibek said. Once a day for the next fourteen days, Alibek received a new cryptogram about the victim of the accident, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov.
    Dr. Ustinov was forty-four years old. Alibek recalls him as a fair-skinned man with light-brown hair, ethnically a Russian. He had a wife and children. Alibek thought of him as a good guy and a talented scientist, easy to talk with, receptive to new ideas. Ustinov had been doing basic military research on the Marburg virus, studying its potential as a weapon. The long-term goal was to see if it could be loaded into special biological warheads on the MIRV missiles that were aimed at the United States. (A MIRV has multiple warheads, which are directed at different targets.) At the time, the Soviet biological missile warheads were designed to be loaded with strategic/operational smallpox virus, Black Death, and anthrax. The Marburg virus had potential for weaponization, too. Marburg is a close cousin to the Ebola virus, and is extremely lethal. Dr. Ustinov had been wearing a spacesuit in a Level 4 hot lab, injecting guinea pigs with Marburg virus. He pricked himself in the finger with a needle, and it penetrated two layers of rubber gloves.
    Nikolai Ustinov exited through an air lock and a chemical decon shower to Level 3, and used an emergency telephone to call his supervisor. The supervisor decided to put Ustinov into a biocontainment hospital, a twenty-bed unit with steel air-lock doors, like the doors of a submarine, where nurses and doctors wearing spacesuits could monitor him. He was not allowed to speak with his wife and children. Ustinov did not seem to be afraid of dying, but, separated from his family, he became deeply depressed.
    On about the fourth day, Ustinov developed a headache, and his eyes turned red. Tiny hemorrhages were occurring in them. He requested a laboratory notebook, and he began writing a diary in it, every day. He was a scientist, and he was determined to explain how he was dying. What does it feel like to die of Marburg virus? What are the psychological effects? For a while, he maintained a small hope that he wouldn't die, but when his skin developed spontaneous bruises he understood what the future held. Dr. Sandakhchiev's cryptograms to Alibek were dry and factual, and didn't include the human details. Alibek would later learn that perhaps twice Ustinov had broken down and wept.
    Alibek was frantic to get help to Ustinov. He begged the Ministry of Defense for a special immune serum, but bureaucratic delays prevented its arrival in Siberia until it was too late. When Ustinov began to vomit blood and pass bloody black diarrhea, the doctor gave him transfusions, but as they put the blood into him it came out of his mouth and rectum. Ustinov was in prostration. They debated replacing all the blood in his body with fresh new blood -- a so-called whole-body transfusion. They were afraid that that might trigger a total flooding hemorrhage, which would kill him, so they didn't do it.
    ALIBEK did not know exactly which strain of Marburg had infected his colleague. It had been obtained by Soviet intelligence somewhere, but the scientists were never told where strains came from. The Marburg virus seems to live in an unknown animal host in East Africa. It has been associated with Kitum Cave, near Mt. Elgon, so the Soviet strain could have been obtained around there, but Alibek suspected that it came from Germany. In 1967, the virus had broken out at a vaccine factory in Marburg, a small city in central Germany, and had killed a number of people who were working with monkeys that were being used to produce vaccine. One of the survivors was a man named Popp, and Alibek thought that Ustinov was probably dying of the strain that had come from him. I have seen a photograph of a Marburg monkey worker taken shortly before his death, in late summer, 1967. He is a stout man, lying on a hospital bed without a shirt. His mouth is slack, his teeth are covered with blood. He is hemorrhaging from the mouth and nose. The blood has run down his neck and pooled in the hollow of his throat. It looks spidery, because it's unable to clot. He also seems to be leaking blood from his nipples.
    The final pages of Dr. Nikolai Ustinov's scientific journal are smeared with unclotted blood. His skin developed starlike hemorrhages in the underlayers. Incredibly -- the Vector scientists had never seen this -- he sweated blood directly from the pores of his skin, and left bloody fingerprints on the pages of his diary. He wept again before he died.
    Ken Alibek is nearly hypnotic when he speaks of these things in his flat voice. We sat around the kitchen table as if we were old friends sharing a story. A gray light shone through the kitchen window, and I saw the red flash of a cardinal near the Patricks' bird feeder, almost a flicker of blood. The dog noticed a squirrel, and started barking. "Go get him, Billy," Patrick said, rising to let the dog out.
    Dr. Ustinov died on April 30, 1988. An autopsy was performed in the spacesuit morgue of the biocontainment hospital. If this was indeed the Popp strain of Marburg virus -- and who could say? -- it was incredibly lethal. It produced effects in the human body that were stunning, terrifying. Alibek says that a pathology team removed Ustinov's liver and his spleen. They sucked a quantity of his destroyed blood out of a leg vein using large syringes.
    They froze the blood and the body parts. They kept the Ustinov strain alive and continually replicating in the laboratories at Vector. They named the strain Variant U, after Ustinov, and they learned how to mass-produce it in simple bioreactors, flasks used for growing viruses. They dried Variant U, and processed it into an inhalable dust. The particles of Variant U were coated to protect them in the air so that they would drift for many miles.
    In late 1990, Biopreparat researchers tested airborne Variant U on monkeys and other small animals in special explosion-test chambers at the Stepnagorsk plant. Marburg Variant U proved to be extremely potent in airborne form. They found that just one to five microscopic particles of Variant U lodged in the lungs of a monkey were almost guaranteed to make the animal crash, bleed, and die. With normal weapons-grade anthrax, in comparison, it takes about eight thousand spores lodged in the lungs to pretty much guarantee infection and death.
    Alibek said that by the fall of 1991, just before Boris Yeltsin came to power, Marburg Variant U was on the verge of becoming a strategic/operational biological weapon, ready to be manufactured in large quantities and loaded into warheads on MIRVs. These warheads are sinister things. Ten separate cone-shaped warheads, each targeted on a different location, sit atop a missile. Special cooling systems inside each warhead keep the virus alive during the heat of reentry through the earth's atmosphere. "If we can land a cosmonaut to earth alive, we can do the same with a virus," Alibek explained. "We use parachutes." The biowarheads are parachuted over a city, and at a certain altitude they break apart. Out of each warhead bursts a spray of more than a hundred oval bomblets the size of small cantaloupes. The cantaloupes fly out a distance and then split in overlapping patterns, releasing a haze of bioparticles that quickly becomes invisible.
    Variant U never became part of the Soviets' strategic arsenal, which was stocked with Black Death, Alibekov anthrax, and powdered smallpox. (Never less than twenty tons of weapons-grade dry smallpox was stockpiled in bunkers.) But it seems quite possible that when the Russian biowarfare facilities fell on hard times and biologists began leaving Russia to work in other countries, some of them carried freeze-dried Variant U with them, ready for further experimentation. Variant U started, perhaps, with a monkey worker named Popp, but its end in the human species is yet to be seen.
    A GENERATION ago, biological weapons were called germ-warfare weapons. Biological weapons are very different from chemical weapons. A chemical weapon is a poison that kills upon contact with the skin. Bioweapons are microorganisms, bacteria or viruses, that invade the body, multiply inside it, and destroy it. Bioweapons can be used as strategic weapons. That is, they are incredibly powerful and dangerous. They can kill huge numbers of people if they are used properly, and their effects are not limited to one place or a small target. Chemical weapons, on the other hand, can be used only tactically. It is virtually impossible to put enough of a chemical in the air in a high enough concentration to wipe out a large number of people over a large territory. And chemicals aren't alive and can't spread through an infectious process.
    There are two basic types of biological weapons, those that are contagious and those that are not. Anthrax is not contagious: people don't spread it among themselves; you can't catch anthrax from someone who is dying of it. Smallpox is contagious. It spreads rapidly, magnifying itself, causing mortality and chaos on a large scale.
    Like any weapon, a biological weapon can be released accidentally, but when a biological accident happens, the consequences can be particularly insidious. I talked about this with Ken Alibek that day in Bill Patrick's kitchen, while we drank whiskey in the soft light of a winter afternoon. Alibek spoke about how bioweapons have a disturbing tendency to invade nonhuman populations of living creatures -- thus finding a new niche in the ecosystems of the earth, apart from the human species. When he was the acting director of the biowarfare facility at Omutninsk, his safety officers discovered that wild rodents living in the woods outside the factory had become chronically infected with the Schu-4 military strain of tularemia -- a bacterium that causes a type of pneumonia -- which was being made in the plant. It was a hot, lethal strain that came from the United States: an American biological weapon that the Soviets had managed to obtain during the nineteen-fifties. Now, unexpectedly, the wild rodents were spreading Schu-4 among themselves in the forests around Omutninsk. The rodents were not the natural host of tularemia, but it had apparently established itself in them as new hosts. People catch tularemia easily from rodents, and it can be fatal. Alibek mounted an investigation and found that a pipe running through a basement area had a small leak and was dripping a suspension of tularemia cells into the ground. The rodents may have come in contact with the contaminated soil in that one spot.
    The staff tried to sterilize the forest of rodents near the plant. That didn't work, because rodents are impossible to eradicate. "We could not get rid of the rodents. We tried everything," Alibek said. "Nobody knows today, but we can assume that the tularemia is still there in the rodents." Nobody knows if anyone has died of the American-Russian tularemia around the Kirov region.
    "Could it have spread across Russia in rodents?" I asked.
    "This I don't know."
    BIOPREPARAT, or The System, was set up in 1973, just a year after the Soviet Union signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, an agreement banning the development, use, and stockpiling of biological weapons. The United States, which had ended its offensive-bioweapons program in 1969, also signed the treaty, as did Great Britain. (Some hundred and forty nations have signed the convention by now.) The Soviets continued to believe, however, that the United States had not ended its bioweapons program but simply hidden it away, turning it into a "black" weapons program. "The notion that the Americans had given up their biological weapons was thought of as the great American lie," a British intelligence officer recalls. "In fact, most of the Biopreparat scientists had never even heard of the Biological Weapons Convention."
    Biopreparat consisted of some forty research-and-production facilities. About a dozen of them were enormous. Perhaps half of the employees developed weapons and the other half made medicines. Biopreparat worked both sides of the street: it cured diseases and invented new ones. An island in the Aral Sea, curiously named Rebirth Island, was used for open-air weapons testing. Large numbers of animals, and perhaps some humans, died there. Biopreparat was modelled to some extent on the Manhattan Project, [the program that led to the first atomic bomb. Military people administered the program and scientists did the research-and-development work.] Somehow, Biopreparat's weapons program remained invisible to the American scientific community. There was a commonly held belief among many American scientists, supported by the strong, even passionate views of a handful of experts in biological weapons, that the Soviet Union was not violating the treaty. This view persisted, despite reports to the contrary from intelligence agencies, which were often viewed as being driven by right-wing ideology.
    One of the side effects of the closing of the American bioweapons program was that the United States lost its technical understanding of biological weapons. There has long been a general feeling among American scientists -- it's hard to say just how widespread it is, but it is definitely there -- that biological weapons don't work. They are said to be uncontrollable, liable to infect their users, or unworkable in any practical sense. A generation ago, leading physicists in this country understood nuclear weapons because they had built them, and they had observed their effects in field tests and in war. The current generation of American molecular biologists has been spared the agony of having created weapons of mass destruction, but, since these biologists haven't built them, or tested them, they don't know much about their real performance characteristics.
    Sitting in Bill Patrick's kitchen, I said to Alibek, "There seems to be a common belief among American scientists that biological weapons aren't effective as weapons. You see these views quoted occasionally in newspapers and magazines."
    Alibek looked disturbed, then annoyed. "You test them to find out. You learn how to make them work," he said to me. "I had a meeting yesterday at a defense agency. They knew absolutely nothing about biological weapons. They want to develop protection against them, but all their expertise is in nuclear weapons. I can say I don't believe that nuclear weapons work. Nuclear weapons destroy everything. Biological weapons are more . . . beneficial. They don't destroy buildings, they only destroy vital activity."
    "Vital activity?"
    "People," he said.
    THE first defector to emerge from Biopreparat was Vladimir Pasechnik, a microbiologist, who arrived in Great Britain in 1989, just as the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble. (He was No. 1 to Alibek's No. 2.) Pasechnik frightened British intelligence, and later the C.I.A., when he told them that his work as director of the Institute of Ultrapure Biopreparations, in Leningrad, had involved offensive-biowarfare research into Yersinia pestis, a pestilential microbe that causes plague, or Black Death an airborne contagious bacterial organism that wiped out a third of the population of Europe around the year 1348. Natural plague is curable with antibiotics. After listening to Dr. Pasechnik, the British concluded that the Soviet Union had developed a genetically engineered strain of plague that was resistant to antibiotics. Because the Black Death can travel through the air in a cough from person to person, a strain of multi-drug-resistant Black Death might be able to amplify itself through a human population in ever-widening chains of infection, culminating in a biological crown fire in the human species. No nuclear weapon could do that. What was the Soviet Union doing developing strategic contagious biological weapons? "I couldn't sleep at night, thinking about what we were doing," Pasechnik told his British handlers. Even though Western intelligence agencies had known that the Russians had a bioweapons program, they had not known what was being developed, and that the United States was a so-called deep target, far enough away so that the Soviet Union wouldn't be contaminated.
    President George Bush and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were briefed on Pasechnik's revelations, and they put direct personal pressure on Mikhail Gorbachev to open up the biowarfare facilities in the U.S.S.R. to a team of outside inspectors. Eventually, he agreed, and a joint British-American weapons-inspection team toured four of the main Biopreparat facilities in January, 1991. The inspectors visited Vector (the virology complex outside Novosibirsk, where Ustinov died) and a giant, high-security facility south of Moscow called the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology at Obolensk, where they found fermenter tanks -- forty of them, each two stories tall. They were maintained at Biosafety Level 4, inside huge ring-shaped biocontainment zones, in a building called Corpus One. The facility was dedicated to research on a variety of bacterial microbes, especially Yersinia pestis. The Level 4 production tanks were obviously intended for making enormous quantities of something deadly, but when the inspectors arrived the tanks were sparkling clean and sterile.
    As the British and American weapons inspectors toured the Biopreparat facilities, they ran into the same problems that recently faced the United Nations Special Commission inspectors in Iraq. They were met with denials, evasions, and large rooms that had been stripped of equipment and cleaned up. A British inspector said to me, "This was clearly the most successful biological-weapons program on earth. These people just sat there and lied to us, and lied, and lied."
    The deal was that after the Americans and the British had peeked at Biopreparat a team of Soviet inspectors was to visit the United States. In December, 1991, Ken Alibek and a number of leading Biopreparat scientists and military people visited USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick, the Army's Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah, and the Army's old bioweapons production facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, which had been abandoned and partly dismantled in 1969. The Russians stumbled around the weeds in Pine Bluff and saw rusting railroad tracks, buildings with their roofs falling in, and nothing that worked. Alibek was pretty well convinced by the time he got home that the United States did not have a bioweapons program. But when the final report was issued by the inspectors to the government of Boris Yeltsin it stated that they had found plenty of evidence for a program. Alibek refused to participate in the writing of that report, and he decided to quit Biopreparat.
    "It was a confused situation," he said. "It was at the exact time when the Soviet Union collapsed. I told all these people I didn't agree with their politics." For a few months, he hung on in Moscow, supporting his family by trading -- "It was easy to make money in those days, you could trade anything" -- but he found that his telephone was tapped, and that the K.G.B. had set up a so-called gray unit to watch him, a surveillance team stationed near his apartment. He decided to move his family to Alma-Ata, in Kazakhstan. What happened next Alibek refuses to talk about. He will not tell me how he got his family to the United States. Once here, he dropped completely out of sight. It is pretty obvious that he was holed up with American intelligence people, discussing his scientific and technical knowledge with them. Several years went by, and Dr. Alibekov morphed into Ken Alibek.
    THE most powerful bioweapons are dry powders formed of tiny particles that are designed to lodge in the human lung. The particles are amber or pink. They have a strong tendency to fly apart from one another, so that if you throw them in the air they disperse like a crowd leaving Yankee Stadium. As they disperse, they become invisible to the human eye, normally within five seconds after the release. You can't see a bioweapon, you can't smell it, you can't taste it, and you don't know it was there until days later, when you start to cough and bleed, and by that time you may be spreading it around. Bill Patrick holds five patents on special processes for making biodusts that will disperse rapidly in the air and form an invisible sea of particles. His patents are classified. The U.S. government does not want anyone to obtain Patrick's research.
    The particles of a bioweapon are exceedingly small, about one to five microns in diameter. You could imagine the size this way: around fifty to a hundred bioparticles lined up in a row would span the thickness of a human hair. The particles are light and fluffy, and don't fall to earth. You can imagine motes of dust dancing in a shaft of sunlight. Dust motes are mostly bits of hair and fuzz. They are much larger than weaponized bioparticles. If a dust mote were as thick as a log, then a weaponized bioparticle would resemble a child's marble. The tiny size of a weaponized bioparticle allows it to be sucked into the deepest sacs of the lung, where it sticks to the membrane, and enters the bloodstream, and begins to replicate. A bioweapon can kill you with just one particle in the lung. If the weapon is contagious in human-to-human transmission, you will kill a lot of other people, too. So much death emergent from one particle. Given the right weather conditions, a bioweapon will drift in the air for up to a hundred miles.
    Sunlight kills a bioweapon. That is, a bioweapon biodegrades in sunlight. It has a "half-life," like nuclear radiation. This is known as the decay time of the bioweapon. Anthrax has a long decay time -- it has a tough spore. Tularemia has a decay time of only a few minutes in sunlight. Therefore, tularemia should always be released at night.
    For many years during the nineteen-fifties and sixties, Bill Patrick had his doubts that bioweapons work. Those doubts were removed decisively during the summer of 1968, when one of the biggest of a long series of open-air biological tests was conducted over the Pacific Ocean downwind of Johnston Atoll, a thousand miles southwest of Hawaii. There, in reaches of open sea, American strategic tests of bioweapons had been conducted secretly for four years. Until very recently, these tests remained unknown to people without security clearances.
    "We tested certain real agents, and some of them were lethal," Patrick said. The American strategic tests of bioweapons were as expensive and elaborate as the tests of the first hydrogen bombs at Eniwetok Atoll. They involved enough ships to have made the world's fifth-largest independent navy. The ships were positioned around Johnston Atoll, upwind from a number of barges loaded with hundreds of rhesus monkeys.
    Late one afternoon, Bill Patrick went out to Johnston Atoll and stood on the beach to watch a test. At sunset, just as the sun touched the horizon, a Marine Phantom jet flew in low, heading on a straight line parallel to the beach, and then continued over the horizon. Meanwhile, a single pod under its wings released a weaponized powder. The powder trailed into the air like a whiff of smoke and disappeared completely. This was visual evidence that the particles were flying away from one another. Patrick's patents worked.
    The scientists call this a line-source laydown. The jet was disseminating a small amount of biopowder for every mile of flight (the exact amount is still classified). One can imagine a jet doing a line-source laydown over Los Angeles, flying from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, releasing dust from a single pod under the wing. It would take a few minutes. The jet would appear on radar, but the trail of bioweapon would be invisible. In Iraq, United Nations inspectors found a videotape of an Iraqi Phantom jet doing a line-source laydown over the desert. The technique looked precisely like the American laydowns, even to the Iraqis' use of a Phantom jet. The one difference was that the Iraqi Phantom had no pilot: it was a remote-controlled drone.
    At Johnston Atoll, the line of particles moved with the wind over the sea, somewhat like a windshield wiper sweeping over glass. Stationed in the path of the particles, at intervals extending many miles away, were the barges full of monkeys, manned by nervous Navy crews wearing biohazard spacesuits. The line of bioparticles passed over the barges one by one. Then the monkeys were taken back to Johnston Atoll, and over the next few days half of them died. Half of the monkeys survived, and were fine. Patrick could see, clearly enough, that a jet that did a laydown of a modest amount of military bioweapon over Los Angeles could kill half the city. It would probably be more efficient at causing human deaths than a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb.
    "What was the agent you used?" I asked Patrick.
    "I don't want to tell you. It may still be classified. The real reason is that a lot of countries would like to know what we used, and not just the Iraqis. When we saw those test results, we knew beyond a doubt that biological weapons are strategic weapons. We were surprised. Even we didn't think they would work that well."
    "But the agent you used was curable with antibiotics, right?" I said.
    "Sure."
    "So people could be cured -- "
    "Well, think about it. Let's say you hit the city of Frederick, right here. That's a small city, with a population of about fifty thousand. You could cause thirty thousand infections. To treat the infections, you'd need -- let me see." He calculated quickly: "Eighty-four grams of antibiotic per person . . . that's . . . oh, my heavens, you'd need more than two tons of antibiotic, delivered overnight! There isn't that much antibiotic stored anywhere in the United States. Now think about New York City. It doesn't take a mathematician to see that if you hit New York with a biological weapon you are gonna tie things up for a while."
    TODAY, Biopreparat is a much smaller organization than it was during the Soviet years, and it is ostensibly dedicated entirely to peaceful research and production. You can buy face cream and vodka made by Biopreparat. Vector, where Variant U was developed, is no longer part of Biopreparat. The Vector laboratories are undergoing an extremely painful and perhaps incomplete conversion to peaceful use, and the Vector scientists are secretive about some of their work. Dr. Frank Malinoski, who was a member of the British-American team that inspected Vector in the early nineteen-nineties, told me that it is now generally believed that the weapons program has been taken over by the Russian Ministry of Defense. "If Biopreparat was once an egg, then the weapons program was the yolk of the egg," he said. "They've hard-boiled the egg, and taken out the yolk and hidden it."
    If, in fact, the yolk exists, what can Western governments do about it? After years of avoiding confrontation with the Russians over bioweapons, American officials are still uncertain how to proceed. Twenty million dollars or so -- no one seems sure of the amount -- has been budgeted by a hodgepodge of agencies to offer financial support to Russian biologists for peaceful research (so they won't go abroad). The National Academy of Sciences, for example, spent a million and a half dollars on research funding for the Russians this past year. But the agencies are in a quandary, and fear the scandal that would ensue if it turned out that their funds had been diverted for weapons research.
    The yolk of the bioweapons program may now be hidden away in military facilities run by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which are off limits to Americans. The largest of these is a complex near Sergiyev Posad, an old town about thirty miles northeast of Moscow. It's not clear how much real control Boris Yeltsin has over the Russian military. If the Ministry of Defense wanted to have a bioweapons program, could anyone tell it to stop? One prominent American scientist said to me, "All of our efforts in touchy-feely relationships have certainly engaged the former Biopreparat people, but we've been turned down flat by the military people. No doubt they're hiding something at Sergiyev Posad, but what are they hiding? Is it a weapons program? Or is it a shadow that doesn't mean anything, like the shadow on the shade in 'Home Alone'? We just don't know."
    Meanwhile, there is strong suspicion that at some of the more visible laboratories weapons-related genetic engineering is being conducted. Genetic engineering, in military terms, is the creation of genetically altered viruses and bacteria in order to enhance their power as weapons. This work can be done by altering an organism's DNA, which is the ribbonlike molecule that contains the organism's genetic code and is found in every cell and in every virus particle. Three months ago, researchers at the Center for Applied Microbiology at Obolensk -- the place south of Moscow where Biopreparat once developed and mass-produced hot strains of Black Death for Soviet missiles and weapons systems -- published a paper in the British medical journal Vaccine describing how they'd created a genetically engineered anthrax. The Obolensk anthrax, they reported, was resistant to the standard anthrax vaccine.
    Ken Alibek thinks that the Russians published information about their research because"they are trying to get some kind of 'legalization' of military genetic engineering," and because they are proud of their work. The Biological Weapons Convention is vague on exactly what constitutes research into an offensive weapon. Alibek said that the Russian biologists are trying to push the envelope of what is permissible. Then, "if someone other than Boris Yeltsin was in power, they could re-create their entire biological weapons program quickly."
    Western biowarfare experts don't know if the new engineered anthrax is as deadly as normal anthrax, but it may be, and it could fall into the wrong hands, such as Iraq or Iran. The real problem may lie in those countries. Genetic-engineering work can be done in a small building by a few Ph.D. researchers, using tabletop machines that are available anywhere in the world at no great cost. In high schools in the United States today, students are taught how to do genetic engineering. They learn how to create new variants of (safe) bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. One genetic-engineering kit for high-school students costs forty-two dollars and is sold through the mail.
    A VIRUS that seems particularly amenable to engineering is smallpox. According to Alibek and others, it is possible that smallpox has left Russia for parts unknown, travelling in the pockets of mercenary biologists. "Iran, Iraq, probably Libya, probably Syria, and North Korea could have smallpox," Alibek said. He bases his list partly on what Russian intelligence told him while he was in the program, for the Russians were very sensitive to other countries' bioweapons programs, and watched carefully. Bioweapons programs may exist in Israel (which has never signed the bioweapons treaty) and Pakistan. Alibek is convinced that India has a program. He says that when he was in Biopreparat, Russian intelligence showed him evidence that China has a large bioweapons program.
    The deadliest natural smallpox virus is known as Variola major. Natural smallpox was eradicated from the earth in 1977, when the last human case of it appeared, in Somalia. Since then, the virus has lived only in laboratories. Smallpox is an extremely lethal virus, and it is highly contagious in the air. When a child with chicken pox appears in a school classroom, many or most of the children in the class may go on to catch chicken pox. Smallpox is as contagious as chicken pox. One case of smallpox can give rise to twenty new cases. Each of those cases can start twenty more. In 1970, when a man infected with smallpox appeared in an emergency room in Germany, seventeen cases of smallpox appeared in the hospital on the floors above. Ultimately, the German government vaccinated a hundred thousand people to stop the outbreak. Two years later in Yugoslavia, a man with a severe case of smallpox visited several hospitals before dying in an intensive-care unit. To stop the resulting outbreak, which forced twenty thousand people into isolation, Yugoslav health authorities had to vaccinate virtually the entire population of the country within three weeks. Smallpox can start the biological equivalent of a runaway chain reaction. About a third of the people who get a hot strain of smallpox die of it. The skin puffs up with blisters the size of hazelnuts, especially over the face. A severe case of smallpox can essentially burn the skin off one's body.
    The smallpox vaccine wears off after ten to twenty years. None of us are immune any longer, unless we've had a recent shot. There are currently seven million usable doses of smallpox vaccine stored in the United States, in one location in Pennsylvania. If an outbreak occurred here, it might be necessary to vaccinate all two hundred and seventy million people in the United States in a matter of weeks. There would be no way to meet such a demand.
    "Russia has researched the genetic alteration of smallpox," Alibek told me. "In 1990 and 1991, we engineered a smallpox at Vector. It was found that several areas of the smallpox genome" -- the DNA -- "can be used for the introduction of some foreign genetic material. The first development was smallpox and VEE. VEE, or Venezuelan equine encephalitis, is a brain virus. It causes a severe headache and near-coma, but it is generally not lethal. Alibek said that the researchers spliced VEE into smallpox. The result was a recombinant chimera virus. In ancient Greek myth, the chimera was a monster made from parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. "It is called smallpox-VEE chimera," Alibek said. It could also be called Veepox. Under a microscope, Alibek said, the Veepox looks like smallpox, but it isn't.
    According to Alibek, there was one major technical hurdle to clear in the creation of a workable Veepox chimera, and he says that it took the Vector researchers years to solve the problem. They solved it by finding more than one place in the smallpox DNA where you could insert new genes without decreasing smallpox's ability to cause disease. Many researchers feel that the smallpox virus doesn't cause disease in animals in any way that is useful for understanding its effects on humans. Alibek says that the Russians tested Veepox in monkeys, but he says that he doesn't know the results.
    More recently, Alibek claims, the Vector researchers may have created a recombinant Ebola-smallpox chimera. One could call it Ebolapox. Ebola virus uses the molecule RNA for its genetic code, whereas smallpox uses DNA. Alibek believes that the Russian researchers made a DNA copy of the disease-causing parts of Ebola, then grafted them into smallpox. Alibek said he thinks that the Ebolapox virus is stable -- that is, that it will replicate successfully in a test tube or in animals -- which means that, once created, Ebolapox will live forever in a laboratory, and will not uncreate itself. Thus a new form of life may have been brought into the world.
    "The Ebolapox could produce the form of smallpox called blackpox," Alibek says. Blackpox, sometimes known as hemorrhagic smallpox, is the most severe type of smallpox disease. In a blackpox infection, the skin does not develop blisters. Instead, the skin becomes dark all over. Blood vessels leak, resulting in severe internal hemorrhaging. Blackpox is invariably fatal. "As a weapon, the Ebolapox would give the hemorrhages and high mortality rate of Ebola virus, which would give you a blackpox, plus the very high contagiousness of smallpox," Alibek said.
    Bill Patrick became exasperated. "Ken! Ken! I think you've got overkill here. What is the point of creating an Ebola smallpox? I mean, it would be nice to do this from a scientific point of view, sure. But with old-fashioned natural smallpox you can bring a society to its knees. You don't need any Ebolapox, Ken. Why, you're just gonna kill everybody."
    "I suspect that this research has been done," Alibek said calmly.
    Lev Sandakhchiev, the head of Vector, strongly denies this. "In our center we developed vaccinia-virus recombinants with VEE viruses and some others," he says. Vaccinia is a harmless virus related to smallpox. It is used for making vaccines.
    "How much do you think it would cost to create genetically engineered smallpox?" I asked Alibek.
    "This is not expensive." He paused, thinking. "A few million dollars. This is what it cost us for making the smallpox-VEE chimera at Vector in 1990 and 1991.
    KEN ALIBEK's statements about the genetic engineering of smallpox are disturbing. I felt a need to hear some perspective from senior scientists who are close to the situation. Dr. Peter Jahrling is the chief scientist at USAMRIID, and he has visited Russia four times in recent months. ("It seems as if all I do these days is visit Russia," he said to me.) He knows the scientists at Vector pretty well. He has listened to Alibek and questioned him carefully, and he doesn't believe him about the Ebola-smallpox chimera. "His talk about chimeras of Ebola is sheer fantasy, in my opinion,"Jahrling said. "This would be technically formidable. We have seen zero evidence of the Vector scientists doing that. But a smallpox chimera -- is it plausible? Yes, it is, and I think that's scary. The truth is, I'm not so worried about governments anymore. I think genetic engineering has been reduced to simple enough principles so that any reasonably equipped group of reasonably good scientists would be able to construct a credible threat using genetic engineering. I don't think anyone could knock out New York City with a genetically engineered bug, but someone might be able to knock out a few people and thereby make an incredible panic."
    Joshua Lederberg is a member of a working group of scientists at the National Academy of Sciences who advise the government on biological weapons and the potential for bioterrorism. He is a professor at Rockefeller University, in Manhattan, and is considered to be one of the founders of the biotechnology revolution. He received the Nobel Prize for discovering -- in 1946, when he was a young man -- that bacteria can swap genes with each other. It was apparent to him even back then that people would soon be moving genes around, for evil as well as for good.
    I found Lederberg in his office, in a modest building covered with vines, in a green island of grass and trees on Manhattan's East Side. He is in his seventies, a man of modest size and modest girth, with a trim white beard, glasses, intelligent hazel eyes, and careful sentences. Lederberg knows Alibek and Pasechnik. He said to me, "They are offering very important evidence. You have to look carefully at what they're saying, but I offer high credibility to their remarks in general." He seemed to be choosing his words. As far as what was going on at Vector, he says that "with smallpox, anything could have happened. Lev Sandakhchiev is one of the world's authorities on the smallpox genome. But there are all kinds of reasons you'd want to introduce modifications into smallpox." He said that you might, for example, alter smallpox in order to make a vaccine. "You have to prove intent to make a weapon," he said.
    Researchers normally introduce new genes into the vaccinia virus. Vaccinia doesn't cause major illness in humans, but if you're infected with it you become immune to smallpox. When the new genes are introduced into vaccinia, they tend to make the virus even weaker, even less able to trigger disease. Putting new genes into smallpox presumably might make it weaker, too. Alibek insisted that the Russians have found places in the genome of smallpox where you can insert new genes, yet the virus remains deadly.
    I said to Lederberg, "If someone is adding genes from Ebola to smallpox virus, and it's making the smallpox more deadly, as Alibek says is happening in Russia, isn't that evidence of intent to make a weapon?"
    "No," he said firmly. "You can't prove intent by the experiment itself. It's not even clear to me that adding Ebola genes to smallpox would make it more deadly. What troubles me is that this kind of work is being done in a clandestine way. They are not telling us what is going on. To be doing such potentially evil research without telling us what they are doing is a provocation. To do an experiment of this kind in the United States would be almost impossible. There would be an extensive review, and it might well not be allowed for safety reasons. The experiment is extremely dangerous, because things could get out of hand."
    Lederberg agreed that Russia does have a clandestine biological-weapons program today, though it's not at all clear how much Vector and Biopreparat have to do with it, since they are independent entities. As for the biological missiles once aimed at the U.S., it doesn't surprise him: "You can put anything in a ballistic missile."
    Lederberg seems to be a man who has looked into the face of evil for a long time and hasn't blinked. He is part of a group of scientists and government officials who are trying to maintain a dialogue with Russian biologists and bring them into the international community of science. "Our best hope is to have a dialogue with Sandakhchiev," he said quietly. "There is no technical solution to the problem of biological weapons. It needs an ethical, human, and moral solution if it's going to happen at all. Don't ask me what the odds are for an ethical solution, but there is no other solution." He paused, considering his words. "But would an ethical solution appeal to a sociopath?"
    TERRORISM is the uncontrolled part of the equation. A while ago, Richard Butler, who is the head of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection teams in Iraq, remarked to me, "Everyone wonders what kinds of delivery systems Iraq may have for biological weapons, but it seems to me that the best delivery system would be a suitcase left in the Washington subway."
    Could something like that happen? What would it be like? The truth is that no one really knows, because lethal bioterror on a major scale has not occurred. At one point in my talk with Ken Alibek in Bill Patrick's kitchen that winter afternoon, we took a break, and the former master bioweaponeers stood on the lawn outside the house, looking down on the city of Frederick. The view reaches to the Mt. Airy Ridge, a blue line in the distance. Clouds had covered the sun again.
    Patrick was squinting east, with a professional need to understand the nuances of wind and cloud. "The wind is ten to twelve miles an hour, gusting a bit." He pointed to smoke coming from a building in the valley. "See the smoke there? It's drifting up a little, but see how it hangs? We have sort of an inversion today, not a good one. I'd say it's a good day for anthrax or Q fever."
    Alibek lit a cigarette and watched the sky. He appraises weather the same way Patrick does.
    Suddenly Patrick turned on his heel and went into his garage. He returned in a few moments carrying a large mayonnaise jar. He unscrewed the cap. The jar contained a fine, creamy, fluffy powder, with a mottled pink tinge. The pink was the dried blood of chicken embryos, he explained. "This is a simulant for VEE." It was a fake version of the weaponized brain virus. It was sterile, and had no living organisms in it. It was harmless.
    The VEE virus can-be grown in weapons-grade concentration in live chicken embryos. When the embryos are swimming with virus particles, you break open the eggs (you had better be wearing a spacesuit), and you harvest the sick embryos. You freeze-dry them and process them into a powder using one of Patrick's secret methods.
    He shook the jar under my face. The blood-tinged powder climbed the sides of the jar. A tendril of simulated bioweapon reached for my nose.
    Instinctively, I jerked my head back.
    Patrick walked across the lawn and stood by an oak tree. Suddenly he extended his arm and heaved the contents of the jar into the air. His simulated brain-virus weapon blasted through the branches of a dogwood tree and took off in the wind, heading straight down a meadow and across the street, booming with celerity toward Frederick. Within seconds, the aerosol cloud had become invisible. But the particles were there, moving with the breeze at a steady ten to twelve miles an hour.
    Alibek watched, tugging at his cigarette, nonchalant, mildly amused. "Yeah. You won't see the cloud now."
    "Some of those particles'll go eighteen to twenty miles, maybe to the Mt. Airy Ridge," Patrick remarked. The simulated brain virus would arrive in Mt. Airy in less than two hours. He walked back and put his hand on Alibek's shoulder, and smiled.
    Alibek nodded.
    "What are you thinking?" I asked Alibek.
    He pursed his lips and shrugged. "This is not exciting for me."
    Patrick went on, "Say you wanted to hit Frederick today, Ken, what would you use?"
    Alibek glanced at the sky, weighing the weather and his options. "I'd use anthrax mixed with smallpox."
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [End]
    Note: Richard Preston was featured in the ABC "PrimeTime" television program on Alibek and bioweapons. He is author of two best-selling books on biological hazards, The Hot Zone, a non-fiction account of the Ebola virus, and The Cobra Event, a novel.

    U.S. USED NERVE GAS IN MILITARY TESTS ON AMERICAN SOIL IN 1960s
    Tue Oct 8,2002
    Associated Press Writer
    The United States held open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least four states — Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland and Florida — during the 1960s in an effort to develop defenses against such weapons, according to Pentagon documents.
    A series of tests in Alaska from 1965-67 used artillery shells and bombs filled with the nerve agents sarin and VX, the records show.
    The Defense Department planned to release summaries of 28 chemical and biological weapons tests at a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday. The Associated Press obtained the summaries Tuesday.
    The documents did not say whether any civilians had been exposed to the poisons. Military personnel exposed to weapons agents would have worn protective gear, the Pentagon says.
    The Pentagon previously acknowledged that it had conducted biological and chemical tests, but this was the first time it disclosed that some tests were conducted over land and not out at sea.
    The tests were part of Project 112, a military program in the 1960s and 1970s to test chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. Parts of the testing program done on Navy ships were called Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense.
    The tests were directed from the Deseret Test Center, part of a biological and chemical weapons complex in the Utah desert.
    Some of those involved in the tests say they now suffer health problems linked to their exposure to dangerous chemicals and germs. They are pressing the Veterans Affairs Department to compensate them and the Defense Department to release more information about the tests.
    In response to pressure from veterans and Congress, the Pentagon began releasing details of the tests last year. Earlier this year, the Defense Department acknowledged for the first time that some of the 1960s tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just benign stand-ins.
    "The Cold War era experiments of Project SHAD, which we are now learning used live toxins and chemical poisons on American servicemen on American soil, must be aggressively investigated in as open and transparent a manner as possible," said the House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J. "Our focus must be on quickly identifying those veterans who were involved, assessing whether they suffered any negative health consequences and, if warranted, providing them with adequate health care and compensation for their service."
    The Defense Department has identified nearly 3,000 soldiers involved in tests disclosed earlier, but the VA has sent letters to fewer than half of them. VA and Pentagon officials acknowledged at a July hearing that finding the soldiers has been difficult.
    The tests described in the latest Pentagon documents include:
    _ Devil Hole I, designed to test how sarin gas would disperse after being released in artillery shells and rockets in aspen and spruce forests. The tests occurred in the summer of 1965 at the Gerstle River test site near Fort Greeley, Alaska, the documents said. Sarin is a powerful nerve gas that causes a choking, thrashing death. It killed 12 people in a Tokyo subway attack in 1995 and the Bush administration says it is part of Iraq's chemical arsenal.
    _ Devil Hole II, which tested how the nerve agent VX behaved when dispersed with artillery shells. The test at the Gerstle River site in Alaska also included mannequins in military uniforms and military trucks. VX is one of the deadliest nerve agents known and is persistent in the environment because it is a sticky liquid that evaporates slowly. Iraq has acknowledged making tons of VX.
    _ Big Tom, a 1965 test that included spraying bacteria over the Hawaiian island of Oahu to simulate a biological attack on an island compound, and to develop tactics for such an attack. The test used Bacillus globigii, a bacterium believed at the time to be harmless. Researchers later discovered the bacteria could cause infections in people with weakened immune systems.

  • Global crash fears as German bank sinks -Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis.
    Faisal Islam, economics correspondent and Will Hutton
    Sunday October 6, 2002
    The Observer
    Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis. A leaked email about the credit-worthiness of Commerzbank, Germany's third largest bank, yesterday increased fears of the international stock market malaise exploding into a fully-fledged banking crisis.
    Commerzbank lost a quarter of its value last week, raising the spectre of Credit-anstalt, the Austrian bank that collapsed in 1931, sparking global depression.
    US stock markets have fallen for six consecutive weeks, to their lowest levels in five years. European markets have collapsed even further, wiping out nearly half of the value of European corpora tions in this year alone. Japan is struggling to put together a plan to save its banking system, riddled with bad debt after a decade of recession and falling prices. Now the German economy threatens to follow.
    'There are strong parallels to the Thirties after an unsustainable "new era" boom,' says Avinash Persaud managing director for economics and research at State Street Bank. 'Then, the stock market decline was not just steep, it was long, taking three years to reach the bottom.'
    'Commerzbank being affected is a sign of the severity. But in today's crisis risks have been offloaded from the banks to the markets and ultimately our pensioners, which makes the problem more difficult to deal with,' he says. The leaked email about Commerzbank was in response to an inquiry from a US investment bank about rumours of huge losses on credit derivatives, which aim to spread risk.
    Figures due to be published on Friday will show that a toll of stock market falls, rising joblessness and war fears is finally denting the spending habits of Americans. Economists fear that the result may be a 'double-dip' US recession, taking much of the world with it.
    Europe's finance Ministers, including Chancellor Gordon Brown, will meet in Luxembourg on Tuesday amid deepening concern about the stability of the financial system. Tomorrow evening, the Eurogroup of finance ministers, excluding Brown, will discuss reforming Europe-wide tax and spending rules along the lines of the British system, taking stronger account of economic difficulties.
    In the US, the concern is that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has insufficient room to cut interest rates if the economy falls into recession. 'The [Bush] Administration has two lines of action: tax relief for the rich [and] reliance on the Federal Reserve. Both are without effect,' says US economist JK Galbraith in an interview with The Observer.

  • Blair tells Bush, 'back off UK plc' -PM urges US to make British firms exempt from new anti-fraud laws
    Sunday August 11, 2002
    The Observer
    Tony Blair is pushing President George Bush to exempt British companies and their auditors from tough new US laws designed to crack down on corporate fraud.
    In a rare move, the Prime Minister raised the issue of the regulation of UK firms listed in the US in one of his regular telephone calls to Bush. The 15 July call was prompted after City institutions expressed fears about how the laws will be interpreted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US financial watchdog.
    The Sarbanes-Oxley act, which was hurried through Congress last month as a response to recent high-profile corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom, is described by legislators in America as the 'most radical redesign of federal securities laws since the 1930s'.
    Under the law, which has met considerable opposition from US businesses, company directors face lengthy prison sentences and huge fines if they are found to have committed fraud, while chief executive officers and chief financial officers will be made personally liable for signing off quarterly accounts.
    In addition, the act places much greater responsibilities on non executive directors, audit committees and auditors for overseeing a company's accounting practices.
    More than half of the UK's FTSE 100 companies either have a dual listing in the US or have their shares traded via American Depository Receipts, and this makes them subject to the new laws.
    But the UK government believes that its own domestic regulator, the Financial Services Authority, is capable of policing City firms and their auditors without the need for US intervention.
    The Government has taken soundings from the business world, which believes the act might deter good-quality directors from joining FTSE 100 boards and will place unnecessary regulatory burdens on UK audit firms.
    A number of leading City organisations are worried that the law raises the prospect of criminal proceedings being taken against innocent directors who fail to detect elaborate frauds perpetrated by colleagues.
    'At a time when we want the best-quality people to be non-executive directors, the threat of stiff penal and legal consequences is a major deterrent to the very people we're trying to attract. They'll just say it's not worth the risk,' said Peter Wyman, president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
    The UK government wants the SEC, which will enforce the act, to exempt UK firms listed in the US from many aspects of the act. In addition to Blair's telephone call, there have been discussions between the White House and the UK ambassador in Washington, and between members of the FSA and SEC.
    Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry confirmed last month that 'high-level' lobbying from the UK government 'has had some success, but concerns about the legislation remain. We are therefore continuing to pursue these matters at national and European level with the US administration'.
    He added: 'We do not want to see extra regulatory burdens piled on to British companies.'
    · By the close of markets last week just 15 per cent of companies had filed the required sworn statements.
    The SEC's deadline for the certification of accounts by CEOs and CFOs expires on Wednesday. Fitch, the ratings agency, said companies that miss the deadline may suffer downgrades to debt ratings.


  • Purported Bin Laden Tape Warns U.S.
    The Associated Press
    Sunday, October 6, 2002
    CAIRO, Egypt –– The Arab satellite station al-Jazeera broadcast an audiotape Sunday in which a male voice attributed to Osama bin Laden said the "youths of God" are planning more attacks against the United States.
    "By God, the youths of God are preparing for you things that would fill your hearts with terror and target your economic lifeline until you stop your oppression and aggression" against Muslims, said the voice in the audiotape.
    It wasn't immediately clear when the tape was made. The short message was broadcast with a picture of bin Laden in the background.
    Bin Laden said his message was addressed to the American people, whom he urged to "understand the message of the New York and Washington attacks which came in response to some of your previous crimes."
    "But those who follow the activities of the band of criminals in the White House, the Jewish agents, who are preparing for an attack on the Muslim world ... feel that you have not understood anything from the message of the two attacks," he said.
    Qatar-based al-Jazeera has become known for its broadcast of audio and videotapes of al-Qaida leaders. Last month, it aired excerpts from a videotape in which a voice said to be bin Laden's is heard naming the leaders of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.
    Until then, bin Laden had not been heard from since shortly after the U.S.-led bombing campaign began in Afghanistan last October.
    An interview al-Jazeera said one of its correspondents conducted in June with two top al-Qaida fugitives was aired to correspond with the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly afterward, U.S. officials announced one of the fugitives had been captured in Pakistan.
    American officials have called the network biased in its coverage of the war on terrorism, the Israeli-Arab conflict and U.S. Mideast policy. Al-Jazeera journalists say they strive to tell all sides of events from the Arab and Muslim point of view, and they have angered Arab governments as often as they have Washington.
    The satellite station, initially funded by the Qatari government, began operations in November 1996. It is editorially independent of the government, which has its own official station to broadcast its point of view.

    Taped interview claims to be of bin Laden's top deputy, threatening more attacks
    (Associated Press)
    Tuesday, October 8, 2002
    LONDON –– In a taped interview, a speaker purported to be Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, threatens new attacks on the United States, its allies and its economy.
    The authenticity of the audiotape, obtained by Associated Press Television News on Tuesday, could not be independently confirmed. It was not known when the tape was made – though it includes references to the United States' recent standoff with Iraq and a July 1 U.S. bombing in Afghanistan.
    The speaker said to be al-Zawahri accuses the United States of trying, through its campaign against Iraq, to subjugate the Arab world on behalf of Israel.
    Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian who is regarded as a primary strategist of the al-Qaida terrorists and was with bin Laden in Afghanistan, disappeared soon after Sept. 11 but is widely thought to have survived U.S. bombing there. U.S. officials say they don't know whether he or bin Laden are alive.
    Al-Zawahri was said to be alive in a satellite telephone conversation reportedly intercepted over the weekend by U.S. and Afghan intelligence. The conversation was between fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and his former deputy prime minister, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, an Afghan intelligence official told The Associated Press. The report could not be confirmed by U.S. officials.
    The audio interview attributed to al-Zawahri was obtained by APTN in the form of a video compact disc. On the disc, the interview is played against a video backdrop with English subtitles of the conversation, along with scenes from the Sept. 11 attacks and other news footage.
    A title in the video identifies the speaker as al-Zawahri and says the video is a production of the As-Sahaab Foundation for Islamic Media. The foundation is credited with earlier al-Qaida statements that appeared on Web sites and with the so-called farewell video of Ahmed Ibrahim A. Alhaznawi, a Sept. 11 hijacker.
    In Washington, U.S. intelligence was analyzing the al-Zawahri tape to determine whether its his voice and when it was made, a U.S. intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
    APTN on Tuesday played the tape to Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, who has interviewed al-Zawahri.
    "To my knowledge it does sound like the voice of Ayman al-Zawahri," Atwan said. "I don't have assurance that it is 100 percent his voice, but definitely it's the closest to his voice." He noted that the speaker has an Egyptian accent and uses language used by al-Zawahri in previous speeches.
    Al-Zawahri, 50, is believed to be bin Laden's doctor and spiritual adviser, providing the ideology that drove al-Qaida. He was the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad until he forged an alliance with bin Laden in 1998.
    Al-Zawahri is on the U.S. most wanted list and the government is offering a reward of up to $25 million for information leading to his capture. Egypt sentenced him to death in absentia in 1999 for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan and for attempting to kill officials in Egypt. He has been indicted in the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
    In the recording, an unidentified person interviewed the speaker said to be al-Zawahri, who issued a warning to what he called "the deputies of America," to get out of the Muslim world, specifically Germany and France.
    "The mujahid youth has already sent messages to Germany and France," the speaker said. "However, if these doses are not enough, we are prepared with the help of Allah, to inject further doses."
    A May 8 attack on a bus in Pakistan killed 11 French engineers and an April 11 blast at a synagogue in Tunisia, a former French colony, killed 16 people, including 11 Germans. Both attacks have been linked to al-Qaida.
    "As for America itself, it should expect to be treated the same way it has acted," the man on the tape says, pointing to suffering of Muslims in Afghanistan and in the Palestinian territories.
    "It will have to pay the price. ... The settlement of this overburdened account will then indeed be heavy. We will also aim to continue, by permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy."
    The speaker said the year-old U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan "has not achieved its goals. ... Neither America nor its allies have been able to harm the leadership of al-Qaida and Taliban, including Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheik Osama bin Laden, may Allah protect them all. They are both in good health."
    Asked what he saw as the motives for the United States campaign against Iraq, the man said, "Its first aim is to destroy any effective military force in the proximity of Israel."
    Its second aim, he said, is to consolidate the supremacy of Israel over Arab countries.
    "America and its deputies should know that their crimes will not go unpunished," he said. "We advise them to make a hasty retreat from Palestine, the Arabian Gulf, Afghanistan and the rest of the Muslim states, before they lose everything."
    Atwan said he believed the recording was part of a "media campaign" by al-Qaida's leaders aimed at showing "that they are still intact, they are still powerful."
    He suggested al-Qaida's change from video to audio interviews could mean its leaders are being more careful and making it impossible for specialists to interpret any background or scenery.

  • Bin Laden still alive, reveals US spy satellite
    Jason Burke in Jalalabad
    Sunday October 6, 2002
    The Observer
    Osama bin Laden is alive and regularly meeting Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, according to a telephone call intercepted by American spy satellites.
    In the conversation, recorded less than a month ago, Omar and a senior aide were discussing the American-led hunt to track them down. The two men, using a mobile Thuraya satellite phone, spoke about tactics for several minutes. Omar then turned to a third person who was within a few yards of him, voice analysis has revealed. After exchanging a few words, Omar said that 'the sheikh sends his salaams [greetings]'. Senior Taliban figures habitually refer to bin Laden as 'the sheikh'.
    Voice analysis appears to corroborate the identification of bin Laden. 'It shows he was alive recently at least,' said a senior Afghan intelligence officer. 'Some people might like to think he is dead, but that's just wishful thinking.'
    The revelation comes amid growing speculation that bin Laden is dead. He has looked gaunt and unwell in videos released by al-Qaeda, and appeared unable to use his left arm. There has been no public statement from bin Laden since early this year.
    Some analysts say this lack of communication indicates that he might be dead, but others say he is biding his time. 'He does not want to be rushed into saying something reactive. He wants to make statements on his own terms,' said Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds newspaper in London.
    Other analysts feel Omar could have been bluffing, knowing he was being listened to by the Americans.
    Bin Laden's whereabouts are unknown, but it is thought he is moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan via the border between the Afghan province of Paktia and the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan. There were unconfirmed sightings of him in eastern Afghanistan in March and April. The only confirmed location for him was at Tora Bora, the cave complex south of Jalalabad, in December.

    Terrorism fears rise as US marine is killed on manoeuvres in Kuwait
    Independent
    09 October 2002
    An American marine on a live-firing exercise in Kuwait was killed yesterday and a second wounded in what has been described as a terrorist attack. Two Kuwaitis who attacked the marines were killed by US forces.
    The soldier was killed after two men approached in a pick-up truck and started firing at a group of US forces. Other marines returned fire and killed the two attackers. An investigation into the identities of the two has been launched.
    The attack was planned and premeditated, according to diplomatic sources. While full details of the incident were unclear, the Kuwaiti government is concerned the attack may have been a terrorist assault on Western targets in the Middle East. Officials are still investigating an incident in which a French oil tanker was attacked by bombers while off the coast of Yemen last Sunday. A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Dave Lapan, said the soldiers were part of a force of about 1,000 from the 11 Marine Expeditionary Unit, taking part in Exercise Eager Mace, a bilateral exercise with Kuwaiti forces. He said the two men had been flown to the Camp Doha Armed Forces Hospital, where one of them died during emergency surgery. The condition of the second marine was not clear.
    The incident happened yesterday morning on Faylaka Island, about 10 miles off the coast from Kuwait City. Colonel Lapan said that,while the exercise was part of joint United States-Kuwait training, the gunmen struck while the marines were taking part in urban assault training that involved only US forces. Urban warfare training is increasingly seen as essential should Washington decide to strike Iraq. Kuwait has said it is opposed to any unilateral military action, though it will allow US forces to use its land for an attack if it is sanctioned by the United Nations.
    Kuwait is thought to be home to a large number of al-Qa'ida operatives. Muslim fundamentalists are politically strong in the country, although they are staunchly opposed to the Iraqi leader, President Saddam Hussein.

    Tanker attack fits bin Laden's economic war
    By Robert Fisk
    (Independent)
    08 October 2002
    To look at those images of the French oil tanker Limburg, scorched and holed off Yemen, you had to remember the very last sermon Osama bin Laden gave before he disappeared in Afghanistan last December.
    The American economy, he said, would be destroyed. "Oil tankers," a Palestinian friend told me later. "If he goes for the oil tankers, the Americans will have to escort every tanker round the Gulf with a warship. Think what that would do to the price of oil."
    Yesterday – as the world mulled over the Limburg captain's report of a small explosives-laden boat ramming itself against the side of his 300,000 ton double-hulled supertanker – the price of a barrel of oil duly broke the $30 envelope.
    First we had the USS Cole two years ago, almost sunk by suicide bombers at the cost of 17 US sailors' lives. Then we had the al-Qa'ida men arrested in Morocco this year for allegedly planning to sink an American or British warship off the Straits of Gibraltar. And now the Limburg.
    The oil markets were yesterday studying the announcement from Yemen's Prime Minister, Abdul-Kader Bajammal, that "terrorism" was not involved. A senior State Department official seemed to back up the Yemeni contention that it was an accident. The French government did not rule out an attack.
    Captain Peter Raes, speaking on behalf of Compagnie Maritime Belge, which owns the ship's operators Euronav, said: "Another vessel colliding with the tanker would never have had the energy to break through to the cargo hold tank."
    Captain Raes said the force tore a very large hole 26 feet by 19 across the hull of the ship which was unlikely to have been made by any gas leakage.
    "On top of that the explosion occurred on the water line – There is absolutely nothing which can trigger an explosion at that height," he said.
    In Bahrain yesterday, US military sources indicated that the 5th Fleet was now examining the security of oil tanker fleets throughout the Gulf.
    During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, US warships were forced to accompany Kuwait-bound tankers up the Gulf to protect them from Iranian attack. One more tanker attack and the American navy could be back in the convoy business again, vulnerable to the same small killer boats that assaulted the Cole.
    The price of oil would go on rising – giving Washington even greater reason to invade Iraq and lower the price of crude by seizing Saddam's oil fields.
    Osama bin Laden is alive, living in Afghanistan and plotting more attacks, according to a satellite telephone conversation reportedly intercepted over the weekend. Be he on earth or in the netherworld, he must be smiling today.

    American soldier killed in Filipino nail bomb attack
    Independent
    03 October 2002
    A master sergeant in the US army and another person were killed and 20 others, including another American, injured when a nail bomb exploded outside a restaurant frequented by military personnel in the largely Muslim southern Philippines.
    In Washington, officials said there was no immediate word on those responsible. The restaurant is in Zamboanga, the base city where US troops are stationed. They helped in operations this year against the local Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, which is linked with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida group that made the September attacks on America.
    That six-month offensive, focused on the rebel stronghold of Basilan island, was widely hailed as a success when it was wrapped up in July. But in recent days, several isolated attacks have been made, heightening concerns that the Abu Sayyaf presence in the southern Philippines has not been eradicated.
    "We're not sure yet, but we believe it's the handiwork of terrorists," Colonel Alexander Yapching, a Filipino army spokesman told reporters. He said the bomb had been placed on a motorcyle which was driven to the restaurant and left parked in front.
    The US serviceman, whose name was not disclosed, died of his wounds as he was being taken to a military hospital at Camp Navarro, the headquarters of the Filipino Southern Command in Zamboanga.
    About 250 soldiers are based at Zamboanga, the remnant of the US force, 1,200 strong at its maximum, that aided the offensive. A total 272 American troops remain in the Philippines, a Pentagon spokesman said last night. Communist rebels said yesterday that they intended to continue hitting military sites and police camps, but denied they were planning to attack oil depots, shopping malls and other civilian installations.
    The bombing was done in the evening, amid heavy security, as the city was preparing for a Christian festival in 10 days. The surrounding area was cordoned off and an extra guard force was posted at the gate to Camp Navarro.
    A suspected al-Qa'ida member in US custody is said to have told interrogators early last month that the group and its allies in Abu Sayyaf were planning attacks on unspecified targets in the Philippines.
    US military backing helped government forces inflict heavy damage on Abu Sayyaf on Basilan island, among a series of semi-covert operations mounted as the war on terrorism moved beyond Afghan-istan, to Yemen, the former soviet republic of Georgia and South East Asia.
    But last month, the government said it was sending reinforcements to a second nearby island, Sulu, to wipe out an Abu Sayyaf faction there. In a year-long spate of kidnapping and violence aimed largely at foreigners, the rebel group seized 102 hostages, including three Americans.
    It continues to hold seven hostages on a third island, Jolo. They include three Indonesian seamen, abducted from a tugboat in June, and four women from the Philippines who are Christian evangelists, kidnapped in August.

  • Highly-Contagious Newcastle Disease Found In Game Birds
    Outbreak Found In Los Angeles County - Last Seen In 1998
    10-5-2
    A ProMED-mail post
    www.promedmail.org
    ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases
    http://www.isid.org
    Date: 4 October 2002
    Source: Office International des Epizooties (OIE),
    Disease InformationOctober 4, 2002 (edited)
    http://www.oie.int/eng/info/hebdo/AIS_51.HTM#Sec1
    Emergency report: Newcastle disease in the USA
    (Date of previous reported outbreak: June 1998)
    Information reported on 3 October 2002 from Dr Peter Fernandez, associate deputy administrator, International Services, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, DC.
    Nature of diagnosis: clinical and laboratory.
    Date of initial detection of animal health incident: 26 September 2002.
    Estimated date of first infection: 19 September 2002.
    One outbreak in Los Angeles County, State of California, in the western part of the USA.
    Description of affected population: the disease was found in game fowl in backyard flock locations. There are 2 laboratory confirmed positive premises and 4 premises that have epidemiological links to the positive premises and/or clinical signs present. No commercial poultry are affected.
    The diagnosis was made by virus isolation at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories, Ames, Iowa. The causal agent is paramyxovirus type-1. The virus was found to have multiple basic amino acids at the fusion (F) protein cleavage activation site: arg. arg. glu. lys. arg* phe, a sequence compatible with that of mesogenic/velogenic pathotypes. Re-isolation of the virus from the original specimen is in progress.
    Epidemiology
    A. Source of agent / origin of infection: unknown. An evaluation of bird movements and movements of people and fomites is ongoing. B. Mode of spread: direct contact, fomites. C. Other epidemiological details: epidemiological investigations are ongoing to determine the extent of spread. Intensive surveillance is being conducted door-to-door in the affected areas. Control measures: quarantine of affected backyard premises, depopulation of affected/exposed game fowl. Epidemiological tracing is ongoing.
    ProMED-mail
    This is a potentially explosive situation because of the extremely rapid spread and easy transmissibility of the virus, high mortality in birds, the particular poultry subpopulation involved, and the time which has elapsed since the first incident. All this means hard work and good luck will be required in order to get a quick eradication as occurred in the 1998 outbreak in Southern California -- see references below.
    These birds in Southern California present a unique challenge because they are most likely fighting game cocks. Unfortunately, the outbreak appears to be located only a short distance from California's commercial layer establishments. Fighting game cocks are a population that travels a great deal and present several significant challenges. The good news is that no new flocks have been identified today -- a day after Peter Fernandez assembled his report. Since animal cruelty laws in the United States ban this activity in California and all but 3 other states, disease control officials will have more than their usual share of owner compliance issue to deal with. Another difficulty lies in the fact that fighting cocks populations present a significant epidemiologic challenge because their reason for living is to congregate and fight, which means be in close contact with other birds for an afternoon and evening and then return home if they haven't been too mutilated by the day's "sporting" activities. The congregation and dispersal, of course, will promote the spread of disease to new back yard game flocks and make the tracing of birds from the original outbreak flock much more complicated. Finally, some of these fighting cocks will be worth substantial amounts of money. Birds may travel great distances to fight other highly touted birds, increasing the potential for spread out of state. We can only hope that birds valuable enough to travel very far were valuable enough for the owners to have vaccinated against Newcastle Disease.
    I understand considerable resources are being devoted to tracing birds from the outbreak site and that the implementation of surveillance strategies is progressing fairly well. In addition to the eradication program currently under way in California, there are two important things to do now to prevent spread to new areas. First of all, commercial poultry flocks should increase their biosecurity efforts and be especially vigilant about employees' extracurricular activities. Most poultry companies require their employees to forgo any contact with other poultry including backyard flocks (their own, relatives or friends), cock fights, or any other type of contact with non commercial poultry but now is the time to really get the message across. Secondly, diagnostic laboratories, poultry veterinarians, and others involved in the industry should be particularly and acutely vigilant. Early diagnosis of spread will astronomically increase the chances of control of the disease if it moves outside its present confinement. Given that the disease may have been circulating in game cock populations for almost two weeks, any delay in the chain of control should be avoided, particularly if the disease moves into commercial populations. --- Mod.PC
    ProMED-mail makes every effort to verify the reports that are posted, but the accuracy and completeness of the information, and of any statements or opinions based thereon, are not guaranteed. The reader assumes all risks in using information posted or archived by ProMED-mail. ISID and its associated service providers shall not be held responsible for errors or omissions or held liable for any damages incurred as a result of use or reliance upon posted or archived material.
    Visit ProMED-mail's web site at http://www.promedmail.org.

  • What is Newcastle Disease?
    USDA Veterinary Services
    January 2002
    Exotic Newcastle disease is a contagious and fatal viral disease affecting all species of birds. Previously known as velogenic viscerotropic Newcastle disease (VVND), exotic Newcastle is probably one of the most infectious diseases of poultry in the world. Exotic Newcastle is so virulent that many birds die without showing any clinical signs. A death rate of almost 100 percent can occur in unvaccinated poultry flocks. Exotic Newcastle can infect and cause death even in vaccinated poultry.
    An outbreak of exotic Newcastle today would severely impact the U.S. poultry industry. In 1971, a major outbreak occurred in commercial poultry flocks in southern California. The disease threatened not only the California poultry industry but the entire U.S. poultry and egg supply. In all, 1,341 infected flocks were identified, and almost 12 million birds were destroyed. Eradication efforts cost taxpayers $56 million, severely disrupted the operations of many producers, and increased the prices of poultry and poultry products to consumers. Exotic Newcastle has not infected commercial chicken flocks in the United States since that outbreak was eradicated in 1974.
    What Are the Clinical Signs?
    Exotic Newcastle affects the respiratory, nervous, and digestive systems. The incubation period for the disease ranges from 2 to 15 days. An infected bird may exhibit the following signs:
    Respiratory: sneezing, gasping for air, nasal discharge, coughing
    Digestive: greenish, watery diarrhea
    Nervous: depression, muscular tremors, drooping wings, twisting of head and neck, circling, complete paralysis
    Partial to complete drop in egg production
    Production of thin-shelled eggs
    Swelling of the tissues around the eyes and in the neck
    Sudden death
    Increased death loss in a flock.
    How Does Exotic Newcastle Spread?
    Exotic Newcastle is spread primarily through direct contact between healthy birds and the bodily discharges of infected birds. The disease is transmitted through infected birds' droppings and secretions from the nose, mouth, and eyes. Exotic Newcastle spreads rapidly among birds kept in confinement, such as commercially raised chickens.
    High concentrations of the exotic Newcastle virus are in birds' bodily discharges. Therefore, the disease can be spread easily by mechanical means. Virus-bearing material can be picked up on shoes and clothing and carried from an infected flock to a healthy one. The disease is often spread by vaccination and debeaking crews, manure haulers, rendering-truck drivers, feed delivery personnel, poultry buyers, egg service people, and poultry farm owners and employees.
    The exotic Newcastle virus can survive for several weeks in a warm and humid environment on birds' feathers, manure, and other materials. It can survive indefinitely in frozen material. However, the virus is destroyed rapidly by dehydration and by the ultraviolet rays in sunlight.
    Smuggled pet birds, especially Amazon parrots from Latin America, pose a great risk of introducing exotic Newcastle into U.S. poultry flocks. Amazon parrots that are carriers of the disease but do not show symptoms are capable of shedding exotic Newcastle virus for more than 400 days.

  • US Investigates Listeria Outbreak Linked to 20 Deaths and 120 illnesses
    Thu Oct 3, 2002
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health and food officials said on Thursday they are investigating the source of a food-borne listeria outbreak blamed for at least 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight Northeastern U.S. states.
    US Suspects Turkey to Be a Source of Food Outbreak
    Turkey deli meat was one likely source of a listeria outbreak blamed for 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight states, U.S. government officials said on Friday.
    The Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, along with the U.S. Agriculture Department, has linked at least seven deaths and 40 illnesses to the same listeria strain. The illnesses were reported in early September.
    "Analysis of data collected to date indicate that the leading suspect food in this outbreak is sliced turkey deli meat," the agency said in a statement.
    However, the U.S. Agriculture Department has not been able to confirm this through its testing. Listeria can be found in a variety of foods including ready-to-eat meats or other foods such as seafood, soft cheese and unpasteurized milk.
    "We have yet to get a positive sample with which we can make a positive link to any specific product from a specific company," said Steve Cohen, spokesman for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
    The USDA said it has conducted more than 200 tests on lunch meats and deli products after the illnesses were reported, most of them in the Northeast -- New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut and Delaware also were affected.
    "Federal, state and local health officials are continuing to investigate to determine the brand and origin of the product involved," CDC said.
    Food contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause high fever, severe headaches and nausea. The disease is especially dangerous to pregnant women, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems from cancer or other disease.
    Health officials have advised those most at risk to avoid eating uncooked hot dogs, luncheon meats or soft cheeses as these products have been associated with listeriosis outbreaks in the past.
    About 2,500 cases of listeriosis occur each year in the United States, CDC said. Listeria can be destroyed by cooking meat to a temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
    In a separate meat contamination probe, Cargill Inc. said the U.S. Agriculture Department closed its ground beef plant in Wisconsin that was linked to an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 which has sickened dozens of people, mostly in the Midwest.
    Both cases come at a time when the USDA has been criticized by lawmakers and consumer groups for failing to police food safety.
    In the listeria outbreak, the USDA said its Food Safety and Inspection Service began "vigorous sampling" of lunch meats and deli products after illnesses were reported in early September. Most illnesses were in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, however Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut and Delaware also were affected.
    Federal officials have not yet been able to pinpoint whether the listeria contaminated ready-to-eat meats or other foods such as seafood, soft cheeses and unpasteurized milk.
    "Working with state health officials, FSIS investigators have been probing every possible lead in an attempt to narrow the list of possible sources of contamination," FSIS Administrator Garry McKee said in a statement.
    "Multiple samples have been collected and analyzed, but as of yet, all have tested negative."
    Of the 120 listeria illnesses reported to health officials, 36 were linked through laboratory tests, said FSIS spokesman Steve Cohen. The 36 illnesses resulted in six deaths.
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( news - web sites) said it has not yet determined the strain of listeria that caused the other 14 deaths.
    Food contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause high fever, severe headaches and nausea. The disease is especially dangerous to pregnant women, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems from cancer or other diseases.
    State health officials have advised those most at risk to avoid eating uncooked hot dogs, luncheon meats, or soft cheeses as these products have been associated with listeriosis outbreaks in the past.
    The USDA is responsible for regulating the safety of beef, chicken and eggs while the Food and Drug Administration ( news - web sites) has authority over most other foods.
    E.COLI OUTBREAK
    In the separate E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak, the USDA temporarily shut down a Cargill plant in Wisconsin after its ground beef sickened at least 57 people in seven states.
    Cargill's Milwaukee-based Emmpak Foods, doing business as Peck Meats, late Wednesday night sharply expanded its recall of ground beef to 2.8 million pounds.
    "USDA has shut the plant down," said Mark Klein, the company's spokesman. "We are working with USDA to determine what it will take to reopen it to their satisfaction."
    Privately owned Cargill bought Emmpak Foods in August 2001.
    Tainted Cargill ground beef was linked to illnesses in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, New York and New Jersey, USDA said. The ground beef was produced between Aug. 20 and Aug. 24 and distributed to grocery stores, hotels, restaurants and other institutions.
    The expanded recall is unlikely to turn up much of the contaminated meat, Cargill said.
    "We are expecting very little product to come back because of the production times," Klein said. "Most of this has already been consumed."
    USDA said its investigation into Emmpak included one slaughter plant and two grinding plants. Cargill said the plant that was closed produced 560,000 pounds of meat each day.
    Emmpak Foods President Justin Segel said the company stands to lose about $3 million per week in revenue with the plant closing.
    "Investigators have not found a smoking gun," Segel told reporters at a news conference in Milwaukee. "We are reevaluating our entire procedure from soup to nuts."
    E. coli O157:H7, typically acquired through contaminated food or water, causes bloody diarrhea, vomiting and cramps. In some cases, usually involving the elderly or young children, it can lead to kidney failure and death.
    Both E. coli 0157:H7 and listeria are destroyed by cooking meat to a temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
    USDA officials on Thursday briefed congressional staff members on the food outbreaks.
    Consumer groups and a handful of Democrats have criticized the USDA for lax oversight and inconsistent enforcement of food safety regulations.
    Consumer advocates said the Cargill recall was further evidence that Congress needs to give USDA the authority to issue mandatory recalls. Currently, the department can only recommend a company withdraw its products from commerce.
    Each year, about 2,500 Americans come down with listeriosis after eating foods--most often meats, raw vegetables and soft cheeses--contaminated with Listeria bacteria. While infection may only result in a transient gastrointestinal illness in healthy individuals, it can prove deadly in the very young, the very old, or those with compromised immune systems, such as people with HIV/AIDS.
    Listeria infection also poses a danger to pregnant women. The CDC report indicates that three women linked to the current outbreak have suffered miscarriage or stillbirth after becoming infected.
    CDC officials are advising that persons in high-risk groups residing in the affected states "reduce their risk of infection by not eating sliced turkey deli meats or by thoroughly heating them."
    The initial signs of listeriosis include flu-like symptoms of fever, aching muscles, nausea and/or diarrhea. If infection spreads to the nervous system more serious symptoms--such as headache, neck stiffness, confusion or convulsion--can occur.


  • What is Listeriosis (cdc.gov)
    What are the symptoms of listeriosis?
    How great is the risk for listeriosis?
    How does Listeria get into food?
    How do you get listeriosis?
    Can listeriosis be prevented?
    How can you reduce your risk for listeriosis?
    How do you know if you have listeriosis?
    What should you do if you've eaten a food recalled because of Listeria contamination?
    Can listeriosis be treated?
    What is the government doing about listeriosis?
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Listeriosis, a serious infection caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, has recently been recognized as an important public health problem in the United States. The disease affects primarily pregnant women, newborns, and adults with weakened immune systems. It can be avoided by following a few simple recommendations.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    What are the symptoms of listeriosis?
    A person with listeriosis has fever, muscle aches, and sometimes gastrintestinal symptoms such as nausea or diarrhea. If infection spreads to the nervous system, symptoms such as headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, or convulsions can occur.
    Infected pregnant women may experience only a mild, flu-like illness; however, infections during pregnancy can lead to premature delivery, infection of the newborn, or even stillbirth.
    How great is the risk for listeriosis?
    In the United States, an estimated 2,500 persons become seriously ill with listeriosis each year. Of these, 500 die. At increased risk are:
    Pregnant women - They are about 20 times more likely than other healthy adults to get listeriosis. About one-third of listeriosis cases happen during pregnancy.
    Newborns - Newborns rather than the pregnant women themselves suffer the serious effects of infection in pregnancy.
    Persons with weakened immune systems
    Persons with cancer, diabetes, or kidney disease
    Persons with AIDS - They are almost 300 times more likely to get listeriosis than people with normal immune systems.
    Persons who take glucocorticosteroid medications
    The elderly
    Healthy adults and children occasionally get infected with Listeria, but they rarely become seriously ill.
    How does Listeria get into food?
    Listeria monocytogenes is found in soil and water. Vegetables can become contaminated from the soil or from manure used as fertilizer.
    Animals can carry the bacterium without appearing ill and can contaminate foods of animal origin such as meats and dairy products. The bacterium has been found in a variety of raw foods, such as uncooked meats and vegetables, as well as in processed foods that become contaminated after processing, such as soft cheeses and cold cuts at the deli counter. Unpasteurized (raw) milk or foods made from unpasteurized milk may contain the bacterium.
    Listeria is killed by pasteurization, and heating procedures used to prepare ready-to-eat processed meats should be sufficient to kill the bacterium; however, unless good manufacturing practices are followed, contamination can occur after processing.
    How do you get listeriosis?
    You get listeriosis by eating food contaminated with Listeria. Babies can be born with listeriosis if their mothers eat contaminated food during pregnancy. Although healthy persons may consume contaminated foods without becoming ill, those at increased risk for infection can probably get listeriosis after eating food contaminated with even a few bacteria. Persons at risk can prevent Listeria infection by avoiding certain high-risk foods and by handling food properly.
    Can listeriosis be prevented?
    The general guidelines recommended for the prevention of listeriosis are similar to those used to help prevent other foodborne illnesses, such as salmonellosis.
    How can you reduce your risk for listeriosis?
    General recommendations:
    Thoroughly cook raw food from animal sources, such as beef, pork, or poultry.
    Wash raw vegetables thoroughly before eating.
    Keep uncooked meats separate from vegetables and from cooked foods and ready-to-eat foods.
    Avoid raw (unpasteurized) milk or foods made from raw milk.
    Wash hands, knives, and cutting boards after handling uncooked foods.
    Recommendations for persons at high risk, such as pregnant women and persons with weakened immune systems, in addition to the recommendations listed above:
    Avoid soft cheeses such as feta, Brie, Camembert, blue-veined, and Mexican-style cheese. (Hard cheesed, processed cheeses, cream cheese, cottage cheese, or yogurt need not be avoided.)
    Left-over foods or ready-to-eat foods, such as hot dogs, should be cooked until steaming hot before eating.
    Although the risk of listeriosis associated with foods from deli counters is relatively low, pregnant women and immunosupressed persons may choose to avoid these foods or thoroughly reheat cold cuts before eating.
    How do you know if you have listeriosis?
    There is no routine screening test for susceptibility to listeriosis during pregnancy, as there is for rubella and some other congenital infections. If you have symptoms such as fever or stiff neck, consult your doctor. A blood or spinal fluid test (to cultivate the bacteria) will show if you have listeriosis. During pregnancy, a blood test is the most reliable way to find out if your symptoms are due to listeriosis.
    What should you do if you've eaten a food recalled because of Listeria contamination?
    The risk of an individual person developing Listeria infection after consumption of a contaminated product is very small. If you have eaten a contaminated product and do not have any symptoms, we do not recommend that you have any tests or treatment, even if you are in a high-risk group. However, if you are in a high-risk group, have eaten the contaminated product, and within 2 months become ill with fever or signs of serious illness, you should contact your physician and inform him or her about this exposure.
    Can listeriosis be treated?
    When infection occurs during pregnancy, antibiotics given promptly to the pregnant woman can often prevent infection of the fetus or newborn.
    Babies with listeriosis receive the same antibiotics as adults, although a combination of antibiotics is often used until physicians are certain of the diagnosis. Even with prompt treatment, some infections result in death. This is particularly likely in the elderly and in persons with other serious medical problems.
     


  • Sharon's miscalculation- The Israeli leader has defied President Bush before and gotten away with it -- but not this time. Israeli withdrawal makes Bush look good to Arab world. (Salon.com)
    By Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
    Oct. 1, 2002 | For the past 19 months, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have been on a long honeymoon. Bush has endorsed Sharon's aggressive tactics in Israel's two-year war with its Palestinian neighbors. He has made no attempt to hide his dislike of "Arik's" nemesis, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose ouster he has advocated. For his part, Sharon has made close coordination with Bush the cornerstone of his foreign policy, showing considerable diplomatic and political skill.
    But then Sharon miscalculated, and his mistake proved that even Bush, who is shaping up as the most pro-Likud U.S. president ever, can be pushed too far. When Israel disturbed America's attempt to gather world support for an invasion of Iraq, the administration did not hesitate to tell it to get in line.
    The event that triggered America's rebuke was Israel's 10-day siege of Arafat's office in Ramallah, which Sharon ordered in retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed six people Sept. 19 in Tel Aviv. Under the barrels of Israeli tanks, bulldozers demolished what remained of the Palestinian Authority's government facilities, locking up Arafat and some 250 others in one semi-ruined building and allowing them modest food rations, electricity and telephone communications. Israel demanded the extradition of 18 "most wanted terrorists" residing with Arafat and refused to accept compromise proposals such as exile or a transfer to Gaza. In the end, however, nothing happened to the wanted Palestinians. Early Sunday, Sharon bowed to the American dictate and called off the siege. The military withdrew to its previous positions.
    Arafat celebrated his small victory over Sharon, flashing the V sign and holding an aggressive press conference. But it was a very small triumph: Although Arafat was allowed to leave his office to tour the ravaged compound yard, he could not go farther, and while he improved his stance with a Palestinian public that has become increasingly disenchanted with him, American officials maintained their formal boycott on contact with him. Nor did Israel lift the curfews it has imposed on most of the West Bank's cities for the past five months.
    Sharon made two miscalculations. The first was sending the army to smash the Muqata, as the Ramallah headquarters is known, in the first place. Leaving aside the P.R. problem this presented Washington in the middle of intense lobbying over Iraq, Sharon's move was seen by many in the Bush administration as smacking of outrage more than rational analysis: Although the White House loathes Arafat, it was not convinced that Arafat was responsible for or had any control over the Sept. 19 attack. The administration differs from Sharon in its assessment of and approach to the Palestinian Authority: While Sharon views it as completely corrupt and untrustworthy and would like to get rid of it -- and Arafat -- once and for all, the Americans take a slightly less harsh view, regarding the P.A. as gravely flawed but the only game in town.
    Sharon's second miscalculation came when he balked at American requests to end the siege on Arafat and calm the situation. Even when the U.S. refused to use its veto and allowed the U.N. Security Council to demand Israel's withdrawal, Sharon ignored the message -- as he did when American ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, a religious Orthodox Jew, traveled to the prime minister's ranch on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, to pass on another angry message from Washington. The siege continued even when the president himself publicly called Israeli actions "not helpful." Sharon thought, perhaps, that he could get away with intransigence, just as he did last April when Bush demanded Israel's withdrawal from Palestinian cities, then failed to do anything when Sharon refused.
    Sharon was wrong. This time around, the circumstances are entirely different. The U.S. is seeking support for its Iraqi campaign at the Security Council and throughout the Arab world. America's arguments to the international community about Saddam risked losing credibility if Washington was seen yet again as allowing Israel to flout the letter and spirit of U.N. resolutions. How could Bush demand Saddam's full compliance and ignore Sharon's defiance?
    The moment of truth came last Thursday night, when the White House lost its patience and sent Sharon a blunt message. Only then did Sharon realize the game was over. The administration threatened to make the message public and promptly leaked it to the Washington Post on Saturday.
    Sharon made a last-minute effort to save face and avoid an open break with Bush. Upon receiving the angry message, he hurriedly sent his bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, to Washington. Weisglass and ambassador Danny Ayalon met National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and read her Israel's position that the Ramallah operation was a reasonable response to a renewed wave of terrorism, which broke out after six quiet weeks. The Israeli officials tried to buy more time. But Rice made it clear that there was no room for compromise or flexibility and that Israel should leave the Muqata without delay. She told her guests that Israel's operation was not helpful to the American effort on Iraq, and that it hurt the important process of reforming the Palestinian Authority and nurturing a new, post-Arafat leadership. It only brought Arafat back to center stage, after months of decline. "We are well aware of your interests and sensitivities and expect you to understand ours," Weisglass told Rice, but she was not moved. Not this time.
    Sharon waited until Sunday morning, the beginning of Israel's working week, to call defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, foreign minister Shimon Peres and the military chiefs and give them his withdrawal order. He asked the ministers to admit bowing to American pressure ("You can't say no to your best friend"), but forbade any mention or acceptance of U.N. resolution 1435, which called Israel to withdraw its forces. Being seen as having yielded to the U.S. is one thing, to the U.N. another.
    "The major winner was Bush," an Israeli official told me afterward. "If the Muqata crisis hadn't happened, he should have created it. Sharon's mistakes helped Bush regain his credibility in the Arab world and strengthened the American position vis-à-vis the Security Council."
    The benefits for Bush were obvious. For the first time, he was able to show that he was not in Sharon's pocket even if he avoided using harsh language or showing personal dissatisfaction with the Israeli leader in public. But Sharon, too, may have benefited from the exchange: Since a regime change in Iraq is emphatically in Israel's interest, Sharon's "loss" could actually turn out, at least in certain respects, to be a victory. In any case, the close alliance between the Bush White House and the prime minister's office in Jerusalem is still intact. "The Americans told us that they are satisfied with the withdrawal decision, and the recent affair will not scar our relationship," a senior Israeli diplomat told me. The U.S. State Department instructed its diplomats in Israel to avoid any gloating or "we told you so" reactions.
    Of course, the Ramallah siege was a minor event, without long-term strategic or ideological consequences like a true territorial withdrawal or a removal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank and Gaza. Still, it could be seen as a rehearsal for the "day after Iraq." If and when Bush moves to implement his stated vision of creating a Palestinian state within three years, he might find himself once again on a collision course with Sharon -- a scenario that is Sharon's worst nightmare.
    How could have Sharon miscalculated so badly? He was well aware of the changing strategic environment. In July, Israeli military planners presented their medium-term assessment to the prime minister. They advocated that Israel refrain from escalating the war with the Palestinians until after the Iraqi war. They expected this "waiting period" to further weaken Arafat and strengthen Israel's position. Sharon accepted this view. But when terror attacks hit Israeli streets again, he followed his instinctive reaction and called for Arafat's expulsion. Defense minister Ben Eliezer and senior military and intelligence officials tried to block the idea, proposing as a compromise to put the Palestinian leader under siege. The cabinet duly approved the plan. A few ministers asked if it was going to work, but Sharon and the military reassured them. As could be expected, when the operation soured, most politicians and generals were quick to throw the blame onto Sharon. Only a handful of officials remained loyal and spoke about the "achievement" in "deterring the Palestinians."
    Politically, Sharon suffered no real damage. By ordering the troops to the Muqata and then calling them back, he proved again that he has complete control over the government. He handled all the contacts with Washington personally and cut Peres and Ben Eliezer out of the loop, using them only to rubber-stamp his decisions. The angry and frustrated foreign minister burst into a tirade against the government's policy during Sunday's Cabinet meeting. However, Peres carries no stick. A few hours later, his Labor Party decided to avoid fighting Sharon over the budget, thus gluing itself even tighter to his "national unity" coalition. As for the right-wing members of the coalition, they have given Sharon their full backing, explaining that Iraq is more important now than dealing with Arafat.
    As the confrontation with Sharon went on, American officials raised a sensitive question with their Israeli counterparts: If Israel acted so carelessly in the face of a suicide bomber, what would it do under an Iraqi missile attack? So far, Sharon has shown more responsibility on the Iraqi issue. After months of pledging to "implement our right to self-defense" in case of an Iraqi attack, he changed his tone and started to climb down the bravado ladder. Knowing that just as in the 1991 Gulf War, Washington needs to handle Saddam on its own and is opposed to Israeli intervention for political reasons, Sharon told the Jerusalem Post last Friday that an Israeli reaction would not be automatic. If there were no casualties and the Iraqis did use nonconventional weapons, Israel would not retaliate. Instead, he said he expected the Americans to do more than they did in 1991 to prevent missile launches against Israel.
    This policy could prove useful in avoiding Israeli participation in the war, while defusing domestic pressures to "do something" when attacked. In 1991, Israel was hit by 39 Iraqi Scuds but did not retaliate, bowing to American demands to sit tight and let the U.S. finish the job. In great likelihood, the same scenario would repeat itself unless a major, multi-casualty catastrophe changed the rules of the game. Alternatively, the Iraqis might not attack Israel after all, and Tel Aviv residents would not have to reach for gas masks when the American forces hit Baghdad.

  • The spy who loved me -George Temple was one of MI6's most successful and highly regarded officers. But when he became ill, he found himself out in the cold. His wife, Anthea, is so angry about his treatment that she decided to break the code of silence among secret-service spouses. Here she gives David Leigh an unprecedented glimpse into the life of a spy
    Anthea Temple
    Wednesday October 2, 2002
    The Guardian
    Anthea Temple was married to a spy. Her husband George was head of the MI6 "station" in Colombia, one of only two countries in the world where embassy staff routinely carry guns. She fetched the groceries in a heavily armoured Grand Cherokee Jeep. Before that, in London, she had to lie to friends at the school gates about where her husband was.
    But Anthea's role as an M16 wife involved more than secrecy and security restrictions. In the course of her long marriage to a senior undercover operator, she dealt with agents and informers, drove getaway cars, and once buried a cache of dollars in an East German forest. It was, she says, like belonging to a "very exclusive, exciting club".
    Her husband, George Temple - a pseudonym, at her request - was one of MI6's "most popular and experienced officers". In a private letter, the present chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, talks of Temple's "outstanding and sometimes groundbreaking operational work". He was involved in many of the most sensational intelligence coups in recent years.
    Yet late one night, last August, an exhausted Anthea was trudging the streets of Pimlico, attempting to hand-deliver a letter to Dearlove at MI6's headquarters on the Thames. She was begging for help for her husband, who had been taken ill with cancer - so ill that the family had been forced to return suddenly to London. Although she had heard that when things went wrong, MI6 left its people out in the cold, she had never believed it. Now she found herself feeling very cold - and very alone.
    It was in 1973 that Anthea was first taken to Fort Monkton, MI6's high-security training ground near Portsmouth. It was the beginning of her husband's career in espionage and she was invited, at the end of his six-month intelligence-officer entry course, for some training of her own. She knew a little about "the friends", as MI6 were referred to by the Foreign Office (FO) - her sister had been married to a diplomat.
    During the 80s, the Temples spent a grim three years in East Berlin, with him under FO cover, and her children going daily to the British army school in West Berlin. Once, Anthea found herself in a forest, trying to bury money as payment for an agent. "It was a fake crocodile handbag, stuffed with dollars. I was wearing a fuchsia-pink boiler suit and I had a special aluminium trowel, like a huge apple-corer, constructed by Tos [the technical services arm of MI6]. I was crouching down, pretending to have a pee. Then along came a couple with a little black dog! It transpired that we had been blown, and the agent was probably a double-agent."
    It was impossible to recruit agents under such heavy surveillance and the couple spent most of the tour doing little but work out "exfiltration" routes to smuggle out defectors - Anthea was the driver - and taking the children on picnics to scout out sites for dead-letter boxes. "My constant fear was that the children would come home from school and no one would be there."
    Back in London, the secrecy imposed further strains. Temple started to travel round the world, posing as a tourist or businessman, recruiting Soviet-bloc agents from diplomats and technical specialists in third countries who had been "talent-spotted" by the local MI6 station as potential informers. He kept a false passport in his drawer at home.
    His frequent disappearances were difficult to explain. "It starts at the school gate, collecting your toddlers. You have to say to your friends, 'I'm not sure where George is just at the moment.' You go home alone but you can't talk to others about it. I never told my mother. He never told his parents."
    Then George was promoted, and made head of the large, five-strong MI6 station in Bangkok. His position was "declared" to Thai intelligence (meaning that they knew his identity, being considered "friendly").
    In professional terms, the posting was a triumph. He recruited a large number of informers and sent back to London much useful intelligence in his CX bulletins (CX is the code name given to secret intelligence bulletins in MI6). "The cover gave brilliant access to so many foreign nationals, such as Indian and Chinese officials," says Anthea. "I used to give a lot of parties to provide the right atmosphere. I was referred to as Mrs N1 in the CX."
    Temple also ran operations against Saddam Hussein, who was engaging in major arms deals in the run-up to the Gulf war. The country was also, perhaps surprisingly, a focus of IRA activity: Temple recruited agents from the Irish bars in tourist resorts.
    But alongside the professional success went personal frustration. The family had to live outside the embassy compound "so that George's agents could creep in at night". Because part of MI6 routine "cover" was to have an ostensibly low FO rank, their housing was of dubious quality, and they were excluded from the more glittering embassy functions.
    Back in London, George's reward was a spell as an aide-de-camp to the head of MI6 - "arse-licker to the chief", as one of his colleagues puts it. This was the period when MI6 was going public and being put on a legal footing. Temple liaised discreetly with MPs and journalists. He also tried to dissuade retired MI6 officers from writing their memoirs.
    His trickiest assignment was to try to silence MI6's renegade, Richard Tomlinson. Temple helped negotiate a £15,000 loan and a job with the Jackie Stewart racing team, in return for a promise of silence. Tomlinson was later to change his mind, write an explosive book, and go to jail for breaching the Official Secrets Act.
    By then, the Temples had gone abroad again, this time to Kenya. Nairobi, though less important than Pretoria, was one of the few MI6 outposts left in Africa. George's job as chief of station was again "declared", and required wearisome rounds of personal meetings with President Moi. But it was at the centre of a gathering storm. When the Temples arrived, MI6 was already intercepting the phones of Bin Laden supporters on the east African coast. And they had under close surveillance Bin Laden's non-violent frontman in London, Khalid Al-Fawwaz, who had bought him a satellite phone. "We knew something was coming," says Anthea. "But we didn't know what."
    In August 1998, an enormous truck-bomb demolished the US embassy, killing 213 people. A fax boasting of the bombing arrived at a newsagent's near al-Fawwaz's London home. Its number of origin eventually led MI6, via a phoneline in Baku, to a Nairobi hotel. There they found Mohamed al-Owhali, one of the bombers, who was extradited to the US and successfully convicted there last year. It was another significant success for George.
    Throughout it all, Anthea felt very much part of the team. "They relied on wives being cooperative, willing, energetic. Of my generation, most wives were pretty deeply involved. I saw myself entirely as 'the wife of an SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] officer'. We did think of it as 'our' work. You had to dissemble and act roles the whole time."
    But then came George's last posting. A big British anti-narcotics operation had been running in Colombia since 1993. Teams of British customs drug liaison officers, backed up by SAS and SBS soldiers, had worked with MI6 to infiltrate the cocaine barons, set up smuggling runs to Europe, follow the fast boats with sophisticated tracking devices, and arrest the smugglers.
    But the Bogota post was not popular. This attempt by MI6 to find itself a quasi-police role after the end of the cold war was regarded, as one of those involved puts it, as "not quite gentleman's work". And, as Anthea says: "No one wanted to go because it was such a bloody place!"
    In Bogota, George achieved, as his official SIS obituary was to record, "groundbreaking successes against drug-trafficking under some of the most difficult security and operational conditions faced by SIS anywhere in the world". At 54, he only had a year to go before being allowed to retire. But in March 2001, he fell ill, and was diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct.
    He insisted on returning to Bogota to complete his mission after three months of treatment in London. There, he discovered, from intercepts provided by the local police and from intelligence obtained via the MI6 station in Cuba, that a team of IRA men were arriving in Colombia to train the rebel guerrillas, the Farc. One of his last acts was to give orders to his second-in-command to arrange for the IRA men to be arrested.
    Back together in London, with George now seriously ill, they were shocked, and appalled, by the lack of help they received from MI6. It turned out that the FO was now in charge of arranging any help in terms of medical or financial care. But it wasn't the kind of help they had been expecting. The Temples found themselves forced to share a single room in a hotel near the hospital where George was being treated, because the FO would not pay for a double room. She was told that his foreign allowances would be cut, and suddenly she found herself desperately short of money. When they finally got an apartment near the hospital, they were soon told that they would have to move out, because M16 had "far exceeded" its budget. No private medical treatment was available, even though they had no British GP; they were told they could not have the services of specialised Macmillan nurses or hospice care.
    "Where do you imagine we shall live?" she wrote to MI6 and the FO last July. "How do you think I shall be able to trail round estate agents in the next two weeks when George needs continuous help? This includes giving him injections three times a day, countless pills at different times, bathing him, coaxing him to eat, watching like a hawk for signs of infection."
    It was while the Temples were trying to arrange to move several miles away, to an unoccupied unfurnished house eventually offered by the army, that George's condition worsened and he died. Anthea, who once served on a secret MI6 "spouses committee", set up in the 90s to try to contain grievances, was left not just heartbroken by her husband's death, but also deeply disappointed and angry. Disappointed enough to break the code of silence of MI6 wives, in the hope that no other family would be treated in such a way again.
    She wants MI6's "amateur" personnel managers to have proper professional training. "And when family disaster happens, it's the FO with whom we're in touch. They just flounder - apply the crude rules. They don't know us. We fall between two stools."
    Whitehall officials react dismissively. Senior sources say she was treated with "remarkable generosity". The contract the FO holds with local hospitals provided medical care of a high standard, they say. "MI6 bent the rules as far as they could."
    But Anthea insists that her husband was treated "grudgingly", and unless procedures are reformed, says she could not recommend youngsters to join MI6. "When you need them, they let you down," she says. "My husband's last days were hell."


  • Citizen Annenberg- So long, you rotten bastard. Billionaire Son of Mobster, Enemy of Journalism, and Nixon Toady Exits for Hell
    (By Jack Shafer, editor of slate.com)
    Posted Wednesday, October 2, 2002, at 1:37 PM PT
    Annenberg bought and paid for his rose-colored obits
    Today's Page One obituaries for Walter H. Annenberg in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post barely scrape the festering keratosis that was his career in crime, journalism, and politics. "Media Tycoon Gave Fortunes to Others," soft-pedals the Los Angeles Times. "Walter Annenberg, Philanthropist and Publisher, Dies at 94," intones the New York Times. "Publisher, Philanthropist Walter Annenberg Dies," echoes the Post.
    I'd prefer the headline, "Billionaire Son of Mobster, Enemy of Journalism, and Nixon Toady Exits for Hell—Forced To Leave Picassos and van Goghs at Metropolitan Museum."
    The dailies concede that the bedrock upon which Walter built his fortune was cleared by a tax-evading father, Moses; that the son dodged a trip to the slammer with Dad via a plea bargain; that Walter punished his political and personal enemies with his publishing empire; and that he ingratiated himself with his soul mate, the odious Richard Nixon. But in skimming only the surface scum of his life, these obituaries neglect the fetid undercurrents and tidal filth of his complete life. The ugly arc of Annenberg's life rivals that of fellow press baron William Randolph Hearst or even his fictional stand-in, Charles Foster Kane. It's a life that proves that you can earn polite notices in death no matter how you lived if you give away a billion dollars to the right places before you croak.
    (In the time-honored tradition of obituary writing, I've plundered the archives for this Annenberg appreciation. I lean especially hard on a June 1993 piece I wrote after Annenberg bought his way onto Page One of America's top dailies by giving hundreds of millions of dollars away. One of the many luxuries of the rich is that if they go philanthropic at the right time, they can read their obituary before they die—obits that are usually more flattering than their real obits.)
    Walter Annenberg was born of a congenital criminal, a rascal who never saw a business proposition that he couldn't improve with a bit of violence. Moses "Moe" Annenberg developed these talents in 1900 in Chicago when he worked as a circulation manager for the monstrous William Randolph Hearst, back when circulation wars were fought with clubs and torches. At Hearst's behest, Moe and his gang cracked the heads of rival newsboys, burned uncooperative newsstands, and toppled competitors' delivery vans. When Marshall Field's department store canceled an ad in Hearst's Evening American, Moe's brother Max led 60 drivers and newsboys to the store, where they terrorized shoppers and employees by surrounding it and chanting, "Marshall Field's closed! Marshall Field's closed!" The store reordered its ad, reports John Cooney's The Annenbergs: The Salvaging of a Tainted Dynasty, a detailed 1982 dual biography of Walter and Moses. In Moe and Max's defense, it should be said that the competition used the same tactics to move newspapers.
    When Hearst needed circulation help with the New York Daily Mirror, Moe enlisted Lucky Luciano, the numbers and loan-sharking gangster. "I used to think of the Mirror as my paper," Luciano said. "I always thought of Annenberg as my sort of guy."
    In the early '20s, Moe purchased the Daily Racing Form and became the major owner of the General News Bureau, a race wire that provided horse race results to newspapers and bookies. With what biographer Cooney calls "methods of strong-arm tactics and bribes" to politicians and police, Moses expanded his business in city after city by ruthlessly destroying the local race-wire competition. "The hoods on his payroll might intimidate a racing publication one day, a man with wires to bookies the next," Cooney writes. Moe's boys literally made Blanie Shields an offer he couldn't refuse. When the small-time race-wire operator in Covington, Ky., declined to sell his business, they sabotaged Shields' office and told him that he would be "bumped off."
    In his drive for domination, Moe double-crossed his racketeering wire partners by going into business against them. That put him on the Capone-mob hit parade, so he moved himself and his family to Miami, protected by gangster Meyer Lansky. As the Racing Form and the wire thrived, Moe expanded his publications empire by buying the Philadelphia Inquirer, which he turned into his personal anti-New-Deal political sheet.
    Walter Annenberg, writes Cooney, was shielded from his father's illegal enterprises and connections. Although he held titles in his father's businesses, he mostly busied himself with Hollywood starlets and the playgirls of Miami and New York. The publicity created by Moe Annenberg's scummy enterprises was plain for all to see. If Walter didn't know, he would have to be stupid, which he was not. If he knew and still worked for the old man ... you make the moral call.
    Moe's bribery, blackmail, and mobstering career ended when he was indicted for tax evasion in 1939. Walter, a company VP, was indicted on charges of "aiding and abetting." Moe pleaded guilty, agreeing to pay the $9.5 million in back taxes and fines. Prosecutors offered to dismiss Walter's charges if Moe went directly to jail, which he did. Moe served two years and died 39 days after his release.
    Assuming control of his father's shattered company, Annenberg launched the phenomenally successful Seventeen magazine in the '40s and TV Guide in the '50s and acquired several radio and TV stations. Annenberg habitually turned his head to the right to obscure the disfigured ear he had been born with. His politics usually followed his ear after his second marriage, to Leonore Cohn Rosenstiel. Like his father, he used the Inquirer and his media empire as his bully pulpit, punishing enemies real and imagined. After purchasing the Philadelphia Daily News, Annenberg practically turned over local police coverage in the city to Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo, a brutalist who rose to mayor in large part thanks to Annenberg. Rizzo returned the favor by providing extraordinary protection when the Teamsters and Newspaper Guild struck the Inquirer. Annenberg also waged a smear campaign against Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp, using his two dailies, two radio stations, and three Pennsylvania TV stations. In one example, reported in today's Philadelphia Inquirer obit, an Inquirer reporter got Shapp to deny that he'd ever been in a mental hospital and then printed the denial on Page One. The media war subsided only when Shapp asked the FCC to revoke Annenberg's broadcast licenses. And in the mid-'70s, he sicced TV Guide on the liberal media culture. TV Guide may be the only publication to become more liberal after Rupert Murdoch purchased it.
    "Annenberg became an oddity in Philadelphia," Cooney writes. "His name was associated with numerous good works, and he was often the first prominent citizen anyone seeking charitable donations approached, but the whimsical use of his paper on occasion to punish those who offended him made many people uneasy." The kindest thing he ever did for Philadelphia was to sell the Inquirer to John Knight, who turned it into a real newspaper.
    President Richard Nixon rewarded Annenberg for his anti-communism and pro-Vietnam-War views by appointing him ambassador to Great Britain, where he attacked U.S. student radicals in his first speech. Ambassador Annenberg, as he thereafter preferred to be called, returned to the States and expanded both his media properties and burgeoning art collection. He also entertained the flow of human sewage that visited him at his own Xanadu, a mansion set on 250 acres (complete with its own golf course) in Palm Springs. There at "Sunnylands," he hosted the disgraced Nixon ("Life is 99 rounds," he told Dick), the detestable Frank Sinatra, and offered refuge for his political soul mate, the shah of Iran. Talk about guilt by association.
    By the late '70s, the racketeer's son launched the rehabilitation of his reputation with philanthropy. He gave $150 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1981 and went on a giving binge after selling his media properties to Murdoch in 1988 for $3.2 billion. He pledged his $1 billion collection of Cézannes, Monets, van Goghs, Gauguins, and others to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (postponing delivery, of course, until his death; meanwhile he collected tax breaks). He also donated hundreds of millions to various educational foundations and projects.
    The light from Annenberg's philanthropy will continue to burn brightly at the various Annenberg organizations: Annenberg Center for Health Sciences; Annenberg Center for Communication (University of Southern California); Annenberg School for Communication (University of Southern California); Annenberg School for Communication (University of Pennsylvania); Annenberg Foundation; Annenberg/CPB Projects; and Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
    Some may find justice in this finale: That Annenberg's billions are being spent to still the wretched wake he churned with his life and his media empire. The less charitable of us will nod, smile, and mutter that there's no rap you can't beat if you're willing to empty the purse.
    Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
     
     

  • Despite the hysterical shuffling of chairs formally known as instituting Homeland Security, the sprawling intelligence-gathering apparatus that existed pre-9/11 likely will survive the restructuring largely unscathed.
    October 14, 2002
    (thenation.com)
    Despite the hysterical shuffling of chairs formally known as instituting Homeland Security, the sprawling intelligence-gathering apparatus that existed pre-9/11 likely will survive the restructuring largely unscathed. This does not bode well for averting future attacks. With the existence of terrorist "sleeper cells" in the American heartland apparently confirmed and the color-coded alert system ratcheted up recently to the second-highest level, the need for accurate, well-analyzed information has never been higher, but confidence in the quality of intelligence work never lower. By all appearances, the spy bureaucracy, now comprising fourteen agencies and about 100,000 employees--much of which will remain intact even with a new Department of Homeland Security--practically begs for the same kind of housecleaning under discussion at the moment in other establishment pillars, from the FBI to the INS.
    In late September a joint Congressional committee was generating daily headlines as it revealed a pattern of pre-9/11 intelligence failures and as sentiment belatedly coalesced around the need for an independent commission of inquiry. But it is one thing to dance vigorously in the glare of a harsh spotlight. It is another thing entirely to do the hard, unheralded and ultimately more meaningful work of policing and directing the intelligence community over the long haul. Even in recent days, random anecdotal evidence mounted that Congressional intelligence oversight bears too many markings of a rubber-stamping politburo. Two examples: the panel's inability to refer by name to a key 9/11 planner, though his identity could be found on the front page of the New York Times, and the Administration's determination to keep Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld from even having to comment on the general quality of intelligence they receive.
    Congressional impotence was seldom clearer than early in the summer, when the White House accused the intelligence committees of leaking sensitive information. Panicky members rushed to invite the FBI to investigate and even polygraph them, raising the question: Who's investigating whom here? In the months prior to the recent dramatics, the prevailing winds were not those of reform but of fear--and less fear of terrorists than of the forces that wish to suppress information. Even most committee members known as comparatively reform-minded on other topics declined to respond to interview requests for this article.
    One who did agree was Richard Shelby, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a moderately conservative Republican from Alabama who is one of the panel's few open critics of the intelligence community. In a long chat in his suite at the Hart Office Building during the summer before the public hearings had been scheduled, Shelby discussed the challenges of dealing with a closed subject in an open society. At one point, he mentioned having just received a handwritten letter from Zacarias Moussaoui. The Moroccan-born Frenchman, who is awaiting trial in connection with the 9/11 attacks, was requesting permission to address Congress, saying he wanted to talk about an FBI cover-up. Whether Moussaoui is crazy--or crazy like a fox--what he has to say seems worth hearing, so I asked Shelby if I could get a copy of the letter. Shelby consulted an aide, and concluded that he was able to accommodate me because the document had not been classified--yet. Absent any evidence that the letter was a coded instruction to sleeper cells from a man who was already in jail on September 11, 2001, it seemed an unlikely threat to national security. But in today's climate, everything is sensitive, everything quickly gets locked away from public view.
    Apart from the intelligence agencies, only Shelby and his colleagues get to see at least some of these documents, and to ask tough questions. And Shelby himself admitted they're doing a lousy job of it. Decrying excessive "coziness" between committee members and those on whom they're supposed to ride herd, he had lamented, "Some people on the committee don't want us to have any public meetings."
    With the convening of the open hearings, these antidemocratic tendencies have been momentarily neutralized. But history provides little assurance that Congress is about to transform itself into a body determined to force substantive changes on the intelligence community. The reality is that the Hill's would-be watchdogs face crushing liabilities, from poor information to information overload, from compromised members to compromised staff, from ignorance to inefficiency, from being bamboozled by the spy agencies to being intimidated by the White House, to--worst thing of all--willful myopia.
    Since Congress first instituted oversight in the 1970s in response to egregious intelligence abuses (including a role in the violent overthrow of Chile's left-wing President Salvador Allende), vigilance has steadily declined--periodic fits of enthusiasm notwithstanding. Today there are fewer open meetings than a decade ago, and fewer independent witnesses are brought in to testify. The committees, with their aura of power and exclusivity, have become so popular that senators and representatives fight for appointments. But with seniority or pull rather than skill determining membership, the committees are full of people who either don't inspire confidence or who have reasons to fear the investigative capabilities of the agencies they're supposed to scrutinize. Thus, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Ron Wyden, who couldn't locate Bosnia on a globe during his first Senate race in 1996--after serving in the House for fifteen years--or name Canada's leader. And lame duck Gary Condit, with Chandra Levy's disappearance hanging over his head, still sits on the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
    Even the savviest members need years before they've mastered the skills to challenge reticent intelligence officials. "First you've got to know what to ask for," says Shelby, "and second, to ask the right thing at the right time to the right person." Eight-year committee term limits, which sounded good when originally proposed as a way of preventing members from building power bases, have ended up weakening the effectiveness and independence of the committees. "About the time you are really into these programs, you're off the committee," says Shelby, who is leaving soon, at the peak of his knowledge and willingness to criticize the agencies.
    "The intelligence officers' testimony is highly sophisticated," notes a former panel chairman. "You have to be alert and suspicious to penetrate. They snow you with fancy jargon. They jack you around. It is not unlike pre-emption with any department, except that these guys are very good at it." They have also already checked with the White House to be certain that nothing they say will cause political headaches. "Intelligence should drive policy," notes Lee Hamilton, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman, "but often it is the other way around. Policy drives intelligence." Instead of independent analysis, oversight committees get information that Hamilton says has been "distilled" for Congressional consumption. Agency officials are also good at dangling carrots before committee members, he says. "They are awful nice to them, invite them to the CIA, give them a nice dinner, court them, seduce them." Meanwhile, spy agency personnel view committee members as political animals eager to drag their analysts into a debate, hoping to use "pure" intelligence to beat up or to support the White House. As one intelligence officer told the author of a 1997 report on the relationship between the agencies and the lawmakers, "It's bad enough that policy-makers get this stuff and run with it. Can you imagine what would happen if we gave it to Congress?"
    Very likely, nothing at all. The same 1997 report concluded that most intelligence provided to lawmakers is read neither by staff nor by members, who apparently have more important demands on their time. One Congressional staff member told the author of the report, "I cannot, in good conscience, recommend to my Member that it is worth his time to come in here and read this stuff. Frankly, it is not even worth my time."
    It turns out that the whole vast enterprise of intelligence oversight is balanced on the head of a pin. According to a 1992 report from a senior Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, the multibillion-dollar budget of the nation's intelligence agencies is reviewed by a Hill staff of about a dozen people. "They are dependent on the agencies for information and do not have the means for independent confirmation of that information," says Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy.
    Applying the principle of "it takes one to know one," members of oversight committees turn almost exclusively to insiders to fill staff posts. It's such a revolving door that there's almost no incentive for anyone to risk alienating anyone. When I tried to track the whereabouts of a former staff director whom one Congressman recalled as being of refreshingly independent spirit, I found him working at the CIA (he quickly hung up on me). Just how convoluted does this game of musical chairs get? The House intelligence panel is chaired by Porter Goss, a former CIA officer, who is charged with "overseeing" a CIA director, George Tenet, who is himself a former Senate Intelligence Committee staff director. While it might be advisable to have an independent-minded committee member who knows the CIA inside and out, Goss is an unrelenting cheerleader. One insider neatly sums it up: "Porter Goss goes beyond support to protection."
    Rob Simmons is the intelligence community's trifecta. A former CIA officer and a former staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, he now represents Connecticut's second district in Congress. Though not yet on any of the intelligence committees, the first-termer has been permitted by Goss to read classified materials and obtain briefings. Some who have testified say they're less worried that what they say will be leaked to the public than that it will get back to the agencies themselves, which are known for their zealousness in tracking down whistleblowers.
    Even party labels mean next to nothing. Two of the more comparatively tough-minded members, Senator Shelby and Representative Saxby Chambliss, are from the GOP, while Democrats Bob Graham and Representative Jane Harman are considered stalwarts for the status quo. When the Democrats took back the Senate in May 2001, many in the CIA could barely conceal their glee at the prospect of Floridian Graham as committee chairman--a choice they found infinitely preferable to the more critical Shelby. Graham sometimes issues tough statements, but he is considered totally "on board." His intriguing past includes the controversial sale of his home, through a middleman, to Carlos Cardoen, a Chilean arms dealer who exported cluster-bomb technology to Iraq during its war with Iran (supposedly with an official US OK). Cardoen, who was accused of using real estate to launder money, raised funds for Graham's first Senate race. Graham was also close to David Paul, who went to jail for his role in the failure of an S&L with links to the intelligence-connected and now-defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Graham gets along famously with Republican Goss. Said a well-respected former chairman about the duo, "I find them inoffensive at a time when they should be aggressive."
    Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis, says that the chairmanship usually goes to someone who has been a big supporter of the intelligence community. "When they are not, the community leaks adverse information," he says. "People with presidential ambitions won't fuck with the intelligence community--especially if there is weird stuff in their backgrounds."
    When secrecy comes up against accountability, the former almost always wins. Yet the fear of harmful leaks has little basis in fact. As a CIA consultant noted in a 1997 report, "Apart from a handful of widely reported and somewhat dated examples, no intelligence agency personnel interviewed for this study could point to instances of compromise by Members or their staffs." In fact, even the now-famous memo by FBI Minneapolis bureau agent Coleen Rowley about deficiencies at the bureau has never been leaked in its entirety.
    The June "leak" regarding the National Security Agency's Arabic intercept the day before September 11 (in which someone declared "the match begins tomorrow" and "tomorrow is zero hour") gave the Administration an excuse to rough up the committees. But Loch Johnson, a respected former intelligence committee staffer, says bluntly, "Chances are, the leak came from the executive branch anyway. And if not, the Congress can read the riot act to members and staff, and they will almost always shape up." As in fact they did, scrambling to demand an inquiry into themselves. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, the liberal minority whip and ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, declared, "It is appropriate that we ask for this investigation and let the chips fall where they may." Several committee members balked when the probers suggested lie-detector tests all around (Shelby said he wouldn't comply, and Pelosi objected as well), but others, including Republican Senator Jon Kyl, indicated an enthusiasm for getting hooked up to a polygraph. According to the Associated Press, the offices of thirteen of seventeen committee members confirmed that they were turning over telephone logs, memos, visitor sign-in sheets and other documents--and not a single member indicated he or she would resist. In the panic and rush to establish bona fides, no one even dared to suggest that the public might be better off knowing about such matters.
    John McCain underlined this when he recently stormed out of a so-called top-secret briefing, complaining that senators were learning less than they might from reading the paper. Although the committees looking into 9/11 and more generalized intelligence failings typically meet in closed session in order to protect "sources and methods," former House committee chairman Dan Glickman remembers, "They didn't tell us anything about that anyway." Glickman recalls the constant frustration of facing intelligence personnel who refused to declassify, or even talk about, information that was already out in the press. Their refusal means that Congress members are checkmated from mentioning such matters in public. It's even worse on the rare occasion when members have some worthwhile knowledge as a result of their briefings. "Most excruciating for me," recalls Lee Hamilton, "was when the President would say something at a news conference and he was flat wrong. On the basis of available intelligence, you know information that makes it wrong, but you can't say anything about it." Shelby left the impression that little has changed in this regard. Even more fundamental, Congress members have almost no way to assess the quality of raw intelligence or how it is analyzed.
    Institutional cocooning is best illustrated by the continued classification not only of line items in the intelligence budget but even of the single figure that represents total intelligence spending. Periodic efforts by committee members to eliminate this ridiculous tiptoeing have largely gone silent since 9/11. The 1997 and 1998 budget totals were declassified only after the Federation of American Scientists sued for the information. Another current suit demands the release of the 2002 budget (widely believed to exceed $30 billion) and, incredibly, the 1947 and 1948 budgets, which the CIA still deems too sensitive to make public. One might well conclude that this attitude is less about protecting legitimate secrets than hiding the faults of the system itself. "There is probably a lot of classified information that might be embarrassing to people but not undermine the Republic," says Shelby.
    Committee members routinely complain that agency personnel try to keep them in the dark on the high-tech equipment that consumes so much of the spying budget. Where such nondisclosure lurks, can pork be far behind? Recruiting Farsi or Arabic speakers may result in better intelligence for a relatively small outlay, but it's the hugely expensive technology contracts (and the jobs they provide) that allow Congress members to reward contributors and constituents, often without an accurate sense of what largesse they are dispensing. It's further downhill from there. "Would-be critics do not even know what is at issue," laments Aftergood. And, of course, there's that old revolving door: Typical is former Senate committee staff director Taylor Lawrence, who went over to defense contractor Northrop Grumman.
    The oversight process certainly has its "moments" (one of which is right now), but its overall performance seems designed to protect a dinosaur. Times have changed, the world has changed, but we don't really know what--except for buying increasingly fancy hardware--the spy agencies have done to change their strategies and tactics since the cold war. As the long-delayed "open" hearings unfold, the confluence of events and the public mood may have finally created a rare window for real reform. Even Shelby agrees. "We think it will take public pressure to modernize these agencies," he says. Fair enough. But the pressure will have to start with someone who knows something, such as committee members themselves. What if one or two of them decide to go public with a more detailed critique of the current system? What if they declare openly that "sources and methods" is a red herring, and that it's time for the public to be told some of the hard truths about the intelligence community's quotidian operations?
    They might start by challenging the idea that government works best by keeping "sensitive" information secret. There is evidence that much successful investigative work and pre-emptive action depends on a collaboration with the public. Given what we now know about tips and leads that were ignored by the bureaucracy before 9/11, it can be argued that bringing more openness to the process would improve accountability and increase public safety. Opening up the system, within prudent limits, will require not just more "open" hearings but changes in the intelligence community to insure that criticisms and suggestions are heard and, where appropriate, acted on. The oversight committees can take steps to put together well-informed and more vigorous staffs, whose mission includes not just asking agency officials better questions but cultivating alternative sources of information. Where can the committees find such staffers? Some knowledgeable insiders suggest that the best place to look might be among disaffected former intelligence officers who got into trouble for speaking out or who retired in disgust.
    Right now, we need some big, concrete moves. For example, if homeland security is going to be "centralized," then perhaps so should the intelligence oversight and budgeting process, which is now shared among committees, including Armed Services and Judiciary as well as Intelligence. But the most important first step is to insure that the impending independent commission on 9/11 has the clout and know-how to dig deep and effect change. As important, after it looks into 9/11, it should be converted into a non-Congressional variant of the original Church committee of the 1970s, which created oversight. It needs a firm mandate to reassess the entire intelligence mission and infrastructure, and the ways in which a democratic society can have a say over its spies. Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand, and I can move the Earth." Moving the intelligence community toward greater efficacy and accountability will take the concerted efforts of tough people who combine law enforcement and intelligence experience with a willingness to seek answers in the face of opposition from some of the most formidable powers in and out of government.

  • Oil Tanker Burns Off Yemen; Terror Attack Feared-Crew saw a high-speed vessel approaching, then an explosion followed with fire.
    (Reuters)
    Oct. 7 2002
    The French-flagged supertanker Limburg burned in the Gulf of Aden early on Monday as Yemeni and French experts prepared to investigate an explosion the owners fear was caused by a terror attack.
    The Yemeni government has ruled out an attack similar to the October 2000 suicide assault on the U.S. destroyer USS Cole in Aden port, saying a fire aboard the Limburg caused the blast.
    But a director of the ship's owners, Euronav SA, said he thought terrorists using a boat could have been responsible for Sunday's blast as the vessel prepared to take on a pilot and dock at Mina al-Dabah, near Mukalla in Yemen.
    Yemeni firefighters with foreign help were still trying to put out the raging flames and clean up a massive oil spill fast approaching Mukalla.
    Film of the tanker on Sunday showed the bright blaze of a fire in the right side almost concealed by thick black smoke pouring away.
    Oil industry sources said the 299,000 deadweight ton tanker was carrying 397,000 barrels of crude oil and had been approaching Mina al-Dabah to load more oil when a hole was blown in the Limburg's side.
    All but one of the eight French and 17 Bulgarian crewmembers were accounted for and Yemeni officials said at least 17 crewmembers were in hospital. The ship's owners, Euronov SA, said the missing man was a Bulgarian.
    French President Jacques Chiran announced on Sunday that French investigators would go to Yemen to join local experts in examining the tanker. A Yemeni official said the team was expected to be in the Arab state on Monday.
    MEETING A PORT PILOT
    Euronov, a subsidiary of Belgian shipping group Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB), said the blast occurred while the Limburg was meeting a pilot vessel to bring it into the port.
    ''In my opinion, this was a terrorist attack,'' Euronav director Jacques Moizan said on Sunday. ''The crew saw a high-speed vessel approaching on the starboard side...an explosion followed with fire.''
    Yemeni Transport and Marine Affairs Minister Saeed Yafai said one of the ship's tanks exploded, igniting the fire. A Yemeni official quoted the tanker's captain as saying a small fire on board had set off the explosion.
    Captain Peter Raes, managing director of the management companies for CMB, doubted whether the explosion occurred inside the ship. He said Limburg's captain told him an eye witness had seen a small fishing boat approach and collide with the tanker.
    Reports of a boat approaching the tanker revived memories of the Cole attack, which was rammed by suicide bombers in a boat packed with explosives. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors.
    Washington blames the Cole attack on al-Qaida, led by Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, its chief suspect in the hijacked airliner attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 last year.
    Last month, the U.S. navy warned of possible attacks on oil tankers in Gulf waters by al- Qaida.
    Oil industry sources said the Limburg had been chartered by the Malaysian state oil company Petronas.
    A Gulf shipping executive said the tanker disaster could upset the crude tanker market and expected a rise in insurance rates.
    Yemen, trying to shake off a name as a haven for Islamic militants, has arrested more than 100 suspected members of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups since the Sept. 11 attacks.
    The Arab state is bin Laden's ancestral home, and many Yemenis have been arrested abroad as suspected al-Qaida members.

  • REPOST:Sea lanes, oil rigs a 'terror target': Imagine a huge oil tanker hijacked in the busy Malacca Strait and turned into a floating bomb aimed at wealthy Singapore or major ports in Indonesia or Malaysia.(Reuters)

    Tanker attack fits bin Laden's economic war
    By Robert Fisk
    (Independent)
    08 October 2002
    To look at those images of the French oil tanker Limburg, scorched and holed off Yemen, you had to remember the very last sermon Osama bin Laden gave before he disappeared in Afghanistan last December.
    The American economy, he said, would be destroyed. "Oil tankers," a Palestinian friend told me later. "If he goes for the oil tankers, the Americans will have to escort every tanker round the Gulf with a warship. Think what that would do to the price of oil."
    Yesterday – as the world mulled over the Limburg captain's report of a small explosives-laden boat ramming itself against the side of his 300,000 ton double-hulled supertanker – the price of a barrel of oil duly broke the $30 envelope.
    First we had the USS Cole two years ago, almost sunk by suicide bombers at the cost of 17 US sailors' lives. Then we had the al-Qa'ida men arrested in Morocco this year for allegedly planning to sink an American or British warship off the Straits of Gibraltar. And now the Limburg.
    The oil markets were yesterday studying the announcement from Yemen's Prime Minister, Abdul-Kader Bajammal, that "terrorism" was not involved. A senior State Department official seemed to back up the Yemeni contention that it was an accident. The French government did not rule out an attack.
    Captain Peter Raes, speaking on behalf of Compagnie Maritime Belge, which owns the ship's operators Euronav, said: "Another vessel colliding with the tanker would never have had the energy to break through to the cargo hold tank."
    Captain Raes said the force tore a very large hole 26 feet by 19 across the hull of the ship which was unlikely to have been made by any gas leakage.
    "On top of that the explosion occurred on the water line – There is absolutely nothing which can trigger an explosion at that height," he said.
    In Bahrain yesterday, US military sources indicated that the 5th Fleet was now examining the security of oil tanker fleets throughout the Gulf.
    During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, US warships were forced to accompany Kuwait-bound tankers up the Gulf to protect them from Iranian attack. One more tanker attack and the American navy could be back in the convoy business again, vulnerable to the same small killer boats that assaulted the Cole.
    The price of oil would go on rising – giving Washington even greater reason to invade Iraq and lower the price of crude by seizing Saddam's oil fields.
    Osama bin Laden is alive, living in Afghanistan and plotting more attacks, according to a satellite telephone conversation reportedly intercepted over the weekend. Be he on earth or in the netherworld, he must be smiling today.

    American soldier killed in Filipino nail bomb attack
    Independent
    03 October 2002
    A master sergeant in the US army and another person were killed and 20 others, including another American, injured when a nail bomb exploded outside a restaurant frequented by military personnel in the largely Muslim southern Philippines.
    In Washington, officials said there was no immediate word on those responsible. The restaurant is in Zamboanga, the base city where US troops are stationed. They helped in operations this year against the local Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, which is linked with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida group that made the September attacks on America.
    That six-month offensive, focused on the rebel stronghold of Basilan island, was widely hailed as a success when it was wrapped up in July. But in recent days, several isolated attacks have been made, heightening concerns that the Abu Sayyaf presence in the southern Philippines has not been eradicated.
    "We're not sure yet, but we believe it's the handiwork of terrorists," Colonel Alexander Yapching, a Filipino army spokesman told reporters. He said the bomb had been placed on a motorcyle which was driven to the restaurant and left parked in front.
    The US serviceman, whose name was not disclosed, died of his wounds as he was being taken to a military hospital at Camp Navarro, the headquarters of the Filipino Southern Command in Zamboanga.
    About 250 soldiers are based at Zamboanga, the remnant of the US force, 1,200 strong at its maximum, that aided the offensive. A total 272 American troops remain in the Philippines, a Pentagon spokesman said last night. Communist rebels said yesterday that they intended to continue hitting military sites and police camps, but denied they were planning to attack oil depots, shopping malls and other civilian installations.
    The bombing was done in the evening, amid heavy security, as the city was preparing for a Christian festival in 10 days. The surrounding area was cordoned off and an extra guard force was posted at the gate to Camp Navarro.
    A suspected al-Qa'ida member in US custody is said to have told interrogators early last month that the group and its allies in Abu Sayyaf were planning attacks on unspecified targets in the Philippines.
    US military backing helped government forces inflict heavy damage on Abu Sayyaf on Basilan island, among a series of semi-covert operations mounted as the war on terrorism moved beyond Afghan-istan, to Yemen, the former soviet republic of Georgia and South East Asia.
    But last month, the government said it was sending reinforcements to a second nearby island, Sulu, to wipe out an Abu Sayyaf faction there. In a year-long spate of kidnapping and violence aimed largely at foreigners, the rebel group seized 102 hostages, including three Americans.
    It continues to hold seven hostages on a third island, Jolo. They include three Indonesian seamen, abducted from a tugboat in June, and four women from the Philippines who are Christian evangelists, kidnapped in August.


  • Cold War ordeal haunts North Korean kidnap victims
    Sunday October 6, 2002
    The Observer
    It was the most romantic night of the Japanese calendar, the Tanabata lovers' festival of 7 July. The year was 1978, and couples the length and breadth of the country went stargazing.
    In Kobama, a coastal town, Yasushi Chimura, a 23-year-old apprentice carpenter, began the evening in high spirits. By midnight he and his girlfriend were being trussed, bagged and bundled off to North Korea by agents on one of the Cold War's most outlandish spy missions.
    These details emerged yesterday as authorities in Tokyo revealed more results of their probe into the abductions of 13 Japanese nationals during the 1970s and 80s. Their fact-finding mission to Pyongyang followed last month's remarkable admission by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il that his country's special forces had stolen their neighbour's citizens to use their identities and make them teach the Japanese language to spies.
    Of the 13 who went missing, only five are still alive. According to the North Korean government, most of the rest died in a remarkably unlucky series of swimming tragedies, car crashes and gas leaks.
    Among the families of the victims, however, suspicions are high that the abductees were murdered to cover up North Korea's crime.
    The five survivors are still in the North, but they have been able to tell the Japanese investigation team of their abductions, and none in more detail than Chimura, who has revealed for the first time how he ended up in the most isolated nation on earth.
    On 7 July, 1978, Chimura and his girlfriend Fukie Hamamoto, a 23-year-old boutique employee, went to a restaurant on the coast to celebrate their recent engagement. It was a beautiful clear night - perfect for the stargazing that is customary during the Tanabata lovers festival - so the couple decided to stop off at a nearby park. They sat together on a bench until the park was empty, then Chimura realised he had forgotten his cigarettes and took the step that was to change both of their lives forever.
    On his way back to the car he met four burly men who gagged him, pushed him to the floor, bound his hands behind his back and then stuffed him inside a sack. He was carried off to the beach and then bundled onto a rubber dinghy. After being paddled a few hundred yards out to sea, he was transferred to a small motorboat that took him to a high-speed spy-ship disguised as a trawler.
    When Chimura asked his captors about his girlfriend, he was told that Hamamoto was still in Japan. She had, in fact, also been abducted, but the couple was not to be reunited for another 16 months. They married and now live with their children in Pyongyang under the Korean names O Son-sam and Lee Yon-ok.
    During a meeting with Japanese officials in a Pyongyang hotel last week, the couple, wearing the Kim Jong-il badges that are a mark of devotion to the regime, recorded a video message for the families they had not seen for more than two decades. 'Dad, mum, I want to see you,' said Chimura, not knowing that his mother died six months ago. They told the Japanese delegation that they had no wish to return home.
    The Japanese government says it will press for the return of the five even if it goes against their stated wishes.

  • Newsweek: 'This Campaign Will Be One of Life or Death for This Regime, and We Must Use Everything We Have,' Hussein Allegedly Told Military Commanders; -- Instructs Them to Deploy Chemical Weapons if Communications with Baghdad are Cut and Ground Attack Begins
    Sunday, October 06, 2002 11:54 AM EST

    UK police say may have foiled racist "terror" plot
    LONDON, Oct 3 (Reuters) - A man convicted of racist crimes was found to have a hidden cache of weapons and explosives that could have been used to wage a "campaign of terror," police said on Thursday.
    Detective Superintendent Steve Morrison from Thames Valley Police said clues of a possible racist campaign were found at David Tovey's home. They included maps of an area around a mosque in Swindon, west of London, and lists of car number plates and addresses of black and Asian people.
    "At some point he may have targeted these people," Morrison told the BBC, adding that Tovey, in his late 30s, was "quite capable of embarking on a campaign of terror."
    The investigation into Tovey's anti-white graffiti -- which police said he wrote in order to stir up racial tension -- led to the discovery of the major arms cache at his house.
    Police said a number of firearms including a sawn-off double-barrelled shot-gun, a pump action shot gun and a machine gun were found.
    In addition, pipe bombs and a stick of military plastic explosive were uncovered.
    Tovey was found guilty on Thursday at Oxford Crown Court in central England of two counts of writing racist graffiti. He had already pleaded guilty to making explosive devices and to having banned guns and ammunition.
    A court official told Reuters Tovey will be sentenced on October 25.

    New Enron sleaze allegations
    8 October, 2002
    (BBC)
    A senior politician in charge of the US army has been accused of lying on oath to the Senate to cover up corporate sleaze allegations.
    Thomas White, Secretary of the Army and former vice-chairman of Enron Energy Services, always denied his division played any part in the rigging of California's electricity market which gained tens of millions of dollars profit for the firm.
    Under oath, he declared his side of Enron was selling electricity to businesses and universities - not dealing in it wholesale among the traders.
    It's very, very serious for a person who's testified unto oath
    But, after combing through Enron memos, consumer interest group Public Citizen told BBC Radio 4's File On 4 programme that it has sent documents to Senate that, it claims, prove Mr White's defence is untrue.
    Public Citizen president, Joan Claybrook said: "We believe that Thomas White misled the senate committee because he tried to portray himself as an individual who was not involved in energy trading. He kept saying he just dealt with the retail side.
    "Smokescreen"
    "We now feel that he should resign because we think he lied and we want the committee to investigate this.
    "I think he will be gone by the end of the year. I don't think he can survive the rebuttal we have sent to the committee.
    "It's very, very serious for a person who's testified unto oath."
    Ms Claybrook also believes the Bush administration is using the whole issue of Iraq as a smokescreen to cover corporate sleaze.
    "The corporate crime wave was dominating the newspapers and on television and they had to change the subject.
    "The only option was war. It has sucked all the air out of the media and so it has trumped all these other issues."
    Still more damaging for the White House are the current allegations levelled against the vice-president Dick Cheney.
    The 'creative' accountancy of Arthur Andersen in Dick Cheney's firm Halliburton is now under official investigation.
    Formal investigation
    The President of campaign group Judicial Watch, Thomas Fitton, has launched a case arguing that Mr Cheney , as Chief Executive of Halliburton, conspired with the auditors to fiddle the books and keep the shares high. He then sold his shares before the price dropped.
    Speaking to File On 4, Mr Fitton said: "Mr Cheney benefited personally from the monies and these are the monies we think in the course of the litigation are going to be subject to being sent back to our clients and other shareholders."
    While Halliburton is under formal investigation, Mr Cheney has refused to discuss his management of the company even with the Congress, and no-one in his office was available for interview about it for File On 4.
    A similar sequence of events has brought into question the previous career of Larry Thompson, the US Deputy Attorney General, and the man who now heads the corporate crime taskforce set up by President Bush.
    Mr Thompson was a director of Providian - a company which grew rich by offering credit cards to people usually thought a bad risk, often people with low incomes and little education.
    Legal action
    Mr Thompson's office said the first he knew of any suspicion of malpractice in the company was when the flood of complaints from Providian customers prompted San Francisco's District attorney to investigate in 1999.
    The case was taken to court by the city's Managing Attorney for Consumer protection, June Cravett., who found that Providian's credit card tactics systematically squeezed customers.
    Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch has now begun legal action against Mr Thompson over the sale of his shares in Providian for more than $4million.
    He said the appointment of Mr Thompson to head of the task force against corporate sleaze was one of the worst decisions the president has made with respect to corporate scandal.
    He said: "There is no confidence in the administration of justice here because of Mr Thompson's involvement in some of the same allegations that he is supposed to be prosecuting. "
    File on 4 made repeated requests for an interview but got no response from Mr Thompson's office.

  • 'Meteorite' hits North Yorkshire girl
    27 August, 2002, 12:27 GMT 13:27 UK
    Siobhan Cowton: "I saw it fall from above roof height"

    The odds against being hit by a meteorite are billions to one - but a teenager in North Yorkshire may have had one land on her foot.
    Siobhan Cowton, 14, was getting into the family car outside her Northallerton home at 1030 BST on Thursday when a stone fell on her from the sky.
    This does not happen very often in Northallerton
    Siobhan Cowton
    Noticing it was "quite hot", she showed it to her father Niel.
    The family now plan to have the stone analysed by scientists at Durham University.
    "I saw it fall from above roof height," Siobhan told BBC News Online.
    "It looked very unusual, with a bubbled surface and tiny indentations like volcanic lava.
    'Shiny'
    "It was shiny on one side and looked rusty as if it contained iron.
    "I've seen shooting stars before - but nothing like this. This does not happen very often in Northallerton."
    Mr Cowton, 45, told BBC News Online he would take the stone to be analysed himself.
    The stone may have come from Mars
    "It is not going to leave my sight because it is a very rare find," he said.
    "It is worth a lot to Siobhan.
    "We will have it mounted in a glass presentation case so she can keep it for the rest of her life.
    "After all it is not every day you get hit by a meteorite.
    "The odds of winning the Lottery are better."
    The stone could have come from Mars, according to expert on Earth impacts Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University.

    "It could be billions of years old and come from the earliest formation of the solar system," he told the Daily Mail newspaper.
    Most meteors are between five and 60 centimetres (1.95 in and 1 ft 11.5 in) long, according to Durham University physical geography lecturer Dr Ben Horton.
    "Sometimes they have shallow depressions and cavities," he said.

  • 'Meteor' lights up Midlands UK
    Sunday, 6 October, 2002
    A burning object seen streaking across West Midlands skies on Sunday morning may have been a meteor, astronomers have said.
    The streaking fireball was seen heading south shortly before 0600 BST.
    Its passage was followed by a bright flash which lit up the sky.
    Sightings of the object were reported at sites including Coventry, England's south coast and Wales.
    Andy Salmon, from the Birmingham Astronomical Society, said it may have been a meteor - space debris burning up in the atmosphere.
    Space junk
    A meteor is a particle entering the Earth's atmosphere and burning up at high speed
    Many meteors are the size of a sand grain
    Larger objects do not burn up completely, hit the ground, and become a 'meteorite'
    He also suggested it may have been a man-made object, such a satellite re-entering the atmosphere, or a rocket being launched.
    "Meteors can happen at any time... there's no predicting when it may happen," he said.
    One witness said the object had a tail.
    He also suggested it may have been a man-made object, such a satellite re-entering the atmosphere, or a rocket being launched.
    "Meteors can happen at any time... there's no predicting when it may happen," he said.
    One witness said the object had a tail.
    "All of a sudden I've seen this light streak across the sky... the front of the light was much larger than what you would call the tail," he said.
    'Like a film'
    The BBC's Ben Godfrey saw the fireball as he arrived at work.
    "It was reminiscent of a meteor you might see in a film... it was huge," he said.
    Local aviation authorities confirmed the object was not aircraft-related.
    It has been an eventful period for the West Midlands in nature terms, with the region shaken by an earth tremor on 23 September.

  • Large Meteor Strikes Southern Siberia
    10-4-2
    (EFE News) -- Residents of several villages in the Russian region of Irkutsk watched, with a mixture of awe and fear, the fall of an enormous luminous object in this southern Siberian area. Scientists have identified the object as a meteorite.
    Several witnesses to the skyfall immediately sounded the alarm and contacted the Institute of Solar Physics of the Western Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Science. In turn, the Emergency Situations Ministry was notified due to the commotion that the object's fall caused among the region's population.
    According to residents of the villages of Bodaibo, Balajniniski, Mama and Kropotkin, the alleged meteorite left a long trail in the sky before crashing violently against the taiga or Siberian forest.
    Witnesses some 100 to 150 kilometers away from the point of impact noted that when the object collided, it caused a huge tremor similar to that of an earthquake, amid a deafening noise. They also remarked that following the impact, sporadic flashes of light were seen in the forested hills. Guelii Zherebtsov of the aforementioned Institute of Solar Physics noted that the celestial body must have been a very large meteorite. He added that preparatios are being made to explore the impact site, located between Baljninski and Kiajta.
    This meteor strike was reminiscent of the Tungunska incident, which occurred in another Siberian region located to the north. On June 30, 1908, an unknown object crashed against the taiga and razed thousands of hectares of forest. The alleged meteorite--the explanation given by conventional scientists--had a mass of approximately 100,000 tons and impacted with a force of 40 tons of TNT: 2000 times the power of the Hiroshima A-bomb. The Tungunska object, identified by some as an extraterrestrial spacecraft, razed nearly 2150 sq. km of forest and, as occurred with today's phenomenon, lightning and strange lights were seen at its epicenter hundreds of kilometers away.

  • NY Area Labs Have Long Studied West Nile Virus - Yale And Rockefeller Began Test In The '50s
    Newsday 09-29-1999 page A28
    "Epidemiologists suspect that the West Nile virus has for the first time been isolated in humans or animals in the Western Hemisphere, but the virus has for decades made its home in several U.S. research laboratories, including Rockefeller University in Manhattan and Yale University in New Haven, Conn. In fact, investigators there were the first to grow and study the West Nile virus in the United States. The work began in the 1950s when unidentified viral samples from around the world arrived at Rockefeller on a steady basis."

  • Alibek believes the West Nile Virus is a bio-terror attack - outbreak compares with nothing he has seen before for this type of biological agent. (NEWSMAX no link)


  • "Russia has researched the genetic alteration of smallpox," Alibek told me. "In 1990 and 1991, we engineered a smallpox at Vector. It was found that several areas of the smallpox genome" -- the DNA -- "can be used for the introduction of some foreign genetic material. The first development was smallpox and VEE. VEE, or Venezuelan equine encephalitis, is a brain virus. It causes a severe headache and near-coma, but it is generally not lethal. Alibek said that the researchers spliced VEE into smallpox. The result was a recombinant chimera virus. In ancient Greek myth, the chimera was a monster made from parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. "It is called smallpox-VEE chimera," Alibek said. It could also be called Veepox. Under a microscope, Alibek said, the Veepox looks like smallpox, but it isn't.
    According to Alibek, there was one major technical hurdle to clear in the creation of a workable Veepox chimera, and he says that it took the Vector researchers years to solve the problem. They solved it by finding more than one place in the smallpox DNA where you could insert new genes without decreasing smallpox's ability to cause disease. Many researchers feel that the smallpox virus doesn't cause disease in animals in any way that is useful for understanding its effects on humans. Alibek says that the Russians tested Veepox in monkeys, but he says that he doesn't know the results.
    More recently, Alibek claims, the Vector researchers may have created a recombinant Ebola-smallpox chimera. One could call it Ebolapox. Ebola virus uses the molecule RNA for its genetic code, whereas smallpox uses DNA. Alibek believes that the Russian researchers made a DNA copy of the disease-causing parts of Ebola, then grafted them into smallpox. Alibek said he thinks that the Ebolapox virus is stable -- that is, that it will replicate successfully in a test tube or in animals -- which means that, once created, Ebolapox will live forever in a laboratory, and will not uncreate itself. Thus a new form of life may have been brought into the world.
    "The Ebolapox could produce the form of smallpox called blackpox," Alibek says. Blackpox, sometimes known as hemorrhagic smallpox, is the most severe type of smallpox disease. In a blackpox infection, the skin does not develop blisters. Instead, the skin becomes dark all over. Blood vessels leak, resulting in severe internal hemorrhaging. Blackpox is invariably fatal. "As a weapon, the Ebolapox would give the hemorrhages and high mortality rate of Ebola virus, which would give you a blackpox, plus the very high contagiousness of smallpox," Alibek said.
    Bill Patrick became exasperated. "Ken! Ken! I think you've got overkill here. What is the point of creating an Ebola smallpox? I mean, it would be nice to do this from a scientific point of view, sure. But with old-fashioned natural smallpox you can bring a society to its knees. You don't need any Ebolapox, Ken. Why, you're just gonna kill everybody."
    "I suspect that this research has been done," Alibek said calmly.


  • Threat Assessment: Countries May Bioengineer Weapons: Iraq has the 100% lethal Genetically Modified Ebolapox says Alibek
    Global Security Newswire
    Friday, November 30, 2001 issue.
    Iraq and Iran are believed to be developing genetically altered biological weapons that could resist vaccines or antibiotics, thereby making them much more deadly, a wide range of intelligence sources told Global Security Newswire in recent interviews.
    Baghdad and Tehran might not only possess mutant strains of anthrax or smallpox, they may already have the ability to weaponize and deliver such devastatingly lethal bioagents, according to lawmakers, Pentagon officials, U.N. inspectors, scientists, analysts and a former CIA director.
    “It’s a 50-50 possibility that Iraq and Iran have genetically modified biological weapons and may have some of the potential to weaponize them today to be used as weapons of mass destruction,” U.S. representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said yesterday.
    “I would expect it,” said microbiologist Gary Long, a government consultant who was in the last group of U.N. Special Commission inspectors to leave Iraq in 1998. “It would prudent for us to assume that they are developing these types of awful weapons.”
    “It’s the perfect weapon,” said Ken Alibek, the former Soviet scientist who headed the Soviet civilian biological warfare agency, Biopreparat, a gigantic, once-secret organization whose experimentations since 1973 created dozens of new harmful and antidote-resistant organisms. “For now, we have no treatment whatsoever for genetically modified weapons.”
    While officials at the White House, CIA, State Department and the newly created Office of Homeland Security refused to comment on grounds that the topic is classified, Undersecretary of State John Bolton last week publicly accused Iraq, Iran and four other countries of pursuing biological weapons (see GSN Nov. 20).
    Former Soviet Support?
    Biological weapons are banned by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention although several countries are thought to have violated the treaty to develop them, including Russia, which according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists also has worrisome stockpiles of genetically modified agents.
    Most officials and analysts believe that any large-scale advanced biological weapons programs in Iraq, Iran or elsewhere—particularly those that manufacture altered organisms—would be spearheaded by Russian scientists who are disgruntled or simply lured away by hefty salaries. Such programs could also be aided by wayward scientists from many other countries, they add.
    According to Alibek, a Kazakh native who defected to the United States in 1992, there are 1,000 to 2,000 former Soviet scientists who know how to make deadly biological agents. Of these, “hundreds” have the “ultimate knowledge”—the ability to not only to grow biological organisms but also to effectively dry, mill, weaponize, deliver and disperse them over wide areas. Out of these hundreds, 100 to 200 know how to create genetically modified life forms resistant to vaccines or antibiotics, he said.
    Asked where these potentially dangerous scientists are now, Alibek said, “I don’t know. It would not surprise me if some were in Baghdad or somewhere else other than Russia.”
    Focus on Iraq
    During a blunt speech in Geneva during a treaty conference Nov. 19, Bolton singled out Iraq as the main biological weapons threat.
    Although Bolton stopped short of accusing Iraq of developing genetically altered biological diseases that could be used as devastating weapons, the State Department official who wrote the speech told GSN that “it’s a concern” and that “if they have [such] a program and we know where it is, we’re going to get it.”
    U.S. analysts say the United States is actively seeking and collecting evidence on Iraqi biological weapons programs—including those that splice the gene of one bacteria into that of another, creating a new and potentially unstoppable plague—so that President George W. Bush could justify toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.
    The administration is also probing Iran and other nations for such evidence but none with the vigor it is apparently investigating Iraq, which was caught with biological weapons by UNSCOM inspectors throughout the 1990s, analysts note.
    One reason White House officials are so concerned about Iraq is that its government openly applauded the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in New York and Washington, analysts add. There has been much speculation that Saddam Hussein had a hand in either the hijackings of the four commercial jetliners or the mailings of anthrax across the United States that so far have infected 18 people and killed five.
    Because the creation of genetically modified weapons is so difficult—even with knowledgeable scientists, the right equipment and sizeable funding, such a task is very painstaking—analysts believe only countries with sizeable infrastructures can accomplish this. Besides Russia, Iraq is believed to have the largest and most comprehensive biological weapons facilities, according to intelligence estimates.
    Iraq is a prime suspect for developing genetically altered biological weapons not only because it attempted to hide its biological weapons arsenal from UNSCOM inspectors—investigators found some stockpiles and believe there are many more—but because Saddam Hussein has shown a willingness to use such weapons. In the late 1980s Iraqi forces gassed Kurdish villagers in Iraq with chemical weapons, probably Sarin.
    According to UNSCOM inspectors and former CIA Director James Woolsey, Iraq protected its biological sites with more zest than its nuclear facilities—a strong indicator that they have something to hide.
     “Even while we were there, under the most intrusive inspections, Iraq continued working on their biological weapons programs,” said Tom O’Brien, an immunologist who was a senior UNSCOM scientist. “They’re very good at hiding and deceiving.”
    Why Alter Biological Weapons?
    Many analysts dismiss the possibility of Iraq, Iran or other nations splicing the genes of biological agents that could be used as weapons.
    Smallpox, anthrax and other diseases are deadly enough without being modified, so a country with limited resources and funds would not want to endure the time, expense and uncertainty of trying alter these agents, said several analysts, including those who also think it is plausible Iraq has done so anyway.
    “Why would you want to go through all that trouble? I don’t think they’d bother,” said William Patrick III, the former head of the U.S. biological weapons program until 1969, when then-President Richard Nixon announced the United States would end its offensive biological weapons program and destroy its stockpiles.
    While smallpox itself is believed to kill 30 percent of the people it infects, it could be rendered ineffective if dispersed among populations that are vaccinated, many officials said.
    Currently only small numbers of the U.S. military are vaccinated against smallpox, but plans are underway to include troops in the nationwide vaccination efforts being readied by health officials.
    If U.S. troops are sent to fight in the Persian Gulf region, it is likely that deploying soldiers would receive vaccinations in order to prevent mass-casualty biological attacks by Iraq or, less likely, Iran, Pentagon officials said.
    Analysts observe that it is for this particular reason that Baghdad and Tehran are believed to be genetically modifying biological agents—so they can overcome any defenses U.S. troops may possess.
    “If you’re practicing bioterrorism, [genetically altered agents] may not be considered more dangerous because people are not vaccinated and they would die anyway,” said Long, the former UNSCOM inspector. “But if you’re going to use it against an army that’s vaccinated then yes, it may give you a little more bang for your buck.”
    Number of Altered Biological Weapons Could be Infinite
    The possibilities of mutant life forms that could be used as weapons are technically endless, although through decades of experiments the Soviet Union and Russia focused on just a handful, according to Alibek and other former Soviet scientists. Many genetically altered agents turn out to be less harmful than intended, but others have proven to be extremely lethal, they said.
    Perhaps the most lethal genetically modified biological agent is “blackpox,” a cross between smallpox and the Ebola virus, Alibek said.
    Alibek said blackpox would combine the two most dangerous aspects of Ebola and smallpox—it would have the contagiousness of the latter and produce the severe internal hemorrhaging of Ebola.
    “The only purpose of this is to kill,” Alibek remarked.
    Alibek said Russia has worked on several other genetically modified bugs, including the mixture of smallpox with the Venezuelan equine encephalitis, known as “Veepox.” Like blackpox this strain would most likely be able to overcome any known vaccines or antibiotics. And Veepox, according to Alibek, would only cost “a few million dollars.”
    Russia has also developed modified versions of anthrax, including the so-called Obolensk anthrax, a strain said to be resistant to known vaccines and antidotes. In December 1997, Russian scientists openly published the recipes and methods for making Obolensk anthrax in the British journal Vaccine.
    Analysts note that it would be naive to believe that scientists in countries such as Iraq and Iran have not copied these procedures.
    Are There Responses to New Weapons?
    Pentagon officials refused recent requests for interviews on this subject, but in March, a top military medical official said his office has been working feverishly to learn about genetically modified agents so that they can learn how to defeat them.
     “When it comes to genetically modified agents, there’s almost nothing we can do to protect ourselves until we know what it is—and by then it’s probably going to be too late, at least for the people that have already been infected,” said Army Col. Bob Thompson, the program manager for the Defense Department’s Office of Health Affairs. “This stuff scares the hell out of us.”
    D. A. Henderson, the newly-appointed director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Public Health Preparedness, has spent a few decades studying how to eradicate diseases for a variety of U.S. and U.N. agencies. He said there is a chance that the current vaccine might turn out to be effective against genetically altered life forms.
    “It protects against a whole range of biological agents. It provides a very broad base of immunity.” Henderson said. “We’re not exactly sure what it is about this [vaccine] that makes it work, but it works.”

  • ANNALS OF WARFARE:THE BIOWEAPONEERS
    New Yorker, March 9, 1998
    In the last few years, Russian scientists have invented the world's deadliest
    plagues. Have we learned about this too late to stop it?
    By Richard Preston
    KEN ALIBEK is a quiet man, forty-seven years old, with youthful looks and an attractive, open face. He lives in a rented condominium in Arlington, Virginia, a five-minute walk from his office at a private consulting firm. Alibek has dark hair and Asian features, and a dimpled scar on his nose, which he got in an accident that was "not heroic," he says, involving a machine in a biowarfare plant.
    Before he arrived in the United States, in 1992, Ken Alibek was Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, the first deputy chief of research and production for the Soviet biological-weapons program. He was the top scientist in the program, a sprawling, clandestine enterprise known as Biopreparat, or The System, by the scientists who worked in it. Biopreparat research-and-production facilities were flung all across the Soviet Union. As Dr. Alibekov, Ken Alibek had thirty-two thousand scientists and staff people working under him.
    Alibek has a Doctor of Sciences degree in anthrax. It is a kind of superdegree, which he received in 1988, at the age of thirty-seven, for directing the research team that developed the Soviet Union's most powerful weapons-grade anthrax. He did this research as head of the Stepnagorsk bioweapons facility, in what is now Kazakhstan, which was once the largest biowarfare production facility in the world. The Alibekov anthrax became fully operational in 1989. It is an amber-gray powder, finer than bath talc, with smooth, creamy particles that tend to fly apart and vanish in the air, becoming invisible and drifting for miles. The Alibekov anthrax is four times more efficient than the standard product.
    Ken Alibek is part of a diaspora of biologists who came out of Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Government funding for research decreased dramatically, and scientists who were working in the biowarfare program found themselves without jobs. Some of them went looking abroad. A few have come to the United States or Great Britain, but most went elsewhere. "No one knows where they are," Alibek says. One can guess that they've ended up in Iraq, Syria, Libya, China, Iran, perhaps Israel, perhaps India -- but no one really knows, probably not even the Russian government. No doubt some of these biologists have carried the Alibekov formula in their heads, if not master seed strains of the anthrax and samples of the finished product in containers. The Alibekov anthrax may be one of the more common bioweapons in the world today. It seems plausible that Iraqi biologists, for instance, know the Alibekov formula by now.
    One day, Ken Alibek and I were sitting in a conference room near his office talking about the anthrax he and his research team had developed. "It's very difficult to say if I felt a sense of excitement over this. It's very difficult to say what I felt like," he said. "It wouldn't be true to say that I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought I had done something very important. The anthrax was one of my scientific results -- my personal result."
    I asked him if he'd tell me the formula for his anthrax.
    "I can't say this," he answered.
    "I won't publish it. I'm just curious," I said.
    "Look, you must understand, this is unbelievably serious. You can't publish this formula," he said. When I assured him I wouldn't, he told me the formula for the Alibekov anthrax. He uttered just one sentence. The Alibekov anthrax is simple, and the formula is somewhat surprising, not quite what you'd expect. Two unrelated materials are mixed with pure powdered anthrax spores. It took a lot of research and testing to get the trick right, and Alibek must have driven his research group hard and skillfully to arrive at it. "There are many countries that would like to know how to do this." he said.
    UNTIL last week, when Ken Alibek was interviewed on "PrimeTime Live," he was known in this country only to a few government officials and intelligence experts and defense-industry figures. What he told the C.I.A. and other people with national-security clearances was usually classified. Sometimes the information was so secret that even he couldn't look at his reports once they were issued. "The first report I wrote, I only saw it once from across a room. It was sitting on a table. They wouldn't let me go any closer to it," Alibek says, with a tiny smile.
    What Alibek describes is shocking, even to those who thought they had a pretty good idea of what bioweapons are out there and who has them. But it is particularly timely now that the public's attention has suddenly focussed on the possibility of biological terrorism, which gained a peculiar intensity in late February, when Larry Wayne Harris and William Leavitt, Jr., were arrested by the F.B.I. outside Las Vegas with what was thought to be weapons-grade anthrax in the trunk of a car. The repeated news reports -- which turned out to be a false alarm -- that they were planning a terrorist attack on the New York City subway system clarified what had seemed to be a vague threat hidden in Iraq. Bioterror had come home.
    I first heard about Ken Alibek in 1995, although at that time none of my contacts would tell me his name. He was referred to only as No. 2. (Biodefector No. 1 had come out in 1989.) Last fall, when I finally figured out that No. 2 was Alibekov, I called up a source who has connections to British intelligence and told him I thought I knew who No. 2 was. He cut me off. "Don't say a name," he said. "I can't confirm anything. Have you forgotten that we are talking on an open telephone line?" That source went nowhere, but then I had an idea. For several years, I have known a man named William C. Patrick III, who in certain important respects is the leading American expert on biological weapons. Before 1969, when President Richard Nixon shut down the American biowarfare program, Bill Patrick was the chief of product development for the United States Army's biological-warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The "products" that Patrick and his research group developed were powdered spores and viruses that were loaded into bombs and sophisticated delivery systems. Patrick was arguably the top bioweaponeer in the United States. He and several hundred other scientists and research-staff members lost their jobs when the biowarfare facilities at Fort Detrick were closed down. (Today, to the best of my knowledge, the scientists at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick don't make offensive bioweapons. They develop vaccines and treatments to defend against them. As far as I can tell, the United States has no bioweapons, and one piece of evidence for this is that government officials today are remarkably ignorant of them.)
    Bill Patrick, who is now seventy-one years old, is one of only two or three scientists still alive and active in the United States who have a hands-on technical understanding of bioweapons. As he explained to me, "There's a hell of a disconnect between us fossils who know about biological weapons and the younger generation." In 1991, on the eve of the Gulf War, he was summoned to the Pentagon to take part in a discussion of anthrax. Patrick sat in silence while a group of intelligence analysts, young men and women dressed in suits, discussed anthrax in knowledgeable-sounding voices. "I reached the conclusion that these people didn't know what the hell they were talking about," Patrick recalls. He said, "Have any of you fellows actually seen anthrax?" and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar of amber-brown powder, and chucked it across the table. It rattled and bounced toward the analysts. They jerked away, some leaping to their feet. The jar contained anthrax simulant, a biopowder that is essentially identical to anthrax except that it doesn't kill. It is used for experiments in which properties other than infectivity are being tested. "I got that through security, by the way," Patrick observed.
    Later, Bill Patrick was the oldest United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. The Iraqis knew exactly who he was -- the former top scientist in the former American bioweapons program. Iraqi intelligence people started calling his hotel room in Baghdad at night, hissing, "You son of bitch, Patrick," and then hanging up. "It was kind of an honor, but it kept me awake," he says.
    Today, Bill Patrick is a consultant to many government agencies -- the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the City of New York -- on the use of biological weapons in a terrorist attack. Jerome Hauer, who is the head of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management -- the group that would handle a bioterror event in New York, should one ever happen -- said to me once, "Bill Patrick is one of the only guys who can tell us about some of these biological agents. We all wonder what we're going to do when he decides to light up a cigar and go sailing." Patrick is able to tell emergency planners what will happen if a biological weapon is released in an American city -- how many people will die, where they'll die, what the deaths will look like. His reports are classified. Bill Patrick and Ken Alibek were counterparts. They had been two of the top scientists in what had been the best biowarfare programs on the planet. I speculated that Patrick might know Alibek.
    "Do I know Ken?" Patrick boomed over the telephone. "We're close friends! My wife and I had Ken over for Christmas this year with our family, because we think he's kind of lonely."
    Then I thought I understood: Patrick must have participated in the long government discussions with Alibek -- the debriefing -- that would have taken place after his arrival in the United States. No one else in the U.S. government, not a single soul, would have understood so clearly what Alibek was talking about. The two scientists had become friends during the process.
    I DROVE down to Bill Patrick's house, in Maryland, on a misty day in winter, when leafless white-oak trees and poplars lay in a haze across the slopes of Catoctin Mountain. The clouds pulled apart and the sun appeared, gleaming through cirrus like a nickel. Patrick's house is a modern version of a Swiss chalet, with a view of Fort Detrick and rolling countryside.
    "Come in, young man," Patrick said genially. A small dog was yapping around his feet. Patrick has a gentlemanly manner, a rather blocky face, with hair combed over a bald head, and penetrating greenish eyes. He glanced at the sky and seemed to sniff the air before ushering me into the house. He is exquisitely sensitive to weather.
    Alibek arrived a short while later, driving a silver BMW. After lunch, we settled down around the kitchen table. Patrick brought out a bottle of Glenmorangie Scotch whiskey, and we poured ourselves a round. It seemed a very Russian thing to do. The whiskey was smoky and golden, and it moved the talk forward.
    "You know, I'm disappointed the agency didn't do better by you, Ken," Patrick remarked. He turned to me. "They let him sign up for all these credit cards."
    Alibek smiled wryly. "This was a problem." The C.I.A. had introduced him to Visa. "I could buy things with the cards, but it didn't seem like money. Then I found out you have to pay for it later."
    Alibek speaks English with a mild Russian accent that makes his serious manner seem almost gloomy. He often has a cigarette smoldering between his fingertips, but he works out at a health club, and he has broad, firm shoulders. His brown eyes seem sombre, and he wears black wire-rimmed eyeglasses. He favors linen shirts with band collars, and soft wool-pique jackets in dark, muted colors. He has a calm expression, with a downward-glancing gaze, and he looks vaguely Chinese. Ethnically, he is a Kazakh. He was born and raised in Kazakhstan. In Russia, he was twenty-five pounds heavier, really quite stout, but he says that he is a different person now, even physically.
    I asked Alibek how he feels about living here. "I'm happy I'm not doing the work," he said. He paused. "I'm not one hundred per cent happy. I know how people feel about me in Russia. Some of my scientific colleagues feel I am a betrayer." Alibek keeps his emotions well hidden, perhaps even from himself. He does not laugh easily. When he does laugh, he is clearly enjoying himself, but his body is slightly rigid. He quit Biopreparat in 1991, left Russia with his family, and abruptly ended up in the United States. According to Alibek, some of his former colleagues at Biopreparat -- which was privatized -- sent word through intermediaries that "if you ever come to Russia you can expect some problems."
    "I've got no desire to go to Russia," Alibek said, shrugging. He recently separated from his wife, although they enjoy a cordial relationship. She lives near him with their two boys, whom he sees almost every day. His oldest child, a daughter, is studying architecture at an Ivy League university. At times, Alibek has suffered from loneliness and a sense of dislocation, and he has had some concerns about how he will support his wife and children in the United States. The Alibeks had a privileged life in Russia, with drivers to take them everywhere and all the money they could use. The United States government paid him consulting fees while he was briefing scientists and officials but now he is on his own.
    KEN ALIBEK was raised in Alma-Ata, then the capital of Kazakhstan. Alma-Ata is in central Asia, not far from the Chinese border, on the medieval silk route. His first language was Kazakh, and he learned Russian at school. He got a medical degree at the military medical institute at Tomsk. His special interest was infectious-disease epidemiology. At some point while he was still in medical school, he was chosen to work for Biopreparat. Since it was a secret system, you didn't really apply; you were approached and brought in. He rose fast. In 1982, at the age of thirty-one, he became the acting director of the Omutninsk bioweapons-production plant, a major facility in the Kirov region of Russia. Eventually, he ended up working in Biopreparat's headquarters, a large building in Moscow -- the same building where Biopreparat is situated today.
    In early April of 1988, Ken Alibek received a telephone call in his office in Moscow. It came from his friend and colleague Lev Sandakhchiev, the director of a Biopreparat facility called Vector, a huge, isolated virology-research campus in the larch forests outside Novosibirsk, a city in western Siberia. In the late nineteen-eighties, Vector was devoted largely to the development and production of virus weapons. (Dr. Sandakhchiev denies this.) Dr. Sandakhchiev reported that there had been an accident. He was reluctant to discuss it on the telephone.
    "Send me the details in a cryptogram," Alibek said. Once a day for the next fourteen days, Alibek received a new cryptogram about the victim of the accident, Dr. Nikolai Ustinov.
    Dr. Ustinov was forty-four years old. Alibek recalls him as a fair-skinned man with light-brown hair, ethnically a Russian. He had a wife and children. Alibek thought of him as a good guy and a talented scientist, easy to talk with, receptive to new ideas. Ustinov had been doing basic military research on the Marburg virus, studying its potential as a weapon. The long-term goal was to see if it could be loaded into special biological warheads on the MIRV missiles that were aimed at the United States. (A MIRV has multiple warheads, which are directed at different targets.) At the time, the Soviet biological missile warheads were designed to be loaded with strategic/operational smallpox virus, Black Death, and anthrax. The Marburg virus had potential for weaponization, too. Marburg is a close cousin to the Ebola virus, and is extremely lethal. Dr. Ustinov had been wearing a spacesuit in a Level 4 hot lab, injecting guinea pigs with Marburg virus. He pricked himself in the finger with a needle, and it penetrated two layers of rubber gloves.
    Nikolai Ustinov exited through an air lock and a chemical decon shower to Level 3, and used an emergency telephone to call his supervisor. The supervisor decided to put Ustinov into a biocontainment hospital, a twenty-bed unit with steel air-lock doors, like the doors of a submarine, where nurses and doctors wearing spacesuits could monitor him. He was not allowed to speak with his wife and children. Ustinov did not seem to be afraid of dying, but, separated from his family, he became deeply depressed.
    On about the fourth day, Ustinov developed a headache, and his eyes turned red. Tiny hemorrhages were occurring in them. He requested a laboratory notebook, and he began writing a diary in it, every day. He was a scientist, and he was determined to explain how he was dying. What does it feel like to die of Marburg virus? What are the psychological effects? For a while, he maintained a small hope that he wouldn't die, but when his skin developed spontaneous bruises he understood what the future held. Dr. Sandakhchiev's cryptograms to Alibek were dry and factual, and didn't include the human details. Alibek would later learn that perhaps twice Ustinov had broken down and wept.
    Alibek was frantic to get help to Ustinov. He begged the Ministry of Defense for a special immune serum, but bureaucratic delays prevented its arrival in Siberia until it was too late. When Ustinov began to vomit blood and pass bloody black diarrhea, the doctor gave him transfusions, but as they put the blood into him it came out of his mouth and rectum. Ustinov was in prostration. They debated replacing all the blood in his body with fresh new blood -- a so-called whole-body transfusion. They were afraid that that might trigger a total flooding hemorrhage, which would kill him, so they didn't do it.
    ALIBEK did not know exactly which strain of Marburg had infected his colleague. It had been obtained by Soviet intelligence somewhere, but the scientists were never told where strains came from. The Marburg virus seems to live in an unknown animal host in East Africa. It has been associated with Kitum Cave, near Mt. Elgon, so the Soviet strain could have been obtained around there, but Alibek suspected that it came from Germany. In 1967, the virus had broken out at a vaccine factory in Marburg, a small city in central Germany, and had killed a number of people who were working with monkeys that were being used to produce vaccine. One of the survivors was a man named Popp, and Alibek thought that Ustinov was probably dying of the strain that had come from him. I have seen a photograph of a Marburg monkey worker taken shortly before his death, in late summer, 1967. He is a stout man, lying on a hospital bed without a shirt. His mouth is slack, his teeth are covered with blood. He is hemorrhaging from the mouth and nose. The blood has run down his neck and pooled in the hollow of his throat. It looks spidery, because it's unable to clot. He also seems to be leaking blood from his nipples.
    The final pages of Dr. Nikolai Ustinov's scientific journal are smeared with unclotted blood. His skin developed starlike hemorrhages in the underlayers. Incredibly -- the Vector scientists had never seen this -- he sweated blood directly from the pores of his skin, and left bloody fingerprints on the pages of his diary. He wept again before he died.
    Ken Alibek is nearly hypnotic when he speaks of these things in his flat voice. We sat around the kitchen table as if we were old friends sharing a story. A gray light shone through the kitchen window, and I saw the red flash of a cardinal near the Patricks' bird feeder, almost a flicker of blood. The dog noticed a squirrel, and started barking. "Go get him, Billy," Patrick said, rising to let the dog out.
    Dr. Ustinov died on April 30, 1988. An autopsy was performed in the spacesuit morgue of the biocontainment hospital. If this was indeed the Popp strain of Marburg virus -- and who could say? -- it was incredibly lethal. It produced effects in the human body that were stunning, terrifying. Alibek says that a pathology team removed Ustinov's liver and his spleen. They sucked a quantity of his destroyed blood out of a leg vein using large syringes.
    They froze the blood and the body parts. They kept the Ustinov strain alive and continually replicating in the laboratories at Vector. They named the strain Variant U, after Ustinov, and they learned how to mass-produce it in simple bioreactors, flasks used for growing viruses. They dried Variant U, and processed it into an inhalable dust. The particles of Variant U were coated to protect them in the air so that they would drift for many miles.
    In late 1990, Biopreparat researchers tested airborne Variant U on monkeys and other small animals in special explosion-test chambers at the Stepnagorsk plant. Marburg Variant U proved to be extremely potent in airborne form. They found that just one to five microscopic particles of Variant U lodged in the lungs of a monkey were almost guaranteed to make the animal crash, bleed, and die. With normal weapons-grade anthrax, in comparison, it takes about eight thousand spores lodged in the lungs to pretty much guarantee infection and death.
    Alibek said that by the fall of 1991, just before Boris Yeltsin came to power, Marburg Variant U was on the verge of becoming a strategic/operational biological weapon, ready to be manufactured in large quantities and loaded into warheads on MIRVs. These warheads are sinister things. Ten separate cone-shaped warheads, each targeted on a different location, sit atop a missile. Special cooling systems inside each warhead keep the virus alive during the heat of reentry through the earth's atmosphere. "If we can land a cosmonaut to earth alive, we can do the same with a virus," Alibek explained. "We use parachutes." The biowarheads are parachuted over a city, and at a certain altitude they break apart. Out of each warhead bursts a spray of more than a hundred oval bomblets the size of small cantaloupes. The cantaloupes fly out a distance and then split in overlapping patterns, releasing a haze of bioparticles that quickly becomes invisible.
    Variant U never became part of the Soviets' strategic arsenal, which was stocked with Black Death, Alibekov anthrax, and powdered smallpox. (Never less than twenty tons of weapons-grade dry smallpox was stockpiled in bunkers.) But it seems quite possible that when the Russian biowarfare facilities fell on hard times and biologists began leaving Russia to work in other countries, some of them carried freeze-dried Variant U with them, ready for further experimentation. Variant U started, perhaps, with a monkey worker named Popp, but its end in the human species is yet to be seen.
    A GENERATION ago, biological weapons were called germ-warfare weapons. Biological weapons are very different from chemical weapons. A chemical weapon is a poison that kills upon contact with the skin. Bioweapons are microorganisms, bacteria or viruses, that invade the body, multiply inside it, and destroy it. Bioweapons can be used as strategic weapons. That is, they are incredibly powerful and dangerous. They can kill huge numbers of people if they are used properly, and their effects are not limited to one place or a small target. Chemical weapons, on the other hand, can be used only tactically. It is virtually impossible to put enough of a chemical in the air in a high enough concentration to wipe out a large number of people over a large territory. And chemicals aren't alive and can't spread through an infectious process.
    There are two basic types of biological weapons, those that are contagious and those that are not. Anthrax is not contagious: people don't spread it among themselves; you can't catch anthrax from someone who is dying of it. Smallpox is contagious. It spreads rapidly, magnifying itself, causing mortality and chaos on a large scale.
    Like any weapon, a biological weapon can be released accidentally, but when a biological accident happens, the consequences can be particularly insidious. I talked about this with Ken Alibek that day in Bill Patrick's kitchen, while we drank whiskey in the soft light of a winter afternoon. Alibek spoke about how bioweapons have a disturbing tendency to invade nonhuman populations of living creatures -- thus finding a new niche in the ecosystems of the earth, apart from the human species. When he was the acting director of the biowarfare facility at Omutninsk, his safety officers discovered that wild rodents living in the woods outside the factory had become chronically infected with the Schu-4 military strain of tularemia -- a bacterium that causes a type of pneumonia -- which was being made in the plant. It was a hot, lethal strain that came from the United States: an American biological weapon that the Soviets had managed to obtain during the nineteen-fifties. Now, unexpectedly, the wild rodents were spreading Schu-4 among themselves in the forests around Omutninsk. The rodents were not the natural host of tularemia, but it had apparently established itself in them as new hosts. People catch tularemia easily from rodents, and it can be fatal. Alibek mounted an investigation and found that a pipe running through a basement area had a small leak and was dripping a suspension of tularemia cells into the ground. The rodents may have come in contact with the contaminated soil in that one spot.
    The staff tried to sterilize the forest of rodents near the plant. That didn't work, because rodents are impossible to eradicate. "We could not get rid of the rodents. We tried everything," Alibek said. "Nobody knows today, but we can assume that the tularemia is still there in the rodents." Nobody knows if anyone has died of the American-Russian tularemia around the Kirov region.
    "Could it have spread across Russia in rodents?" I asked.
    "This I don't know."
    BIOPREPARAT, or The System, was set up in 1973, just a year after the Soviet Union signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, an agreement banning the development, use, and stockpiling of biological weapons. The United States, which had ended its offensive-bioweapons program in 1969, also signed the treaty, as did Great Britain. (Some hundred and forty nations have signed the convention by now.) The Soviets continued to believe, however, that the United States had not ended its bioweapons program but simply hidden it away, turning it into a "black" weapons program. "The notion that the Americans had given up their biological weapons was thought of as the great American lie," a British intelligence officer recalls. "In fact, most of the Biopreparat scientists had never even heard of the Biological Weapons Convention."
    Biopreparat consisted of some forty research-and-production facilities. About a dozen of them were enormous. Perhaps half of the employees developed weapons and the other half made medicines. Biopreparat worked both sides of the street: it cured diseases and invented new ones. An island in the Aral Sea, curiously named Rebirth Island, was used for open-air weapons testing. Large numbers of animals, and perhaps some humans, died there. Biopreparat was modelled to some extent on the Manhattan Project, [the program that led to the first atomic bomb. Military people administered the program and scientists did the research-and-development work.] Somehow, Biopreparat's weapons program remained invisible to the American scientific community. There was a commonly held belief among many American scientists, supported by the strong, even passionate views of a handful of experts in biological weapons, that the Soviet Union was not violating the treaty. This view persisted, despite reports to the contrary from intelligence agencies, which were often viewed as being driven by right-wing ideology.
    One of the side effects of the closing of the American bioweapons program was that the United States lost its technical understanding of biological weapons. There has long been a general feeling among American scientists -- it's hard to say just how widespread it is, but it is definitely there -- that biological weapons don't work. They are said to be uncontrollable, liable to infect their users, or unworkable in any practical sense. A generation ago, leading physicists in this country understood nuclear weapons because they had built them, and they had observed their effects in field tests and in war. The current generation of American molecular biologists has been spared the agony of having created weapons of mass destruction, but, since these biologists haven't built them, or tested them, they don't know much about their real performance characteristics.
    Sitting in Bill Patrick's kitchen, I said to Alibek, "There seems to be a common belief among American scientists that biological weapons aren't effective as weapons. You see these views quoted occasionally in newspapers and magazines."
    Alibek looked disturbed, then annoyed. "You test them to find out. You learn how to make them work," he said to me. "I had a meeting yesterday at a defense agency. They knew absolutely nothing about biological weapons. They want to develop protection against them, but all their expertise is in nuclear weapons. I can say I don't believe that nuclear weapons work. Nuclear weapons destroy everything. Biological weapons are more . . . beneficial. They don't destroy buildings, they only destroy vital activity."
    "Vital activity?"
    "People," he said.
    THE first defector to emerge from Biopreparat was Vladimir Pasechnik, a microbiologist, who arrived in Great Britain in 1989, just as the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble. (He was No. 1 to Alibek's No. 2.) Pasechnik frightened British intelligence, and later the C.I.A., when he told them that his work as director of the Institute of Ultrapure Biopreparations, in Leningrad, had involved offensive-biowarfare research into Yersinia pestis, a pestilential microbe that causes plague, or Black Death an airborne contagious bacterial organism that wiped out a third of the population of Europe around the year 1348. Natural plague is curable with antibiotics. After listening to Dr. Pasechnik, the British concluded that the Soviet Union had developed a genetically engineered strain of plague that was resistant to antibiotics. Because the Black Death can travel through the air in a cough from person to person, a strain of multi-drug-resistant Black Death might be able to amplify itself through a human population in ever-widening chains of infection, culminating in a biological crown fire in the human species. No nuclear weapon could do that. What was the Soviet Union doing developing strategic contagious biological weapons? "I couldn't sleep at night, thinking about what we were doing," Pasechnik told his British handlers. Even though Western intelligence agencies had known that the Russians had a bioweapons program, they had not known what was being developed, and that the United States was a so-called deep target, far enough away so that the Soviet Union wouldn't be contaminated.
    President George Bush and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were briefed on Pasechnik's revelations, and they put direct personal pressure on Mikhail Gorbachev to open up the biowarfare facilities in the U.S.S.R. to a team of outside inspectors. Eventually, he agreed, and a joint British-American weapons-inspection team toured four of the main Biopreparat facilities in January, 1991. The inspectors visited Vector (the virology complex outside Novosibirsk, where Ustinov died) and a giant, high-security facility south of Moscow called the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology at Obolensk, where they found fermenter tanks -- forty of them, each two stories tall. They were maintained at Biosafety Level 4, inside huge ring-shaped biocontainment zones, in a building called Corpus One. The facility was dedicated to research on a variety of bacterial microbes, especially Yersinia pestis. The Level 4 production tanks were obviously intended for making enormous quantities of something deadly, but when the inspectors arrived the tanks were sparkling clean and sterile.
    As the British and American weapons inspectors toured the Biopreparat facilities, they ran into the same problems that recently faced the United Nations Special Commission inspectors in Iraq. They were met with denials, evasions, and large rooms that had been stripped of equipment and cleaned up. A British inspector said to me, "This was clearly the most successful biological-weapons program on earth. These people just sat there and lied to us, and lied, and lied."
    The deal was that after the Americans and the British had peeked at Biopreparat a team of Soviet inspectors was to visit the United States. In December, 1991, Ken Alibek and a number of leading Biopreparat scientists and military people visited USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick, the Army's Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah, and the Army's old bioweapons production facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, which had been abandoned and partly dismantled in 1969. The Russians stumbled around the weeds in Pine Bluff and saw rusting railroad tracks, buildings with their roofs falling in, and nothing that worked. Alibek was pretty well convinced by the time he got home that the United States did not have a bioweapons program. But when the final report was issued by the inspectors to the government of Boris Yeltsin it stated that they had found plenty of evidence for a program. Alibek refused to participate in the writing of that report, and he decided to quit Biopreparat.
    "It was a confused situation," he said. "It was at the exact time when the Soviet Union collapsed. I told all these people I didn't agree with their politics." For a few months, he hung on in Moscow, supporting his family by trading -- "It was easy to make money in those days, you could trade anything" -- but he found that his telephone was tapped, and that the K.G.B. had set up a so-called gray unit to watch him, a surveillance team stationed near his apartment. He decided to move his family to Alma-Ata, in Kazakhstan. What happened next Alibek refuses to talk about. He will not tell me how he got his family to the United States. Once here, he dropped completely out of sight. It is pretty obvious that he was holed up with American intelligence people, discussing his scientific and technical knowledge with them. Several years went by, and Dr. Alibekov morphed into Ken Alibek.
    THE most powerful bioweapons are dry powders formed of tiny particles that are designed to lodge in the human lung. The particles are amber or pink. They have a strong tendency to fly apart from one another, so that if you throw them in the air they disperse like a crowd leaving Yankee Stadium. As they disperse, they become invisible to the human eye, normally within five seconds after the release. You can't see a bioweapon, you can't smell it, you can't taste it, and you don't know it was there until days later, when you start to cough and bleed, and by that time you may be spreading it around. Bill Patrick holds five patents on special processes for making biodusts that will disperse rapidly in the air and form an invisible sea of particles. His patents are classified. The U.S. government does not want anyone to obtain Patrick's research.
    The particles of a bioweapon are exceedingly small, about one to five microns in diameter. You could imagine the size this way: around fifty to a hundred bioparticles lined up in a row would span the thickness of a human hair. The particles are light and fluffy, and don't fall to earth. You can imagine motes of dust dancing in a shaft of sunlight. Dust motes are mostly bits of hair and fuzz. They are much larger than weaponized bioparticles. If a dust mote were as thick as a log, then a weaponized bioparticle would resemble a child's marble. The tiny size of a weaponized bioparticle allows it to be sucked into the deepest sacs of the lung, where it sticks to the membrane, and enters the bloodstream, and begins to replicate. A bioweapon can kill you with just one particle in the lung. If the weapon is contagious in human-to-human transmission, you will kill a lot of other people, too. So much death emergent from one particle. Given the right weather conditions, a bioweapon will drift in the air for up to a hundred miles.
    Sunlight kills a bioweapon. That is, a bioweapon biodegrades in sunlight. It has a "half-life," like nuclear radiation. This is known as the decay time of the bioweapon. Anthrax has a long decay time -- it has a tough spore. Tularemia has a decay time of only a few minutes in sunlight. Therefore, tularemia should always be released at night.
    For many years during the nineteen-fifties and sixties, Bill Patrick had his doubts that bioweapons work. Those doubts were removed decisively during the summer of 1968, when one of the biggest of a long series of open-air biological tests was conducted over the Pacific Ocean downwind of Johnston Atoll, a thousand miles southwest of Hawaii. There, in reaches of open sea, American strategic tests of bioweapons had been conducted secretly for four years. Until very recently, these tests remained unknown to people without security clearances.
    "We tested certain real agents, and some of them were lethal," Patrick said. The American strategic tests of bioweapons were as expensive and elaborate as the tests of the first hydrogen bombs at Eniwetok Atoll. They involved enough ships to have made the world's fifth-largest independent navy. The ships were positioned around Johnston Atoll, upwind from a number of barges loaded with hundreds of rhesus monkeys.
    Late one afternoon, Bill Patrick went out to Johnston Atoll and stood on the beach to watch a test. At sunset, just as the sun touched the horizon, a Marine Phantom jet flew in low, heading on a straight line parallel to the beach, and then continued over the horizon. Meanwhile, a single pod under its wings released a weaponized powder. The powder trailed into the air like a whiff of smoke and disappeared completely. This was visual evidence that the particles were flying away from one another. Patrick's patents worked.
    The scientists call this a line-source laydown. The jet was disseminating a small amount of biopowder for every mile of flight (the exact amount is still classified). One can imagine a jet doing a line-source laydown over Los Angeles, flying from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, releasing dust from a single pod under the wing. It would take a few minutes. The jet would appear on radar, but the trail of bioweapon would be invisible. In Iraq, United Nations inspectors found a videotape of an Iraqi Phantom jet doing a line-source laydown over the desert. The technique looked precisely like the American laydowns, even to the Iraqis' use of a Phantom jet. The one difference was that the Iraqi Phantom had no pilot: it was a remote-controlled drone.
    At Johnston Atoll, the line of particles moved with the wind over the sea, somewhat like a windshield wiper sweeping over glass. Stationed in the path of the particles, at intervals extending many miles away, were the barges full of monkeys, manned by nervous Navy crews wearing biohazard spacesuits. The line of bioparticles passed over the barges one by one. Then the monkeys were taken back to Johnston Atoll, and over the next few days half of them died. Half of the monkeys survived, and were fine. Patrick could see, clearly enough, that a jet that did a laydown of a modest amount of military bioweapon over Los Angeles could kill half the city. It would probably be more efficient at causing human deaths than a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb.
    "What was the agent you used?" I asked Patrick.
    "I don't want to tell you. It may still be classified. The real reason is that a lot of countries would like to know what we used, and not just the Iraqis. When we saw those test results, we knew beyond a doubt that biological weapons are strategic weapons. We were surprised. Even we didn't think they would work that well."
    "But the agent you used was curable with antibiotics, right?" I said.
    "Sure."
    "So people could be cured -- "
    "Well, think about it. Let's say you hit the city of Frederick, right here. That's a small city, with a population of about fifty thousand. You could cause thirty thousand infections. To treat the infections, you'd need -- let me see." He calculated quickly: "Eighty-four grams of antibiotic per person . . . that's . . . oh, my heavens, you'd need more than two tons of antibiotic, delivered overnight! There isn't that much antibiotic stored anywhere in the United States. Now think about New York City. It doesn't take a mathematician to see that if you hit New York with a biological weapon you are gonna tie things up for a while."
    TODAY, Biopreparat is a much smaller organization than it was during the Soviet years, and it is ostensibly dedicated entirely to peaceful research and production. You can buy face cream and vodka made by Biopreparat. Vector, where Variant U was developed, is no longer part of Biopreparat. The Vector laboratories are undergoing an extremely painful and perhaps incomplete conversion to peaceful use, and the Vector scientists are secretive about some of their work. Dr. Frank Malinoski, who was a member of the British-American team that inspected Vector in the early nineteen-nineties, told me that it is now generally believed that the weapons program has been taken over by the Russian Ministry of Defense. "If Biopreparat was once an egg, then the weapons program was the yolk of the egg," he said. "They've hard-boiled the egg, and taken out the yolk and hidden it."
    If, in fact, the yolk exists, what can Western governments do about it? After years of avoiding confrontation with the Russians over bioweapons, American officials are still uncertain how to proceed. Twenty million dollars or so -- no one seems sure of the amount -- has been budgeted by a hodgepodge of agencies to offer financial support to Russian biologists for peaceful research (so they won't go abroad). The National Academy of Sciences, for example, spent a million and a half dollars on research funding for the Russians this past year. But the agencies are in a quandary, and fear the scandal that would ensue if it turned out that their funds had been diverted for weapons research.
    The yolk of the bioweapons program may now be hidden away in military facilities run by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which are off limits to Americans. The largest of these is a complex near Sergiyev Posad, an old town about thirty miles northeast of Moscow. It's not clear how much real control Boris Yeltsin has over the Russian military. If the Ministry of Defense wanted to have a bioweapons program, could anyone tell it to stop? One prominent American scientist said to me, "All of our efforts in touchy-feely relationships have certainly engaged the former Biopreparat people, but we've been turned down flat by the military people. No doubt they're hiding something at Sergiyev Posad, but what are they hiding? Is it a weapons program? Or is it a shadow that doesn't mean anything, like the shadow on the shade in 'Home Alone'? We just don't know."
    Meanwhile, there is strong suspicion that at some of the more visible laboratories weapons-related genetic engineering is being conducted. Genetic engineering, in military terms, is the creation of genetically altered viruses and bacteria in order to enhance their power as weapons. This work can be done by altering an organism's DNA, which is the ribbonlike molecule that contains the organism's genetic code and is found in every cell and in every virus particle. Three months ago, researchers at the Center for Applied Microbiology at Obolensk -- the place south of Moscow where Biopreparat once developed and mass-produced hot strains of Black Death for Soviet missiles and weapons systems -- published a paper in the British medical journal Vaccine describing how they'd created a genetically engineered anthrax. The Obolensk anthrax, they reported, was resistant to the standard anthrax vaccine.
    Ken Alibek thinks that the Russians published information about their research because"they are trying to get some kind of 'legalization' of military genetic engineering," and because they are proud of their work. The Biological Weapons Convention is vague on exactly what constitutes research into an offensive weapon. Alibek said that the Russian biologists are trying to push the envelope of what is permissible. Then, "if someone other than Boris Yeltsin was in power, they could re-create their entire biological weapons program quickly."
    Western biowarfare experts don't know if the new engineered anthrax is as deadly as normal anthrax, but it may be, and it could fall into the wrong hands, such as Iraq or Iran. The real problem may lie in those countries. Genetic-engineering work can be done in a small building by a few Ph.D. researchers, using tabletop machines that are available anywhere in the world at no great cost. In high schools in the United States today, students are taught how to do genetic engineering. They learn how to create new variants of (safe) bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. One genetic-engineering kit for high-school students costs forty-two dollars and is sold through the mail.
    A VIRUS that seems particularly amenable to engineering is smallpox. According to Alibek and others, it is possible that smallpox has left Russia for parts unknown, travelling in the pockets of mercenary biologists. "Iran, Iraq, probably Libya, probably Syria, and North Korea could have smallpox," Alibek said. He bases his list partly on what Russian intelligence told him while he was in the program, for the Russians were very sensitive to other countries' bioweapons programs, and watched carefully. Bioweapons programs may exist in Israel (which has never signed the bioweapons treaty) and Pakistan. Alibek is convinced that India has a program. He says that when he was in Biopreparat, Russian intelligence showed him evidence that China has a large bioweapons program.
    The deadliest natural smallpox virus is known as Variola major. Natural smallpox was eradicated from the earth in 1977, when the last human case of it appeared, in Somalia. Since then, the virus has lived only in laboratories. Smallpox is an extremely lethal virus, and it is highly contagious in the air. When a child with chicken pox appears in a school classroom, many or most of the children in the class may go on to catch chicken pox. Smallpox is as contagious as chicken pox. One case of smallpox can give rise to twenty new cases. Each of those cases can start twenty more. In 1970, when a man infected with smallpox appeared in an emergency room in Germany, seventeen cases of smallpox appeared in the hospital on the floors above. Ultimately, the German government vaccinated a hundred thousand people to stop the outbreak. Two years later in Yugoslavia, a man with a severe case of smallpox visited several hospitals before dying in an intensive-care unit. To stop the resulting outbreak, which forced twenty thousand people into isolation, Yugoslav health authorities had to vaccinate virtually the entire population of the country within three weeks. Smallpox can start the biological equivalent of a runaway chain reaction. About a third of the people who get a hot strain of smallpox die of it. The skin puffs up with blisters the size of hazelnuts, especially over the face. A severe case of smallpox can essentially burn the skin off one's body.
    The smallpox vaccine wears off after ten to twenty years. None of us are immune any longer, unless we've had a recent shot. There are currently seven million usable doses of smallpox vaccine stored in the United States, in one location in Pennsylvania. If an outbreak occurred here, it might be necessary to vaccinate all two hundred and seventy million people in the United States in a matter of weeks. There would be no way to meet such a demand.
    "Russia has researched the genetic alteration of smallpox," Alibek told me. "In 1990 and 1991, we engineered a smallpox at Vector. It was found that several areas of the smallpox genome" -- the DNA -- "can be used for the introduction of some foreign genetic material. The first development was smallpox and VEE. VEE, or Venezuelan equine encephalitis, is a brain virus. It causes a severe headache and near-coma, but it is generally not lethal. Alibek said that the researchers spliced VEE into smallpox. The result was a recombinant chimera virus. In ancient Greek myth, the chimera was a monster made from parts of different animals. Recombination means the mixing of genes from different organisms. "It is called smallpox-VEE chimera," Alibek said. It could also be called Veepox. Under a microscope, Alibek said, the Veepox looks like smallpox, but it isn't.
    According to Alibek, there was one major technical hurdle to clear in the creation of a workable Veepox chimera, and he says that it took the Vector researchers years to solve the problem. They solved it by finding more than one place in the smallpox DNA where you could insert new genes without decreasing smallpox's ability to cause disease. Many researchers feel that the smallpox virus doesn't cause disease in animals in any way that is useful for understanding its effects on humans. Alibek says that the Russians tested Veepox in monkeys, but he says that he doesn't know the results.
    More recently, Alibek claims, the Vector researchers may have created a recombinant Ebola-smallpox chimera. One could call it Ebolapox. Ebola virus uses the molecule RNA for its genetic code, whereas smallpox uses DNA. Alibek believes that the Russian researchers made a DNA copy of the disease-causing parts of Ebola, then grafted them into smallpox. Alibek said he thinks that the Ebolapox virus is stable -- that is, that it will replicate successfully in a test tube or in animals -- which means that, once created, Ebolapox will live forever in a laboratory, and will not uncreate itself. Thus a new form of life may have been brought into the world.
    "The Ebolapox could produce the form of smallpox called blackpox," Alibek says. Blackpox, sometimes known as hemorrhagic smallpox, is the most severe type of smallpox disease. In a blackpox infection, the skin does not develop blisters. Instead, the skin becomes dark all over. Blood vessels leak, resulting in severe internal hemorrhaging. Blackpox is invariably fatal. "As a weapon, the Ebolapox would give the hemorrhages and high mortality rate of Ebola virus, which would give you a blackpox, plus the very high contagiousness of smallpox," Alibek said.
    Bill Patrick became exasperated. "Ken! Ken! I think you've got overkill here. What is the point of creating an Ebola smallpox? I mean, it would be nice to do this from a scientific point of view, sure. But with old-fashioned natural smallpox you can bring a society to its knees. You don't need any Ebolapox, Ken. Why, you're just gonna kill everybody."
    "I suspect that this research has been done," Alibek said calmly.
    Lev Sandakhchiev, the head of Vector, strongly denies this. "In our center we developed vaccinia-virus recombinants with VEE viruses and some others," he says. Vaccinia is a harmless virus related to smallpox. It is used for making vaccines.
    "How much do you think it would cost to create genetically engineered smallpox?" I asked Alibek.
    "This is not expensive." He paused, thinking. "A few million dollars. This is what it cost us for making the smallpox-VEE chimera at Vector in 1990 and 1991.
    KEN ALIBEK's statements about the genetic engineering of smallpox are disturbing. I felt a need to hear some perspective from senior scientists who are close to the situation. Dr. Peter Jahrling is the chief scientist at USAMRIID, and he has visited Russia four times in recent months. ("It seems as if all I do these days is visit Russia," he said to me.) He knows the scientists at Vector pretty well. He has listened to Alibek and questioned him carefully, and he doesn't believe him about the Ebola-smallpox chimera. "His talk about chimeras of Ebola is sheer fantasy, in my opinion,"Jahrling said. "This would be technically formidable. We have seen zero evidence of the Vector scientists doing that. But a smallpox chimera -- is it plausible? Yes, it is, and I think that's scary. The truth is, I'm not so worried about governments anymore. I think genetic engineering has been reduced to simple enough principles so that any reasonably equipped group of reasonably good scientists would be able to construct a credible threat using genetic engineering. I don't think anyone could knock out New York City with a genetically engineered bug, but someone might be able to knock out a few people and thereby make an incredible panic."
    Joshua Lederberg is a member of a working group of scientists at the National Academy of Sciences who advise the government on biological weapons and the potential for bioterrorism. He is a professor at Rockefeller University, in Manhattan, and is considered to be one of the founders of the biotechnology revolution. He received the Nobel Prize for discovering -- in 1946, when he was a young man -- that bacteria can swap genes with each other. It was apparent to him even back then that people would soon be moving genes around, for evil as well as for good.
    I found Lederberg in his office, in a modest building covered with vines, in a green island of grass and trees on Manhattan's East Side. He is in his seventies, a man of modest size and modest girth, with a trim white beard, glasses, intelligent hazel eyes, and careful sentences. Lederberg knows Alibek and Pasechnik. He said to me, "They are offering very important evidence. You have to look carefully at what they're saying, but I offer high credibility to their remarks in general." He seemed to be choosing his words. As far as what was going on at Vector, he says that "with smallpox, anything could have happened. Lev Sandakhchiev is one of the world's authorities on the smallpox genome. But there are all kinds of reasons you'd want to introduce modifications into smallpox." He said that you might, for example, alter smallpox in order to make a vaccine. "You have to prove intent to make a weapon," he said.
    Researchers normally introduce new genes into the vaccinia virus. Vaccinia doesn't cause major illness in humans, but if you're infected with it you become immune to smallpox. When the new genes are introduced into vaccinia, they tend to make the virus even weaker, even less able to trigger disease. Putting new genes into smallpox presumably might make it weaker, too. Alibek insisted that the Russians have found places in the genome of smallpox where you can insert new genes, yet the virus remains deadly.
    I said to Lederberg, "If someone is adding genes from Ebola to smallpox virus, and it's making the smallpox more deadly, as Alibek says is happening in Russia, isn't that evidence of intent to make a weapon?"
    "No," he said firmly. "You can't prove intent by the experiment itself. It's not even clear to me that adding Ebola genes to smallpox would make it more deadly. What troubles me is that this kind of work is being done in a clandestine way. They are not telling us what is going on. To be doing such potentially evil research without telling us what they are doing is a provocation. To do an experiment of this kind in the United States would be almost impossible. There would be an extensive review, and it might well not be allowed for safety reasons. The experiment is extremely dangerous, because things could get out of hand."
    Lederberg agreed that Russia does have a clandestine biological-weapons program today, though it's not at all clear how much Vector and Biopreparat have to do with it, since they are independent entities. As for the biological missiles once aimed at the U.S., it doesn't surprise him: "You can put anything in a ballistic missile."
    Lederberg seems to be a man who has looked into the face of evil for a long time and hasn't blinked. He is part of a group of scientists and government officials who are trying to maintain a dialogue with Russian biologists and bring them into the international community of science. "Our best hope is to have a dialogue with Sandakhchiev," he said quietly. "There is no technical solution to the problem of biological weapons. It needs an ethical, human, and moral solution if it's going to happen at all. Don't ask me what the odds are for an ethical solution, but there is no other solution." He paused, considering his words. "But would an ethical solution appeal to a sociopath?"
    TERRORISM is the uncontrolled part of the equation. A while ago, Richard Butler, who is the head of the United Nations Special Commission weapons-inspection teams in Iraq, remarked to me, "Everyone wonders what kinds of delivery systems Iraq may have for biological weapons, but it seems to me that the best delivery system would be a suitcase left in the Washington subway."
    Could something like that happen? What would it be like? The truth is that no one really knows, because lethal bioterror on a major scale has not occurred. At one point in my talk with Ken Alibek in Bill Patrick's kitchen that winter afternoon, we took a break, and the former master bioweaponeers stood on the lawn outside the house, looking down on the city of Frederick. The view reaches to the Mt. Airy Ridge, a blue line in the distance. Clouds had covered the sun again.
    Patrick was squinting east, with a professional need to understand the nuances of wind and cloud. "The wind is ten to twelve miles an hour, gusting a bit." He pointed to smoke coming from a building in the valley. "See the smoke there? It's drifting up a little, but see how it hangs? We have sort of an inversion today, not a good one. I'd say it's a good day for anthrax or Q fever."
    Alibek lit a cigarette and watched the sky. He appraises weather the same way Patrick does.
    Suddenly Patrick turned on his heel and went into his garage. He returned in a few moments carrying a large mayonnaise jar. He unscrewed the cap. The jar contained a fine, creamy, fluffy powder, with a mottled pink tinge. The pink was the dried blood of chicken embryos, he explained. "This is a simulant for VEE." It was a fake version of the weaponized brain virus. It was sterile, and had no living organisms in it. It was harmless.
    The VEE virus can-be grown in weapons-grade concentration in live chicken embryos. When the embryos are swimming with virus particles, you break open the eggs (you had better be wearing a spacesuit), and you harvest the sick embryos. You freeze-dry them and process them into a powder using one of Patrick's secret methods.
    He shook the jar under my face. The blood-tinged powder climbed the sides of the jar. A tendril of simulated bioweapon reached for my nose.
    Instinctively, I jerked my head back.
    Patrick walked across the lawn and stood by an oak tree. Suddenly he extended his arm and heaved the contents of the jar into the air. His simulated brain-virus weapon blasted through the branches of a dogwood tree and took off in the wind, heading straight down a meadow and across the street, booming with celerity toward Frederick. Within seconds, the aerosol cloud had become invisible. But the particles were there, moving with the breeze at a steady ten to twelve miles an hour.
    Alibek watched, tugging at his cigarette, nonchalant, mildly amused. "Yeah. You won't see the cloud now."
    "Some of those particles'll go eighteen to twenty miles, maybe to the Mt. Airy Ridge," Patrick remarked. The simulated brain virus would arrive in Mt. Airy in less than two hours. He walked back and put his hand on Alibek's shoulder, and smiled.
    Alibek nodded.
    "What are you thinking?" I asked Alibek.
    He pursed his lips and shrugged. "This is not exciting for me."
    Patrick went on, "Say you wanted to hit Frederick today, Ken, what would you use?"
    Alibek glanced at the sky, weighing the weather and his options. "I'd use anthrax mixed with smallpox."
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [End]
    Note: Richard Preston was featured in the ABC "PrimeTime" television program on Alibek and bioweapons. He is author of two best-selling books on biological hazards, The Hot Zone, a non-fiction account of the Ebola virus, and The Cobra Event, a novel.


  • Global crash fears as German bank sinks -Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis.
    Faisal Islam, economics correspondent and Will Hutton
    Sunday October 6, 2002
    The Observer
    Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis. A leaked email about the credit-worthiness of Commerzbank, Germany's third largest bank, yesterday increased fears of the international stock market malaise exploding into a fully-fledged banking crisis.
    Commerzbank lost a quarter of its value last week, raising the spectre of Credit-anstalt, the Austrian bank that collapsed in 1931, sparking global depression.
    US stock markets have fallen for six consecutive weeks, to their lowest levels in five years. European markets have collapsed even further, wiping out nearly half of the value of European corpora tions in this year alone. Japan is struggling to put together a plan to save its banking system, riddled with bad debt after a decade of recession and falling prices. Now the German economy threatens to follow.
    'There are strong parallels to the Thirties after an unsustainable "new era" boom,' says Avinash Persaud managing director for economics and research at State Street Bank. 'Then, the stock market decline was not just steep, it was long, taking three years to reach the bottom.'
    'Commerzbank being affected is a sign of the severity. But in today's crisis risks have been offloaded from the banks to the markets and ultimately our pensioners, which makes the problem more difficult to deal with,' he says. The leaked email about Commerzbank was in response to an inquiry from a US investment bank about rumours of huge losses on credit derivatives, which aim to spread risk.
    Figures due to be published on Friday will show that a toll of stock market falls, rising joblessness and war fears is finally denting the spending habits of Americans. Economists fear that the result may be a 'double-dip' US recession, taking much of the world with it.
    Europe's finance Ministers, including Chancellor Gordon Brown, will meet in Luxembourg on Tuesday amid deepening concern about the stability of the financial system. Tomorrow evening, the Eurogroup of finance ministers, excluding Brown, will discuss reforming Europe-wide tax and spending rules along the lines of the British system, taking stronger account of economic difficulties.
    In the US, the concern is that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has insufficient room to cut interest rates if the economy falls into recession. 'The [Bush] Administration has two lines of action: tax relief for the rich [and] reliance on the Federal Reserve. Both are without effect,' says US economist JK Galbraith in an interview with The Observer.

  • Blair tells Bush, 'back off UK plc' -PM urges US to make British firms exempt from new anti-fraud laws
    Sunday August 11, 2002
    The Observer
    Tony Blair is pushing President George Bush to exempt British companies and their auditors from tough new US laws designed to crack down on corporate fraud.
    In a rare move, the Prime Minister raised the issue of the regulation of UK firms listed in the US in one of his regular telephone calls to Bush. The 15 July call was prompted after City institutions expressed fears about how the laws will be interpreted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US financial watchdog.
    The Sarbanes-Oxley act, which was hurried through Congress last month as a response to recent high-profile corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom, is described by legislators in America as the 'most radical redesign of federal securities laws since the 1930s'.
    Under the law, which has met considerable opposition from US businesses, company directors face lengthy prison sentences and huge fines if they are found to have committed fraud, while chief executive officers and chief financial officers will be made personally liable for signing off quarterly accounts.
    In addition, the act places much greater responsibilities on non executive directors, audit committees and auditors for overseeing a company's accounting practices.
    More than half of the UK's FTSE 100 companies either have a dual listing in the US or have their shares traded via American Depository Receipts, and this makes them subject to the new laws.
    But the UK government believes that its own domestic regulator, the Financial Services Authority, is capable of policing City firms and their auditors without the need for US intervention.
    The Government has taken soundings from the business world, which believes the act might deter good-quality directors from joining FTSE 100 boards and will place unnecessary regulatory burdens on UK audit firms.
    A number of leading City organisations are worried that the law raises the prospect of criminal proceedings being taken against innocent directors who fail to detect elaborate frauds perpetrated by colleagues.
    'At a time when we want the best-quality people to be non-executive directors, the threat of stiff penal and legal consequences is a major deterrent to the very people we're trying to attract. They'll just say it's not worth the risk,' said Peter Wyman, president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
    The UK government wants the SEC, which will enforce the act, to exempt UK firms listed in the US from many aspects of the act. In addition to Blair's telephone call, there have been discussions between the White House and the UK ambassador in Washington, and between members of the FSA and SEC.
    Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry confirmed last month that 'high-level' lobbying from the UK government 'has had some success, but concerns about the legislation remain. We are therefore continuing to pursue these matters at national and European level with the US administration'.
    He added: 'We do not want to see extra regulatory burdens piled on to British companies.'
    · By the close of markets last week just 15 per cent of companies had filed the required sworn statements.
    The SEC's deadline for the certification of accounts by CEOs and CFOs expires on Wednesday. Fitch, the ratings agency, said companies that miss the deadline may suffer downgrades to debt ratings.

  • Purported Bin Laden Tape Warns U.S.
    The Associated Press
    Sunday, October 6, 2002
    CAIRO, Egypt –– The Arab satellite station al-Jazeera broadcast an audiotape Sunday in which a male voice attributed to Osama bin Laden said the "youths of God" are planning more attacks against the United States.
    "By God, the youths of God are preparing for you things that would fill your hearts with terror and target your economic lifeline until you stop your oppression and aggression" against Muslims, said the voice in the audiotape.
    It wasn't immediately clear when the tape was made. The short message was broadcast with a picture of bin Laden in the background.
    Bin Laden said his message was addressed to the American people, whom he urged to "understand the message of the New York and Washington attacks which came in response to some of your previous crimes."
    "But those who follow the activities of the band of criminals in the White House, the Jewish agents, who are preparing for an attack on the Muslim world ... feel that you have not understood anything from the message of the two attacks," he said.
    Qatar-based al-Jazeera has become known for its broadcast of audio and videotapes of al-Qaida leaders. Last month, it aired excerpts from a videotape in which a voice said to be bin Laden's is heard naming the leaders of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.
    Until then, bin Laden had not been heard from since shortly after the U.S.-led bombing campaign began in Afghanistan last October.
    An interview al-Jazeera said one of its correspondents conducted in June with two top al-Qaida fugitives was aired to correspond with the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly afterward, U.S. officials announced one of the fugitives had been captured in Pakistan.
    American officials have called the network biased in its coverage of the war on terrorism, the Israeli-Arab conflict and U.S. Mideast policy. Al-Jazeera journalists say they strive to tell all sides of events from the Arab and Muslim point of view, and they have angered Arab governments as often as they have Washington.
    The satellite station, initially funded by the Qatari government, began operations in November 1996. It is editorially independent of the government, which has its own official station to broadcast its point of view.

  • Bin Laden still alive, reveals US spy satellite
    Jason Burke in Jalalabad
    Sunday October 6, 2002
    The Observer
    Osama bin Laden is alive and regularly meeting Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, according to a telephone call intercepted by American spy satellites.
    In the conversation, recorded less than a month ago, Omar and a senior aide were discussing the American-led hunt to track them down. The two men, using a mobile Thuraya satellite phone, spoke about tactics for several minutes. Omar then turned to a third person who was within a few yards of him, voice analysis has revealed. After exchanging a few words, Omar said that 'the sheikh sends his salaams [greetings]'. Senior Taliban figures habitually refer to bin Laden as 'the sheikh'.
    Voice analysis appears to corroborate the identification of bin Laden. 'It shows he was alive recently at least,' said a senior Afghan intelligence officer. 'Some people might like to think he is dead, but that's just wishful thinking.'
    The revelation comes amid growing speculation that bin Laden is dead. He has looked gaunt and unwell in videos released by al-Qaeda, and appeared unable to use his left arm. There has been no public statement from bin Laden since early this year.
    Some analysts say this lack of communication indicates that he might be dead, but others say he is biding his time. 'He does not want to be rushed into saying something reactive. He wants to make statements on his own terms,' said Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds newspaper in London.
    Other analysts feel Omar could have been bluffing, knowing he was being listened to by the Americans.
    Bin Laden's whereabouts are unknown, but it is thought he is moving between Pakistan and Afghanistan via the border between the Afghan province of Paktia and the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan. There were unconfirmed sightings of him in eastern Afghanistan in March and April. The only confirmed location for him was at Tora Bora, the cave complex south of Jalalabad, in December.

  • Highly-Contagious Newcastle Disease Found In Game Birds
    Outbreak Found In Los Angeles County - Last Seen In 1998
    10-5-2
    A ProMED-mail post
    www.promedmail.org
    ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases
    http://www.isid.org
    Date: 4 October 2002
    Source: Office International des Epizooties (OIE),
    Disease InformationOctober 4, 2002 (edited)
    http://www.oie.int/eng/info/hebdo/AIS_51.HTM#Sec1
    Emergency report: Newcastle disease in the USA
    (Date of previous reported outbreak: June 1998)
    Information reported on 3 October 2002 from Dr Peter Fernandez, associate deputy administrator, International Services, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, DC.
    Nature of diagnosis: clinical and laboratory.
    Date of initial detection of animal health incident: 26 September 2002.
    Estimated date of first infection: 19 September 2002.
    One outbreak in Los Angeles County, State of California, in the western part of the USA.
    Description of affected population: the disease was found in game fowl in backyard flock locations. There are 2 laboratory confirmed positive premises and 4 premises that have epidemiological links to the positive premises and/or clinical signs present. No commercial poultry are affected.
    The diagnosis was made by virus isolation at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories, Ames, Iowa. The causal agent is paramyxovirus type-1. The virus was found to have multiple basic amino acids at the fusion (F) protein cleavage activation site: arg. arg. glu. lys. arg* phe, a sequence compatible with that of mesogenic/velogenic pathotypes. Re-isolation of the virus from the original specimen is in progress.
    Epidemiology
    A. Source of agent / origin of infection: unknown. An evaluation of bird movements and movements of people and fomites is ongoing. B. Mode of spread: direct contact, fomites. C. Other epidemiological details: epidemiological investigations are ongoing to determine the extent of spread. Intensive surveillance is being conducted door-to-door in the affected areas. Control measures: quarantine of affected backyard premises, depopulation of affected/exposed game fowl. Epidemiological tracing is ongoing.
    ProMED-mail
    This is a potentially explosive situation because of the extremely rapid spread and easy transmissibility of the virus, high mortality in birds, the particular poultry subpopulation involved, and the time which has elapsed since the first incident. All this means hard work and good luck will be required in order to get a quick eradication as occurred in the 1998 outbreak in Southern California -- see references below.
    These birds in Southern California present a unique challenge because they are most likely fighting game cocks. Unfortunately, the outbreak appears to be located only a short distance from California's commercial layer establishments. Fighting game cocks are a population that travels a great deal and present several significant challenges. The good news is that no new flocks have been identified today -- a day after Peter Fernandez assembled his report. Since animal cruelty laws in the United States ban this activity in California and all but 3 other states, disease control officials will have more than their usual share of owner compliance issue to deal with. Another difficulty lies in the fact that fighting cocks populations present a significant epidemiologic challenge because their reason for living is to congregate and fight, which means be in close contact with other birds for an afternoon and evening and then return home if they haven't been too mutilated by the day's "sporting" activities. The congregation and dispersal, of course, will promote the spread of disease to new back yard game flocks and make the tracing of birds from the original outbreak flock much more complicated. Finally, some of these fighting cocks will be worth substantial amounts of money. Birds may travel great distances to fight other highly touted birds, increasing the potential for spread out of state. We can only hope that birds valuable enough to travel very far were valuable enough for the owners to have vaccinated against Newcastle Disease.
    I understand considerable resources are being devoted to tracing birds from the outbreak site and that the implementation of surveillance strategies is progressing fairly well. In addition to the eradication program currently under way in California, there are two important things to do now to prevent spread to new areas. First of all, commercial poultry flocks should increase their biosecurity efforts and be especially vigilant about employees' extracurricular activities. Most poultry companies require their employees to forgo any contact with other poultry including backyard flocks (their own, relatives or friends), cock fights, or any other type of contact with non commercial poultry but now is the time to really get the message across. Secondly, diagnostic laboratories, poultry veterinarians, and others involved in the industry should be particularly and acutely vigilant. Early diagnosis of spread will astronomically increase the chances of control of the disease if it moves outside its present confinement. Given that the disease may have been circulating in game cock populations for almost two weeks, any delay in the chain of control should be avoided, particularly if the disease moves into commercial populations. --- Mod.PC
    ProMED-mail makes every effort to verify the reports that are posted, but the accuracy and completeness of the information, and of any statements or opinions based thereon, are not guaranteed. The reader assumes all risks in using information posted or archived by ProMED-mail. ISID and its associated service providers shall not be held responsible for errors or omissions or held liable for any damages incurred as a result of use or reliance upon posted or archived material.
    Visit ProMED-mail's web site at http://www.promedmail.org.

  • What is Newcastle Disease?
    USDA Veterinary Services
    January 2002
    Exotic Newcastle disease is a contagious and fatal viral disease affecting all species of birds. Previously known as velogenic viscerotropic Newcastle disease (VVND), exotic Newcastle is probably one of the most infectious diseases of poultry in the world. Exotic Newcastle is so virulent that many birds die without showing any clinical signs. A death rate of almost 100 percent can occur in unvaccinated poultry flocks. Exotic Newcastle can infect and cause death even in vaccinated poultry.
    An outbreak of exotic Newcastle today would severely impact the U.S. poultry industry. In 1971, a major outbreak occurred in commercial poultry flocks in southern California. The disease threatened not only the California poultry industry but the entire U.S. poultry and egg supply. In all, 1,341 infected flocks were identified, and almost 12 million birds were destroyed. Eradication efforts cost taxpayers $56 million, severely disrupted the operations of many producers, and increased the prices of poultry and poultry products to consumers. Exotic Newcastle has not infected commercial chicken flocks in the United States since that outbreak was eradicated in 1974.
    What Are the Clinical Signs?
    Exotic Newcastle affects the respiratory, nervous, and digestive systems. The incubation period for the disease ranges from 2 to 15 days. An infected bird may exhibit the following signs:
    Respiratory: sneezing, gasping for air, nasal discharge, coughing
    Digestive: greenish, watery diarrhea
    Nervous: depression, muscular tremors, drooping wings, twisting of head and neck, circling, complete paralysis
    Partial to complete drop in egg production
    Production of thin-shelled eggs
    Swelling of the tissues around the eyes and in the neck
    Sudden death
    Increased death loss in a flock.
    How Does Exotic Newcastle Spread?
    Exotic Newcastle is spread primarily through direct contact between healthy birds and the bodily discharges of infected birds. The disease is transmitted through infected birds' droppings and secretions from the nose, mouth, and eyes. Exotic Newcastle spreads rapidly among birds kept in confinement, such as commercially raised chickens.
    High concentrations of the exotic Newcastle virus are in birds' bodily discharges. Therefore, the disease can be spread easily by mechanical means. Virus-bearing material can be picked up on shoes and clothing and carried from an infected flock to a healthy one. The disease is often spread by vaccination and debeaking crews, manure haulers, rendering-truck drivers, feed delivery personnel, poultry buyers, egg service people, and poultry farm owners and employees.
    The exotic Newcastle virus can survive for several weeks in a warm and humid environment on birds' feathers, manure, and other materials. It can survive indefinitely in frozen material. However, the virus is destroyed rapidly by dehydration and by the ultraviolet rays in sunlight.
    Smuggled pet birds, especially Amazon parrots from Latin America, pose a great risk of introducing exotic Newcastle into U.S. poultry flocks. Amazon parrots that are carriers of the disease but do not show symptoms are capable of shedding exotic Newcastle virus for more than 400 days.

  • US Investigates Listeria Outbreak Linked to 20 Deaths and 120 illnesses
    Thu Oct 3, 2002
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health and food officials said on Thursday they are investigating the source of a food-borne listeria outbreak blamed for at least 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight Northeastern U.S. states.
    US Suspects Turkey to Be a Source of Food Outbreak
    Turkey deli meat was one likely source of a listeria outbreak blamed for 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight states, U.S. government officials said on Friday.
    The Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, along with the U.S. Agriculture Department, has linked at least seven deaths and 40 illnesses to the same listeria strain. The illnesses were reported in early September.
    "Analysis of data collected to date indicate that the leading suspect food in this outbreak is sliced turkey deli meat," the agency said in a statement.
    However, the U.S. Agriculture Department has not been able to confirm this through its testing. Listeria can be found in a variety of foods including ready-to-eat meats or other foods such as seafood, soft cheese and unpasteurized milk.
    "We have yet to get a positive sample with which we can make a positive link to any specific product from a specific company," said Steve Cohen, spokesman for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
    The USDA said it has conducted more than 200 tests on lunch meats and deli products after the illnesses were reported, most of them in the Northeast -- New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut and Delaware also were affected.
    "Federal, state and local health officials are continuing to investigate to determine the brand and origin of the product involved," CDC said.
    Food contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause high fever, severe headaches and nausea. The disease is especially dangerous to pregnant women, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems from cancer or other disease.
    Health officials have advised those most at risk to avoid eating uncooked hot dogs, luncheon meats or soft cheeses as these products have been associated with listeriosis outbreaks in the past.
    About 2,500 cases of listeriosis occur each year in the United States, CDC said. Listeria can be destroyed by cooking meat to a temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
    In a separate meat contamination probe, Cargill Inc. said the U.S. Agriculture Department closed its ground beef plant in Wisconsin that was linked to an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 which has sickened dozens of people, mostly in the Midwest.
    Both cases come at a time when the USDA has been criticized by lawmakers and consumer groups for failing to police food safety.
    In the listeria outbreak, the USDA said its Food Safety and Inspection Service began "vigorous sampling" of lunch meats and deli products after illnesses were reported in early September. Most illnesses were in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, however Michigan, Maryland, Ohio, Connecticut and Delaware also were affected.
    Federal officials have not yet been able to pinpoint whether the listeria contaminated ready-to-eat meats or other foods such as seafood, soft cheeses and unpasteurized milk.
    "Working with state health officials, FSIS investigators have been probing every possible lead in an attempt to narrow the list of possible sources of contamination," FSIS Administrator Garry McKee said in a statement.
    "Multiple samples have been collected and analyzed, but as of yet, all have tested negative."
    Of the 120 listeria illnesses reported to health officials, 36 were linked through laboratory tests, said FSIS spokesman Steve Cohen. The 36 illnesses resulted in six deaths.
    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( news - web sites) said it has not yet determined the strain of listeria that caused the other 14 deaths.
    Food contaminated with listeria monocytogenes can cause high fever, severe headaches and nausea. The disease is especially dangerous to pregnant women, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems from cancer or other diseases.
    State health officials have advised those most at risk to avoid eating uncooked hot dogs, luncheon meats, or soft cheeses as these products have been associated with listeriosis outbreaks in the past.
    The USDA is responsible for regulating the safety of beef, chicken and eggs while the Food and Drug Administration ( news - web sites) has authority over most other foods.
    E.COLI OUTBREAK
    In the separate E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak, the USDA temporarily shut down a Cargill plant in Wisconsin after its ground beef sickened at least 57 people in seven states.
    Cargill's Milwaukee-based Emmpak Foods, doing business as Peck Meats, late Wednesday night sharply expanded its recall of ground beef to 2.8 million pounds.
    "USDA has shut the plant down," said Mark Klein, the company's spokesman. "We are working with USDA to determine what it will take to reopen it to their satisfaction."
    Privately owned Cargill bought Emmpak Foods in August 2001.
    Tainted Cargill ground beef was linked to illnesses in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, New York and New Jersey, USDA said. The ground beef was produced between Aug. 20 and Aug. 24 and distributed to grocery stores, hotels, restaurants and other institutions.
    The expanded recall is unlikely to turn up much of the contaminated meat, Cargill said.
    "We are expecting very little product to come back because of the production times," Klein said. "Most of this has already been consumed."
    USDA said its investigation into Emmpak included one slaughter plant and two grinding plants. Cargill said the plant that was closed produced 560,000 pounds of meat each day.
    Emmpak Foods President Justin Segel said the company stands to lose about $3 million per week in revenue with the plant closing.
    "Investigators have not found a smoking gun," Segel told reporters at a news conference in Milwaukee. "We are reevaluating our entire procedure from soup to nuts."
    E. coli O157:H7, typically acquired through contaminated food or water, causes bloody diarrhea, vomiting and cramps. In some cases, usually involving the elderly or young children, it can lead to kidney failure and death.
    Both E. coli 0157:H7 and listeria are destroyed by cooking meat to a temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
    USDA officials on Thursday briefed congressional staff members on the food outbreaks.
    Consumer groups and a handful of Democrats have criticized the USDA for lax oversight and inconsistent enforcement of food safety regulations.
    Consumer advocates said the Cargill recall was further evidence that Congress needs to give USDA the authority to issue mandatory recalls. Currently, the department can only recommend a company withdraw its products from commerce.
    Each year, about 2,500 Americans come down with listeriosis after eating foods--most often meats, raw vegetables and soft cheeses--contaminated with Listeria bacteria. While infection may only result in a transient gastrointestinal illness in healthy individuals, it can prove deadly in the very young, the very old, or those with compromised immune systems, such as people with HIV/AIDS.
    Listeria infection also poses a danger to pregnant women. The CDC report indicates that three women linked to the current outbreak have suffered miscarriage or stillbirth after becoming infected.
    CDC officials are advising that persons in high-risk groups residing in the affected states "reduce their risk of infection by not eating sliced turkey deli meats or by thoroughly heating them."
    The initial signs of listeriosis include flu-like symptoms of fever, aching muscles, nausea and/or diarrhea. If infection spreads to the nervous system more serious symptoms--such as headache, neck stiffness, confusion or convulsion--can occur.


  • What is Listeriosis (cdc.gov)
    What are the symptoms of listeriosis?
    How great is the risk for listeriosis?
    How does Listeria get into food?
    How do you get listeriosis?
    Can listeriosis be prevented?
    How can you reduce your risk for listeriosis?
    How do you know if you have listeriosis?
    What should you do if you've eaten a food recalled because of Listeria contamination?
    Can listeriosis be treated?
    What is the government doing about listeriosis?
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Listeriosis, a serious infection caused by eating food contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, has recently been recognized as an important public health problem in the United States. The disease affects primarily pregnant women, newborns, and adults with weakened immune systems. It can be avoided by following a few simple recommendations.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    What are the symptoms of listeriosis?
    A person with listeriosis has fever, muscle aches, and sometimes gastrintestinal symptoms such as nausea or diarrhea. If infection spreads to the nervous system, symptoms such as headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, or convulsions can occur.
    Infected pregnant women may experience only a mild, flu-like illness; however, infections during pregnancy can lead to premature delivery, infection of the newborn, or even stillbirth.
    How great is the risk for listeriosis?
    In the United States, an estimated 2,500 persons become seriously ill with listeriosis each year. Of these, 500 die. At increased risk are:
    Pregnant women - They are about 20 times more likely than other healthy adults to get listeriosis. About one-third of listeriosis cases happen during pregnancy.
    Newborns - Newborns rather than the pregnant women themselves suffer the serious effects of infection in pregnancy.
    Persons with weakened immune systems
    Persons with cancer, diabetes, or kidney disease
    Persons with AIDS - They are almost 300 times more likely to get listeriosis than people with normal immune systems.
    Persons who take glucocorticosteroid medications
    The elderly
    Healthy adults and children occasionally get infected with Listeria, but they rarely become seriously ill.
    How does Listeria get into food?
    Listeria monocytogenes is found in soil and water. Vegetables can become contaminated from the soil or from manure used as fertilizer.
    Animals can carry the bacterium without appearing ill and can contaminate foods of animal origin such as meats and dairy products. The bacterium has been found in a variety of raw foods, such as uncooked meats and vegetables, as well as in processed foods that become contaminated after processing, such as soft cheeses and cold cuts at the deli counter. Unpasteurized (raw) milk or foods made from unpasteurized milk may contain the bacterium.
    Listeria is killed by pasteurization, and heating procedures used to prepare ready-to-eat processed meats should be sufficient to kill the bacterium; however, unless good manufacturing practices are followed, contamination can occur after processing.
    How do you get listeriosis?
    You get listeriosis by eating food contaminated with Listeria. Babies can be born with listeriosis if their mothers eat contaminated food during pregnancy. Although healthy persons may consume contaminated foods without becoming ill, those at increased risk for infection can probably get listeriosis after eating food contaminated with even a few bacteria. Persons at risk can prevent Listeria infection by avoiding certain high-risk foods and by handling food properly.
    Can listeriosis be prevented?
    The general guidelines recommended for the prevention of listeriosis are similar to those used to help prevent other foodborne illnesses, such as salmonellosis.
    How can you reduce your risk for listeriosis?
    General recommendations:
    Thoroughly cook raw food from animal sources, such as beef, pork, or poultry.
    Wash raw vegetables thoroughly before eating.
    Keep uncooked meats separate from vegetables and from cooked foods and ready-to-eat foods.
    Avoid raw (unpasteurized) milk or foods made from raw milk.
    Wash hands, knives, and cutting boards after handling uncooked foods.
    Recommendations for persons at high risk, such as pregnant women and persons with weakened immune systems, in addition to the recommendations listed above:
    Avoid soft cheeses such as feta, Brie, Camembert, blue-veined, and Mexican-style cheese. (Hard cheesed, processed cheeses, cream cheese, cottage cheese, or yogurt need not be avoided.)
    Left-over foods or ready-to-eat foods, such as hot dogs, should be cooked until steaming hot before eating.
    Although the risk of listeriosis associated with foods from deli counters is relatively low, pregnant women and immunosupressed persons may choose to avoid these foods or thoroughly reheat cold cuts before eating.
    How do you know if you have listeriosis?
    There is no routine screening test for susceptibility to listeriosis during pregnancy, as there is for rubella and some other congenital infections. If you have symptoms such as fever or stiff neck, consult your doctor. A blood or spinal fluid test (to cultivate the bacteria) will show if you have listeriosis. During pregnancy, a blood test is the most reliable way to find out if your symptoms are due to listeriosis.
    What should you do if you've eaten a food recalled because of Listeria contamination?
    The risk of an individual person developing Listeria infection after consumption of a contaminated product is very small. If you have eaten a contaminated product and do not have any symptoms, we do not recommend that you have any tests or treatment, even if you are in a high-risk group. However, if you are in a high-risk group, have eaten the contaminated product, and within 2 months become ill with fever or signs of serious illness, you should contact your physician and inform him or her about this exposure.
    Can listeriosis be treated?
    When infection occurs during pregnancy, antibiotics given promptly to the pregnant woman can often prevent infection of the fetus or newborn.
    Babies with listeriosis receive the same antibiotics as adults, although a combination of antibiotics is often used until physicians are certain of the diagnosis. Even with prompt treatment, some infections result in death. This is particularly likely in the elderly and in persons with other serious medical problems.
     


  • Sharon's miscalculation- The Israeli leader has defied President Bush before and gotten away with it -- but not this time. Israeli withdrawal makes Bush look good to Arab world. (Salon.com)
    By Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
    Oct. 1, 2002 | For the past 19 months, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have been on a long honeymoon. Bush has endorsed Sharon's aggressive tactics in Israel's two-year war with its Palestinian neighbors. He has made no attempt to hide his dislike of "Arik's" nemesis, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose ouster he has advocated. For his part, Sharon has made close coordination with Bush the cornerstone of his foreign policy, showing considerable diplomatic and political skill.
    But then Sharon miscalculated, and his mistake proved that even Bush, who is shaping up as the most pro-Likud U.S. president ever, can be pushed too far. When Israel disturbed America's attempt to gather world support for an invasion of Iraq, the administration did not hesitate to tell it to get in line.
    The event that triggered America's rebuke was Israel's 10-day siege of Arafat's office in Ramallah, which Sharon ordered in retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed six people Sept. 19 in Tel Aviv. Under the barrels of Israeli tanks, bulldozers demolished what remained of the Palestinian Authority's government facilities, locking up Arafat and some 250 others in one semi-ruined building and allowing them modest food rations, electricity and telephone communications. Israel demanded the extradition of 18 "most wanted terrorists" residing with Arafat and refused to accept compromise proposals such as exile or a transfer to Gaza. In the end, however, nothing happened to the wanted Palestinians. Early Sunday, Sharon bowed to the American dictate and called off the siege. The military withdrew to its previous positions.
    Arafat celebrated his small victory over Sharon, flashing the V sign and holding an aggressive press conference. But it was a very small triumph: Although Arafat was allowed to leave his office to tour the ravaged compound yard, he could not go farther, and while he improved his stance with a Palestinian public that has become increasingly disenchanted with him, American officials maintained their formal boycott on contact with him. Nor did Israel lift the curfews it has imposed on most of the West Bank's cities for the past five months.
    Sharon made two miscalculations. The first was sending the army to smash the Muqata, as the Ramallah headquarters is known, in the first place. Leaving aside the P.R. problem this presented Washington in the middle of intense lobbying over Iraq, Sharon's move was seen by many in the Bush administration as smacking of outrage more than rational analysis: Although the White House loathes Arafat, it was not convinced that Arafat was responsible for or had any control over the Sept. 19 attack. The administration differs from Sharon in its assessment of and approach to the Palestinian Authority: While Sharon views it as completely corrupt and untrustworthy and would like to get rid of it -- and Arafat -- once and for all, the Americans take a slightly less harsh view, regarding the P.A. as gravely flawed but the only game in town.
    Sharon's second miscalculation came when he balked at American requests to end the siege on Arafat and calm the situation. Even when the U.S. refused to use its veto and allowed the U.N. Security Council to demand Israel's withdrawal, Sharon ignored the message -- as he did when American ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, a religious Orthodox Jew, traveled to the prime minister's ranch on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, to pass on another angry message from Washington. The siege continued even when the president himself publicly called Israeli actions "not helpful." Sharon thought, perhaps, that he could get away with intransigence, just as he did last April when Bush demanded Israel's withdrawal from Palestinian cities, then failed to do anything when Sharon refused.
    Sharon was wrong. This time around, the circumstances are entirely different. The U.S. is seeking support for its Iraqi campaign at the Security Council and throughout the Arab world. America's arguments to the international community about Saddam risked losing credibility if Washington was seen yet again as allowing Israel to flout the letter and spirit of U.N. resolutions. How could Bush demand Saddam's full compliance and ignore Sharon's defiance?
    The moment of truth came last Thursday night, when the White House lost its patience and sent Sharon a blunt message. Only then did Sharon realize the game was over. The administration threatened to make the message public and promptly leaked it to the Washington Post on Saturday.
    Sharon made a last-minute effort to save face and avoid an open break with Bush. Upon receiving the angry message, he hurriedly sent his bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, to Washington. Weisglass and ambassador Danny Ayalon met National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and read her Israel's position that the Ramallah operation was a reasonable response to a renewed wave of terrorism, which broke out after six quiet weeks. The Israeli officials tried to buy more time. But Rice made it clear that there was no room for compromise or flexibility and that Israel should leave the Muqata without delay. She told her guests that Israel's operation was not helpful to the American effort on Iraq, and that it hurt the important process of reforming the Palestinian Authority and nurturing a new, post-Arafat leadership. It only brought Arafat back to center stage, after months of decline. "We are well aware of your interests and sensitivities and expect you to understand ours," Weisglass told Rice, but she was not moved. Not this time.
    Sharon waited until Sunday morning, the beginning of Israel's working week, to call defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, foreign minister Shimon Peres and the military chiefs and give them his withdrawal order. He asked the ministers to admit bowing to American pressure ("You can't say no to your best friend"), but forbade any mention or acceptance of U.N. resolution 1435, which called Israel to withdraw its forces. Being seen as having yielded to the U.S. is one thing, to the U.N. another.
    "The major winner was Bush," an Israeli official told me afterward. "If the Muqata crisis hadn't happened, he should have created it. Sharon's mistakes helped Bush regain his credibility in the Arab world and strengthened the American position vis-à-vis the Security Council."
    The benefits for Bush were obvious. For the first time, he was able to show that he was not in Sharon's pocket even if he avoided using harsh language or showing personal dissatisfaction with the Israeli leader in public. But Sharon, too, may have benefited from the exchange: Since a regime change in Iraq is emphatically in Israel's interest, Sharon's "loss" could actually turn out, at least in certain respects, to be a victory. In any case, the close alliance between the Bush White House and the prime minister's office in Jerusalem is still intact. "The Americans told us that they are satisfied with the withdrawal decision, and the recent affair will not scar our relationship," a senior Israeli diplomat told me. The U.S. State Department instructed its diplomats in Israel to avoid any gloating or "we told you so" reactions.
    Of course, the Ramallah siege was a minor event, without long-term strategic or ideological consequences like a true territorial withdrawal or a removal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank and Gaza. Still, it could be seen as a rehearsal for the "day after Iraq." If and when Bush moves to implement his stated vision of creating a Palestinian state within three years, he might find himself once again on a collision course with Sharon -- a scenario that is Sharon's worst nightmare.
    How could have Sharon miscalculated so badly? He was well aware of the changing strategic environment. In July, Israeli military planners presented their medium-term assessment to the prime minister. They advocated that Israel refrain from escalating the war with the Palestinians until after the Iraqi war. They expected this "waiting period" to further weaken Arafat and strengthen Israel's position. Sharon accepted this view. But when terror attacks hit Israeli streets again, he followed his instinctive reaction and called for Arafat's expulsion. Defense minister Ben Eliezer and senior military and intelligence officials tried to block the idea, proposing as a compromise to put the Palestinian leader under siege. The cabinet duly approved the plan. A few ministers asked if it was going to work, but Sharon and the military reassured them. As could be expected, when the operation soured, most politicians and generals were quick to throw the blame onto Sharon. Only a handful of officials remained loyal and spoke about the "achievement" in "deterring the Palestinians."
    Politically, Sharon suffered no real damage. By ordering the troops to the Muqata and then calling them back, he proved again that he has complete control over the government. He handled all the contacts with Washington personally and cut Peres and Ben Eliezer out of the loop, using them only to rubber-stamp his decisions. The angry and frustrated foreign minister burst into a tirade against the government's policy during Sunday's Cabinet meeting. However, Peres carries no stick. A few hours later, his Labor Party decided to avoid fighting Sharon over the budget, thus gluing itself even tighter to his "national unity" coalition. As for the right-wing members of the coalition, they have given Sharon their full backing, explaining that Iraq is more important now than dealing with Arafat.
    As the confrontation with Sharon went on, American officials raised a sensitive question with their Israeli counterparts: If Israel acted so carelessly in the face of a suicide bomber, what would it do under an Iraqi missile attack? So far, Sharon has shown more responsibility on the Iraqi issue. After months of pledging to "implement our right to self-defense" in case of an Iraqi attack, he changed his tone and started to climb down the bravado ladder. Knowing that just as in the 1991 Gulf War, Washington needs to handle Saddam on its own and is opposed to Israeli intervention for political reasons, Sharon told the Jerusalem Post last Friday that an Israeli reaction would not be automatic. If there were no casualties and the Iraqis did use nonconventional weapons, Israel would not retaliate. Instead, he said he expected the Americans to do more than they did in 1991 to prevent missile launches against Israel.
    This policy could prove useful in avoiding Israeli participation in the war, while defusing domestic pressures to "do something" when attacked. In 1991, Israel was hit by 39 Iraqi Scuds but did not retaliate, bowing to American demands to sit tight and let the U.S. finish the job. In great likelihood, the same scenario would repeat itself unless a major, multi-casualty catastrophe changed the rules of the game. Alternatively, the Iraqis might not attack Israel after all, and Tel Aviv residents would not have to reach for gas masks when the American forces hit Baghdad.

  • The spy who loved me -George Temple was one of MI6's most successful and highly regarded officers. But when he became ill, he found himself out in the cold. His wife, Anthea, is so angry about his treatment that she decided to break the code of silence among secret-service spouses. Here she gives David Leigh an unprecedented glimpse into the life of a spy
    Anthea Temple
    Wednesday October 2, 2002
    The Guardian
    Anthea Temple was married to a spy. Her husband George was head of the MI6 "station" in Colombia, one of only two countries in the world where embassy staff routinely carry guns. She fetched the groceries in a heavily armoured Grand Cherokee Jeep. Before that, in London, she had to lie to friends at the school gates about where her husband was.
    But Anthea's role as an M16 wife involved more than secrecy and security restrictions. In the course of her long marriage to a senior undercover operator, she dealt with agents and informers, drove getaway cars, and once buried a cache of dollars in an East German forest. It was, she says, like belonging to a "very exclusive, exciting club".
    Her husband, George Temple - a pseudonym, at her request - was one of MI6's "most popular and experienced officers". In a private letter, the present chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, talks of Temple's "outstanding and sometimes groundbreaking operational work". He was involved in many of the most sensational intelligence coups in recent years.
    Yet late one night, last August, an exhausted Anthea was trudging the streets of Pimlico, attempting to hand-deliver a letter to Dearlove at MI6's headquarters on the Thames. She was begging for help for her husband, who had been taken ill with cancer - so ill that the family had been forced to return suddenly to London. Although she had heard that when things went wrong, MI6 left its people out in the cold, she had never believed it. Now she found herself feeling very cold - and very alone.
    It was in 1973 that Anthea was first taken to Fort Monkton, MI6's high-security training ground near Portsmouth. It was the beginning of her husband's career in espionage and she was invited, at the end of his six-month intelligence-officer entry course, for some training of her own. She knew a little about "the friends", as MI6 were referred to by the Foreign Office (FO) - her sister had been married to a diplomat.
    During the 80s, the Temples spent a grim three years in East Berlin, with him under FO cover, and her children going daily to the British army school in West Berlin. Once, Anthea found herself in a forest, trying to bury money as payment for an agent. "It was a fake crocodile handbag, stuffed with dollars. I was wearing a fuchsia-pink boiler suit and I had a special aluminium trowel, like a huge apple-corer, constructed by Tos [the technical services arm of MI6]. I was crouching down, pretending to have a pee. Then along came a couple with a little black dog! It transpired that we had been blown, and the agent was probably a double-agent."
    It was impossible to recruit agents under such heavy surveillance and the couple spent most of the tour doing little but work out "exfiltration" routes to smuggle out defectors - Anthea was the driver - and taking the children on picnics to scout out sites for dead-letter boxes. "My constant fear was that the children would come home from school and no one would be there."
    Back in London, the secrecy imposed further strains. Temple started to travel round the world, posing as a tourist or businessman, recruiting Soviet-bloc agents from diplomats and technical specialists in third countries who had been "talent-spotted" by the local MI6 station as potential informers. He kept a false passport in his drawer at home.
    His frequent disappearances were difficult to explain. "It starts at the school gate, collecting your toddlers. You have to say to your friends, 'I'm not sure where George is just at the moment.' You go home alone but you can't talk to others about it. I never told my mother. He never told his parents."
    Then George was promoted, and made head of the large, five-strong MI6 station in Bangkok. His position was "declared" to Thai intelligence (meaning that they knew his identity, being considered "friendly").
    In professional terms, the posting was a triumph. He recruited a large number of informers and sent back to London much useful intelligence in his CX bulletins (CX is the code name given to secret intelligence bulletins in MI6). "The cover gave brilliant access to so many foreign nationals, such as Indian and Chinese officials," says Anthea. "I used to give a lot of parties to provide the right atmosphere. I was referred to as Mrs N1 in the CX."
    Temple also ran operations against Saddam Hussein, who was engaging in major arms deals in the run-up to the Gulf war. The country was also, perhaps surprisingly, a focus of IRA activity: Temple recruited agents from the Irish bars in tourist resorts.
    But alongside the professional success went personal frustration. The family had to live outside the embassy compound "so that George's agents could creep in at night". Because part of MI6 routine "cover" was to have an ostensibly low FO rank, their housing was of dubious quality, and they were excluded from the more glittering embassy functions.
    Back in London, George's reward was a spell as an aide-de-camp to the head of MI6 - "arse-licker to the chief", as one of his colleagues puts it. This was the period when MI6 was going public and being put on a legal footing. Temple liaised discreetly with MPs and journalists. He also tried to dissuade retired MI6 officers from writing their memoirs.
    His trickiest assignment was to try to silence MI6's renegade, Richard Tomlinson. Temple helped negotiate a £15,000 loan and a job with the Jackie Stewart racing team, in return for a promise of silence. Tomlinson was later to change his mind, write an explosive book, and go to jail for breaching the Official Secrets Act.
    By then, the Temples had gone abroad again, this time to Kenya. Nairobi, though less important than Pretoria, was one of the few MI6 outposts left in Africa. George's job as chief of station was again "declared", and required wearisome rounds of personal meetings with President Moi. But it was at the centre of a gathering storm. When the Temples arrived, MI6 was already intercepting the phones of Bin Laden supporters on the east African coast. And they had under close surveillance Bin Laden's non-violent frontman in London, Khalid Al-Fawwaz, who had bought him a satellite phone. "We knew something was coming," says Anthea. "But we didn't know what."
    In August 1998, an enormous truck-bomb demolished the US embassy, killing 213 people. A fax boasting of the bombing arrived at a newsagent's near al-Fawwaz's London home. Its number of origin eventually led MI6, via a phoneline in Baku, to a Nairobi hotel. There they found Mohamed al-Owhali, one of the bombers, who was extradited to the US and successfully convicted there last year. It was another significant success for George.
    Throughout it all, Anthea felt very much part of the team. "They relied on wives being cooperative, willing, energetic. Of my generation, most wives were pretty deeply involved. I saw myself entirely as 'the wife of an SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] officer'. We did think of it as 'our' work. You had to dissemble and act roles the whole time."
    But then came George's last posting. A big British anti-narcotics operation had been running in Colombia since 1993. Teams of British customs drug liaison officers, backed up by SAS and SBS soldiers, had worked with MI6 to infiltrate the cocaine barons, set up smuggling runs to Europe, follow the fast boats with sophisticated tracking devices, and arrest the smugglers.
    But the Bogota post was not popular. This attempt by MI6 to find itself a quasi-police role after the end of the cold war was regarded, as one of those involved puts it, as "not quite gentleman's work". And, as Anthea says: "No one wanted to go because it was such a bloody place!"
    In Bogota, George achieved, as his official SIS obituary was to record, "groundbreaking successes against drug-trafficking under some of the most difficult security and operational conditions faced by SIS anywhere in the world". At 54, he only had a year to go before being allowed to retire. But in March 2001, he fell ill, and was diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct.
    He insisted on returning to Bogota to complete his mission after three months of treatment in London. There, he discovered, from intercepts provided by the local police and from intelligence obtained via the MI6 station in Cuba, that a team of IRA men were arriving in Colombia to train the rebel guerrillas, the Farc. One of his last acts was to give orders to his second-in-command to arrange for the IRA men to be arrested.
    Back together in London, with George now seriously ill, they were shocked, and appalled, by the lack of help they received from MI6. It turned out that the FO was now in charge of arranging any help in terms of medical or financial care. But it wasn't the kind of help they had been expecting. The Temples found themselves forced to share a single room in a hotel near the hospital where George was being treated, because the FO would not pay for a double room. She was told that his foreign allowances would be cut, and suddenly she found herself desperately short of money. When they finally got an apartment near the hospital, they were soon told that they would have to move out, because M16 had "far exceeded" its budget. No private medical treatment was available, even though they had no British GP; they were told they could not have the services of specialised Macmillan nurses or hospice care.
    "Where do you imagine we shall live?" she wrote to MI6 and the FO last July. "How do you think I shall be able to trail round estate agents in the next two weeks when George needs continuous help? This includes giving him injections three times a day, countless pills at different times, bathing him, coaxing him to eat, watching like a hawk for signs of infection."
    It was while the Temples were trying to arrange to move several miles away, to an unoccupied unfurnished house eventually offered by the army, that George's condition worsened and he died. Anthea, who once served on a secret MI6 "spouses committee", set up in the 90s to try to contain grievances, was left not just heartbroken by her husband's death, but also deeply disappointed and angry. Disappointed enough to break the code of silence of MI6 wives, in the hope that no other family would be treated in such a way again.
    She wants MI6's "amateur" personnel managers to have proper professional training. "And when family disaster happens, it's the FO with whom we're in touch. They just flounder - apply the crude rules. They don't know us. We fall between two stools."
    Whitehall officials react dismissively. Senior sources say she was treated with "remarkable generosity". The contract the FO holds with local hospitals provided medical care of a high standard, they say. "MI6 bent the rules as far as they could."
    But Anthea insists that her husband was treated "grudgingly", and unless procedures are reformed, says she could not recommend youngsters to join MI6. "When you need them, they let you down," she says. "My husband's last days were hell."


  • Citizen Annenberg- So long, you rotten bastard. Billionaire Son of Mobster, Enemy of Journalism, and Nixon Toady Exits for Hell
    (By Jack Shafer, editor of slate.com)
    Posted Wednesday, October 2, 2002, at 1:37 PM PT
    Annenberg bought and paid for his rose-colored obits
    Today's Page One obituaries for Walter H. Annenberg in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post barely scrape the festering keratosis that was his career in crime, journalism, and politics. "Media Tycoon Gave Fortunes to Others," soft-pedals the Los Angeles Times. "Walter Annenberg, Philanthropist and Publisher, Dies at 94," intones the New York Times. "Publisher, Philanthropist Walter Annenberg Dies," echoes the Post.
    I'd prefer the headline, "Billionaire Son of Mobster, Enemy of Journalism, and Nixon Toady Exits for Hell—Forced To Leave Picassos and van Goghs at Metropolitan Museum."
    The dailies concede that the bedrock upon which Walter built his fortune was cleared by a tax-evading father, Moses; that the son dodged a trip to the slammer with Dad via a plea bargain; that Walter punished his political and personal enemies with his publishing empire; and that he ingratiated himself with his soul mate, the odious Richard Nixon. But in skimming only the surface scum of his life, these obituaries neglect the fetid undercurrents and tidal filth of his complete life. The ugly arc of Annenberg's life rivals that of fellow press baron William Randolph Hearst or even his fictional stand-in, Charles Foster Kane. It's a life that proves that you can earn polite notices in death no matter how you lived if you give away a billion dollars to the right places before you croak.
    (In the time-honored tradition of obituary writing, I've plundered the archives for this Annenberg appreciation. I lean especially hard on a June 1993 piece I wrote after Annenberg bought his way onto Page One of America's top dailies by giving hundreds of millions of dollars away. One of the many luxuries of the rich is that if they go philanthropic at the right time, they can read their obituary before they die—obits that are usually more flattering than their real obits.)
    Walter Annenberg was born of a congenital criminal, a rascal who never saw a business proposition that he couldn't improve with a bit of violence. Moses "Moe" Annenberg developed these talents in 1900 in Chicago when he worked as a circulation manager for the monstrous William Randolph Hearst, back when circulation wars were fought with clubs and torches. At Hearst's behest, Moe and his gang cracked the heads of rival newsboys, burned uncooperative newsstands, and toppled competitors' delivery vans. When Marshall Field's department store canceled an ad in Hearst's Evening American, Moe's brother Max led 60 drivers and newsboys to the store, where they terrorized shoppers and employees by surrounding it and chanting, "Marshall Field's closed! Marshall Field's closed!" The store reordered its ad, reports John Cooney's The Annenbergs: The Salvaging of a Tainted Dynasty, a detailed 1982 dual biography of Walter and Moses. In Moe and Max's defense, it should be said that the competition used the same tactics to move newspapers.
    When Hearst needed circulation help with the New York Daily Mirror, Moe enlisted Lucky Luciano, the numbers and loan-sharking gangster. "I used to think of the Mirror as my paper," Luciano said. "I always thought of Annenberg as my sort of guy."
    In the early '20s, Moe purchased the Daily Racing Form and became the major owner of the General News Bureau, a race wire that provided horse race results to newspapers and bookies. With what biographer Cooney calls "methods of strong-arm tactics and bribes" to politicians and police, Moses expanded his business in city after city by ruthlessly destroying the local race-wire competition. "The hoods on his payroll might intimidate a racing publication one day, a man with wires to bookies the next," Cooney writes. Moe's boys literally made Blanie Shields an offer he couldn't refuse. When the small-time race-wire operator in Covington, Ky., declined to sell his business, they sabotaged Shields' office and told him that he would be "bumped off."
    In his drive for domination, Moe double-crossed his racketeering wire partners by going into business against them. That put him on the Capone-mob hit parade, so he moved himself and his family to Miami, protected by gangster Meyer Lansky. As the Racing Form and the wire thrived, Moe expanded his publications empire by buying the Philadelphia Inquirer, which he turned into his personal anti-New-Deal political sheet.
    Walter Annenberg, writes Cooney, was shielded from his father's illegal enterprises and connections. Although he held titles in his father's businesses, he mostly busied himself with Hollywood starlets and the playgirls of Miami and New York. The publicity created by Moe Annenberg's scummy enterprises was plain for all to see. If Walter didn't know, he would have to be stupid, which he was not. If he knew and still worked for the old man ... you make the moral call.
    Moe's bribery, blackmail, and mobstering career ended when he was indicted for tax evasion in 1939. Walter, a company VP, was indicted on charges of "aiding and abetting." Moe pleaded guilty, agreeing to pay the $9.5 million in back taxes and fines. Prosecutors offered to dismiss Walter's charges if Moe went directly to jail, which he did. Moe served two years and died 39 days after his release.
    Assuming control of his father's shattered company, Annenberg launched the phenomenally successful Seventeen magazine in the '40s and TV Guide in the '50s and acquired several radio and TV stations. Annenberg habitually turned his head to the right to obscure the disfigured ear he had been born with. His politics usually followed his ear after his second marriage, to Leonore Cohn Rosenstiel. Like his father, he used the Inquirer and his media empire as his bully pulpit, punishing enemies real and imagined. After purchasing the Philadelphia Daily News, Annenberg practically turned over local police coverage in the city to Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo, a brutalist who rose to mayor in large part thanks to Annenberg. Rizzo returned the favor by providing extraordinary protection when the Teamsters and Newspaper Guild struck the Inquirer. Annenberg also waged a smear campaign against Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp, using his two dailies, two radio stations, and three Pennsylvania TV stations. In one example, reported in today's Philadelphia Inquirer obit, an Inquirer reporter got Shapp to deny that he'd ever been in a mental hospital and then printed the denial on Page One. The media war subsided only when Shapp asked the FCC to revoke Annenberg's broadcast licenses. And in the mid-'70s, he sicced TV Guide on the liberal media culture. TV Guide may be the only publication to become more liberal after Rupert Murdoch purchased it.
    "Annenberg became an oddity in Philadelphia," Cooney writes. "His name was associated with numerous good works, and he was often the first prominent citizen anyone seeking charitable donations approached, but the whimsical use of his paper on occasion to punish those who offended him made many people uneasy." The kindest thing he ever did for Philadelphia was to sell the Inquirer to John Knight, who turned it into a real newspaper.
    President Richard Nixon rewarded Annenberg for his anti-communism and pro-Vietnam-War views by appointing him ambassador to Great Britain, where he attacked U.S. student radicals in his first speech. Ambassador Annenberg, as he thereafter preferred to be called, returned to the States and expanded both his media properties and burgeoning art collection. He also entertained the flow of human sewage that visited him at his own Xanadu, a mansion set on 250 acres (complete with its own golf course) in Palm Springs. There at "Sunnylands," he hosted the disgraced Nixon ("Life is 99 rounds," he told Dick), the detestable Frank Sinatra, and offered refuge for his political soul mate, the shah of Iran. Talk about guilt by association.
    By the late '70s, the racketeer's son launched the rehabilitation of his reputation with philanthropy. He gave $150 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1981 and went on a giving binge after selling his media properties to Murdoch in 1988 for $3.2 billion. He pledged his $1 billion collection of Cézannes, Monets, van Goghs, Gauguins, and others to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (postponing delivery, of course, until his death; meanwhile he collected tax breaks). He also donated hundreds of millions to various educational foundations and projects.
    The light from Annenberg's philanthropy will continue to burn brightly at the various Annenberg organizations: Annenberg Center for Health Sciences; Annenberg Center for Communication (University of Southern California); Annenberg School for Communication (University of Southern California); Annenberg School for Communication (University of Pennsylvania); Annenberg Foundation; Annenberg/CPB Projects; and Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
    Some may find justice in this finale: That Annenberg's billions are being spent to still the wretched wake he churned with his life and his media empire. The less charitable of us will nod, smile, and mutter that there's no rap you can't beat if you're willing to empty the purse.
    Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
     
     

  • Despite the hysterical shuffling of chairs formally known as instituting Homeland Security, the sprawling intelligence-gathering apparatus that existed pre-9/11 likely will survive the restructuring largely unscathed.
    October 14, 2002
    (thenation.com)
    Despite the hysterical shuffling of chairs formally known as instituting Homeland Security, the sprawling intelligence-gathering apparatus that existed pre-9/11 likely will survive the restructuring largely unscathed. This does not bode well for averting future attacks. With the existence of terrorist "sleeper cells" in the American heartland apparently confirmed and the color-coded alert system ratcheted up recently to the second-highest level, the need for accurate, well-analyzed information has never been higher, but confidence in the quality of intelligence work never lower. By all appearances, the spy bureaucracy, now comprising fourteen agencies and about 100,000 employees--much of which will remain intact even with a new Department of Homeland Security--practically begs for the same kind of housecleaning under discussion at the moment in other establishment pillars, from the FBI to the INS.
    In late September a joint Congressional committee was generating daily headlines as it revealed a pattern of pre-9/11 intelligence failures and as sentiment belatedly coalesced around the need for an independent commission of inquiry. But it is one thing to dance vigorously in the glare of a harsh spotlight. It is another thing entirely to do the hard, unheralded and ultimately more meaningful work of policing and directing the intelligence community over the long haul. Even in recent days, random anecdotal evidence mounted that Congressional intelligence oversight bears too many markings of a rubber-stamping politburo. Two examples: the panel's inability to refer by name to a key 9/11 planner, though his identity could be found on the front page of the New York Times, and the Administration's determination to keep Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld from even having to comment on the general quality of intelligence they receive.
    Congressional impotence was seldom clearer than early in the summer, when the White House accused the intelligence committees of leaking sensitive information. Panicky members rushed to invite the FBI to investigate and even polygraph them, raising the question: Who's investigating whom here? In the months prior to the recent dramatics, the prevailing winds were not those of reform but of fear--and less fear of terrorists than of the forces that wish to suppress information. Even most committee members known as comparatively reform-minded on other topics declined to respond to interview requests for this article.
    One who did agree was Richard Shelby, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a moderately conservative Republican from Alabama who is one of the panel's few open critics of the intelligence community. In a long chat in his suite at the Hart Office Building during the summer before the public hearings had been scheduled, Shelby discussed the challenges of dealing with a closed subject in an open society. At one point, he mentioned having just received a handwritten letter from Zacarias Moussaoui. The Moroccan-born Frenchman, who is awaiting trial in connection with the 9/11 attacks, was requesting permission to address Congress, saying he wanted to talk about an FBI cover-up. Whether Moussaoui is crazy--or crazy like a fox--what he has to say seems worth hearing, so I asked Shelby if I could get a copy of the letter. Shelby consulted an aide, and concluded that he was able to accommodate me because the document had not been classified--yet. Absent any evidence that the letter was a coded instruction to sleeper cells from a man who was already in jail on September 11, 2001, it seemed an unlikely threat to national security. But in today's climate, everything is sensitive, everything quickly gets locked away from public view.
    Apart from the intelligence agencies, only Shelby and his colleagues get to see at least some of these documents, and to ask tough questions. And Shelby himself admitted they're doing a lousy job of it. Decrying excessive "coziness" between committee members and those on whom they're supposed to ride herd, he had lamented, "Some people on the committee don't want us to have any public meetings."
    With the convening of the open hearings, these antidemocratic tendencies have been momentarily neutralized. But history provides little assurance that Congress is about to transform itself into a body determined to force substantive changes on the intelligence community. The reality is that the Hill's would-be watchdogs face crushing liabilities, from poor information to information overload, from compromised members to compromised staff, from ignorance to inefficiency, from being bamboozled by the spy agencies to being intimidated by the White House, to--worst thing of all--willful myopia.
    Since Congress first instituted oversight in the 1970s in response to egregious intelligence abuses (including a role in the violent overthrow of Chile's left-wing President Salvador Allende), vigilance has steadily declined--periodic fits of enthusiasm notwithstanding. Today there are fewer open meetings than a decade ago, and fewer independent witnesses are brought in to testify. The committees, with their aura of power and exclusivity, have become so popular that senators and representatives fight for appointments. But with seniority or pull rather than skill determining membership, the committees are full of people who either don't inspire confidence or who have reasons to fear the investigative capabilities of the agencies they're supposed to scrutinize. Thus, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Ron Wyden, who couldn't locate Bosnia on a globe during his first Senate race in 1996--after serving in the House for fifteen years--or name Canada's leader. And lame duck Gary Condit, with Chandra Levy's disappearance hanging over his head, still sits on the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.
    Even the savviest members need years before they've mastered the skills to challenge reticent intelligence officials. "First you've got to know what to ask for," says Shelby, "and second, to ask the right thing at the right time to the right person." Eight-year committee term limits, which sounded good when originally proposed as a way of preventing members from building power bases, have ended up weakening the effectiveness and independence of the committees. "About the time you are really into these programs, you're off the committee," says Shelby, who is leaving soon, at the peak of his knowledge and willingness to criticize the agencies.
    "The intelligence officers' testimony is highly sophisticated," notes a former panel chairman. "You have to be alert and suspicious to penetrate. They snow you with fancy jargon. They jack you around. It is not unlike pre-emption with any department, except that these guys are very good at it." They have also already checked with the White House to be certain that nothing they say will cause political headaches. "Intelligence should drive policy," notes Lee Hamilton, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman, "but often it is the other way around. Policy drives intelligence." Instead of independent analysis, oversight committees get information that Hamilton says has been "distilled" for Congressional consumption. Agency officials are also good at dangling carrots before committee members, he says. "They are awful nice to them, invite them to the CIA, give them a nice dinner, court them, seduce them." Meanwhile, spy agency personnel view committee members as political animals eager to drag their analysts into a debate, hoping to use "pure" intelligence to beat up or to support the White House. As one intelligence officer told the author of a 1997 report on the relationship between the agencies and the lawmakers, "It's bad enough that policy-makers get this stuff and run with it. Can you imagine what would happen if we gave it to Congress?"
    Very likely, nothing at all. The same 1997 report concluded that most intelligence provided to lawmakers is read neither by staff nor by members, who apparently have more important demands on their time. One Congressional staff member told the author of the report, "I cannot, in good conscience, recommend to my Member that it is worth his time to come in here and read this stuff. Frankly, it is not even worth my time."
    It turns out that the whole vast enterprise of intelligence oversight is balanced on the head of a pin. According to a 1992 report from a senior Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, the multibillion-dollar budget of the nation's intelligence agencies is reviewed by a Hill staff of about a dozen people. "They are dependent on the agencies for information and do not have the means for independent confirmation of that information," says Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy.
    Applying the principle of "it takes one to know one," members of oversight committees turn almost exclusively to insiders to fill staff posts. It's such a revolving door that there's almost no incentive for anyone to risk alienating anyone. When I tried to track the whereabouts of a former staff director whom one Congressman recalled as being of refreshingly independent spirit, I found him working at the CIA (he quickly hung up on me). Just how convoluted does this game of musical chairs get? The House intelligence panel is chaired by Porter Goss, a former CIA officer, who is charged with "overseeing" a CIA director, George Tenet, who is himself a former Senate Intelligence Committee staff director. While it might be advisable to have an independent-minded committee member who knows the CIA inside and out, Goss is an unrelenting cheerleader. One insider neatly sums it up: "Porter Goss goes beyond support to protection."
    Rob Simmons is the intelligence community's trifecta. A former CIA officer and a former staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, he now represents Connecticut's second district in Congress. Though not yet on any of the intelligence committees, the first-termer has been permitted by Goss to read classified materials and obtain briefings. Some who have testified say they're less worried that what they say will be leaked to the public than that it will get back to the agencies themselves, which are known for their zealousness in tracking down whistleblowers.
    Even party labels mean next to nothing. Two of the more comparatively tough-minded members, Senator Shelby and Representative Saxby Chambliss, are from the GOP, while Democrats Bob Graham and Representative Jane Harman are considered stalwarts for the status quo. When the Democrats took back the Senate in May 2001, many in the CIA could barely conceal their glee at the prospect of Floridian Graham as committee chairman--a choice they found infinitely preferable to the more critical Shelby. Graham sometimes issues tough statements, but he is considered totally "on board." His intriguing past includes the controversial sale of his home, through a middleman, to Carlos Cardoen, a Chilean arms dealer who exported cluster-bomb technology to Iraq during its war with Iran (supposedly with an official US OK). Cardoen, who was accused of using real estate to launder money, raised funds for Graham's first Senate race. Graham was also close to David Paul, who went to jail for his role in the failure of an S&L with links to the intelligence-connected and now-defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Graham gets along famously with Republican Goss. Said a well-respected former chairman about the duo, "I find them inoffensive at a time when they should be aggressive."
    Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis, says that the chairmanship usually goes to someone who has been a big supporter of the intelligence community. "When they are not, the community leaks adverse information," he says. "People with presidential ambitions won't fuck with the intelligence community--especially if there is weird stuff in their backgrounds."
    When secrecy comes up against accountability, the former almost always wins. Yet the fear of harmful leaks has little basis in fact. As a CIA consultant noted in a 1997 report, "Apart from a handful of widely reported and somewhat dated examples, no intelligence agency personnel interviewed for this study could point to instances of compromise by Members or their staffs." In fact, even the now-famous memo by FBI Minneapolis bureau agent Coleen Rowley about deficiencies at the bureau has never been leaked in its entirety.
    The June "leak" regarding the National Security Agency's Arabic intercept the day before September 11 (in which someone declared "the match begins tomorrow" and "tomorrow is zero hour") gave the Administration an excuse to rough up the committees. But Loch Johnson, a respected former intelligence committee staffer, says bluntly, "Chances are, the leak came from the executive branch anyway. And if not, the Congress can read the riot act to members and staff, and they will almost always shape up." As in fact they did, scrambling to demand an inquiry into themselves. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, the liberal minority whip and ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, declared, "It is appropriate that we ask for this investigation and let the chips fall where they may." Several committee members balked when the probers suggested lie-detector tests all around (Shelby said he wouldn't comply, and Pelosi objected as well), but others, including Republican Senator Jon Kyl, indicated an enthusiasm for getting hooked up to a polygraph. According to the Associated Press, the offices of thirteen of seventeen committee members confirmed that they were turning over telephone logs, memos, visitor sign-in sheets and other documents--and not a single member indicated he or she would resist. In the panic and rush to establish bona fides, no one even dared to suggest that the public might be better off knowing about such matters.
    John McCain underlined this when he recently stormed out of a so-called top-secret briefing, complaining that senators were learning less than they might from reading the paper. Although the committees looking into 9/11 and more generalized intelligence failings typically meet in closed session in order to protect "sources and methods," former House committee chairman Dan Glickman remembers, "They didn't tell us anything about that anyway." Glickman recalls the constant frustration of facing intelligence personnel who refused to declassify, or even talk about, information that was already out in the press. Their refusal means that Congress members are checkmated from mentioning such matters in public. It's even worse on the rare occasion when members have some worthwhile knowledge as a result of their briefings. "Most excruciating for me," recalls Lee Hamilton, "was when the President would say something at a news conference and he was flat wrong. On the basis of available intelligence, you know information that makes it wrong, but you can't say anything about it." Shelby left the impression that little has changed in this regard. Even more fundamental, Congress members have almost no way to assess the quality of raw intelligence or how it is analyzed.
    Institutional cocooning is best illustrated by the continued classification not only of line items in the intelligence budget but even of the single figure that represents total intelligence spending. Periodic efforts by committee members to eliminate this ridiculous tiptoeing have largely gone silent since 9/11. The 1997 and 1998 budget totals were declassified only after the Federation of American Scientists sued for the information. Another current suit demands the release of the 2002 budget (widely believed to exceed $30 billion) and, incredibly, the 1947 and 1948 budgets, which the CIA still deems too sensitive to make public. One might well conclude that this attitude is less about protecting legitimate secrets than hiding the faults of the system itself. "There is probably a lot of classified information that might be embarrassing to people but not undermine the Republic," says Shelby.
    Committee members routinely complain that agency personnel try to keep them in the dark on the high-tech equipment that consumes so much of the spying budget. Where such nondisclosure lurks, can pork be far behind? Recruiting Farsi or Arabic speakers may result in better intelligence for a relatively small outlay, but it's the hugely expensive technology contracts (and the jobs they provide) that allow Congress members to reward contributors and constituents, often without an accurate sense of what largesse they are dispensing. It's further downhill from there. "Would-be critics do not even know what is at issue," laments Aftergood. And, of course, there's that old revolving door: Typical is former Senate committee staff director Taylor Lawrence, who went over to defense contractor Northrop Grumman.
    The oversight process certainly has its "moments" (one of which is right now), but its overall performance seems designed to protect a dinosaur. Times have changed, the world has changed, but we don't really know what--except for buying increasingly fancy hardware--the spy agencies have done to change their strategies and tactics since the cold war. As the long-delayed "open" hearings unfold, the confluence of events and the public mood may have finally created a rare window for real reform. Even Shelby agrees. "We think it will take public pressure to modernize these agencies," he says. Fair enough. But the pressure will have to start with someone who knows something, such as committee members themselves. What if one or two of them decide to go public with a more detailed critique of the current system? What if they declare openly that "sources and methods" is a red herring, and that it's time for the public to be told some of the hard truths about the intelligence community's quotidian operations?
    They might start by challenging the idea that government works best by keeping "sensitive" information secret. There is evidence that much successful investigative work and pre-emptive action depends on a collaboration with the public. Given what we now know about tips and leads that were ignored by the bureaucracy before 9/11, it can be argued that bringing more openness to the process would improve accountability and increase public safety. Opening up the system, within prudent limits, will require not just more "open" hearings but changes in the intelligence community to insure that criticisms and suggestions are heard and, where appropriate, acted on. The oversight committees can take steps to put together well-informed and more vigorous staffs, whose mission includes not just asking agency officials better questions but cultivating alternative sources of information. Where can the committees find such staffers? Some knowledgeable insiders suggest that the best place to look might be among disaffected former intelligence officers who got into trouble for speaking out or who retired in disgust.
    Right now, we need some big, concrete moves. For example, if homeland security is going to be "centralized," then perhaps so should the intelligence oversight and budgeting process, which is now shared among committees, including Armed Services and Judiciary as well as Intelligence. But the most important first step is to insure that the impending independent commission on 9/11 has the clout and know-how to dig deep and effect change. As important, after it looks into 9/11, it should be converted into a non-Congressional variant of the original Church committee of the 1970s, which created oversight. It needs a firm mandate to reassess the entire intelligence mission and infrastructure, and the ways in which a democratic society can have a say over its spies. Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand, and I can move the Earth." Moving the intelligence community toward greater efficacy and accountability will take the concerted efforts of tough people who combine law enforcement and intelligence experience with a willingness to seek answers in the face of opposition from some of the most formidable powers in and out of government.

  • Oil Tanker Burns Off Yemen; Terror Attack Feared-Crew saw a high-speed vessel approaching, then an explosion followed with fire.
    (Reuters)
    Oct. 7 2002
    The French-flagged supertanker Limburg burned in the Gulf of Aden early on Monday as Yemeni and French experts prepared to investigate an explosion the owners fear was caused by a terror attack.
    The Yemeni government has ruled out an attack similar to the October 2000 suicide assault on the U.S. destroyer USS Cole in Aden port, saying a fire aboard the Limburg caused the blast.
    But a director of the ship's owners, Euronav SA, said he thought terrorists using a boat could have been responsible for Sunday's blast as the vessel prepared to take on a pilot and dock at Mina al-Dabah, near Mukalla in Yemen.
    Yemeni firefighters with foreign help were still trying to put out the raging flames and clean up a massive oil spill fast approaching Mukalla.
    Film of the tanker on Sunday showed the bright blaze of a fire in the right side almost concealed by thick black smoke pouring away.
    Oil industry sources said the 299,000 deadweight ton tanker was carrying 397,000 barrels of crude oil and had been approaching Mina al-Dabah to load more oil when a hole was blown in the Limburg's side.
    All but one of the eight French and 17 Bulgarian crewmembers were accounted for and Yemeni officials said at least 17 crewmembers were in hospital. The ship's owners, Euronov SA, said the missing man was a Bulgarian.
    French President Jacques Chiran announced on Sunday that French investigators would go to Yemen to join local experts in examining the tanker. A Yemeni official said the team was expected to be in the Arab state on Monday.
    MEETING A PORT PILOT
    Euronov, a subsidiary of Belgian shipping group Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB), said the blast occurred while the Limburg was meeting a pilot vessel to bring it into the port.
    ''In my opinion, this was a terrorist attack,'' Euronav director Jacques Moizan said on Sunday. ''The crew saw a high-speed vessel approaching on the starboard side...an explosion followed with fire.''
    Yemeni Transport and Marine Affairs Minister Saeed Yafai said one of the ship's tanks exploded, igniting the fire. A Yemeni official quoted the tanker's captain as saying a small fire on board had set off the explosion.
    Captain Peter Raes, managing director of the management companies for CMB, doubted whether the explosion occurred inside the ship. He said Limburg's captain told him an eye witness had seen a small fishing boat approach and collide with the tanker.
    Reports of a boat approaching the tanker revived memories of the Cole attack, which was rammed by suicide bombers in a boat packed with explosives. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors.
    Washington blames the Cole attack on al-Qaida, led by Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, its chief suspect in the hijacked airliner attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 last year.
    Last month, the U.S. navy warned of possible attacks on oil tankers in Gulf waters by al- Qaida.
    Oil industry sources said the Limburg had been chartered by the Malaysian state oil company Petronas.
    A Gulf shipping executive said the tanker disaster could upset the crude tanker market and expected a rise in insurance rates.
    Yemen, trying to shake off a name as a haven for Islamic militants, has arrested more than 100 suspected members of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups since the Sept. 11 attacks.
    The Arab state is bin Laden's ancestral home, and many Yemenis have been arrested abroad as suspected al-Qaida members.

  • REPOST:Sea lanes, oil rigs a 'terror target': Imagine a huge oil tanker hijacked in the busy Malacca Strait and turned into a floating bomb aimed at wealthy Singapore or major ports in Indonesia or Malaysia.(Reuters)

  • Cold War ordeal haunts North Korean kidnap victims
    Sunday October 6, 2002
    The Observer
    It was the most romantic night of the Japanese calendar, the Tanabata lovers' festival of 7 July. The year was 1978, and couples the length and breadth of the country went stargazing.
    In Kobama, a coastal town, Yasushi Chimura, a 23-year-old apprentice carpenter, began the evening in high spirits. By midnight he and his girlfriend were being trussed, bagged and bundled off to North Korea by agents on one of the Cold War's most outlandish spy missions.
    These details emerged yesterday as authorities in Tokyo revealed more results of their probe into the abductions of 13 Japanese nationals during the 1970s and 80s. Their fact-finding mission to Pyongyang followed last month's remarkable admission by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il that his country's special forces had stolen their neighbour's citizens to use their identities and make them teach the Japanese language to spies.
    Of the 13 who went missing, only five are still alive. According to the North Korean government, most of the rest died in a remarkably unlucky series of swimming tragedies, car crashes and gas leaks.
    Among the families of the victims, however, suspicions are high that the abductees were murdered to cover up North Korea's crime.
    The five survivors are still in the North, but they have been able to tell the Japanese investigation team of their abductions, and none in more detail than Chimura, who has revealed for the first time how he ended up in the most isolated nation on earth.
    On 7 July, 1978, Chimura and his girlfriend Fukie Hamamoto, a 23-year-old boutique employee, went to a restaurant on the coast to celebrate their recent engagement. It was a beautiful clear night - perfect for the stargazing that is customary during the Tanabata lovers festival - so the couple decided to stop off at a nearby park. They sat together on a bench until the park was empty, then Chimura realised he had forgotten his cigarettes and took the step that was to change both of their lives forever.
    On his way back to the car he met four burly men who gagged him, pushed him to the floor, bound his hands behind his back and then stuffed him inside a sack. He was carried off to the beach and then bundled onto a rubber dinghy. After being paddled a few hundred yards out to sea, he was transferred to a small motorboat that took him to a high-speed spy-ship disguised as a trawler.
    When Chimura asked his captors about his girlfriend, he was told that Hamamoto was still in Japan. She had, in fact, also been abducted, but the couple was not to be reunited for another 16 months. They married and now live with their children in Pyongyang under the Korean names O Son-sam and Lee Yon-ok.
    During a meeting with Japanese officials in a Pyongyang hotel last week, the couple, wearing the Kim Jong-il badges that are a mark of devotion to the regime, recorded a video message for the families they had not seen for more than two decades. 'Dad, mum, I want to see you,' said Chimura, not knowing that his mother died six months ago. They told the Japanese delegation that they had no wish to return home.
    The Japanese government says it will press for the return of the five even if it goes against their stated wishes.

  • Newsweek: 'This Campaign Will Be One of Life or Death for This Regime, and We Must Use Everything We Have,' Hussein Allegedly Told Military Commanders; -- Instructs Them to Deploy Chemical Weapons if Communications with Baghdad are Cut and Ground Attack Begins
    Sunday, October 06, 2002 11:54 AM EST

  • Democrats accuse Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, of manipulating the war on terror to Republicans' political advantage, get ready for the next "Bush October Surprise".
    (TIMEMAG)
    Sunday, Sep. 29, 2002
    Karl Rove spent last week where he usually does, out of the limelight. But that didn't stop Democrats from seeing Rove everywhere, his invisible hand guiding all that the White House has done to prepare the country for war. For months Democrats have suspected that Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, was manipulating the war on terror to Republicans' political advantage. In August, when Democratic operative Jim Jordan was asked how war might affect the November elections, he replied caustically, "You mean when General Rove calls in the air strikes in October?" And when majority leader Tom Daschle erupted on the Senate floor last week, accusing the Bush White House of politicizing the national-security debate, he fingered Rove as a principal culprit.
    Over dinner in a Washington steak house, Rove laughed off suggestions that he had manufactured the Iraq debate to divert attention from the sagging economy. "It's ridiculous!" he told TIME. "That's not me, and you know it." But that's the thing about Rove; few people know exactly where or whether the perception of his clout diverges from reality.
    There is no doubt that Rove ranks among the most influential staff members ever to advise a President. He is so peripatetic, his political and policy interests so catholic, that it's tempting for Democrats and Republicans alike to assume there are no limits to Rove's power—even if there are.
    It doesn't help that Rove has the habit of fueling speculation that the White House is wagging the dog. In January he suggested that the war on terror created a political advantage because Americans "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." In June a misplaced diskette containing one of Rove's private PowerPoint presentations included advice to candidates to "focus on the war" in their fall campaigns. When friends ask whether Bush really plans to invade Iraq, Rove has been known to reply, "Let me put it this way: If you want to see Baghdad, you'd better visit soon."
    But the image of General Rove drawing up war plans exists mostly in the imagination of Democrats who fear and loathe the man. Insiders swear that Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell wouldn't stand for interference from a political operative. Superhawks Cheney and Rumsfeld didn't need Rove to tell them to target Saddam, and Powell has warned the White House that he doesn't expect to receive, and won't accept, phone calls from Rove.
    Then there's the President, who likes to keep his exuberant aide in check by tartly reminding him who's boss. Says Ed Gillespie, a G.O.P. strategist who worked with Rove on the Bush campaign: "If Karl said we should invade Iraq to help us in the November elections, he would have found himself sitting on his ass on Pennsylvania Avenue because the President would have thrown him out of the Oval Office."
    Still, Rove knows an opportunity when he sees one. In private, Republicans concede that Bush's focus on Iraq has vastly improved their chances in November and bless Rove for his efforts. More than a few G.O.P. candidates, taking their cue from Bush's political guru, are beating the war drums in their speeches and insinuating that their Democratic opponents are soft on defense. But others fear this kind of talk has gone too far and could backfire. "There are some high-level people in the White House, Karl Rove being the main driver, who are using this for politics," says a G.O.P. Senator, whose message to his colleagues is: "Don't be baited. Don't let Rove hook you."
    Though Rove insists he doesn't play a foreign policy role, he fought an internal battle last spring with Bush's economic and foreign policy advisers over steel tariffs. Rove was for imposing the duties—favored by steel companies and unions in Mid-western swing states—and he won. It was Rove who in July warned Republican lawmakers who wanted to lift the trade embargo on Cuba that the White House would never go along.
    Bush's position was based on policy, not politics, Rove promised, but the Congressmen didn't buy it. The Cuban-American lobby is key to Bush's hope of winning Florida in 2004, not to mention his brother's tough re-election bid in November to be the state's Governor. Says anti-embargo Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona: "Everyone recognizes there is a political element to this."
    And to almost everything else Rove is involved in. Rove has already drawn up plans for the 2004 re-election campaign, White House sources tell TIME. Ken Mehlman, his deputy, will leave the White House to be the official campaign manager. But Rove will run things from inside, following the example of James Baker, who managed Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election effort as White House chief of staff. Like Baker, says a senior White House official, Rove wants to be "as much about policy as politics."

  • Israel ends Ramallah siege on US orders
    (SydneyMorningHerald)
    September 30 2002
    Israel yesterday bowed to United States pressure to end its 10-day siege of the West Bank compound of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and began withdrawing tanks and troops.
    But the Israelis, who have destroyed all but one building in the Ramallah compound, say they will only pull back a short distance from the perimeter and maintain control of access to the building to ensure that wanted Palestinian suspects do not
    escape.
    The decision to lift the siege was taken at a meeting yesterday between the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, senior cabinet ministers and security officials after President George Bush sent a message demanding that the blockade end.
    Witnesses reported seeing tanks leaving the compound yesterday. "[They] are stationed outside it, and some of the barbed wire has been removed," a Reuters reporter, Wafa Amr, said.
    At least two tanks, jeeps and armoured troop carriers left, and loudspeakers were removed from rooftops, she said.
    The pull back, which stopped short of the total withdrawal demanded in a UN Security Council resolution last week, was denounced by the Palestinians. One senior official called it a farce.
    Mr Arafat's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeinah, said Israel should pull back its troops in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to pre-September 2000 positions.
    The siege began 11 days ago after two Palestinian suicide bombings in which seven people died. Mr Arafat and about 200 aides and officials spent the siege in the only building left standing.
    Israel is demanding the surrender of about 20 alleged Palestinian militants it claims are still in Mr Arafat's offices.
    The cabinet decided that wanted suspects leaving the compound would be arrested, but all those not on the Israeli Army's list would be allowed to go free.
    The Defence Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said it was likely that the wanted Palestinians would be sent into exile.
    US officials earlier told Mr Sharon that they expected a speedy resolution of the siege. Israeli newspapers yesterday quoted the White House as saying the situation in Ramallah was not helping US efforts to galvanise support for the campaign against Iraq.
    The US National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told the head of Mr Sharon's bureau, Dov Weisglass, who was dispatched to Washington at the weekend in a effort to reconcile differences, that Israel should resolve the siege immediately and that Washington would not mediate an end to the stand-off.
    Other US officials said Mr Sharon had received a message from Mr Bush demanding swift compliance with the UN Security Council resolution calling
    for an end to the military
    offensive against Mr Arafat's headquarters.
    The officials said that compliance with the resolution would give the US a boost in recruiting allies for any possible action against Iraq's President Saddam Hussein.

  • Bush Says Saddam 'Tried To Kill My Dad'
    9-27-2
    (AFP) -- Saying "this is the guy who tried to kill my dad," President George W. Bush embraced disarming and ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a "uniquely American issue."
    "Other countries of course, bear the same risk. But there's no doubt his hatred is mainly directed at us," Bush said at a political fundraiser here Friday. "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad."
    As Bush's father, former president George Bush, traveled to Kuwait in April 1993, officials there disrupted a car-bomb plot they said they traced back to Saddam. The plot was aimed at Kuwait's emir and the former president, officials said.
    Then-US president Bill Clinton cited the plot as justification for a June 1993 US missile attack on Baghdad's intelligence headquarters.
    Bush had also referred to that US charge in his September 12 address to the UN General Assembly, but had deliberately referred only to "a former American president." Aides said Bush was taking pains to avoid personalizing the issue.
    In his speech here, the US leader again said Washington would act alone if the the world body failed to take strong action to strip Saddam of any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
    "If the United Nations won't act, if he doesn't disarm, the United States will lead a coalition to make sure he does," the president said here. "It's an American issue, a uniquely American issue."
    Bush, who has struggled to rally US allies in Europe as well as Russia behind his hard-line stance on Iraq, said the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes had made clear Saddam poses a special threat to the United States.
    "I say uniquely American issue because I truly believe that now that the war has changed, now that we are a battlefield this man poses a much greater threat that anybody could possibly imagine," he said.
    The president frequently says he worries the Iraqi leader will team up with terrorists and equip them with weapons of mass destruction that could then be used to attack the United States or its interests abroad.
    Earlier, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States has solid information about top-level contacts between al-Qaeda militants and Iraq going back a decade, including possible chemical weapons training.
    Links between the terrorist group that carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraqi regime Bush wants to bring down have intensified since 1998, Rumsfeld said.
    "We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," he said.
    "We have what we believe to be credible information that Iraq and al-Qaeda have discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq and reciprocal non-aggression discussions."


  • Turkish Police Seize Weapons-Grade Uranium
    September 28, 2002
    ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish paramilitary police have seized more than 33 pounds of weapons-grade uranium and detained two men accused of smuggling the material, the state-run Anatolian news agency said on Saturday.
    Officers in the southern province of Sanliurfa, which borders Syria and is about 155 miles from the Iraqi border, were acting on a tip-off when they stopped a taxi cab and discovered the uranium in a lead container hidden beneath the vehicle's seat, the agency said.
    The incident happens at a time of mounting speculation the United States could launch a military attack on neighboring Iraq for its alleged program of weapons of mass destruction.
    U.S. President George Bush has accused Baghdad of clandestine efforts to develop a nuclear bomb as his administration works to build international support for an operation to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
     Officials at Ankara's Atomic Energy Institute would not confirm they had been notified about the material, which Anatolia had reported.
    "Our investigation on whether the uranium was destined for a neighboring country is continuing," a Sanliurfa police official was quoted as saying by Anatolian.
    Police officials in Sanliurfa and Ankara declined to comment on the case.
    Authorities believe the uranium came from an east European country and has a value of about $5 million, Anatolian said.
    It was not immediately clear when the operation was carried out. Anatolian only gave the first names of the suspects, which appeared to be Turkish.
    Smugglers use Turkey's porous eastern border to import drugs, and hundreds of thousands of migrants each year illegally cross the rugged frontier on their way to more affluent European Union nations.
    Police in Istanbul seized more than 2.2 pounds of weapons-grade uranium last November that had been smuggled into Turkey from an east European nation. The smugglers were detained after attempting to sell the material to undercover police
    officers.

     
     

  • UPDATE:Refined uranium found in Turkey weighs grams, not kilograms
    30/09/2002
    (By Yossi Melman, Ha'aretz)
    The refined uranium caught by Turkish police Saturday weighed far less than originally thought, an official source in southwestern Turkey said Sunday.
    It was originally believed that the Turkish paramilitary police had seized over 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium in the operation that also resulted in the detention of two men accused of smuggling the substance. The actual weight of the uranium turned out to be hundreds of grams, a fraction of the initial estimate.
    The uranium is to be sent for tests to the local Atomic Energy Agency. The two suspects were brought before a judge Saturday night charged with the illegal sale of the material.
    Officers in the southern province of Sanliurfa, bordering Syria and 250 km from the Iraqi border, were acting on a tip-off when they stopped a taxi cab and discovered the uranium in a lead container hidden beneath the vehicle's seat, the Anatolian news agency said Saturday.
    The incident came at a time of mounting speculation the U.S. could attack neighboring Iraq for its alleged program of weapons of mass destruction.
    Officials at Ankara's Atomic Energy Institute would not confirm they had been notified about the material. "Our investigation on whether the uranium was destined for a neighboring country is continuing," a Sanliurfa police official was quoted as saying by Anatolian.
    Authorities believe the uranium came from an east European country and has a value of about $5 million, Anatolian said. It was not immediately clear when the operation was carried out. Anatolian only gave the first names of the suspects, which appeared to be Turkish.
    Smugglers use Turkey's porous eastern border to import drugs, and hundreds of thousands of migrants each year illegally cross the rugged frontier on their way to more affluent European Union nations.
    Police in Istanbul seized more than one kg of weapons-grade uranium last November that had been smuggled into Turkey from an east European state. The smugglers were detained after attempting to sell the material to undercover police officers.
     


  • Sensation: Chernobyl Uranium On Sale!
    2002-09-27
    (Pravda.com)
    The court of Minsk, the Belarus capital, started a sensational case, which is at the same time extremely horrifying: several people charged with selling radioactive uranium rods, which highly likely came from the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
    The newspaper Sovetskaya Belorussiya (Soviet Belarus) reported yesterday that the investigation department of the National Security Committee (KGB) for Minsk and the Minsk region investigated crimes committed by an international criminal group. The investigation revealed that a group of criminals attempted to sell about 1.5 kilograms of uranium dioxide 235 and 238 in Belarus at the beginning of the year. Numerous tests on the uranium dioxide failed to determine its origin, because the identification numbers had been removed from the uranium rods. However, the invesitgation revealed that the radioactive metal originates from Ukraine, the Chernobyl nuclear plant, to be precise.
    There are five people charged with this dangerous crime: one Ukrainian, Veselovsky, and four Belorussians, Kurdesov, Bankalyuk, Volchenko, and Gurinovich. It is because of the involvement of the Ukrainian, Veselovsky, that the uranium is said to originate from the Chernobyl nuclear plant. The investigation discovered that Veselovsky came to Chernobyl in 1987 and was appointed the chief foreman in the reactor shop where radioactive elements were processed. Before the appointment, he worked at a nuclear power plant in Russia. Therefore, it is evidently he who had access to the uranium. In addtion, zirconium tubes with uranium dioxide, similar to that brought to Belarus in 2002, was stolen from the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1993. A criminal investigation was opened, but no results were achieved. The investigation failed to determine who was involved in the theft. It is astonishing that the same Veselovsky was a key witness in that case.
    Th Ukrainian origin of the uranium is also confirmed by the fact that the dangerous substance was brought to Belarus in a train Chernigov (Ukraine)– Iolcha (Belarus) through the railway checkpoint of Novaya Iolcha, where border security is weak. In other words, there is much evidence of the Ukrainian origin of the uranium, and it is highly likely that Veselovsky is connected with the theft in 1993. It is quite natural that the man decided to wait for some time for the scandalous theft to be forgotten, and then he decided to sell the stolen uranium. Veselovsky denies the charges and says it was Kurdesov who obtained the uranium. The latter lays the blame on Veselovsky and says it was he who had stolen the tubes. The investigation still failed to unravel the closed circle.
    The Belarus Internet site, www.sb.by, reported details of the unique case. According to the conclusion of the investigation, Kurdesov lived in Ukraine for many years and then moved to Mogilev (Belarus). At the end of 2001, he told an acquaintance of his, a supplier at the Minsk bearing plant, Bankalyuk, that he was looking for a client to sell a batch of uranium. Bankalyuk agreed to help him, and soon established contact with Gurinovich, who in his turn found Volchenko. In addition, a criminal case was initiated against Gurinovich in Belarus in January 2002 for an attempt to sell precious stones.
    The KGB learnt about some people wishing to sell uranium at the end of 2001. The committee decided to place its officer into the criminal group as a potential client. However, Volchenko and Co. checked the man and his contacts several times before they agreed to have dealings with him. The KGB officer performed his role wonderfully: he asked the criminals to sell him only one rod at first to examine the quality of the uranium.
    Kurdesov brought a piece of uranium tube to Minsk on December 28, 2001 and delivered it to Bankalyuk. The latter handed the rod over to Gurinovich, who in his turn contacted Volchenko and arranged a meeting. It was Volchenko who was the last link in the criminal chain and who met with the “client." The KGB paid 10,000 USD for the purchase, but it was worth it. An test on the rod determined that the criminals actually offered uranium dioxide 235 and 238 for sale. It was decided to conclude the operation and seize the whole batch.
    A special operation was held which resulted in all members of the criminal group being arrested; 5 zirconium tubes with uranium dioxide 290-300 mm long, one tube 50 mm long, and the 10,000 USD paid for the firse purchase were found during the operation.
    It may be incorrect to label the people who participaged in this crime an organized criminal group, as each of them was just a link in a chain of people pursuing their own objectives. For instance, Kurdesov and Veselovsky offered the uranium tubes for 250,000 USD. At the same time, Volchenko planned to sell the same goods for approximately 800,000 USD. The criminals didn't realized what a high price the innocent population would have to pay if the dangerous transaction wasn’t prevented. It is not clear yet to what extent the sentence passed will affect the republic that has suffered so much from the Chernobyl tragedy.

  • China’s Military Planners Took Credit for 9/11
    (NEWSMAX)
    Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2002
    Soon after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, two high-ranking Chinese military planners took credit for the 9/11 attacks – and were even hailed as national heroes in China.
    In fact, three years before 9/11, the Chinese colonels had proposed the attacks and cited Osama bin Laden by name in their book "Unrestricted Warfare.” (Click Here for more info on book.)
    The authors of "Unrestricted Warfare” are Senior Cols. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, and in 1999 they wrote that an attack by bin Laden on the World Trade Center would be just the type of "unrestricted warfare” that could bring down America.
    The book was published by China’s People’s Liberation Army and had the endorsement of the Chinese government.
    "Unrestricted Warfare” makes clear its purpose: offering China and other "weak” countries a strategy to destroy the U.S. without a full-scale invasion, using unusual or "asymmetrical” warfare.
    NewsMax has recently obtained the CIA translation of this astounding book and has made it available with an introduction by Al Santoli, editor of the prestigious China Reform Monitor.
    The importance of this book was highlighted soon after 9/11, when the Chinese colonels were treated as national heroes.
    In one interview with the Chinese government-owned Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Hong Kong, the colonels offered little sympathy for the Americans killed in 9/11.
    They told the paper, "The series of attacks taking place in the United States were very dreary and terrifying, but they must not be viewed from a single perspective” – that is, the U.S. as victims. The colonels then added coldly that the Americans "were victims of U.S. foreign policy.”
    The colonels were quick to take credit for the attacks on the World Trade Center, telling the paper their strategy had worked and that "September 11, 2001 very likely is the beginning of the decline of the United States, as a superpower."
    Qiao and Wang offer in "Unrestricted Warfare” several new methods for destroying the U.S. – from manipulating U.S. media, to homicide-suicide bombing, to using immigrants as a fifth column, and even employing cyber attacks to destroy America’s critical infrastructure.
    Both colonels agreed that the unconventional attacks of 9/11 were right from the pages of their book, and they demonstrated their theory works. "The attacks demonstrated the United States' fragility and weakness and showed that essentially it is unable to stand attacks. ... The United States, a giant tiger, has been dealing with mice; unexpectedly, this time it was bitten by mice – it has been wielding a large hammer but has been unable to find the flea.
    "From a short-term perspective, the attacks in the United States will very likely have some effect on China's economy – they might affect China's economic growth. However, from a long-term viewpoint, they could be favorable to China."
    "Unrestricted Warfare” has set off alarm bells among several high-ranking U.S. officers.
    Adm. Thomas Moorer, former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, warns, "'Unrestricted Warfare' reveals China’s game plan in its coming war with America.” He adds ominously, "China thinks it can destroy America by using these tactics.”
    Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, former chief of staff of U.S. Forces Korea, shares Adm. Moorer’s view.
    "The 9/11 attacks may just be the beginning. Many terrorist nations and groups will try to imitate this operation,” Gen. Singlaub said, noting "China’s war book 'Unrestricted Warfare' will be their text.”

  • Report: Israeli special forces are operating inside Iraq to locate missile launchers (JerusalemPost)
    Israeli special forces are operating inside western Iraq to locate missile launchers that could be used against Israel, according to a report in the recent issue of Jane's Foreign Report. Israeli officials refused to comment on the report.
    According to the report, the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit was ordered to scout out and "find and identify places used by or likely to be used by Iraqi Scud missiles."
    The newsletter stated that "neither Israel nor the US has a clue about what, if anything, Saddam Hussein is hiding," and claimed it was this "ignorance" that prompted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to assign the elite commando unit to carry out the job.
    The report stated that the Israeli operation was being carried out without the knowledge of the US, a fact that could raise tensions particularly at such a sensitive period, when the US is attempting to garner support for an offensive against Iraq in the Arab world.
    Quoting Israeli sources, the report also claims that Israel is concerned that Iraq may employ kamikaze-style pilots to attack targets inside Israel using the methods deployed by Japan against the US troops in World War II.
    The article also claimed that Israel had struck a secret agreement with Jordan whereby if necessary Israel will be permitted to use Jordanian air space.

     

  • Blondes Are A Dying Breed-Fewer People Have Proper Genetics
    September 27, 2002
    They say blondes have more fun, but new research suggests their days are numbered.
    Scientists have revealed that in just 200 years time, natural blondes will be completely extinct.
    Blonde hair occurs only in people from northern Europe. The blonde gene that causes it must be on both sides of the family, and according to the World Health Organization, there is now too few people who carry it.
    Professor Jonathan Rees from Edinburgh University is leading a two-year study into the genetics of blondes, and says men who prefer light-colored hair in their ladies need not despair yet. Scientists say blondes will survive longest in Scandinavia where they are most concentrated, and they predict the last one alive will be from Finland.
    But the end of natural blondes won't mean the end of fair-haired women. A salon specializing in hair coloring says most of their clients go for blonde.

  • MAJOR AND CURRIE CONFIRM 1980S AFFAIR
    (thesentinel.co.uk)
    9/28/02
    Conservative former minister Edwina Currie has told a newspaper she had a four-year affair with ex-prime minister John Major in the 1980s.
    The liaison began in 1984 when Mrs Currie was a backbencher and Mr Major a whip in Margaret Thatcher's government.
    Mrs Currie - who later became a health minister - says in her diaries, published in The Times, that the affair ended in early 1988 after his swift promotion to the Cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury.
    The newspaper says that Mr Major has confirmed her revelations in a statement.
    He is reported as saying that his wife Norma had known of the affair for many years and had forgiven him, but he regarded it as "the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed".
    The Times reports that the friendship between the two continued after his move to the Treasury and the end of their affair.
    Mrs Currie claims in the diaries that her love for Mr Major persisted after he became prime minister in 1990, "dominating her life".
    However, she says that after his arrival in 10 Downing Street she "appeared to have been forgotten".
    "If you are out in politics, you are an awful long way out. And it felt like I'd been pushed off in a boat adrift at sea."
    Nothing has been known publicly about the relationship until Saturday's report in the Times.
    Defending her timing Mrs Currie - now a presenter on BBC Radio 5 Live - said the events happened "a very long time ago".
    Mrs Currie became notorious when as a health minister in 1988 she remarked that most of Britain's egg production was infected with salmonella.
    A huge storm followed as egg sales plummeted and she was eventually forced to resign.
    She and her first husband, Ray formally separated in 1997. She married her second husband, John Jones, a retired detective in 1999.

  • Grey man's affair amazes a nation
    By Peter Fray, Herald Correspondent in London
    September 30 2002
    Britain has been stunned, amazed and titillated by the news that the former prime minister John Major had a four-year affair with Edwina Currie, a flamboyant former Thatcher-era minister.
    Mr Major is widely considered one of the greyest MPs ever, and is remembered for a "back-to-basics" platform that promoted morality in public life - a platform marred by seven Tory sex scandals during his prime ministership that he roundly condemned.
    Mrs Currie, 55, revealed intimate details of the affair, which took place before Mr Major reached high office and which included three-hour sex romps in her London flat, in extracts from her diaries published in The Times.
    The political fallout over the revelations continued yesterday when a former Downing Street caterer, Clare Latimer, claimed she had been set up as a "decoy" to cover up the affair.
    Mr Major was falsely rumoured to have had an affair with Ms Latimer and in 1993 he brought libel actions against two magazines, the now defunct Scallywag and New Statesman & Society, which reported the rumours.
    When she went to Mr Major with her concerns about the false claims, Ms Latimer said, he told her to "earn as much money as possible" from selling the story.
    Mrs Currie says in her book that she initiated the affair, which lasted from 1984 to 1988, and ended only when Mr Major was promoted to the Cabinet.
    Mr Major, a government whip at the time, has admitted the affair, describing it as "the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed, and I have long feared it would be made public".
    He said his wife, Norma, had known about the affair for "many years" and had forgiven him. Mrs Currie, who formally separated from her first husband, Ray, in 1997, said he never knew of the affair. She married John Jones, a retired detective, in 1999.
    Before this weekend's revelations, Mrs Currie was best known for her claim, as health minister in 1988, that most British eggs were infected with salmonella. She lost her portfolio over the gaffe and now makes a living writing saucy romance novels.
    Her works include A Parliamentary Affair, which details a liaison between a rising silver-hair party whip and female Tory MP who treats him to sex sessions involving strawberries and whipped cream. She has previously admitted the book's female character was based on her.
    Mr Major's friends and former colleagues have criticised Mrs Currie for revealing the affair, seemingly to publicise her diaries.
    Mary Archer, wife of the disgraced Tory peer Jeffrey Archer, told BBC radio: "I am a little surprised, not at Mrs Currie's indiscretion but at the temporary lapse in John Major's taste."
    Archer is serving a four-year sentence for perjury for lying about his relationship with a prostitute in a successful defamation case. Lawyers for the former publishers of Scallywag said they might consider legal action against Mr Major, who had declared he was not an adulterer during the libel case over his rumoured affair with Ms Latimer.
    Mrs Currie's political career in effect ended when Mr Major, now 61, failed to promote her when he became prime minister in 1990 or after his 1992 election win. She denies seeking revenge, but said "the most hurtful thing is to look at John's autobiography and find that I wasn't even in the index".

     

  • IMAGE: Boat designed to be a moving city on the sea.(AP)

    Artist rendition of the "AZ Island" project designed by French architect Jean-Philippe Zoppini and made available Thursday Sept. 26, 2002. The 400 meter (1320 feet) long and 300 meter (990 feet) large vessel could host 4,000 cabins on 15 storeys, its own port and facilities to be like a moving city on the sea. No price was available for the project but a model could be presented at the Sea Trade exhibition of Miami in March 2003.

  • Malaria-Carrying Mosquitoes Found in US
    Washington Post
    September 27, 2002
    Mosquitoes infected with malaria have been found this week in two locations in Loudoun County, health officials said today, raising concerns that more humans could be infected by the mosquito-borne illness.
    Two Loudoun residents were diagnosed with the disease in August, but since then there have been no other cases, county health director David Goodfriend said today. This week's discovery came after mosquito traps were placed in the Landsdowne area and along Broad Run. Tests of the trapped Anopheles mosquitoes were positive for malaria, and they will be confirmed by state health authorities, Goodfriend said.
    "This is the first time in over 20 years that positive mosquitoes have been found in conjunction with a human case in the United States," Goodfriend said. "Importantly, although this is rare, there is no evidence that anyone in the Landsdowne and Broad Run areas has been infected with malaria."
    County officials must now decide what to do next in their fight against the spread of the parasitic disease. Among the possibilities would be more spraying of insecticide, which was done after the human cases turned up in the eastern sector of the county, and application of larvicide in places where the insects may breed.
    Health officials are continuing to recommend that people wear insect repellent outdoors after dark, remove standing water around their homes, and see their doctors if they notice any unusual symptoms such as fever, chills, or flu-like illness.

  • FBI Denies Foreknowledge of 9/11 -The FBI has found no one in the United States who had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks other than the 19 hijackers, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress.
    Thu Sep 26, 2002
    By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI has found no one in the United States who had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks other than the 19 hijackers, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told Congress.
    "While here, the hijackers effectively operated without suspicion, triggering nothing that alerted law enforcement and doing nothing that exposed them to domestic coverage," according to a declassified copy of written testimony Mueller gave in June to the congressional inquiry into the attacks.
    It is unclear whether Mueller's statement on the 19 hijackers includes Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001 and later charged in connection with the attacks. In his testimony, Mueller specifically keeps Moussaoui out of his statements because of the pending case against him.
    One hijacker, Nawaf Alhazmi, even reported an attempted street robbery to police in Fairfax, Va., on May 1, 2001, but later declined to press charges, Mueller related.
    The disclosure of his testimony came as the top counterterrorism officials of the CIA ( news - web sites) and FBI at the time of the attacks defended their agencies' efforts to lawmakers conducting the inquiry.
    In addition, the FBI has identified several more people they believe served as the paymasters of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to Mueller's testimony.
    Among the hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi has emerged as the moneyman, he said.
    U.S. authorities have previously said that an al-Qaida senior operative named Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi distributed money from the United Arab Emirates to the hijackers. He is believed to Osama bin Laden ( news - web sites)'s financial chief, Shaikh Saiid al-Sharif.
    But Al-Shehhi also received money from a man named Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, also known as Isam Mansar, and Mohamed Yousef Mohamed Alqusaidi, believed to be Al-Shehhi's brother, Mueller's statement said. Their whereabouts are unclear. Ali also sent money to other hijackers, his statement said.
    In addition, Mueller said, al-Hisawi's accounts in the UAE connect him to a man named Abdulrahman A.A. Al-Ghamdi, whom authorities now believe is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged operational mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Both al-Hisawi and Mohammed are at large and are among the most wanted al-Qaida figures remaining.
    Ramzi Binalshibh, the al-Qaida operative captured in Pakistan on Sept. 11, 2002, is another alleged moneyman, according to the FBI director.
    Mueller's testimony also details how the 19 hijackers staged the attacks. It breaks them into two groups: the four pilots and two other chief organizers, and 13 men that Mueller described as "muscle."
    The pilots — Mohamed Atta, Al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, Hani Hanjour — and organizers — Khalid Almihdhar and Alhazmi — constituted the core of the plot and operated in the United States for some time before the attacks, it said. Mueller said the 13 others entered the country in pairs in the spring and summer of 2001, each passing through the UAE on their journey.
    Also Thursday, Cofer Black, the CIA official who led counterterrorism efforts at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks told lawmakers the agency did the best it could with limited staff, money and legal restrictions.
    Black was defiant and direct as he spoke to the House and Senate intelligence committees that have been looking into intelligence shortcomings leading up to the attacks.
    Noting that he had been offered an opportunity to testify anonymously behind a screen, Black said "I don't want to be just a voice behind a screen.'
    "When I speak, I think the American people need to look into my face. and I want to look the American people in the eye."
    The appearances of Black and Dale Watson, a top FBI counterterrorism official, came after Eleanor Hill, staff director of the committees' inquiry, issued three reports over the past week outlining many missed clues and warnings that could have pointed toward the Sept. 11 hijackings.
    In an attempt to address some of the interagency communications problems, the Senate agreed late Wednesday to create the Terrorist Identification Classification System, a database of known or suspected international terrorists that would be available to local, state and federal agencies.
    Provision for such a database was a part of legislation authorizing money in the new fiscal year for the intelligence community, and it was approved by voice vote. It will have to be reconciled with a separate version passed by the House in July.
    The figures in the bills are classified, but they are believed to call for more than $35 billion in intelligence spending.
    In his testimony, Black said CIA officers were overwhelmed and did an excellent job with the limited resources they had.
    He said the counterterrorism center had as many people as three infantry companies. "Three infantry companies can be expected to cover a front of a few kilometers. Our Counterterrorism Center has worldwide responsibilities for all terrorist threats."
    He said when he became the center's chief, he had to cut the budget of most of his units by at least 30 percent.
    Despite limitations, intelligence officials had successes, including thwarting a 1998 attack on the U.S. embassy in Albania, unveiling the Jan. 1, 2000, Millennium plot and uncovering threats on U.S. embassies in Yemen and France in 2001, he said.
    Pulling close to the microphone, Black said he wanted to speak to everyone at the counterterrorism center.
    "I was proud of them when I led them, I am proud of them now and I'll be proud of them as long as I live," he said.
    Black ran the CIA's Counterterrorism Center from 1999 until May, and he remains with the agency. He previously served as an undercover CIA officer and played a role in France's capture of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, commonly known as Carlos the Jackal, once the world's most famous terrorist. He also survived an al-Qaida plot to kill him in the Sudan in the early 1990s, he said.
    Watson is retiring Friday from his post as assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division. He also expressed pride in his bureau's work.
    "We don't do everything always right," he said. "We're like a soccer goalkeeper. We can block 99 shots and nobody wants to talk about any of those. And the only thing anyone wants to talk about is the one that gets through."

  • Survivors of embassy blasts say US neglecting their needs
    (Boston Globe)
    9/29/2002
    NAIROBI - Under a bright blue sky Aug. 7 on the outskirts of Nairobi, Johnnie Carson, US ambassador to Kenya, marked the fourth anniversary of the devastating US embassy bombing with a sympathetic promise. ''We shall never forget the wrong that was done and the evil that was perpetrated,'' he said, ''and we should never let [the victims] be far from our thoughts and our prayers.''
    But many of the 5,000 people injured in the near simultaneous 1998 bombings in Kenya and in the US Embassy in neighboring Tanzania say they feel forgotten. As they see it, the United States has not lived up to its promise to help them recover and rebuild their lives as it has done for those injured in the Sept. 11 attacks.
    What bothers them most is that the US government has never given direct compensation to any of the victims or their families, insisting it is not responsible for the attacks or their injuries. Instead, it has provided money for social services such as health care, counseling, and school fees for orphans. Those services are ending tomorrow, angering victims who say they still are in need and have few other options.
    Esther Githagui's chest was crushed when she was thrown from the second floor of building about 100 yards from the embassy in Kenya. The 38-year-old mother of two says her injuries were so severe that she had to retire from her job in a bank and now she doesn't have enough money to support herself or her family. She worries what she will do when her health care ends and doesn't know how she will come up with enough money for her children's school fees next semester.
    Simon Maina, 45, who along with Githagui is a member of the Nairobi Bomb Blast Victims Association, had his hand severed by the blast as he walked by the embassy. He says he can no longer work or provide for his wife and seven children.
    Though he applied for a US-sponsored business loan for about $250, to start a small shop, Maina was turned down when he couldn't come up with two guarantors. ''I used to sell milk in Nairobi,'' he said. ''Now I can only beg.''
    Four men linked to Al Qaeda were convicted in the attacks last year and sentenced to life in prison in the United States. The two enormous truck bombs set off outside the embassies killed 219 people and injured more than 5,000. More than 40 people lost their vision and hundreds were maimed or disabled.
    What's more, 80 percent of those killed were male breadwinners, leaving many widows and families with little way of making up for the lost income.
    Although victims have been unsuccessfully pushing for more aid since the blasts, their frustrations grew when the United States announced late last year that those injured in the Sept. 11 attacks, including foreign nationals, would receive millions of dollars in direct government aid.
    According to the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, each victim or their family will receive $1.5 million from the US government, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars more from private sources. In addition, they will receive up to 10 years of health care, counseling, and legal aid provided by private charities.
    Congress is also contemplating extending equivalent compensation to dozens of US citizens killed or injured in the African bombings, but not to African nationals.
    For its part, the State Department says it has provided more than $50 million in aid to help the Africa victims and their communities. That has paid for school fees for 1,500 children; health care, counseling, and physical therapy for 2,000 victims; and helped rebuild dozens of buildings and businesses affected by the tragedies.
    US officials also point out that not all benefits may end this week, as some of the programs have extra money that may last a few more months. This assistance ''has helped many victims and their families through a difficult time,'' said Lucille DePalma, a department spokeswoman.
    But for all of the public wrangling, the US government's legal responsibility is unclear. Last fall, lawyers in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco who represent nearly 5,000 African victims filed two separate lawsuits, totaling $1 billion in damages. But federal judges threw out the lawsuits, ruling that lawyers failed to show why the United States was responsible for any deaths or injuries. The two cases are now on appeal.
    The crux of the lawsuits is that the United States was negligent in not protecting the embassies from known risks, which if true could be grounds for a judgment. According to court records from the lawsuits, State Department security officers had analyzed and discussed before the bombing how vulnerable the back of the Kenyan embassy was to a truck bomb, the same location where the blast went off. One of the locks on the drop bar outside the embassy was broken, allowing the truck to get even closer to the building.
    ''There is no question the government didn't meet the minimal requirements for protecting these two buildings,'' said Philip Musolino, a Washington lawyer representing more than 1,000 victims.
    But the State Department said that it took all possible precautions to make sure both embassies were secure.
    There may be possible alternatives for the Africa victims to get some money. The judgment against the four men convicted in the bombings included $7 million in compensation for the victims as well as $26 million for the US government. The men say they have no assets, but if the government can prove they do, or claim other Al Qaeda assets, the African victims would be entitled to some of that money. And the State Department, under the Foreign Claims Act, could also voluntarily decide that victims deserve more money, although victims and their lawyers aren't hopeful.
    Whatever the outcome, advocates for the victims say the issue is likely to come up again. They point out that threats on US diplomatic posts around the world are increasing. In June, 12 Pakistanis were killed in a car bombing outside the US consulate in Karachi, and just weeks ago several US embassies in Southeast Asia were closed because of terror threats.
    ''The US must realize they can't just walk away from these problems,'' said Paul Wala, chairman of the Bomb Blast Victims Association.

  • AGGRESSIVE CONGRESSIONAL PROBE INTO 911 ENRAGES FBI, CIA; PANEL'S FINDINGS TAKE OFFICIALS BY SURPRISE
    Sept. 28, 2002,
    Investigation angers FBI, CIA officials
    New York Times
    WASHINGTON -- An aggressive congressional investigation that has yielded new evidence about lapses in counterterrorism at the CIA and the FBI before the Sept. 11 attacks has surprised and enraged senior officials at both agencies, say lawmakers and intelligence officials.
    The findings of a joint committee, especially revelations that the CIA and FBI had for years collected information that showed Islamic militants hoped to strike in the United States, have been far more damaging than most officials at either agency expected when the panel's inquiry began early this year.
    Even more than the findings of missed signals, however, the increasingly combative tone of the committee's staff and the tough language of its three interim reports on specific terrorism issues have infuriated senior officials at the FBI and the CIA.
    With George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Robert Mueller, the director of the bureau, scheduled to testify before the panel in coming weeks, along with Louis Freeh, the former bureau director, the committee's investigation has added heat to hearings that at first seemed unlikely to produce either fireworks or revelations.
    The new disclosures from the first two weeks of hearings and the increasing acrimony surrounding them have left officials at the two agencies expecting an even more protracted and potentially damaging investigation by an independent commission.
    The main conclusion of the hearings so far is that the bureau and the intelligence agency missed warning signals of the impending attacks and focused too much attention on threats overseas rather than on the possibility of an attack on U.S. soil. The reports by the ad hoc joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence panels also have included declassified intelligence that has created a far fuller account of the Sept. 11 plot and the 19 hijackers.
    A sign of the joint committee's success in raising new questions about the government's performance before Sept. 11 was President Bush's decision a week ago to drop his opposition to an independent commission, created by Congress, to conduct a broader inquiry. A commission could mean that the bureau and the intelligence agency will be under scrutiny for years.
    The joint committee has touched nerves at the two agencies by focusing much of its inquiry on a few key incidents in which the two agencies were slow to follow trails of evidence leading to the hijackers. The joint committee revealed a wealth of new details about the case of Khalid Almidhar, a leading hijacker who was able to slip into the United States even after the CIA had discovered that he had attended a meeting in Malaysia of people suspected of being al-Qaida operatives.

  • Sex, IQ & ET: How We Got Big Brains-when we discover the extraterrestrials, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that they are slick talkers, good musicians and -- unlike their Hollywood ciphers -- able to tell a decent joke.
    Thu Sep 26,2002(By Seth Shostak Senior Astronomer, Project Phoenix, SPACE.com)
    Relative to their size, humans have the biggest brains on the planet. Check out the guy sitting next to you on the bus: hunkered beneath a fringe of moussed hair and a few millimeters of skull are three crinkly pounds of brain -- the only substantive difference between you and species you regard as food or pets.
    But how did this happen? What special circumstance, what unperceived evolutionary force, nudged our hulking, hairy ancestors toward intelligence, and silently trebled the size of their brains in two million years or less?
    This question is seductive not only because it tells us something exquisitely interesting about ourselves, but also because the answer could give us insight into whether other intelligent beings really exist.
    Many researchers have considered how the processes of natural selection might encourage higher IQ. For example, predator-prey relationships can do this. When a lioness bags an antelope, she’s more likely to snag one of the dumb ones. Result? The lioness has a meal, but the average ability of the antelopes has been raised. The next night, the dumber lions will have a harder time getting dinner, and will preferentially drop out of the leonine gene pool. In this animal arms race, the IQ of both species is ratcheted upward.
    This is survival of the functionally fittest, and intelligence is certainly one component of making it in a competitive environment. But there’s another type of mechanism that might have been more important in creating our cerebral machinery. It’s called signaling for fitness, and it’s a widespread component of beastly behavior.
    The way to understand signaling for fitness is to consider a canonical example: peacock tails. When choosing a mate, peahens prefer males with long, bright tails. This isn’t simply due to a quirk of their little pea brains; it’s good reproductive strategy. Those impressive tails are metabolically costly, and require both good health and success in finding food. In addition, a flashy tail can attract predators, which only the wily can avoid. So when a peahen spies a male with a well-endowed tail, she can be sure he has good genes.
    If she chooses to get to know him better, their offspring will have a survival advantage.
    For most species, males court and females choose. So it’s usually the males who are using these fitness signals as semaphores to indicate that they’re up to snuff. In the words of Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, "evolution is driven not just by survival of the fittest, but reproduction of the sexiest."
    So how does this dovetail with the evolution of intelligence?
    Miller points out that musty theories claiming we developed our impressive cerebra from, for example, tool use, don’t seem to fit the facts. The stone axes chipped by our one-pound-brained ancestors were about as good as those made by their three-pound-brained successors. Instead, Miller suggests that the ramping up of IQ was the result of 100,000 generations of pre-human courtship operating on fitness signals made possible by brain power.
    "The brain’s a really good indicator of fitness because its growth depends on at least half of the genes that humans have," he says. "A brain, after all, is very complex, very sensitive to genetic mutations, and costs a lot of energy to run."
    If you have a good brain, you have good genes. They’re our flashy tail.
    But it’s a messy business to literally display your brain. So how can a quality cranium signal its superiority to a mate? It does so with behaviors such as speaking well, or by demonstrating musical ability, a sense of humor, or creativity. These activities depend upon many parts of the brain, and consequently are reliable indicators of mental merit.
    Brains are like the Dow Jones index, which is an accessible and generally trustworthy gauge of a complex system because it’s rooted in a number of important stocks.
    So males strut their stuff by crooning, being witty, and speaking well, while the females use these clues to sort out the best one to take home to mom and dad. You might wonder why this mechanism would ever lead to women who are also clever. But that’s a natural consequence of the long maturation time of humans.
    "Human males invest a whole lot more in being parents than any other primates," says Miller, "so the more they invest in their offspring, the choosier they should be about their long-term mate. This puts the females under evolutionary pressure; early in courtship to attract a high-fitness guy, but after that to keep him interested, to keep him from wandering off with some other woman. They’re strongly selected to tell interesting stories, to be continually amusing and charismatic in order to maintain the male’s commitment and investment in their children."
    Miller’s ideas will no doubt affect your view of significant others. But what insights do they give into the likelihood of intelligence on other worlds?
    "I think this is one of the key evolutionary processes that can produce intelligence anywhere in the universe," he says. "And it’s universal because any evolutionary system will have some kind of genetic code. That code will be vulnerable to mutations of some sort -- and fitness indicators reveal just how many mutations you have."
    "Clearly, one of the best ways to signal is through behavior that can only be produced by a highly complicated nervous system whose growth depends on most of your genes. So in my view it’s a very powerful evolutionary process. There’s good evidence that it’s important in just about every other animal species. And we have one example -- us -- where it’s led to intelligence." And on other worlds around other stars? Miller laughs: "I think aliens who are obsessed with showing off their brain power to the opposite sex will be fairly common out there."
    So if and when we discover the extraterrestrials, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that they are slick talkers, good musicians and -- unlike their Hollywood ciphers -- able to tell a decent joke.

  • Mice born from rat-matured eggs (newscientist.com)

  • Pig's teeth grown in rats' bellies (newscientist.com)

  • 'Next To Jews, We Hate Palestinians The Most' - King Fahd (Rense.com)
    9-28-2
    John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor and author of several books, including The Secret War Against the Jews, is currently president of the Florida Holocaust Museum. He has instituted a lawsuit that he claims will expose the Saudi-funded terrorist network in Florida and elsewhere. Loftus, by the way, is an Irish-Catholic.
    Loftus's press release about his lawsuit follows below. You not only should read this, but you should pass it on. It's an incredible tale.
    Lawsuit to expose federal cover-up of Saudi-funded terrorist net in Florida
    The following is a statement by John Loftus:
    For 20 years, I have served without compensation as a lawyer for federal whistle blowers within the US intelligence community. In the last year, I have received highly classified information from several of my confidential clients concerning a Saudi covert operation. The Saudi relationship is so sensitive that, for more than a decade, federal prosecutors and counter-terrorist agents have been ordered to shut down their investigations for reasons of foreign policy.
    I am filing a lawsuit in Hillsborough County Court to expose the manner in which Florida charities were used as a money laundry for tax-deductible terrorism. The complaint cites specific testimony, including highly classified information which has never been released before.
    Simply put, the Saudi Government was laundering money through Florida charities run by the University of South Florida - Tampa Professor Sami Al Arian for the support of terrorist groups in the Middle East. Through the Al Arian network and others, the Saudi Government secretly funded Al Qaida, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
    The Saudi purpose was twofold: the destruction of the State of Israel and the prevention! of the formation of an independent Palestinian State. Two particular terrorist groups, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were specifically chosen and funded by the Saudis for their willingness to undermine Arafat's Palestinian Authority. The secret Saudi goal was to create such animosity between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that it would wreck any chance for the creation of an independent Palestinian State.
    Their tactics specifically called for the intimidation or murder of those Palestinians who were willing to work with Israel for peace. To put it bluntly, the covert Saudi network in Florida funded the murders of fellow Muslims for the crime of wanting to create the first democratic Arab State.
    Whatever harm the Israelis may have done, they did build an excellent public education system, including several universities, for the benefit of their Palestinian neighbors. That was the problem: While literacy in the Arab world is below 50%, in Israel it is 97%.
    Israel is the only place in the Middle East where an Arab woman can vote.
    After 50 years, Israel has created the first Arab class exposed to democracy, literacy and western values.
    To the Saudis, a democratic Palestinian nation would be a cancer in the Arab world, a destabilizing example of freedom that would threaten Arab dictators everywhere. As King Fahd said, "Next to the Jews, we hate the Palestinians the most." The harder the Israelis and Palestinians worked for peace, the more money King Fahd poured into his murder for hire program.
    The Saudi Government has already begun its spin operations, claiming that this terror network was a rogue operation financed by a radical Saudi businessman without the support or knowledge of the Saudi Government.
    The truth is that many of the Saudi princes, notably Prince Bandahar and Prince Alwaheed, are good and loyal friends of America who want to lead Saudi Arabia into the modern world. Unfortunately, they are now in the minority in their own country. King Fahd is on his deathbed, and his nephew and heir apparent, Crown Prince Abdullah depends on the most radical southern and eastern clans for his political base.
    The southern faction is the center of popular support for Al Qaida and the Taliban, because it is the home of the most extreme Muslim sect, the Wahabbis. Ninety-nine percent of the Muslim world rejects the Wahabbi religious tenets as utterly repugnant to the teachings and examples of the Prophet as written down in the Hadith. Since most Wahabbis are functionally illiterate, they cannot read about this conflict on their own.
    Typically, they memorize a few passages of the Koran taken out of context, and never read the accompanying Hadith for explanation. For example, the Wahabbis are taught by rote that Jews are subhuman who should be killed as a religious duty. In contrast, the Hadith explains that the prophet Mohammed honored Jews. Married a Jewish wife, forbade forced conversions of Jews. Always bowed in respect when a Jewish funeral passed, and promised that good and faithful Jews would go to Paradise just as good Muslims and Christians would. That the Jews would have their Holy Place in the West (meaning Jerusalem) while Muslims would have their Holy Place in the East (meaning Mecca).
    Illiteracy is a weapon of oppression. The Saudis, and their Wahabbis, the Taliban, have decreed that women cannot work or even sit in the front seat of a car. In contrast, the Hadith records that the Prophet worked for his wife, and that she drove her own caravans in international commerce.
    The Prophet forbade racism, the Wahabbis practice it, especially against their non-Arab Shiite minority.
    The Wahabbis (both in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban) discriminate viciously against women. The Prophet, who lovingly raised three daughters, insisted that women should have substantially equal rights in contract, ownership and divorce.
    The Muslim faith envisioned by the Prophet in the Koran and recorded by his contemporaries in the Hadith is a religion that practices tolerance towards all races and religions, stresses the extreme importance of literacy and education, and elevates the status of women to unprecedented levels in many societies. This is the gentle, peaceful Muslim faith practiced everywhere in the world, except in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban provinces of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
    Muslim scholars speak derisively about the primitive Wahabbi apostasy, but rarely in public. The reason for this deafening silence is simple: Most Mosques in the world are impoverished and depend upon Saudi subsidies for their operation. In return, however, the Saudis have gained a foothold for proselytizing and radicalizing the Muslim youth through religious education in the form of militant Wahabbism. Children learn to hate because they are being taught that way.
    The Saudis dabbled with funding anti-Semitic hate groups as a means of breaking down American support for Israel. After the fall of communism, the Saudis took over funding the most militant terror organizations for direct attacks against Jewish and Palestinian supporters of the peace process. Year after year, members of the intelligence community warned that a rising wave of terror was coming. [TEXT MISSING] something about terrorism, he was told to stop because it would embarrass the Saudi Government. John O'Neill quit his job as head of FBI counter-terrorism for the same reason. Jonathan Pollard went to jail.
    Federal agents in Tampa, who had known about the Saudi-Sami Al Arian connection since 1990, were ordered to drop the investigation in 1995. The Saudi influence-buying machine had effectively shut down any threat of criminal prosecution. Those Americans, including a former President, who lobbied for the Saudis have a lot to answer for. So d! o the Saudis. With the explosive growth of Al Qaida and their Taliban allies, the Saudis finally recognized that they had gone too far. As Osama Bin Laden laughingly related on videotape, he was approached prior to the attack on the twin Trade Towers by his relatives, who offered him $300,000,000 to cancel the operation.
    Apparently, the Bin Laden family really had not broken off all ties and knew exactly what was coming. So, my clients say, did the Saudis.
    Six months later, a much-chagrined Prince Abdullah belatedly announced that the Saudis would release the names of the terrorists whom their charities had unwittingly funded, but only in Somalia and Asia. The main Saudi charities in Herndon, Virginia, and the Al Arian network in Florida are still untouched.
    My clients are betting that the American influence peddlers hired by the Saudis will succeed once again in derailing a federal investigation. They came to me for help in exposing the cover-up! p. That is why I am filing this lawsuit. In the months to come, the American public may finally begin to learn why the Saudi-Sami Al Arian terror networks went untouched for so long. It wasn't an intelligence failure, it was a foreign policy failure. The orders were not to embarrass the Saudi government. Year after year, the cover-up orders came from the State Department and the White House.
    The CIA, the FBI, and the Justice Department just did what they were told. No one intended the harsh consequences of letting the Saudis get away with it again and again. Only after September 11, when the Treasury Department found the financial transactions linking the Saudi charities directly to Osama bin Laden, did American officials realize the extent of their betrayal.
    We are not alone in our grief and anger. Saudi money sabotaged every Israeli initiative to make peace. The bewildered Palestinians may finally realize that they have been stabbed in the back by an Arab brother.
    The rules have changed after September 11, but the bottom line remains the same: If we want to stop terrorism, we have to tell the Saudis to stop funding it.
    John Loftus

  • West Nile Virus Stretching US Health Resources
    9-28-2
    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The epidemic of West Nile virus, which has killed 94 people this year and made nearly 2,000 sick, has stretched the resources of the U.S. public health system, officials said Tuesday.
    The virus has also thrown up a few surprises -- spreading faster than predicted, causing a previously unseen polio-like disease in some, and getting into donated blood and organs, the officials told the U.S. Congress.
    Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the agency received $29 million this year to spend fighting West Nile virus. "That money was used to shore up surveillance and tracking in birds, she told a hearing of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
    Although the agency had responded well to the epidemic, Gerberding said she thought "the system was stretched."
    West Nile, first diagnosed in a Ugandan woman in 1937, is common in Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East but only appeared in the United States in 1999. It spread to much of the country this year, as well as Canada and the Cayman Islands.
    "The population we are most concerned about are the elderly people who are at the highest risk of the severe form of the disease," Gerberding said.
    Birds serve as the host of the West Nile virus, which is spread by mosquitoes to other birds as well as to people, horses and squirrels.
    "Most mosquitoes that transmit this virus live in suburban back yards," Gerberding said. She advised people to wear long sleeves and pants, use insect repellents and drain standing water from birdbaths and outside containers.
    Dr. Jesse Goodman, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said it was important to develop screening tests to protect the nation's blood supply and scarce donor organs.
    "Certainly from the FDA's point of view this is a priority," Goodman told the hearing."
    RISK SMALLER THAN BENEFIT OF BLOOD
    The risk of catching West Nile virus is smaller than the benefit of a lifesaving blood or organ donation, Goodman said. But he admitted the FDA was surprised when four people became infected after receiving organs from a single donor.
    Five others may also have caught the virus from transfusions with infected blood and warnings went out to blood banks to ask donors if they have suffered from fever, body aches or other symptoms of viral infection.
    West Nile virus only makes about 20 percent of those infected sick and most have a very minor illness. This means people may unconsciously pass on the disease without knowing they have been infected.
    "If people can have the disease without any symptoms, we take it seriously," said Goodman, adding that this is unlikely.
    Based on what is known about the virus, people who do not become ill should clear it from their systems quickly. Experts believe such people have lifelong immunity from the virus.
    Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, said that based on patterns with related viruses like yellow fever and dengue, the epidemic would wax and wane, possibly infecting fewer people next year.
    As more healthy children and young adults are infected without becoming sick, they could create a growing pool of people immune to the virus.
    "It is quite likely we will see a decrease," said Fauci. "It is extremely unlikely that the impact of West Nile virus would even get onto the same radar screen as...flu and HIV/AIDS. It's not going to wipe out scores of millions of people. But to say this is trivial would be far underestimating it.
    Fauci described the polio syndrome is "new and alarming," although it is extremely rare. At least four patients, all in their 50s, have shown symptoms of the syndrome, developing partial paralysis. One is now on a ventilator.

  • Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Deaths Out Of Control
    The National Post - Canada
    9-30-2
    Dr. Joshua Lederberg discovered bacteria gene swapping.
    Antibiotic-resistant bacteria kill more than 40,000 North Americans a year, and the numbers will soar unless the so-called super-germs are brought under control, a new book warns.
    The book, The Killers Within, charts the acceleration of resistant infections that began with a few cases in the late 1980s and is now spiralling out of control. The germs, once killed easily with standard antibiotics, can disintegrate skin, clog the lungs and carve golf-ball-size abscesses in flesh.
    "The bad bugs are getting stronger and they're getting stronger faster," says co-author Mark Plotkin, a Smithsonian Institution ethnobotanist whom Time magazine dubbed a "Hero of the Planet" in 1998. "We feel like we're looking at almost a hyper-evolutionary period," he says.
    While West Nile virus is grabbing headlines for killing about 100 people, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 44,000 people in North America die annually of infections from drug-resistant germs.
    Some experts believe the numbers are higher. The epidemic comes as pharmaceutical companies have all but stopped doing research on antibiotics.
    "They'd rather develop lifestyle drugs like Viagra and blood-pressure medicine that you're going to take every day of your life for 40 years," says Dr. Plotkin, who concedes a few drug companies are pursuing new antimicrobials.
    "If you're selling antibiotics, I'm going to take it for a week, and I'm either going to get better or I'm going to die."
    Even the newest types of antibiotics, such as Synercid and Zyvox, are already threatened by resistant strains.
    The book charts the proliferation of three germs in particular: E. faecium, S. aureus and S. pneumococcus, which are remarkably common in hospitals. Virtually every major Canadian hospital has been colonized by these bacteria, including operating theatres and intensive care wards.
    Decades ago, these species could be wiped out with a single dose of penicillin.
    But overuse of antibiotics gave the bacteria a chance to develop new genes that protected them.
    "Among the billions of bacteria in a drop of human blood, or on a pinpoint of skin ... might be a few -- just a few -- with a chance mutation that enabled them to resist the antibiotic used against them," the book notes.
    "If the antibiotic was then removed because the patient felt better and stopped using it, those few resistant bugs would have an ecological niche, or clear field, in which to run wild."
    Unlike other creatures, bacteria can swap genes between species, so enterococci can donate genes to staphylococcus.
    Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel laureate who discovered this gene swapping, says the Ebola and West Nile viruses are minor by comparison with such bacteria.
    "The odds of Ebola breaking out are quite low, but the stakes are quite high," says Dr. Lederberg, a professor at Rockefeller University in New York.
    "With antibiotic resistance, the odds are certain and the stakes are just as high."
    Unlike U.S. hospitals, which have thrown up their hands in the face of drug-resistant enterococci and other bugs, Canadian hospitals have fought back.
    Two of the heroes of The Killers Within are microbiologist Donald Low and infectious disease specialist Alison McGeer, both from Toronto, who have waged an exhaustive struggle against drug-resistant germs.
    As early as 1991, Dr. Low was warning about the dangers of overuse of antibiotics.
    By 1993, a Japanese patient had become infected with the first strain of S. aureus that could not be killed by Vancomycin, known as the "antibiotic of last resort."
    One of the biggest areas of antibiotic misuse is by doctors who prescribe them to complaining patients with viral infections.
    Antibiotics do not work against viruses and the more often an antibiotic is given, the more likely a person's natural bacteria will become resistant.
    Adding to the medical overuse of antibiotics, North American livestock have been fed small doses of antibiotics as a growth promoter since the 1950s.
    As a result, livestock serve as a reservoir of drug-resistant germs.
    One of the reasons the new antibiotic, Synercid, is now threatened with resistance is because cows are being fed an analogue -- a close chemical cousin -- of the drug with their dinner.
    The book says experimental drugs offer some hope.
    Among the most unorthodox of these is a tiny chunk of protein, found in the thick saliva of the Komodo dragon, a massive carnivore found in Indonesia.
    Another promising drug can be found in the skin of African clawed frogs.
    In the meantime, infection control and less antibiotic use in humans and animals is the only strategy, Dr. Plotkin says.

  • DEAD WHALE WATCH:News is coming in to WDCS of an unusual mass stranding of beaked whales in the Canary Islands that is coincident with military manoeuvres that have been ongoing there.
    (WDCS News Pages - The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society -wdcs.org)
    26/09/2002
    DEAD WHALE WATCH:News is coming in to WDCS of an unusual mass stranding of beaked whales in the Canary Islands that is coincident with military manoeuvres that have been ongoing there.
    The details, as far as we know them are that on the 24th of September, at least 12 beaked whales of 3 species (Ziphius cavirostris, Mesoplodon densirostris and Mesoplodon europaeus) stranded in the Canary Islands (Spain). At least one in Lanzarote and 11 in Fuerteventura. NATO naval exercises were ongoing near by
    The Environmental Department of the Government of the Canary Islands is coordinating all the efforts to investigate and deal with this mass stranding, while SECAC (Society for the Study of Cetaceans in the Canary Archipielago) is assisting investigations
    At least four animals were alive when they stranded, and were "refloated". Post mortem investigations are in progress.
    The Government of the Canary Islands has asked the NATO to stop all military manoeuvres in the area.
    WDCS is very concerned indeed about these strandings and fully supports the call from the authorities in the Canary Islands to halt the military manoeuvres.
    We also call for a full and independent investigation to be made into the event.
    After the series of similar unusual mass strandings that occurred in the Island in the mid-late 1980s and which coincided with military activities, WDCS had hoped that the appropriate authorities had ceased their activities. However, this latest incident seems to be another in the same series.

  • As Thousands of Salmon Die, Fight for River Erupts Again- 12,000 dead fish have washed up along the banks of the Klamath River in the past week. It's the worst die-off of salmon in generations, officials say.
    Sat Sep 28, 2002
    The New York Times
    SEATTLE, Sept. 27 More than 10,000 chinook salmon have died in the Klamath River in northern California in recent days, leaving biologists stunned and Indian tribes and fishermen angered at the Bush administration, which they say caused the deaths by favoring farmers in one of the most contentious water disputes in the West.
    Federal officials, while not conceding that administration policy had anything to do with the die-off, said they would reverse an earlier policy and begin releasing water from Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon in an effort to revitalize the Klamath River downstream. The slow-moving river is littered with thousands of dead, bloated salmon, rotting in the sun.
    Biologists say they have never seen a salmon kill of this size. It comes six months after the Bush administration decided to divert more Klamath Lake water to irrigation in the Klamath basin, saying the decision would satisfy farmers and comply with environmental laws.
    Indian tribes and fishermen say the administration broke the law and starved the river by favoring farmers over fish.
    "We're seeing dead fish everywhere; it's just tragic," said David Hillemeier, a biologist with the Yurok Indian Tribe in northern California. "No matter what happens now, the damage is done. We could lose 30,000 fish."
    Although biologists disagree on what caused the fish to die, they say a very warm and dry September in the Pacific Northwest and low water flows in the Klamath River are the two major reasons the river is too low for fish to move upstream and spawn, as they would normally do this time of year. Instead, the fish are crowded into small pools and dying of disease.
    On Thursday, fishermen and environmental groups went to federal court in Oakland, Calif., charging the Bush administration with giving too much water to irrigation interests at the risk of thousands of salmon, including coho, which are listed as threatened with extinction, and king salmon, or chinook, which are considered the most desirable and grow to 70 pounds or more.
    "Basically, the administration created a drought in the lower river," said Zeke Grader, with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen, the largest trade group of salmon fishers on the West Coast.
    "We were expecting a really good run of fish this year. And now we've got the federal government essentially killing fish to satisfy their irrigation interests."
    Bush officials said they had acted on the best information from scientists and were baffled by the death of the salmon. Allocating more water to irrigators, who staged protests last summer when they were denied their usual amount of water for farming, may not have been a factor in the die-off, the officials said.
    "It's an anomaly," said Mark Limbaugh, director of external affairs at the Bureau of Reclamation, which controls water in the upper Klamath Basin. "No one has ever seen a problem like this, and it may very well turn out to be a natural phenomenon."
    The Indians say that the warm and dry weather has not affected any river except the Klamath and that the fish die-off can be directly tied to the withholding of river water.
    "We begged them for more water, starting in the spring," said Sue Mastern, chairwoman of the Yurok Indian Tribe, which has 4,500 members and lives in northern California. "They would not consult with us. They ignored us. And now people are feeling helpless and outraged. It's just a sickening feeling."
    Just six months ago, the Bush administration held an elaborate ceremony in Klamath Falls, where officials released water for irrigation that had been held up because of concerns for endangered fish. As farmers chanted, "Let the water flow," Bush officials unveiled a 10-year plan that they said would settle the water war, one of the biggest in the West.
    Property rights groups and farm interests portrayed the fight as a battle between sucker fish, which live in Upper Klamath Lake and were dying because of little water, and farmers, who depend on backed up river water to irrigate 200,000 acres. The downstream salmon, and the Indians and fishermen who depend on them, were largely forgotten in the debate, though some biologists warned that there was not enough water to satisfy all the interests.
    Under Indian treaty law, the federal government has a "trust" responsibility to tribes and their water, fishing and property rights.
    "This water will be released beginning today to meet tribal trust responsibilities and to support the migrating salmon during this emergency," Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said. "We are doing our best to respond to this situation."
    Federal officials say the water release, which they call a "pulse" and will go on for 14 days, may not be enough to help the thousands of fast-dying fish. "No one is certain exactly what effect the water will have on fish," said Steve Williams, director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. "But we are all determined to do something to quickly address the situation."
    Fish runs vary greatly. The 10,000 fish killed this week are more than the river's entire salmon population in some years. Other years, like this one, are more bountiful, and biologists had been expecting a big run on the Klamath.
    It will take about three days for today's first release of water to make it downstream to where the fish are trapped in warm pools. The release comes at a time when irrigators say they have adequate water to give some back to fish.
    "We believe increasing the flows is justified at this time," said Dan Keppen, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents 1,500 farm families. "We had an extra slug of water available, and we've got a cushion right now."
    Indians and fishermen say it is precisely that extra water that should have gone to other needs of the river starting last spring.
    "It's been clear all summer long that this river is ailing," said Kristen Boyles, a lawyer with Earthjustice, an environmental legal group, which is suing the administration on behalf of fishing groups and others. "Now we have this massive die-off, and it's the result of six months of water mismanagement."

  • Jellyfish Invade Salmon Farm Killing Hundreds of Thousands of Salmon (AP)

  • More than 200,000 dead fish turn up in Florida lake (FLORIDA TODAY)

    • Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#38
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR SEPT 25th 2002
  • My Not-So-Secret Life as an FBI Informant- A New York woman describes how a July 2001 cab ride -- in which the Egyptian driver told her something terrible was going to happen in New York, and that bin Laden would be responsible -- led her to become an FBI informant.(villagevoice)
  • Earthquake shakes much of Britain (Reuters)
  • Two Die In Nebraska TV Tower Collapse- Structure Was Tallest In Nebraska (AP)
  • VOLCANO WATCH: TANGKUBANPARAHU western Java, Indonesia On 2 September VSI raised the Alert Level at Tangkubanparahu from 1 to 2 (on a scale of 1-4). The number of daily earthquakes had been increasing for 2 weeks and the temperatures of Domas and Ratu craters were 2-4°C higher than normal. There were no surface changes at the volcano, but several animals from the forest near Ratu crater were found dead in the crater.
  • Venus may have bugs, say scientists (BBCNEWS)
  • What can Venus teach us about Earth? Everybody knows there's a big problem with the greenhouse effect on the Earth. There's also an enormous greenhouse effect on Venus. Venus is a very Earth-like planet - it's the same size and made of the same stuff - and has this very extreme case of what we're worried about on Earth, and we need to understand it. (BBCNEWS)
  • British police hold six terror suspects LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters)
  • Heat-to-electricity device could help Third World LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters)
  • Stray dogs used as mobile billboards in Russian city. 20th September 2002 orange-today.co.uk
  • Puffins return to breed as rats are vanquished LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters)
  • Singapore to screen U.S.-bound cargo Saturday, September 21, 2002 SINGAPORE (CNN)
  • The quest for SE Asia's Islamic 'super' state: 1995 report on original WTC terrorists forewarned of U.S. terror attacks. (CNN)
    "He will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute."
  • Sea lanes, oil rigs a 'terror target': Imagine a huge oil tanker hijacked in the busy Malacca Strait and turned into a floating bomb aimed at wealthy Singapore or major ports in Indonesia or Malaysia.(Reuters)
  • Detroit Zoo Shark Credited with 'Virgin Births'(Reuters)
  • New FOX TV reality show "American Candidate" to produce a 'populist' political rival for Bush in 2004 (Variety)
  • I'm Not Prince Harry's Dad, Says Princess Di Lover (Reuters)
  • Tiger attacks kindergartner at California school (AP)
  • 'Anti-US' University And College Profs Targeted (NewsMax.com)
    The Middle East Forum has created a new Web site that lists faculty members it is monitoring and allows students to report on their professors who display an anti-Israel bias and denigrate the U.S.
  • HARVARD PREZ WARNS OF GROWING CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM (DRUDGEREPORT)
  • Clipping of Cursor.org
    The booking agent for Dr. Khidhir Hamza, the dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist who said this week that Iraq could have a nuclear bomb within months, is the same person who has been so successful in helping "experts" from a network of right-wing think tanks dominate the debate on Middle Eastern issues.
    One of those think tanks has just set up a Web site to monitor the attitudes of American professors and universities toward Islamic fundamentalism and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
  • The return of the Auschwitz nightmare- SPECIAL REPORT: Deprived of their short-term memory, Jewish seniors with Alzheimer's are reliving the Holocaust (globeandmail.com) One elderly woman is terrified of showers. Then there are those who hide crusts of bread in their rooms, even though that's against the rules.
  • Christians Show Support for Israel (AP) JERUSALEM- Thousands of sympathetic Christians from around the world brought a feeling of an old-time revival to the Holy Land, starting a pilgrimageto show uncompromising support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. The pro-Zionist Christians, in Israel on an annual event for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, showered support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as he addressed them Sunday.
  • Pro-Israel television ad campaign snubbed by CNN (israelinsider.com)
    CNN refused to broadcast nationally an advertising campaign emphasizing that Israel is a democracy and has a lot in common with the U.S.
  • Portrait of the Arab as a Young Radical (NYT)
  • Sept. 11 Plotter Reportedly Sent Terror Funds Flowing Through Dutch Town (NYT)
  • Swine Flu Bacteria Stolen From 'Secure' Michigan State University Lab (wlns.com)
  • Silver swindle! Sterling silver jewellery being hawked at major US retail outlets and even prominent jewellers is probably little better than stainless steel. (Miningweb)
  • French Daily: Saddam to escape Iraq in event of US strike (Albawaba.com)
  • IRAQGATE: Arming Saddam. "ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop. "It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy."
    March/April 1993 (cjr.org)
  • Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President (The Sunday Herald - UK)
  • Oil Companies Drool Over Iraq's Vast Oil Prize (WASHPOST)
  • The Most Secret Service Of The Third Reich (Anomalia.Ru (Pravda))
  • Bush Gives N. Korea Two Reactors Capable Of Bomb-Making (Moscow Times)
  • DEAD WHALE WATCH: Nessie-like Creature Remains Washed Ashore? (Halifax Herald)
  • First Pacific sighting of right whale calf in nearly 100 years (AP)
  • Federal health officials issue detailed guidelines for vaccinating entire U.S. population against smallpox within five days of an outbreak of the dreaded disease. (WashingPost)
  • In Case of Attack, New York City Has a Plan (Newsday)
  • Gov't Had Missile in Oklahoma City Building (AP)
  • White House Staff, Reporters Given Protective Hoods for use in case of smoke, fire or chemical attack. (AP)
  • Pentagon Discusses Chemical Weapons To Calm Rioters -Critics Say Idea Is Illegal (AP)
  • BOOK REVIEW: Acres of Skin: Human Experimentation at Holmesburg Prison, PA Allen Hornblum's Acres of Skin is a distressing exposé of human experimentation on prisoners that emphasizes the role of dermatologists in such experiments.
  • Inmates Used As Medical Guinea Pigs Get No Compensation-Prisoners Waited Too Long To File Suit (AP)
  • BOOK EXCERPT: The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate” -The CIA and Mind Control. Chapter 8: Brainwashing (conspiracyarchive.com)
  • Chronicle of a death foretold-Assassination, conspiracy, paranoia... The Manchurian Candidate had it all. A week after the death of its director John Frankenheimer, Greil Marcus salutes a remarkable film (The Guardian) The Manchurian Candidate's plot is an exploitation of terrors floating in the air in 1959: the terror of McCarthyism, which meant any US citizen could at any time be called a Communist and then blacklisted, deprived of her job, cast out of his community.
  • The Search for the Manchurian Candidate-Chapter 12.The Search for the Truth. (druglibrary.org)
    In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy reportedly vowed to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces. In the end, he settled for firing CIA chief Allen Dulles and his top deputies and the closure of the research part of the CIA's mind-control programs.
  • Doctors Link Polio Outbreak To West Nile Virus-"I teach this as a historical thing to the residents,'' said Dr. Jonathan D. Glass, director of the neuromuscular program at Emory University in Atlanta and one of the physicians who treated the polio patients. "We simply don't see it today. That's why I didn't believe it at first." (Boston Globe)
  • Saudi Rescue...The Phantom Flight From Florida (The Tampa Tribune)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#37
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR SEPT 18th 2002
  • DEAD WHALE WATCH: PHOTO:Marine biologists measure a giant squid captured by Spanish fisherman off the northern coast of Spain (AP)
  • N. Korea Admits Abducting Japanese Youths To Brainwash And Train As Spies (AP)
  • Climate Change Threatens London's Future - Report (Reuters)
  • Train Carrying Acid Derails in Tenn. (AP)
  • GENES MAY BE REASON FOR LOW JEWISH ALCOHOLISM RATE -Genes make drinking more pleasurable to white Europeans but increase the risks of alcoholism. (leicestermercury.co.uk)
  • Illinois Has Worst West Nile Outbreak -21 deaths so far (AP)
  • LA Babies Get Lifetime's Toxic Air in 2 Weeks-Study (Reuters)
  • Bin Laden dead, says comrade. Mullah Omar states "victory is coming."(thesundaymail.news.com.au)
  • Cloned Food Products Near Reality -Items Could Reach Shelves by 2003 (Washington Post)
  • Fires From Dino-Asteroid Debris Set Most of the World Ablaze (National Geographic News)
  • Arab Reporter Fears Reprisal From Allies Of Al Qaeda Suspect -Al-Jazeera Interviewer Denies Any Link to Arrest (Washington Post)
  • When the New York-New York Hotel and Casino opened in Las Vegas, five years ago, the absence of the World Trade Center towers from the resort's ersatz skyline seemed like a reasonable omission, now it requires an explanation. (NewYorker)
  • Russia to play key role in building Iraq attack support-Russia's decision may hinge on economics. (Knight Ridder Newspapers)
    As one of five permanent members of the 15-member U.N. Security Council - along with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China - Russia is empowered to veto any resolution. "France is not going to veto the United States, so in that sense, Russia is important. If they go along, China is likely to go along."
  • Police commander: Women have taken over Mexican drug cartels (EFE)
  • Photos of wealthy Mexicans prompts outrage (AP)
  • Reactor liner thinner than thought
    The strength of the liner was critical because when corrosion created a large hole in the reactor's lid, the liner became the only barrier between the reactor's high-pressure coolant and the building that houses the reactor.
    Wednesday, September 11, 2002 (Associated Press)
  • UFO PREVENTS BLAST AT CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR PLANT (the ever-increasingly fantastical PRAVDA.ru)
  • Earth's freaky future-Five million years from now, most of the living creatures we know today will have become extinct. (heraldsun.news.com.au)
  • New type of elephant discovered (SIGNONSANDIEGO)
  • Israelis eyed in school bombs-Israeli police and Palestinian officials said they believe extremist Jewish settlers planted two bombs in a Palestinian schoolyard (Associated Press)
  • Bush, Princess Di and Churchill are distant relatives whose ancestry can be traced back to a 15th century English squire, genealogists say (AP)
  • British Freemasonry Covets Israel
    (By Barry Chamish -Israeli Conspiracy mongerer)
    During much of his youth, Jesus lived in Britain with his uncle Joseph of Arimithea, who ran a lucrative tin trading business between Cornwall and Phoenicia.
  • US KNEW OF JET TERROR ATTACKS (AP)
  • 9/11 Inquiry Reveals WTC Threat in 1998(Reuters)
    A U.S. congressional hearing was told on Wednesday that three years before the Sept. 11 attacks intelligence agencies had information about a group that planned to fly an explosives-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center.
  • FBI Warns of Possible New Al Qaeda Airplane Hijacking Tactics -using 10-20 Muslim extremists of non-Arabic appearance (ABCNEWS)
  • Only Five CIA Analysts Assigned to Study Al Qaeda Pre-9/11. (By "pentagon pal" Bill Gertz in THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#36
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR SEPT 13th 2002
  • U.S. Arrests Al Qaeda Cell In NY and captures Atta's room mate in Pakistan shoot-out day after Al Jazeera Interview is aired (CBS)
  • 1,800 Uncounted 'Reno' Votes Found In Miami-Dade( miami.com)
  • Woman Overhears Possible Terrorist Plot Against South Florida (wsvn.com)
  • UPDATE:Federal sources say overheard terrorism threat by 3 students was a hoax (MIAMI HERALD)
  • Navy SEALs Inspecting Radioactive Ship Off New Jersey (FOXNEWS)
  • UPDATE:Radiation Ship Poses no Threat, FBI says (1010 WINS)
  • Customs Fails to Detect Depleted Uranium Carried From Europe to U.S.(ABCNEWS)
    ABCNEWS' Brian Ross traveled across Europe by train, carrying a suitcase packed with 15 pounds of depleted uranium. The suitcase was never inspected.
  • Traders puzzled by eery 911 closing of S&P futures (AP)
  • N.Y. Lottery Draws 9-1-1 on 9/11 (AP)
  • Research Holds Hope for Genitally Challenged Men (Reuters)
  • Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab (NewScientist)
  • Oldest penis 100 million years old (Reuters)
  • Terror warning over electronic equipment-laptops and cellphones could bring down an airliner (New Scientist)
  • Genetic modification alters hair colour-Scientists Give Mice Green Hair -May Lead to cure for Graying Hair and Baldness (NewScientist.com)
  • FOLLOW THE MONEY: Sept. 11's Smoking Gun: The $100,000 wired to Mohammed Atta days before the attacks by convicted Daniel Pearl killer, and former LSE student Saeed Sheikh. His actions prove the involvement of Pakistan's secret service in the Sept. 11 attacks, and suggest a possible CIA role as well. (cooperativeresearch.org)
  • 9/11 and the Smoking Gun that Turned on its Tracker (CRG)
  • Iraq Calls For Suicide Squads To Strike US Targets (The very dodgy Middle East Media Research Institute-www.memri.org)
  • Kuwaiti said to be source behind 'orange' high alert (CNN)
    Embassies and consulates have been closed for a review of their "security posture" in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as in Malawi, Pakistan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Tajikistan.

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#35
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR SEPT 8th 2002
  • DC 'Staking' arouses terror suspicions
    (By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES' "PENTAGON PR CONSULTANT")
  • Nuclear plants first option for Sept 11 -newspaper(Reuters) Britain's Sunday Times quoted two leading members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network as saying the initial plan for the September 11 hijackers had been to crash planes into nuclear power plants in the United States.
  • UPDATE: Bin Laden's aides says Capitol Hill was third target-attacks on nuclear power plants first considered. The codenames for the targets were university faculties: "town planning" for the WTC, "law" for Congress, "fine arts" for the Pentagon. -Al Jazeera to air interview on Sept 12th. (BBCNEWS)
  • Jazeera TV Says Atta's fugitive former flatmates give al Qaeda 911 Confession On Tape (Reuters)
  • The US and UN ignored a clear warning in July last year from the emissary of a Taliban leader that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was planning a major attack on U.S. soil. (UKIndependent)
  • Germany arrests two over plan to attack US base on Sept 11th (Reuters)
  • Germans Had Hints of Suspected U.S. Base Plot -Prosecutor Says Bureaucratic Red Tape Delayed Suspect's Arrest Months Ago-An unidentified neighbor tells German paper that a few drops of a chemical spattered onto his head from Osman Petmezci's balcony two months ago, sending him screaming with pain into the stairwell.(Associated Press)
  • Libya may be first Arab state with nukes, Sharon warns (WorldTribune.com)
  • Radical Islamic Clerics to host Celebration in London on 9/11(AP)
  • Intruder Alert Shuts Chemical Weapon Depot -Intruder Not Found (AP)
  • Secret arrest of leading al-Qaida fugitive (UKGuardian)
  • The CIA connection to Syria -U.S. officials describe secret quid pro quo (NBC NEWS)
    The United States is quietly allowing Syria, which it has declared a state sponsor of terrorism, to illegally import 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day in exchange for information about al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, U.S. and Syrian officials have told NBC News. SOURCES SAID THAT earlier this year, U.S. troops were saved from an al-Qaida attack in the Persian Gulf based on information from Syria.
  • Israel and Iran: Covert friends?(WorldNetDaily.com)
    Recent allegations that an Israeli company was caught shipping military parts to Iran have raised several questions about shadowy ties between the two countries, which share a common enemy in Iraq, reports Stratfor, the global intelligence company.
  • Internet Rumor Claims Oliver North stated during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings that Osama bin Laden was "the most evil person alive" and that "an assassin team should be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth."
    Status: False. Oliver North claims it was Abu Nidal (whose sympathizers, he claims were attempting to assasinate him and his family at their home in Virginia) who should be eliminated. (Snopes)
  • Saddam killed Abu Nidal over al-Qa'eda row (UKTelegraph)
    Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist, was murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein after refusing to train al-Qa'eda fighters based in Iraq.
  • Internet Rumor: Don't drink Coke after Labor Day says "Muslim storeclerk"
  • Investigators Claim Russian Defector Ken Alibek Should Be Lead Suspect in Anthrax Mailings (rense.com)
  • Bull attacks woman in Portaloo (2dayUK.com)
  • Rough-terrain Unicylcing-Riding a unicycle up and down mountains requires the balance of a gymnast and the temperament of a teenager (AtlanticJournal)
  • Artist uses his mother with dementia in exhibition (orange-today.co.uk/news)
  • PHOTO: Sim Yong , a 40-year-old spider vendor, shows his selection of hundreds of the fried furry insects at Skuon market (REUTERS)
  • Did a Middle-Eastern Film Crew Attempt Assasination of the President In Florida on the Morning of Sept 11th? (MadCowMorningNews)
  • Mohammed Atta's American Girlfriend Is Missing (MadCowMorningNews)
  • Swedish Hijack Suspect Had Studied to Be a Pilot in U.S. (New York Times)
  • Police hunt al-Qa'ida network linked to Stansted 'hijacker'(UKIndependent)
  • Feds bust US terror sleeper cell (NYPOST)
  • Detroit Arab Men Plead Innocent of Terror Link (Reuters)
  • Flight Attendants Who Subdued Shoe Bomber Give First Interview. (TIMEMAG)
  • UPDATE: Chicago Reader critic's mention of nerve gas in "Gaza Strip" documentary review causes a stir (Jim Romenesko's Media News)
  • Jewish groups angry about shoe with Nazi gas name (Reuters)
  • Target Yanks 'Neo-Nazi' Clothing Off Shelves after Southern Poverty Law Center complaints (Reuters)
  • Incumbents' Losses May Add To Black-Jewish Tensions -Senator who was first to claim that Bush's pre-knowledge of attacks should be investigated loses campaign for re-election (The Miami Herald Washington Bureau)
    Jewish help in defeating two black members of Congress who had been critical of Israel is threatening to aggravate long-standing tensions between two uneasy allies in the Democratic Party.
  • Israel Warns Bulge In Holy Wall Could Collapse Any Moment-Destroying the Al-Aksa Mosque (AFP)
  • SAME ARTICLE EDITED FOR JORDANTIMES.com:
    Israel warns bulge in Jerusalem wall could turn deadly     OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
  • Apocalyptical German Christians Hold Rally For Israel (Jewish Chronicle)
  • Plunging Plankton Levels In Oceans May Be Disasterous (The Scotsman)
    Global warming is being accelerated by a massive drop in the tiny organisms that absorb CO2 in the North Atlantic, NASA satellites have revealed.
  • Seven rare whales dead, entangled in fishing gear (AP)
  • Giant Squid Washes Up on Portuguese Beach (Reuters)
  • Strange Underwater Objects - Mystery Footprints In Arctic Canada- Inuit report submarines driving away marine life (The Halifax Herald)
  • PHOTO: Shark in Maine seen leaping out of the water (Reuters)
  • Bin Laden’s Brother-in-law Had Close Ties to Bush (Scoop.co.nz)
    Saudi Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, an Osama bin Laden benefactor, has laundered money into tax-exempt U.S. entities for years as a foreign financier of terrorism. But a new 9/11 lawsuit is thrusting Mahfouz’s latent past business links to George W. Bush back into the spotlight and raising important questions about links between Saudi finance and terrorism in America.
  • CNN to Reveal When Celebrities Promote Drugs for Companies (nytimes.com)
    Ann Wilson,of the group Heart, discussed the Lap-band, a surgical device for obesity, on "The Early Show" last month. Ms. Wilson was paid to promote the device.
  • Zambia Must Accept Biotech Food Or Face Starvation Says U.N. (AP)
  • River found under Sahara (AP)
    Russian satellites have discovered a river flowing 700 feet under the Sahara.
  • Huge Black Triangle low-flying silent UFO spotted by astronomer in Canada- A Nuclear-powered Stealth Blimp? (canada.com)
  • Thailand's latest pet craze The Thai government is cautioning people against a new fad sweeping Bangkok - raising giant African cockroaches as pets - saying the bugs could become a health risk if let loose. (dfw.com)
  • About 270-million years ago this 3-meter water scorpion lived in a fresh-water sea on the ancient continent of Gondwana. (news24.com)
  • Dino-killer asteroid triggered huge tsunamis. (Discovery.com)
  • Mother told to stop breastfeeding 8 year old boy.(The Guardian)
  • Author claims to have found remnants of a lost tribe of Israel. (forward.com)
  • Shields up! An electric force field that vaporizes grenades and shells on impact has reportedly been developed by the UK Ministry of Defence.
  • The circular message contained in the corn circle has been decoded. The message consists of 26 Words in the English language.. Here's a good picture of the formation and an interview with the land owner. (earthfiles.com)
  • It's all right here, folks. All the Apollo Moon landings were fakes. (ufos-aliens.co.uk)
  • Do you believe that an alien craft crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947? If you do, the government cover-up worked. Here's what really happened. (alienresistance.org)
  • Did you ever catch a glimpse of another time, right where you're standing? Joan Forman collected many reports time slips from around the UK. (mysterymag.com)
  • Does this old story hold answer to possibility of time travel? (deseretnews.com)
  • U.S. woman sought to poison Prince William - police (Reuters)
  • US and Russia in raid to snatch uranium in Yugoslavia (Times Of London)
  • Uranium Fuel Plants Told To Beef Up Security (Reuters)
  • CIA FIGHTS PUBLISHER OVER DOCS; BOOK DETAILS HISTORIC INTELLIGENCE BREAKDOWN; AUTHOR'S PATRIOTISM CHALLENGED (DRUDGE)
    WASHINGTON TIMES reporter and bestselling author Bill Gertz is preparing to begin the fight of his life -- when next week he exposes, in unprecedented detail, America's intelligence failures.
  • Spy Agency Planned Exercise On September 11 Built Around A Plane Crashing Into A Building (Associated Press)
  • West Nile Probably NOT Being Spread By Migrating Birds say Birdspotters (RENSE.com)
  • Virginia Teens Diagnosed With Malaria (Reuters)
  • West Nile Spread via Transplants (AP)
  • The Silence of the Crows (WASHPOST)
  • Mystery disease strikes UK birds - Young birds with the disease can't fly, instead walking round in tight circles, doing somersaults and twisting their heads bizarrely.(New Scientist)
  • Death Toll Surges In Madagascar Flu Epidemic (Reuters)
  • Death Toll Tops 700 in Madagascar Flu Epidemic (UKTelegraph)
  • Killer flu can result from a single mutation (NewScientist.com)
    The 1997 Hong Kong flu outbreak, which killed one third of its victims, resulted from a single mutation that allowed the virus to disable part of the body's immune system.
    "If this mutated gene is put into an ordinary strain of flu you turn it into a nasty virus," says Robert Webster, of St Jude Children's Hospital, Memphis, whose team did the research. "It provides an explanation for the virulence of the H5N1 Hong Kong epidemic and possibly for the 1918 epidemic." In 1918, a flu strain killed 30 million people world-wide.
  • Doctor's house searched, Fifteen Buckets of Brains found. (Florida Gainesville Sun)
  • Jewish Doctor Accused of Targeting Mosques (AP)
    TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - A podiatrist who allegedly wanted to destroy mosques and other Muslim centers had so many explosives in his home that he could have accidentally destroyed the 200-unit townhouse complex where he lives, police said. Dr. Robert J. Goldstein planned to use guns and the explosives to destroy an Islamic education center and dozens of mosques, prosecutors said.
  • Police Say Doctor Accused of Targeting Mosques Had Expertise, Explosives to Carry Out Plans (AP)
  • Meteorite may have delayed life (Reuters)
  • Swedish Scientists Find Schizophrenia Clue (Reuters)
    Swedish scientists have found a tiny, mysterious particle in the spinal marrow fluid which may be a new form of life and which could help explain the cause of schizophrenia.
  • FAT CLUE TO YUPPIE FLU (westpress.co.uk)
  • Researchers say have found that the human brain creates its own internal music and produce brain waves that create perfect lullabies to aid sleep. (ABCNEWS.com)
  • TIME Reports LaRouche Versus 'Israeli Agent' In Pentagon (larouchepub.com)
    Time magazine, issue dated August 26, 2002, "How an unpaid conservative board that hold private meetings and puts nothing in writing gets heard at the Pentagon--Inside the Secret War Council,"
  • Chicken hawks-How those calling for war avoided their own military service (left-wing UKGuardian)
  • With critics like this, Bush must know he's right (right-wing UKTelegraph)
  • The Men From JINSA and CSP-In a profile of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP), Jason Vest writes that "For this crew, 'regime change' by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative." (Right-on Socialists TheNation.com)
    Almost thirty years ago, a prominent group of neoconservative hawks found an effective vehicle for advocating their views via the Committee on the Present Danger, a group that fervently believed the United States was a hair away from being militarily surpassed by the Soviet Union, and whose raison d'être was strident advocacy of bigger military budgets, near-fanatical opposition to any form of arms control and zealous championing of a Likudnik Israel. Considered a marginal group in its nascent days during the Carter Administration, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 CPD went from the margins to the center of power
    Just as the right-wing defense intellectuals made CPD a cornerstone of a shadow defense establishment during the Carter Administration, so, too, did the right during the Clinton years, in part through two organizations: the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP). And just as was the case two decades ago, dozens of their members have ascended to powerful government posts, where their advocacy in support of the same agenda continues, abetted by the out-of-government adjuncts from which they came. Industrious and persistent, they've managed to weave a number of issues--support for national missile defense, opposition to arms control treaties, championing of wasteful weapons systems, arms aid to Turkey and American unilateralism in general--into a hard line, with support for Israel right at its core.
  • President Bush says that he's reading "Supreme Command," a new book by Eliot Cohen, a hardliner on Iraq who argues that "war is too important to be left to the generals." In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Cohen criticized people in the Pentagon for their tendency "to whine to the press" about their doubts surrounding an Iraq attack.
  • The Guardian's Brian Whitaker reports on the closely-knit and well-financed network of hawkish think tanks whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues.
  • Media Transparency follows the money from conservative philanthropies to groups that Whitaker cites, including the American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute, Middle East Forum, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. See the extensive list of newspaper articles and op-ed pieces that Washington Institute members have placed during the last year, and the speakers represented by Eleana Benador, who Whitaker calls "a sort of theatrical agent for experts on the Middle East and terrorism." (slice of cursor.org)
  • Bush Junior Gets a Spanking (NYT's MAUREEN DOWD)
  • Swedish philosopher at Yale says there's a 20-30% chance that we are already living in a 'Matrix'-style Virtual Universe. (UKtelegraph)
  • Will robots ever learn to love? (UKTelegraph)
  • Rep. Decries Bush on Security Funds (AP)
    A Democratic congressman criticized President Bush Tuesday for withholding more than $300 million for security at Energy Department installations, saying they could be targets for terrorists.
    "The Department of Energy , by its own admission, does not have adequate resources to provide security at these facilities," said Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
  • Diamonds Are Forever, and You Could Be Too (Reuters)
    A Chicago company says it has developed a process for turning cremated human remains into diamonds that can be worn as jewelry.
  • Majority of Britons Want to Leave Country (Reuters)
  • London mayor: I feel safer in New York
  • British seasons are becoming increasingly muddled, say conservationists.(BBCNEWS)
  • Ionising Rain-maker causes Drizzle over moscow claim Scientists (AP)
  • IS THIS NESSIE? (Hi-lands.com)
    A chance visit to a web site has produced the best underwater pictures of 'Nessie' in 27 years.
  • PHOTO: Youngest known mother in the world: Peruvian five-year-old Lina Medina, accompanied by her 11-month-old-son Gerardo and Doctor Lozada
  • Isaac Asimov to blame for "al-Qaida"? (UKGuardian) It has become synonymous with the terrorist attacks of September 11 - but what is the origin of the name al-Qaida? Giles Foden on how Bin Laden may have been inspired by Isaac Asimov's Foundation.
  • Debunking the myth of Al Qaeda-Its size and reach have been blown out of proportion. It is a loose collection of groups and individuals that doesn't even refer to itself as "Al Qaeda." Bin Laden has never mentioned "Al Qaeda" publicly. (ChristianScienceMonitor)
  • ShotSpotter™- Surveillance Microphones listen for gunfire then dispatch police.(ABCNEWS.com) Due to a developing technology called Shotspotter, police can figure out exactly where a gun was fired. And they can do that faster than a panicky person's fingers can dial 911. ShotSpotter uses a grid of listening microphones in a specified area to instantly record and accurately pinpoint the location of gunfire.
  • The Bill has eyes. Big Brother is watching the streets of London. Biometrics Offers High-tech IDs Via Eye, Hand Scans (ABCNEWS)
    Around Stratford, in the borough of Newham — one of the English capital’s toughest neighborhoods — a system of 250 video cameras monitors the mean streets, and a computer scans the images in real time, alerting police when it recognizes the face of a known criminal.
  • Police film 80 year old man in sunglasses and tennis shoes having sex with a herd of cows.(TheSun.co.uk)
  • Cross-species testes transplant successful (NewScientist.com)
  • Bin Laden plans fresh terror for September-Intelligence agencies in the UK, southern Asia and the Middle East are detecting an increased volume of communications between suspected al-Qaeda cells (UKGuardian)
  • "Master of Disguise" Bin Laden Reportedly Back at Helm of al Qaeda-"planning new attack to coincide with a U.S. attack on Iraq" (Reuters)
  • PHOTO:Thai schoolboy Wattana Thongjon, 10, lays in his bed alongside his pet crocodile "Kheng" at his home in Thailand (Reuters)
  • Memo: 'Dirty bomb' suspect learned from al-Qaeda (AP)
  • GeoStorm™-First Automated Severe Weather Early Warning System Issue Alerts Residents and Businesses in Path By Telephone
  • India Vedic city in Iowa: A city in the US follows building principles set in the Vedas (The Indian Week)
  • Saudi racehorse to be offered to US in goodwill gesture (LondonTimes)
    15 Saudis were among the September 11 hijackers. Now their Government hopes a gift of the Kentucky Derby winner will heal families wounds.
  • Saudi royalty live it up in hedonistic Marbella (AP)
    Saudi princes and princesses are snap up Hermes scarves and Rolex watches by the display case, slap down millions on roulette tables and boogie into the night with the bejeweled blondes at the Olivia Valere discotheque. It's a lifestyle strictly prohibited in Saudi Arabia
  • Saudi Press Trashes Cheney As Israeli Puppet (Right-wing NewsMax.com)
  • Submarine could prove US started Pearl Harbor (UKIndependent)
  • New Jersy Girl Gets $4.7 Million For Vaccine Injuries
  • Selling out the legacy of Punk (art-for-a-change.com)
  • Park in California closed because of bubonic plague. (AP)
  • Flying Toilets: a First Earth Summit Test? (Reuters)
  • Dung flies over Japanese TV show full of bull -Cow abuse featured for jokes on Japanese Sketch show (Sordid Japanese news site:http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/)
  • Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power (MSNBC.com)
    During the initiation the new members are introduced to the artifacts in the tomb, among them Nazi memorabilia—including a set of Hitler’s silverware-dozens of skulls, and an assortment of decorative tchotchkes: coffins, skeletons, and innards. They are then are then systematically deflowered by the tomb's resident harlot.
  • CNN Refuses To Run Connie Chung's Skull & Bones Broadcast (Rense.com)
  • New life for Operation TIPS-Blasted for plans to link the spy program to "America's Most Wanted," John Ashcroft has tapped another private firm to run its volunteer hotline. His most fervent supporter: Joe Lieberman. (Salon.com)
  • Former CIA and Mossad chiefs to help fight terrorism in New York (haaretzdaily.com)
  • The Jews who voted for Le Pen. Rabbis define the rise of Le Pen as a divine miracle.(haaretzdaily.com)
  • We have the technology.....What is Synthetic Aperture Radar? -- Sandia National Laboratories
  • 2002 award for most obvious CIA front goes to....Atlas Economic Research Foundation-Bringing Freedom to the World: INSTITUTE SPOTLIGHT: Minaret of Freedom (http://www.atlasusa.org/)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#34
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR AUGUST 19th 2002
  • Terrorist Training Tapes shed new light on bin Laden's network. Dog shown being gassed. (CNN)
  • An FBI forensic linguistics expert believes the US anthrax attacks were carried out by a senior scientist from within America's biological-defence community. Professor Don Foster - who helped convict Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and unveiled Joe Klein as the author of the novel Primary Colors - says the evidence points to someone with high-ranking military and intelligence connections. (BBCNEWS)
  • Bill Patrick and Ken Alibek, between them, have nearly 50 years of experience in biological weapons research. Interviews with Biowarriors Bill Patrick and Ken Alibek (Nova Online)
  • Dr. Ken Alibek, president of Hadron Advanced Biosystems, and a former Soviet bioweapons expert, contracts with the U.S. government to develop innovative technical solutions for the intelligence community. (FOXNEWS)
    In March 2001, Hadron was awarded a $2.6 million Anthrax research contract by the U.S. Army to study and develop new medical defenses for Anthrax. Dr. Alibek was asked what people could best do to defend themselves against the threat of Anthrax. He replied that the best defense is to build a strong immune system.
  • REPOST: Microbiologist Death Toll Mounts, 12 in last 5 months, including 2 former Soviet bioweapons experts, As Connections To Dyncorp, Hadron, Promis Software & Disease Research Emerge (Rense)
  • REPOST: Weapons Expert Michael Riconosciuto, Wackenhut And Osama bin Laden (OrlinGrabbe.com)
    Michael Riconosciuto was more than just an expert on missile electronics; he was also an expert on electronic computers and associated subjects such as cryptology. Riconosciuto was a prodigy who had grown up in the spook community. The Riconosciuto family had once run Hercules, California, as a company town. Michael and his father Marshall Riconosciuto, a friend of Richard Nixon, ran the Hercules Research Corporation. In the early 1980s Michael also served as the Director of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians in Indio, California. Riconosciuto's talents were much in demand. He had created the a-neutronic bomb (or "Electro-Hydrodynamic Gaseous Fuel Device"), which sank the ground level of the Nevada test site by 30 feet when a prototype was tested. Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, said of Riconosciuto: "I've spoken to Michael Riconosciuto (the inventor of the a-neutronic bomb) and he's an extraordinarily bright guy. I also have a hunch, which I can't prove, that they both (Riconosciuto and Lavos, his partner) indirectly work for the CIA." Riconosciuto's bomb made suitcase nukes obsolete, because it achieved near-atomic explosive yields, but could be more easily minaturized. You could have a suitcase a-neutronic bomb, or a briefcase a-neutronic bomb, or simply a lady's purse a-neutronic bomb.
    But there was more than explosives in the portfolios of the CIA agents who surrounded Riconosciuto like moths around a candle. Both Robert Booth Nichols, the shady head of Meridian Arms Corporation, and Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the manager of the Cabazon reservation, were involved in bio-warfare work, the first in trying to sell bio-warfare products to the army through Wackenhut, the second in giving tribal permission for research to take place at Cabazon. According to Riconosciuto, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was in charge of the classified contracts for biological warfare research. Riconosciuto would later testify under oath that Stormont Laboratories was involved in the DARPA-Wackenhut-Cabazon project. Jonathan Littman, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle would relate: "Cabazons and Wackenhut appeared to be acting as middlemen between the Pentagon's DARPA and Stormont Laboratories, a small facility in Woodland near Sacramento."
    Riconosciuto would make additional claims about Bio-Rad corporation, a medical supplier which had gradually taken over Hercules, California. The focus of Bio-Rad's research was said to be bio-active elements that could be tailored to attack those with certain types of DNA. Weapons could thus be produced that were specifically designed to wipe out specific races or genetic classes of human beings.
  • NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports (WASHTIMES)
  • Film being made about allegedly fabricating journalist (AP)
  • Tombstone Cash Machine Doles Out Inheritance
  • 'Handmade' cloning cheap and easy (New Scientist)
    Handmade cloning, a new way to create genetically identical copies of animals, is not only cheaper and simpler than existing methods, but appears to work better too.
  • WILD THINGS: Stories of ENFANT SAVAGES and MAN-CUBS. (Fortean Times)
  • Iran Accused By Iraq of Building Two Secret Nuclear Plants (UPI)
  • New Proof Birds Did Not Descend From Dinosaurs -Ostrich Study Confirms Bird 'Hands' Unlike Those Of Dinosaurs ('Creationist' University Of North Carolina)
  • THE SECRET WAR: A Saudi Flying Instructor Who Died Mysteriously On May 8 Had The Same Name as Two 9/11 Hijackers Who Lived At The Same U.S. Naval Air Base (Freedom lovin' AmericanFreePress.net)
    Amid reports in the days after the September 11 attacks that two of the hijackers, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi received flight training at Florida’s Pensacola Naval Air Station, a new dot has been connected which may shed more light on past revelations that 9/11 terrorists learned to fly at secure United States military bases. Connecting those dots links them to US Defence contractor Raytheon, the builders of HAARP, air craft control and back to the flight school where most of the other terrorists trained
  • Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Nerve Gas (New York Times)
  • "Project Truth" and Secret Agents In The Newsroom (SFBay Guardian)
  • Was the Russian Tupolev Airliner, carrying the childen of "Russian's Political Oil Elite" Shot Down Over Germany? Despite diligent analysis of the available video footage, no trace can be found of any debris from the collision of the DHL Boeing 757, which was travelling from Bahrain carrying what has being described by middle east sources as “secure”, “classified”, “secret” and “extremely hazardous”. (by "no-plane-crash-an-accident" conspiracy-stirrer Joe Vialls, 3 July 2002)
  • 'UFO' in air show crash (UKTelegraph)
    Slow-motion videotape of the July 27 accident shows a dark object rising in an arc from a wood near the Lviv airfield close the flight path of the Su-27, which went on to crash into the crowd.
  • India calls in X-Files agents to unmask face-scratching alien; UFO sightings have sparked hysteria and riots (London Times)
  • 10 million-plus under threat in China with vast lake at danger level August 20, 2002 (AP)
  • U.S. considers hitting al Qaeda site in Iraq
  • Security experts: Nuclear waste, an inviting terror target (AP)
  • 80's Terrorist Mastermind Abu Nidal Reported Dead in Baghdad (AP)
  • Falling Masonry makes U.N. consider $1 billion face-lift (WASHTIMES)
  • Lab Mice Die After Drugs, Disco (AP)
  • Flight of Saudi funds from US raises concern(FT.com)
  • Dispute over size of Saudi pull-out from US-Saudis on Thursday issued conflicting reactions to estimates that up to $200bn in non-government investments had been pulled out of the US in recent months.(FT.com)
  • IMAGE: Space Weather:A coronal mass ejection billowed away from the vicinity of sunspot 61 on August 14th. (spaceweather.com)
  • DATA GRAPHIC OF CURRENT OZONE LAYER MAKES WORLD LOOK LIKE ROTTEN APPLE
  • Floods in Europe Kill at Least 74 (AP)
  • The US Department of Defense is to fund a "death ray" program to allow the Air Force to field working laser and microwave weapons capable of tackling underground enemy bunkers. (theherald.co.uk)
  • US HAARP "Tesla Ray" Weapon Development Concerns Russian Duma -US Could Dominate The Planet If It Deploys This Weapon In Space (Interfax News Agency)
  • Real-life Jurassic Park Coming Soon (The Scotsman)
  • Mice first to produce other species' sperm (UPI)
  • UK volunteers line up to sell name for advertising (Reuters)
  • Like it or Not, Incarceration's Inflation-Proof-The Booming Prison Business Stock analysts estimate the private prison industry to be a $30 billion to $40 billion business.(ABCNEWS.com)
  • UNTANGLING THE OCTOPUS
    (by Dr. SteveMizrach of Samizdat) October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Noriega, Wackenhut, Iraqgate, and BCCI
    Before he died in an ineptly performed 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency.
  • The Wackenhut Connection
    The Wackenhut Security Corporation of Miami, Florida, has long been suspected of being a CIA front. The right-wing politics of George Wackenhut, who had ties to Belgian fascists and South American death squads, are well known. But few people realize that Wackenhut, a small company with "only a few" employees, gets some choice assignments, including guarding nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons facilities, the Alaskan Oil pipeline, and several American embassies; or that its board of directors contains several luminaries from the FBI, CIA, and Army Intelligence, including Bobby Ray Inman. Wackenhut has led a covert crusade against whistleblowers at many nuclear power plants, using wiretaps to eavesdrop on them and various 'subtle' techniques to convince them not to talk; it also spied on Chuck Hamel, a critic of the Aleyska Oil Consortium's drilling policies, by setting up a fake environmental-law firm which sought to "pump" him for his sources. Wackenhut may have even used some operatives to try and help topple President Perez of Venezuela through a (failed) military coup. It appears that Michael Riconsciuto, a convicted drug dealer, claims to have met with George Wackenhut, John Amarell (of Wackenhut's Executive Board), and Dr. John Philip Nichols (a CIA operative conducting shady activities on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in the California desert) in Las Vegas in the early 80s to discuss the theft of Inslaw's PROMIS software; he says Wackenhut asked him "how his software work was coming along." (Supposedly, Nichols was using the Cabazon reservation as his own private munitions proving ground, testing things ranging from super-lethal Fuel-Air Explosives and chemical-biological weapons to Electromagnetic Pulse [EMP] generators.)
  • Helicopter Crashes, Wackenhut, and Underground UFO Bases
    Conspiracy report on helicopter crash in July 1991 in which several Wackenhut employees were killed. (alt.alien.visitors. via www.totse.com)
    8/6/95.
    "The dead journalist, Joseph Daniel 'Danny' Casolaro was found dead August 10th in a motel room in West Virginia. His wrists were slashed seven times on each wrist and a suicide note was found nearby. The only manuscript of his book, with accompanying notes, WAS MISSING. "The book, provisionally titled 'The Octopus', was meant to be an explosive expose of misdeeds by the Justice Department under the Reagan administration.
  • Wackenhut Rent-a-Cops (mediafilter.org) The company's ubiquitous presence at nuclear facilities and the role of its employees in repressing anti-nuclear demonstrations--including intelligence gathering--has made the term "wackenhuts" synonymous with rent-a-cops. The company has resorted to "dirty tricks" against its perceived foes or those of its clients.
  • Homeland Security bill to end a revered tradition of Whistle-Blowing. Supervisor blew whistle on substandard security at Colorado Nuclear Storage Facily overseen by Wackenhut Services, where a ton of plutonium has already gone missing. (WASHINGTONTIMES)
  • Secret US Forces Plan Pretext for Clamp-Down
    (by Voxfux)
    The following article is no longer on the VoxFux website. As of August 8th, 2002 the entire website content has been removed --leaving only a disclaimer warning that the death of the site operator would be a covert forces assassination. It has been the principle focus of State Department and military strategists since presidential National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined it twenty years ago as the principle American “Imperative.” Meaning: To survive, we MUST conquer. But what of all those nations that we will be conquering? According to Brzezinski and his cabal of adherents in the Military and State Department whom his writings are a biblical tome - it’s for their own good. The problem Brzezinski says is that most average American’s don’t have a taste for crusades of global conquest... Unless...there’s a sudden threat.
    In his latest book, The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski drills his followers no less than four times that only sudden and terrorfying threats would rouse Americans to the task of global conquest. So now we are standing by waiting for the dirty bomb to make it’s debut as the next threat of the month to capture the limited imagination of the somnambulistic American sheepdom. In the age of simulations this poor mans nuclear bomb, the dirty bomb, is an accurate reflection of the bankrupt and desperate warring American industrialists who assuredly will be the ones wielding it’s terrorfying force against us. (The trail of acquisition of a genuine nuclear bomb is too much to cover for this group so the easiest solution is the dirty bomb)
    Brzezinski’s book is the defacto Bible of the Bush Group and now is standard coffee table decor in every office in the state department and pentagon.
  • This is the extraordinary story of a dinner date. A dinner date that was scheduled to happen on march 31st 1981 - the day following the strange assassination attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the president. And George Bush Sr, the very ambitious former CIA director from Texas was the Vice President. What makes this dinner date so special that night was it’s two guests. Hold on to your seats because the following news item should send a chill up your spine. The dinner party was to be held at the home of Neil Bush, the vice president’s son. The guest at the dinner party (which was quickly cancelled after news of the failed attempt on the life of the President), was Scott Hinckley the brother of John Hinckley who just that afternoon fired several shots into Reagans chest, coming one half inch from putting his bullet into the heart of the President - a half inch from putting his friend’s father, George Bush, into the White House. It was revealed in the days following the shooting that since 1970 both George Bush Sr. and John Hinckley Sr (the father of the assassin) were friends and fellow oil industrialists in Texas and Colorado.
  • Heavyweights like the Bechtel Group, Wackenhut and a certain now infamous Carlyle group invest heavily only in eventualities that lead to the use of force to control populations, Wackenhut is a government contractor with deep ties to both intelligence agencies and the military. This private contractor is responsible for among other things running America’s prison system. They also have their own very lethal private army - ditto for Bechtel Group. A quick rundown on the Carlyle group. The Carlyle Group is basically a group of political insiders who buy failing military contractors at bargain basement prices. The reason why they buy the failing discounted companies is because the Defence Department appropriations guidelines require that companies be in existence for a certain time before being allowed to enter government contracts, for the obvious reasons. Then with their insider status and all the requirements and appearances in place, they then do insider deals with their buddies on the inside for this or that weapons system, and cash in big time. That the Carlyle Group in a nutshell. Who’s on the board of Carlyle Group? George Bush Sr, James Baker, John Major, and prior to Sept 11th, The Bin Laden family. It’s chairman is Frank Carlucci -former Defence Secretary and Princeton University wrestling teammate and pal of current Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
  • The Russian Nuclear Bomb in Washington, DC (TimeMag 2001)
    JFK: "You know, they have an atom bomb on the third floor of their embassy."
  • 25,000 Gas Masks Ordered for the Capitol (AP)
  • Rash of Long Island Spider Bite Victims Will be Tested for Cutaneous Anthrax (AP)
  • The Diagnosis of Brown Recluse Spider Bite Is Overused for Dermonecrotic Wounds of Uncertain Etiology
    (American College of Emergency Physicians)
    One of the most famous misdiagnoses occurred recently in New York when a 7-month-old who had contracted cutaneous anthrax was initially diagnosed as having a brown recluse spider bite, even though these spiders are not native to New York.
  • Renowned Spider Venom Authority Goes Missing-Oct '99
  • Anthrax Spores Found in Princeton Mailbox (AP)
  • FBI Sources: Former Govt. Scientist Not Cleared Yet. Hatfill was working on Novel about a fictional anthrax attack upon congress. Hoax letter mailed from London to Daschle during time of visit there. (ABCNEWS)
  • Ex-Army Scientist Denies Role in Anthrax Attacks. Hatfill:'My Life Is Destroyed' by Probe, Media (WashPost)
  • Electric shocks may help the morbidly obese lose their appetite (NationalPost)
  • NY Times business editor dies in fall (Reuters)
  • Scientist's Death Fall Haunts Family Nearly 50 years Later- Government documents showed CIA had slipped LSD into his drink, days before his death. (San Jose Mercury News)
  • Worker Falls Into Vat of Chocolate, Dies (AP)
  • Platform at aquarium falls, dumps people into shark tank (AP)
  • Satellites see big changes in the ocean food chain.
  • Flesh-Eating Bacteria Kills Fisherman (UPI)
  • Suicidal Woman Killed After Leaping Into Thai Crocodile Pit (Reuters)
  • Jellyfish Invade Salmon Farm Killing Hundreds of Thousands of Salmon (AP)
  • More than 200,000 dead fish turn up in Florida lake (FLORIDA TODAY)
  • Lost Parrot Tells Animal Rescuers His Name (Reuters)
  • A Whale Bleeds to Death at Sea World (TheMemoryHole.org)
  • Ship's bow 'harpoons' a small whale-But it may have been dead when it was hit (SEATTLE POST)
  • Dead Whale Washes Up on Fire Island (1010 WINS)
  • Leaping sturgeons: Giant fish in Florida injuring boaters (MiamiHerald)
  • Deadly seal virus returns to UK- 18,000 died from last outbreak in 1988 (BBCNEWS)
  • The Russian mob was ready to kidnap or kill the United States' highest-ranking military officer in 1998 (WASHTIMES)
  • Planes' vapour trails affect weather-Researchers proved jet vapour makes things cooler (BBC)
  • Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Nerve Gas (New York Times)
  • Evidence For Release Of A Schizophrenia-Causing BioWeapon (Conspiracy mongering Rense.com)
  • USE OF TEAR GAS QUESTIONED IN SEATTLE (pacifica.org-Dec '99)
    Doctors examining scores of protesters are expressing increasing concern that some may be suffering from the effects of nerve gas.
  • AUDIO: ALLEGATION OF ISRAELI NERVE GAS USE AGAINST PALESTINIANS (Pacifica Radio)
  • US Documentary "Gaza Strip" By James Longley purportedly shows Israeli Army use of nerve gas upon Palestinians (littleredbutton.com)
  • The IDF former chief medical officer denied Palestinian claims that the IDF has used nerve gas in the ongoing violence. Dr. Eran Dolev said pictures on Palestinian television purporting to show victims of Israeli nerve gas attacks were fabricated. (Canadian Jewish News)
  • Palestinians working on nerve gas weapons for attacks (WORLDTRIBUNE.COM)
    Israeli military sources said the Palestinians are trying to use cyanide or nerve gas in suicide bombings.
  • Demand to Equip Americans for civil defense like Israelis (The Baltimore Sun)
    It costs less than $10 per person to manufacture and distribute the WMD kits in Israel.
  • Israelis 'poisoning' Palestinians says Mrs Arafat (BBC World Service)
  • The use of teargas and nerve gas (Intifada Diary: Ten Years After)
    Some released a kind of gas we called ghaz 'aasad ("nerve gas") that had orange or red coloured smoke when they were thrown. If you inhaled it you would get hysterical and you would have to be taken to the hospital. Nothing would stop it. The effect was incredible. You would suddenly find yourself starting to panic for no apprent reason. Everyone around would start to panic and experience extreme confusion.
  • Letter to Editor From Deputy Consul General David Roet (Chicago Reader)
    May 23, 2002
    Film critic Ted Shen has perhaps unintentionally stumbled on one of the most terrible blood libels and outrageous statements regarding Israel perpetuated by Palestinians and their supporters, in his review of the film Gaza Strip (Critic's Choice, April 19). Based on this narrative, the Israelis are accused of deliberately poisoning Arab women and children. This propaganda echoes the centuries-old anti-Semitic canard that Jews poison Christian children.
  • Israel says El Al crash chemical 'non-toxic' (BBCNEWS)
    October 2, 1998
    The state-run Israeli airline, El Al, admitted on Thursday that its aircraft was carrying a chemical which is used in the production of the nerve gas sarin. A report published by the Dutch health ministry showed that local doctors believed up to 300 residents could be suffering from effects caused by the accident.
  • British Freemasonry Covets Israel
    (By Barry Chamish -Israeli Conspiracy mongerer)
    During much of his youth, Jesus lived in Britain with his uncle Joseph of Armithea, who ran a lucrative tin trading business between Cornwall and Phoenicia.
  • DNA Tests Confirm India's Jewish Community Carries Unusual Moses Gene (The Times of India)
  • Catholic Church admits Jews' covenant with God is legitimate (Boston Globe)
  • No Need to Guzzle All That Water, Expert Says-Trying to do the "right" thing by drinking eight full glasses of water a day may do little more than make a person run to the bathroom. (Reuters)
  • THE COMING WATER CRISIS- Many billions of dollars will be needed to quench America's thirst, but is private business the answer? (usnews.com)
  • "Virtual water" helps Mideast leaders sell myths (Reuters)
    The population of the Jordan River Basin, which includes Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and southern Syria, has grown six-fold since the late 1940s when it was secure in water. Now it would need about 15 billion cubic metres of water a year to be self-sufficient, but has only three to five billion. Allan says the shortfall is not publicly discussed.
  • Pesticides 'found on 50% of UK supermarket fruit and veg' (Ananova)
  • Elvis' Hairdresser: He Was Really Blonde (Wireless Flash)
  • Flu clue to fatal mystery Madagascaran illness:156 deaths and 1291 cases since June (NewScientist.com)
  • Washington looks at overhauling the Islamic and Arab world (NEWSWEEK)
    As one senior British official put it: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”
  • U.S. to Begin Fingerprinting Visiting Aliens -Including all nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria (AP)
  • Taking the "Saudi" Out of "Arabia". Pentagon considers bombing Mecca and Medina if Arabs don't foresake terrorism- The LaRouchie defector who's advising the defense establishment. (MSN Slate)
    Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies: Ultimatum Urged To Pentagon Board. Murawiec's PowerPoint scenario, which is reproduced for the first time below, makes him sound like an aspiring Dr. Strangelove.
  • Rumsfeld phones Prince Sultan to contain the Saudi- American crisis (arabicnews.com)
  • Assassination attempt on King Fahd? Recent Deaths of Three Saudi Princes and Sec. General Of World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY). (TalibanNews.com via opposong immoderate Rantburg.com)
  • REPOST: FBI AND US SPY AGENTS SAY BUSH SPIKED BIN LADEN LINKED "WORLD ASSEMBLY OF MUSLIM YOUTH" (WAMY) PROBES BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11TH (The Guardian-London Nov 7, 2001 by Greg Palast)
  • THE WORD THAT NO ONE DARES UTTER – BUT CRUCIAL TO THE COMING WAR WITH IRAQ; PREEMPT. (by Anti-mossad CIA-friendly Gordon Thomas)
    Will Saddam launch squadrons of his pilots in kamikaze bio-chem or "dirty nuke" attacks upon 7,000 US troops already stationed in the broiling Kuwaiti desert.
  • Group Claims Saddam's Son Wounded In Assasination Attempt (The Associated Press)
  • Has The US Invasion Of Iraq Already Begun? Special forces training Kurds. (Mossad Outlet Debka.com)
  • NY likes Aussie's Sept 11 idea
    A Perth schoolboy's suggestion that rose petals be scattered on the streets of Manhattan to commemorate September 11 has reportedly been taken up.
  • Asian smog cloud threatens millions, says U.N.(Reuters)
    A three-km (two-mile) thick cloud of pollution shrouding southern Asia is threatening the lives of millions of people in the region and could have an impact much further afield, according to a United Nations-sponsored study.
  • Are Nuclear-Powered Slealth Blimps flying the Unfriendly skies? Investigation Casts Light on the Multitude of Mysterious Flying Black Triangle UFO sightings. (Space.com)
  • REPOST: U.S. Air Force's Nuclear Flying Saucer (popularmechanics.com)
  • Explorer: Legendary El Dorado Pinpointed (Discovery News)
  • PHOTO: New Mars 'Inca City' Photographs Reveal More Mystery (Rense via Malin Space Science Systems)
  • Bush Routes FBI's 1-800-TIPS Calls To FOX TV's 'America's Most Wanted' (Salon.com)
  • Forget TIPS, TIA is the real deal: Total Information Awareness.
    DARPA's Information Awareness Office is beginning the bidding process for the development of a next-generation information handling system, Total Information Awareness (TIA). The system will capture, cross index and maintain pedabytes of information including: financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, "critical resources", government and communications. By the way: DARPA's Information Awareness Office is run by by John Poindexter, who was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence.(Metafilter)
    Feds Open 'Total' Tech Spy System (Wired.com)
    Had Winston Churchill been alive in the months subsequent to Sept. 11 he might well have described U.S. intelligence agencies' performance prior to the attack thusly: Never have so many known so much and done so little.
  • Bush to allow marketers to look at your medical information. (ChicagoTrib)
    The bad news: Everyone is going to know your medical history without your approval. The good news: Free prozac. (Metafilter)
  • After Internet Glitch UK Vacationers Go to Canada by Mistake
  • Ashcroft Asked to Target Online Song Swappers (Reuters)
  • Thousands flee erupting volcano in New Britain (ABC RadioAustralia)
  • Volcano Erupts On Japanese Island (AP)US Planned to Drop an Atomic Bomb on Europe During WWII (MemoryHole Via Guardian via Studs Terkel)
  • Police Investigate Cross Burning in New Jersey (1010 WINS)
    MONROE TOWNSHIP, N.J. -- A black couple called authorities after they found a 6-foot wooden cross burning near their home early Friday morning.
  • Jewish Charities Watching Insurance Rates Rise (1010WINS)
  • Florida student pleads guilty to plot to bomb Jewish Centers, Power-Plants, Mount Rushmore. Developed his plan with the aid of a Jewish FBI operative who infiltrated his "mujahedeen" group on a classified intelligence-gathering operation. (Miami sun-sentinel.com)
  • U.S. Received New Tip on Qaeda Threats Against Landmarks: Famous Bridges on Heightened Alert (NYT)
  • Israel to Ship New Yorker Back Home (AP) Among those taken into custody was Adam Shapiro, 30, a New York City Jew who spent a night in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters, at a time when the compound was under siege by Israeli forces. Shapiro shared breakfast with the Palestinian leader and about six aides. He later gave the media an account of conditions inside. Afterward, Shapiro's parents received death threats and temporarily fled their Brooklyn home.
  • WTC Hero Laid to Rest in Jerusalem (1010 WINS)
    A computer programmer hailed as a hero for remaining with his quadriplegic friend rather than flee the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center was laid to rest on the Mount of Olives in Israel on Monday.
  • City Workers Used 9/11 Computer Glitch to Steal - up to 4,000 people stole $15M in funds from faulty ATM machines (1010 WINS)
  • Suspected Sept 11 Accomplice Flees to Egypt (1010 WINS)
  • Book Details Heroism Aboard Flight 93: 'Roll it' and 'Pull it up' last words heard on 'Let's Roll' Flight. (1010 WINS)
  • Flushing Out Corruption (AP)
    NEW YORK --Authorities charged 19 out of 20 city plumbing inspectors with extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for approval on plumbing projects. The charges come just four months after more than a dozen city tax assessors were charged with bribery.
  • Report: FBI Agents Invested with Inside Trader (AP)
  • REPOST: Ex-FBI Agent Insider Stock Scam Linked To 911? (NewsDay)
    Elgindy's attempt to liquidate the trust accounts of his children on Sept. 10 might "perhaps" mean he had "pre-knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, and, rather than report it, he was attempting to profit from that information."
  • REPOST: Is the FBI Penetrated? -Terrorists' Boston hotel searched on Sept 10th? (by Whitley Strieber -Author of "Communion")
  • Indian Actors Talks About LaGuardia Plane Ordeal :detained after "suspicious" activity (AP)
  • Jeb Bush benefiting from brother George's interest in Florida (AP)
  • Antibodies could be grown in fields ;"Plantibody" (NewScientist)
  • Cloned cows produce human antibodies (NewScientist.com)
    Cloned cows producing human antibodies could soon be drafted into the battle against a wide variety of microbes, including those attractive to terrorists.
  • Scientist Probes Indian Myths for Tsunami Clues (AP)
    When scientists figured out that sea water drowned groves of tall trees up and down the coast of Washington state the same year a tsunami hit Japan, they theorized that a massive 9.0 earthquake in the Pacific most likely triggered both events.
  • Tobacco Industry Fought Drugs' Marketing (NYT)
    Tobacco companies in the 1980's and 1990's put pressure on drug companies to limit their marketing of nicotine gum and skin patches that help people quit smoking, according to a new study of tobacco industry documents.
  • Drug dealers setting up shop next to methadone clinics. (WashPost)
  • Germany's most notorious postwar neo-Nazi party leader 'was MI6 agent' (UKGuardian)
  • The grimy cocktail of ash, soot, acids and other damaging airborne particles may be causing the premature deaths of a half-million people in India each year. (MSNBC)
  • Education is no paranormal prophylactic; smart people believe weird things. (ScientificAmerican)
  • UFOs are destroying the plains of fertile central Greece, according to farmers who claim to have spotted alien aircraft landing in their fields. (UKGuardian)
  • A German submarine be linked to the Nazis' search for the mythical Holy Grail (greenocktelegraph.co.uk).
  • Rock carvings in Sylva, North Carolina, may be stone-cold evidence that extraterrestrials visited Earth thousands of years ago. (Wireless)
  • Armed with a camera and a supply of plaster of Paris, a Minnesota hunter is wandering northwestern Wisconsin in search of a creature no one has managed to bag. (wisinfo.com)
  • Harvesting antimatter with giant balloons.
  • The alternative human evolution hypothesis known as the Aquatic Ape Theory or AAT for short. (DailyGrail)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#33
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR AUGUST 3rd 2002
  • PHOTO:Former President George Bush puts his hands to his face while talking about his recent dermatological treatment for sun-induced keratosis.(AP)
  • OIL RESERVES ORDERED FULL (NEWSWEEK)
  • JPost editor proposes Palestinian state if Springsteen visits (WPMsNBC)
  • SciDaily: New-car smell makes fish impotent (etc)"(SciDaily)
  • Percentage of male fish in two English rivers that scientists say have been "effectively feminised" by estrogen in the water : 100 (HarpersIndex)
  • BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S LENGTHY REVIEW PROCESS DELAYED CLINTON PLAN TO ATTACK AL QAEDA -- UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE (TimeMag)
  • Big Brother Incorporated(PRwatch.org)
    For years, activist groups in Europe thought that Manfred Schlickenrieder was a leftist sympathizer and filmmaker. He traveled around Europe, interviewing a broad spectrum of activists, and even produced a documentary video, titled Business As Usual: The Arrogance of Power, about human rights groups and environmentalists campaigning against the Shell oil company. In reality, Schlickenrieder was a spy, and Shell was one of his clients. His film and his activist pretensions were merely cover designed to win the confidence of activists so that he could infiltrate their organizations and collect "inside information" about their goals and activities.
  • First, you market the disease... then you push the pills to treat it (UKGuardian)
    The ugly truth about doctors, PR firms, drug companies and the "worrying" case of Paxil
  • Evidence For Release Of A Schizophrenia-Causing BioWeapon (Conspiracy mongering Rense.com)
  • Strong Statistical Correlation Between Prevalence Of Diabetes, Air Pollution (ScienceDaily)
  • The Barbie Pill (UKIndependent)
    You can't buy it yet, but a drug is being developed in labs in Australia and the US that may prove to be the ultimate lifestyle enhancer - you'd get a fantastic tan and a highly active libido, with a slim figure and clear skin as possible side-effects. It's been tagged 'the Barbie drug', but has serious origins as a treatment for skin cancer and sexual dysfunction.
  • Harper's Index July
    Percentage of Americans who would sign away their right to sue the maker of a pill that could make part of their body bigger : 3
    Percentage who say they would do so for the maker of a pill that could make part of their body smaller : 6
    Chance that a prescription drug approved by the FDA will be recalled or require relabeling within 25 years of its release : 1 in 5
    Chances an American believes the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorist attacks : 2 in 5
    Number of references to Israeli "retaliation" on U.S. network nightly newscasts between September 2000 and March 2002 : 118
    Number of references to Palestinian "retaliation" : 14
  • State vs. National Review -An American journalist is detained because he questioned Foggy Bottom's Saudi policies. (WSJ)
  • FBI has silenced an agent who accused it of shutting down his 1998 probe into alleged terrorist training camps in Chicago and Kansas City. (LAWeekly)
  • FBI wants to administer lie detector tests to Senate and House intelligence committee members over 9/11 leaks. (WASHPOST)
  • "We've got to do whatever it takes even if it takes sending SWAT teams into journalists homes to stop these leaks," admonished James B. Bruce, vice chairman of the CIA's Foreign Denial and Deception Committee. (Newsmax)
  • U.S. Mulls Military's Domestic Role (AP)
    Homeland security chief Tom Ridge says the threat of terrorism may force government planners to consider using the military for domestic law enforcement, now largely prohibited by federal law.
  • Talking Surveillance Cams Coming To LA Neighborhoods (Sacramento Bee)
  • Two weeks ago, Bush's appointee, Peter Kirsanow of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission drew heat by suggesting that another terrorist attack on U.S. soil could stir public support for mass, ethnicity-based internments as during World War II. (villagevoice)
  • Senator Biden: "War with Iraq likely"-War against Iraq is likely, said a senator exploring U.S. options, and other lawmakers joined him Sunday in pressing the Bush administration to make the case to Congress before any attack. (The Associated Press)
  • Sen. Biden's Daughter Arrested (AP)
  • Don't Scrutinize the Pentagon -Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is pushing a series of sweeping proposals that would weaken congressional oversight of the Pentagon. (Los Angeles Times)
  • London to Sydney in two hours?- A revolutionary jet engine that could cut the flight from London to Sydney to two hours has been tested successfully in open flight for the first time. (UKIndependent)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#32
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR AUGUST 1st 2002
  • Explorers Claim 'El Dorado' Discovered In Peruvian Amazon (Agencia EFE)
  • Evolutionists conspire to deny existence of dragons?
  • Ghost Of Crash Victim Caught On Surveillance Cam? - Video (ABCnews)
  • World Heads for Warmest Recorded Year Yet (Reuters)
  • 85% Of Alaska's Glaciers Are Melting At 'An Incredible Rate' (UKGuardian)
  • Alaska sweats in record 70-degree weather. (ADN.com)
  • NY TIMES: PLAN CONSIDERS TAKING BAGHDAD FIRST to pre-empt Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction
  • An Invasion Of Iraq - Leaks And The Truth
    A secret CIA assessment presented to the US President and the British Prime Minister warns Saddam has a "doomsday plan." In the event his death is imminent, he will issue instructions to terrorist cells already in place to launch chemical attacks in western capitals and in Israel. (By Martin Dillon www.Globe-Intel.net)
  • Whitehall dossier says Saddam plans biological weapons for Palestinians for use against Israel or US targets (LondonTimes)
  • Ebola virus could be synthesised (New Scientist)
    The technique used to create the first synthetic polio virus, revealed last week, could be also used to recreate Ebola or the 1918 flu strain that killed up to 40 million people.
  • Bin Laden's eldest son 'takes over al-Qaeda' (AFP)
  • INS To Deport 6,000 Arab Aliens From US Via Airliners (WorldNetDaily.com)
  • UK distributes anti-radiation pills (AFP)
  • U.S. ports of entry on alert after iridium lost (AP)
  • Possible theft of Russian weapons-grade plutonium alarms US (UKGuardian)
    Chechen rebels have stolen radioactive metals, possibly including plutonium, from a Russian nuclear power station in the southern region of Rostov, according to US nuclear officials.
  • NRC Warns Of Nuclear Theft Danger (AP)
    People with access to irradiation equipment used in medicine or commerce aren't required to undergo background checks, increasing the potential for theft or sabotage.
  • Russia defies US with plan to build more nuclear reactors in Iran (UKGuardian)
  • CIA Develops Secret Plan To Foster Political Dissent In Iran (By Martin Dillon www.Globe-Intel.net)
  • "Strip club terrorists?" Released. No link to terrorism.(KEYE radio San Antonio)
  • Atom breakthrough promises lasers which see underground (ANANOVA)
  • Boeing admits to working on anti-gravity craft (JanesDefenceWeekly)
  • F-16s Pursue UFO Over Washington Area (Washington Post)
  • Blue lights in Cincinnati sky a mystery (Cincinnati Post)
  • Perseid Meteor Shower Begins Slow Crawl to Aug. 12 Peak (SPACE.com)
  • UK charity slams "absurd" US cash cut to UN fund (Reuters)
    Marie Stopes International, the global family planning organisation, on Tuesday condemned as "absurd" a decision by the United States to withhold $34 million from the United Nations Population Fund.
  • Beijing orders Chinese women who are married to Taiwanese to have abortions Chinese birth-control personnel have forced at least six brides of Taiwan men to undergo pregnancy tests and ordered them to have abortions (www.taipeitimes.com via Drudge)
  • ETs Live Among Us Says Ex-China Foreign Ministry Official (ChinaDaily.com)
  • Jews, Muslims find common ground on London street (Reuters)
  • Jewish American moves to Israel, and converts to Islam, backs Hamas (AP)
  • Jewish settlers accused of selling arms to Palestinians (JERUSALEM POST)
  • Most Jewish Settlers Willing To Leave West Bank, Gaza If Paid (CBC News-Canada Broadcasting Co)
  • Israeli Cable Companies Drop CNN amid Ted Turner "both sides are terrorists" remarks (AP)
  • Alan Keyes vs. MSNBC over Israel- Jewish supporters say that TV's No. 1 pro-Israel host was axed for his views. (usnews.com)
  • NEWSWEEK: Evidence against the ‘20th hijacker’ mostly circumstantial
    Attorney General John Ashcroft was about to announce the U.S. government’s biggest legal victory yet in the war on terrorism last week—until events in an Virginian courtroom brought the well-laid plans to an abrupt halt.
  • The Terrorist Motel-The I-40 connection between Zacarias Moussaoui and Mohamed Atta, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (LAweekly.com)
  • Pentagon Denies Reports 7 US Troops Killed In Afghan Ambush (Reuters)
  • Murder-suicides and Killings Of 4 Ft. Bragg Army Wives Raises Concerns About Stress among Afghanistan Veterans (CNN)
  • PHOTO: Cow has a Royal wee (TheSun)
  • Northeast US losing population in droves (Washington Post)
  • Florida: Amoebas attack boy's brain after swim. (UPI)
  • India's 'Monkey-Man' making a comeback (abc.net.au)
  • On The Trail Of China's Bigfoot (The Shanghai Star)
  • "What are we to make of the fact that the Fearless Leader of the Free World, a man brave enough to challenge terrorists in 80 nations to worldwide war, requires a general anesthetic for a routine colonoscopy?" Spectator magazine columnist David Steinberg raises a stink . (Metafilter)
  • Case of the Missing Anthrax (NYT)
    Internal Army documents about the U.S. biodefense program describe missing Ebola and other pathogens, vicious feuds, lax security, cover-ups and a "cowboy culture" beyond anyone's scrutiny.
  • New Boss Says BioWeapons Expert Hatfill Not Anthrax Suspect (Baltimore Sun Staff)
  • UPDATE: MAINSTREAM US PRESS FINALLY REPORT ON HATFILL; ANTHRAX INVESTIGATORS SEARCH SCIENTIST'S HOME FOR SECOND TIME (AP/CNN/AOL)
  • REPOST: The Case Of Dr. Hatfill -Former UNSCOM member is chief FBI Anthrax Mail Suspect (Hartford Courant)
  • Mystery Virus In Madagascar Kills 153 So Far (AFP)
  • New antibiotic-resistant superbug found (NewScientist.com)
  • Killer bug strikes fear into thousands(LondonTimes)
    Britain's worst outbreak of legionnaires' disease grips town AN OUTBREAK of legionnaires’ disease has killed an elderly man and infected 18 others in what could be the UK’s worst ever case. A further 11 people in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, are suspected to have the disease and according to experts as many as 130 more cases could emerge in the next week or so, of which up to 20 could die.
    Doctors in the US have detected the first Staphyloccocus aureus bacteria that are highly resistant to vancomycin, known as the antibiotic of last resort.
  • Most Of Europe's Health Supplement Stores Will Be Shut Down By New EU Law (UKDailyTelegraph)
  • PHOTO: Injured Giant Tortoise Uses Skateboard (AP)
  • PHOTO: Giant squid washes up on Australian beach (Reuters)
  • Attempts Fail to Rescue Whales (AP)
    Nearly 60 whales stranded on an Australian beach have died or were euthanized after failed attempts to return them to the water
  • Forty-six Pilot Whales Die Off Cape Cod after Beaching (ENS)
  • 14 Rough-Toothed Dolphins Found Dead On Virginian Shore (The Virginian-Pilot)
  • Thousands of Jumbo Squid Wash Ashore in Californina (AP)
  • Bush administration approves Navy sonar criticized for potential harm to whales and dolpins-Jul 15,2002 (Associated Press)
  • Cheney takes submarine to Florida (AP)
  • The Dolphins of War (ukdiving.co.uk)
    The most recent allegation of US military use came in February this year, after the mysterious deaths of 22 dolphins whose bodies were found washed up on the Mediterranean coastline of France. All had a neat, fist-sized hole on the underside of their necks.
  • Ukraine: Purpose Of Iran's Dolphin Purchase Unclear (RadioFreeEurope-Feb 2000)
  • Atlantic Sharks Seen Coming Closer to Shore (Reuters)
  • Young sea dog swims 10 miles after going overboard (Reuters)
  • Voice And Sound Beamed, At Distance, Directly Into Brains (NEWSWEEK)
    Woody Norris wants to tell you something—and he can put the words inside your head from 100 yards away.
  • New Asteroid Seems To Be On Collision Course With Earth says British Scientist Says Chances "Minimal (Reuters)
  • NASA Dismisses Asteroid Collision Claim (The Guardian - London)
  • Strange crater found under North Sea -Rings likely created by ancient meteorite impact, experts say (MSNBC)
  • Six Months Of Anomalous Night Lights In Spokane, Wa. - Photos (Rense)
  • REPOST:Hundreds of small earthquakes are been detected around Spokane near Mount St. Helens in Southwest Washington.
  • REPOST: Abnormal Phenomena Occur Before Huge Turkey Quake in 1999
  • Huge volcanic eruption could threaten humankind (Reuters)
    A volcanic super-eruption could pose twice as much of a threat to civilisation as a collision with an asteroid or comet.
  • The Yellowstone hotspot, which powers Yellowstone National Park's geysers and hot springs, produced 142 huge volcanic eruptions during the last 16.5 million years -- far more than the 100 previously known blasts, University of Utah geologists found. (Geological Society of America Bulletin, Mar-2002)
  • REPOST:Yellowstone Park - is one of the largest supervolcanoes in the world. Scientists have revealed that it has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago…so the next is overdue. (BBC Horizon/PBS Nova)
  • A Global Winter's Tale-Huge Volcanic Eruption 70,000 years ago reduced human population to thousands and led to present day genetic homogeniety (DISCOVERY magazine)
  • Catastrophic floods built Grand Canyon, research suggests (UPI)
    Dams of volcanic rock laid across the Grand Canyon have burst repeatedly and catastrophically over the past million years - most recently about 165,000 years ago
  • New Volcano Erupts Near Lava-Scarred Congo Town (Reuters)
  • Comet catastrophe back on the agenda
    The "Tunguska event" in which a fragment of comet exploded over Siberia and devastated a wide area in June 1908 may have been caused by a fragment of leftover material from an interplanetary stream which has already destroyed civilizations twice. If this hypothesis is correct, the world is in for another bout of fire from the heavens in about a thousand years time.
  • ADHD May Have Given Ancient Man A Survival Edge, Researchers Believe (psychologyonline)
  • In the beginning, there was one people, perhaps no more than 2,000 strong, who had acquired an amazing gift, the faculty for language. February 2 2000 (NYT)
  • NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTORS (OKLO)-in the Proterozoic, an unassertive community of modest bacteria built a set of nuclear reactors that ran for millions of years
    From James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia (1988)
  • Bubble bursts for bench-top nuclear fusion (NewScientist.com)
    The claim that nuclear fusion can take place inside tiny imploding bubbles of acetone in bench-top experiments has suffered a deflating blow.
  • Second law of thermodynamics "broken" (NewScientist.com)
  • Bush administration pouring favors on Florida to help Jeb's reelection prospects.(The New Republic)
  • 'Wahhabi Lobby' Takes the Offensive (InsightMagazine)
    Numerous parallels are visible between the totalitarianism of Soviet communism and that of Wahhabism, a Saudi-funded movement to seize control of global Islam.
  • GM crop DNA found in human gut bugs (NewScientist.com) For the first time, it has been proved that bacteria in the human gut can take up DNA from genetically modified food.
  • Secret US Biopharms Growing Experimental Drugs-"Just one mistake by a biotech company and we'll be eating other people's prescription drugs in our corn flakes" (ENS)
  • Scientists plan to halt the spread of a destructive tree moth by making the males think they are gay, it was revealed yesterday. (thisisgloucestershire.co.uk)
  • TV watch demoed
  • Toxic mold has been found in buildings old and new, from Sacramento to New York. Toxic Mold In The Home - Sinus Infections To Seizures And Worse (USAWeekend.com)
  • Disney Researcher Joins Spy Agency (Orlando Sentinel)
    Eric Haseltine is moving from one top-secret organization to another. Uncle Sam has plucked Walt Disney Co.'s chief of research and development to become head of research for the National Security Agency, which uses highly sophisticated technology to gather intelligence and break codes to protect sensitive government information systems.
  • Disney Will Fake Crop Circles For 'Signs' Movie (teletext.co.uk)
  • Disney, UFOs And Disclosure -late creator of Jiminy Cricket may have had footage of alien captive (www.presidentialufo.com)
  • PHOTO: Recent Crop Circle from Summer 2002
  • Self-help books make 'depressed people feel worse' (Ananova)
  • Revealed: Scottish couple try to have first human clone baby (sundayherald.com)
  • First Human Clone To Be Born In December (Sapa-DPA)
  • Did wild game feasts lead to fatal brain disorders? Has "mad deer disease" passed to humans (MilwaukeelJournalSentinel)
  • Human Rabies Often Caused By Undetected, Tiny Bat Bites (American College of Emergency Physicians)
  • Rabies Increase tied to Drought (ArizonaCentral)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#31
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JULY 13th 2002
  • Asteroid Impact Set Off Hiroshima-Sized Air Blast Over the Mediterranean On June 6th- Early Warning Center For Asteroids Urgently Needed Says USAF (Aerospace Daily)
  • Clinton has fun with Nike condom at the world AIDS conference (AustralianAdvertiser)
  • Clinton accused of fathering secret love child (Scotsman)
  • From Fark.com:Saudi woman surprised by difficulty in getting "discreet maid" service, never seems to figure out they are hookers.(arabnews.com)
  • COMEDY Central funnyman Jon Stewart is taking his act worldwide - via CNN.(NYPOST)
  • Sharp rise in Gold stocks indicate possibility of imminent Stock Market Crash (CBS.MarketWatch.com)
  • FTW Economic Alert: Global Economic Collapse Imminent,
    Pension Fund Disaster; Stocks, Dollar To Free Fall, Gold To Skyrocket (By 911 conspiracy theorist Michael C. Ruppert copvcia.com)
  • Debt Clock Revived as Deficits Soar (Reuters)
  • California catpoop blamed for sea-otter die-off (Science Daily via Robot Wisdom)
  • Scientists Build Polio Virus From Scratch Using only a genetic map as a guide- stunning achievement with chilling bioterrorism consequences (Reuters)
  • In a lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers place immature brain cells into a culture dish and an eerie process unfolds: The cells on their own begin organizing to form the beginnings of a human brain. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
  • Osama bin Laden and the Mystery of the Skull-did the FBI CSI I.D. Osama skull? (Newsweek)
  • Stunning 7 Million year Old Hominid Skull Unearthed in Africa shows "missing links" are manifold (BBC)
  • Man who filmed LA cop beating video arrested- fears for life(Reuters)
  • Cheney accused of corporate fraud, video shows him thanking Arthur Anderson for not operating a typical by-the-books auditing arrangement (BBC)
  • In Tough Times, a Company Finds Profits in Terror War ;Halliburton Company, the Dallas oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.
    From building cells for detainees at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton (NYT)
  • REPOST:Cheney's Mess Worth a Close Look-The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating Halliburton - the company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney (Baltimore Sun)
  • Disney, UFOs And Disclosure -late creator of Jiminy Cricket may have had footage of alien captive (www.presidentialufo.com)
  • 'Jews-Only' Law Ignites Firestorm (Ha'aretz Daily)
  • A Few Saudis Defy a Rigid Islam to Debate Their Own Intolerance (The New York Times)
  • American Elections Dictate Timing Of An Attack On Iraq (TheLondonTimes)
  • How the Right-wing took over US radio-was Reagan to blame?-You decide. (The Register-Guard)
  • Barry Chamish: Chamish - More LAX chicanery-witnesses decribe shooter as white male with ponytail
    7-8-2
    We don't have much time. The El Al counter murders in Los Angeles are fast being covered up. Two days ago I presented preliminary evidence suggesting that the "terror" attack, was in fact, a bungled attempt to assassinate Shimon Peres' granddaughter. Peres inhabits a world of murder, and he has at least since he organized the Rabin assassination in 1995. His European circles want Israel to stop existing as a sovereign state and he was to be their blunt instrument of destruction. But Peres has been blackmailed over the Rabin murder and he has been mostly neutralized in Israel. His controllers are most unhappy with what they view as his betrayal of them and sought to exact vengeance against his beloved grandchild. A wild scenario? Let us review the evidence two days later....
  • Iceland glacier 'jokulhlaup' flood fears -large geothermal cauldron has grown deeper and wider in the last 24 hours (BBC News)
  • Sea level rises 'underestimated' (BBCNews)
  • The extinction of species and why it matters more than you think (NewStatesman)
  • Why Would Seattle Be Targeted? Smoke bombs released in two bulidings.(komotv.com)
  • D.C. Car Bomb Investigation Continues, Police: Blast Does Not Appear Related To Terrorism (NBCnews)
  • Laser-armed Army vehicle to blast mines (New Scientist)
  • Hunt for hidden web messages goes on-USA TODAY article claims al-Qaeda operatives have uploaded 2300 images containing encrypted information to the internet auction site eBay since the start of 2002 (NewScientist.com)
  • Hackers Hit USA Today Web Site with fake "Iraq attacks Israel" stories (AP)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#30
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JULY 9th 2002
  • Quebec forest fires blanket eastern United States with smoke
  • Magazine says Arafat to step down soon (UPI)
  • White couple has black twins (TheSUN)
  • Couple claim their car was invaded by tiny UFO on the A55 Expressway (BBC)
  • Family abducted by alien cruise ship In Wales (BBC)
  • UFO 'spotted hovering over sacred cliff' (Ananova)
  • Observers confirming Sri Lanka UFO reports (DailyNews)
  • Arthur C. Clarke comments:
    (TIMES OF INDIA (JUNE 18, 2002) via IndiaUFO.com)
  • Spielberg refused Star Wars trial
  • Latest Japanese Gizmo is feline 'Furby' for the senile (thesun.co.uk)
  • Govt probing ‘mystery’ ship (INDIAN TIMES)
  • Bubonic plague detected in Kazazhstan (Reuters)
  • KGB sex espionage exploits expose (Pravda.ru)
  • Al-Qaida suspect 'protected by British intelligence' (Ananova.com)
  • Rights group wants British rule for Washington D.C. (Reuters)
  • Time Magazine Special:TIME Magazine The Bible & The Apocalypse A TIME/CNN poll finds that more than one-third of Americans say they are paying more attention now to how the news might relate to the end of the world, and have talked about what the Bible has to say on the subject. Fully 59% say they believe the events in Revelation are going to come true, and nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack
  • 36% of those polled who support Israel say they do so because they believe in Biblical prophecies that Jews must control Israel before Christ will come again
  • 36% of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God and is to be taken literally
  • 59% believe the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true
  • 17% of Americans believe the end of the world will happen in their lifetime
    — TIME/CNN Poll
    "'When Christ returns, every eye shall see Him,'" are quotes from Revelation. Thanks to CNN and the Internet, "we're getting to a place where every eye could actually behold such an event."
  • Western Wall wet spot mystifies the faithful- A message from God heralding the messiah, or just bad plumbing? (Reuters)
  • Falwell - Antichrist Is Probably Here And Is Jewish (AP-1-17-99)
  • Earth's Magnetic Poles May Be About To Switch (The Guardian)
  • Atta Flight School Owner Survives Suspicious Plane Crash. 9-11 Clean Up Crew At Work? (MadCow Morning News)
  • New Zealand not concerned about detention of Hussein's stepson who enrolled in Florida Flight school attended by Sept 11th Terrorist (CNN)
  • Political Assasinations At LA Airport? (skolnicksreport.com)
  • Egyptian infuriated by US flags named as LA gunman (The Guardian)
  • Fake Harry Potter novel hits China (BBCNews)
  • Killer flu swept through the world 3 times in the last century, and it almost happened again in 1997. Now experts say a killer virus strain may be making its way to our shores from Hong Kong (Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country)
  • The Best Investigative Reporter You've Never Heard Of died Wednesday from a rare blood disease he picked up reporting in the slums of Bombay. Robert Friedman was beaten by religious zealots after writing about Rabbi Meir Kahane, had a contract taken out on his life after writing about "The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World" and got a Valentine's card threatening rape and murder after writing about Russian organized crime links to the NHL. This December article about the Israel/Palestine situation, which may be the last piece he wrote, is detailed, balanced and yet pulls no punches -- a good example of his hard-hitting style. His death leaves a gaping hole in journalism. (from Metafilter)
  • The BBC has obtained video footage which appears to show an incident in the West Bank city of Jenin two weeks ago in which two Palestinian children were killed by Israeli tank fire. 5 July, 2002 (BBCNEWS)
  • Britain to tighten security at civil nuclear sites LONDON, July 5 (Reuters)
  • Who's putting the anti-liberal bias in UPI news stories that appear on NewsMax? (conwebwatch.tripod.com)
  • Who owns Newsmax? NewsMax By the Numbers. Would you buy stock in this company? Should anyone? (conwebwatch.tripod.com)
  • Estimated amount the United States spends each year safeguarding oil supplies in the Persian Gulf : $50,000,000,000
    Estimated value of U.S. crude-oil imports from the region last year : $19,000,000,000 (Harpers Index)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#29
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JULY 2nd 2002
  • The day the sun caught fire (LondonEveningStandard)
  • NEW REVELATIONS ON 9-11-Political Deception: Was it an ‘intelligence failure’ to give red carpet treatment to the ‘money man’ behind the 9-11 terrorists, or was it simply ‘routine’?
  • Morning of Sept. 11 Warren Buffet hosted WTC CEO's at "charity event" at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha Date: 27 May 2002 19:39
  • Blair's Aides Denounce US 'Blundering' In Afghan War
    (By Christina Lamb Diplomatic Correspondent-The Telegraph - London)
  • RetroPsychoKinesis Experiments Online
  • Pre-emptive Expulsion-Two Iranian U.N. Workers Expelled From the United States-seen videotaping the Brooklyn Bridge, the entrance to the tunnels into Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty (ABCNEWS)
  • UPDATE:Iran Says Its Guards Were Just Taking Pictures (Reuters)
  • Report: Anthrax by Mail Study Launched by Researcher F O R T D E T R I C K, Md., June 27 (AP)— A biodefense researcher whose home was searched by FBI agents commissioned a 1999 study depicting a hypothetical anthrax attack by mail
  • Anthrax Hoax Scares Continue -Five In California This Month Alone (FROM 12-28-98) POMONA, Calif. (AP) _ A telephoned anthrax threat forced about 800 people to be quarantined for several hours inside a dance club Sunday - at least the fifth such hoax in Southern California this month.
  • The Case Of Dr. Hatfill -Former UNSCOM member is chief FBI Anthrax Mail Suspect (Hartford Courant) In the late 1970s, when Hatfill was in Rhodesia, an anthrax outbreak killed hundreds and sickened thousands of villagers. In 1993, an African news agency reported that a former officer from the white minority army's special forces claimed that the anthrax outbreak that killed 182 and sickened more than 10,000 people between 1978 and 1980 was launched by the army.
  • Federal Aviation Administration is banning flights near the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and the St. Louis Gateway Arch during the July 4 holidays. Ban on flights over WTC site lifted
  • FBI Warns of Possible Al Qaeda cyber-attacks targeting nuclear power plants, dams or other critical structures (Reuters)
  • The greed, the fraud, the crash. Another US giant falls to earth (UKIndependent) World equity markets were dealt a further body blow yesterday when WorldCom, one of America's largest and fastest- growing telecoms companies, admitted to accounting improprieties involving $3.8bn. The group's chief financial officer, Scott Sullivan, was fired and a SEC investigation launched.
  • GM shares fall amid rumors of accounting problems (Reuters)
  • Dollar slides to brink of free fall (UKIndependent)
  • Soros says Bush's policies caused dollar to fall (Reuters)
  • The Real Deal on 9-11: Rewarding Failure
    (by CATHERINE AUSTIN FITTS-Solari.com)
    The Departments of Defense (DOD) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), with Lockheed Martin as their lead contractor, are missing over $3.3 trillion between fiscal 1998-2000. Lockheed’s stock is up over 60% since 9-11, as a result of new War on Terrorism- related contracts
  • Cheney's Mess Worth a Close Look-The Securities and Exchange Commission is now investigating Halliburton - the company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney (Baltimore Sun)
  • A gold-plated conspiracy theory-price-manipulation conspiracy in the global gold market. (Canadian GlobeandMail.com)
  • Arafat Calls For Democratic Elections In The US (CounterPunch.org)
  • Fatah calls for attacks on US, Zionist targets (right-wing JerusalemPost)
  • Arafat Using Sex Video to Seduce New 'Martyrs' ("Old boy" owned Newsmax.com)
  • One in every 26,000 Israelis has been killed in a terrorist attack in the past six months (CNN)
  • BOLIVIA: INTERFERENCE IN ELECTIONS BY USA (PRAVDA.Ru) The US Ambassador to Bolivia has told the Bolivian people not to vote for the indigenous Indian candidate for the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Evo Morales Ayma. If he is elected next Sunday, the USA will suspend economic aid and will review its agreements.
  • Multiple Sclerosis - Smoked Sausage Link Examined (Reuters Health)
  • Magnetic wood blocks mobile phone signals (New Scientist)
  • Henry VIII's love life may have postponed the industrial revolution by 200 years.(UKTelegraph)
  • Vatican Sitting On Time Machine? (Wireless Flash)
  • Headless body of large cat a Scottish mystery.
  • Woman in Wiltshire says she spotted a wild panther
  • Fox "attacks sleeping child" in British home (Reuters)
  • Argentine Vet Says Cattle Mutilators Are Airborn (Diario "Nuevo Día" via Rense.com)
  • MAP OF RECENT SPATE OF ARGENTINE CATTLE MUTILATIONS
  • Ancient bird-like footprints found in Argentina-But the prints are 55 million years older than the oldest known bird fossils - so what made them? (NewScientist.com)
  • Cows rampage in Norway-two farmers in different parts of the country were hospitalized after being attacked by cows. Elsewhere, four men narrowly missed having their car crushed by a crash-landing cow. (aftenposten.no)
  • Austria- Cow Falls on Car, Driver Injured (The Associated Press)
  • CIA Said To Rue Its Longterm UFO Cover-Up (Space.com)
  • UMMO'S DAUGHTERS-Inside a bizarre South American UFO sex cult(ForteanTimes)
  • The UMMO Affaire: Sects, Saucers, Sex and Secret Services
  • The Ummo case : UFO manipulation in Europe
  • ZetaTalk: Ummo
  • Noah's Ark replica to be built on top of Mount Ararat (Ananova.com)
  • The first transistors to be fashioned from a single "buckyball" - a molecule of carbon-60 - have been reported by scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
  • Japanese Volcano May Be Waking (AP)
  • Quake shakes US volcano (ANANOVA)
  • Fallout from the accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Ukraine may have led to hundreds of deaths and deformities among babies in Britain. (New Scientist)
  • Doctors in Kazakhstan are baffled after finding a six-year-old boy covered in ape-like hair(with photos) (Ananova)
  • Hidden 'Doomsday Genes' Might Cause Rapid Evolutionary Changes- If the world suddenly gets hotter, you might survive better with a new skin color, or you might sprout a tail to maneuver in the dense tropical forest that spreads around the globe.(AP)
  • "Creationist victory" in US Supreme Court-state funds can be used to pay for religious schools (NewScientist.com)
  • Babe Ruth and I were teammates on the Yankees—and lovers, too. (NEWYORKER)
  • Zionism or colonialism? (left-leaning Haaretzdaily.com)
    If settlement is not ended once and for all by an unequivocal political decision and in the framework of a comprehensive peace agreement, Jewish settlement in the territories is a process that will continue until the last dunam of land in the West Bank is "redeemed," or until the last of the Arabs who refuses to accept the sentence of Jewish overlordship is thrown out.
  • Israeli Army Removes Rogue Settler Outposts (Reuters)
  • Reflections On The Death Of King Hussein and his tribe, the Hashemites, who had governed Mecca since the 13th century until the rise of the House of Saud (Stratfor)
  • American Servicemen in 60's Used As Guinea Pigs For Chemical-Biological Tests-Ships at sea sprayed by planes-DOD Releases Project SHAD Fact Sheets
  • How a War With Iraq Will Change the World-It's not if but when. Here are the consequences. (FORTUNE.com)
  • Iran worth a new look from U.S.(By NYT's THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN in Seattlepi)
  • Foot and Mouth Livestock Epidemic Threatens Iraq-(Jan'99) (Associated Press)
  • The Gross Hypocrisy Of Biological & Chemical Weapons (By Zoltan Grossman)
  • Feds laying ground for mandatory mass smallpox vaccinations of public; plan to vaccinate health workers and emergency response teams in coming months. Iraq believed to possess smallpox. (Yahoonews.com)
  • Six Hours of Sleep May Be Inadequate (WebMD)
  • A mysterious TB-like bug called NTM is turning up in shower stalls and hot tubs across the South
  • Something was biting hotel guests as they slept. A sickening odor wafted through the room. One morning, the walls wept -- with blood. (St. Petersburg Times-Florida)
  • Man's best friend or dangerous dog? UK In Britain, last year 3,400 people were hospitalised after dog attacks - a 25 % rise over the last five years. (Dog News Blog)
  • Manhattan honors rescue dog with sculptures
    "Hundreds of life-size rescue dog statues painted by local artists and celebrities will appear in front of police stations and fire houses and elsewhere in Manhattan this summer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday" (DOGNY.org)
  • UK Geneticists Make Faithful Mice (BBC News)
  • Companies Want Biochip Implants To Control And Monitor Employee Performance (sundaytimes.co.uk)
  • PHOTO:Do Ancient Egyptian Heiroglyphs depict Helicopters and flying craft?
  • Huge Airship Planned To Take Tourists Into Space (The UK Sunday Times)
  • Earth 'will expire by 2050'
    Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week. (The UK Observer)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archivecreepyd28.html#28
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JUNE 21st 2002
  • AL QUAEDA SPOKESMAN: OSAMA ALIVE AND IN GOOD HEALTH
  • Conspiracy flowchart explains everything (via fark.com)
  • Arafat and Ariel Sharon best friends gallery
  • FBI Warns of Attacks with Fuel Tanker Trucks
  • Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11 Spies?-June 21 (ABCNEWS)
  • FBI makes spy-catching priority, topped only by counterterrorism (washingtontimes.com)
  • FBI COVER-UP OF ISRAELI SPY OPERATIONS IN US (whatreallyhappened.com)
  • TIME MAG POLLS:AMERICANS SEE FOURTH OF JULY TERROR LIKELY
  • Terrorist Threat Warning from fake Ambulances and Police Cars (ABCNEWS.com)
  • FBI Probes Las Vegas Overheard July 4th Threat Claim
  • UPDATE:FBI Deem Vegas Threat "Not Credible"
  • TIME MAG: 'Dirtybomber' Was Trying to Build a Nuke...
  • Radiological attack: 'Manhattan would be uninhabitable for years'...(UKIndependent)
  • Deadly Soviet Caesium Is Missing (NewScientist.com)
  • Bush Gives CIA More Powers To Oust Saddam (Reuters)
  • A History of CIA Atrocities
  • Was Robert Gaylon Ross, Sr. right? Committee to elect Jay Rockefeller as World President?
  • REPOST:THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: Bilderberg group meeting near D.C. -Powerful Secretive organization holds powwow in Virginia-June 6th 2002 (Guardian)
  • REPOST:Who are the Bilderberg Group? (conspiracy-fatalist Robert Gaylon Ross, Sr)
  • Bilderberg Batters Bush; But Unity remains on NWO (Nationalist Americanfreepress.com)
  • Air Cargo Poses Terror Risk
  • FBI searches L.A. coast for al Qaeda crew, cache
  • Over 75 Stowaway Terrorists Sneak Into America By Sea Container (From DEBKA-Net-Israeli Intelligence (disinfo?) website)
  • San Francisco Bay Terror Fears - Suspicious Ferry Boat Surveillance Reported (SFExaminer.com)
  • Major Milk Recall in Bay Area
  • U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY -- THE MAKINGS OF AN AMERICAN GESTAPO?
  • Speculation That Powell May Quit Caps Bad Week For Bush(UKTelegraph)
  • Blimps larger than a football field - carrying radar to detect aircraft, missiles and ships - would soar 13 miles above the Earth under one proposal for improving US homeland defense. (tampatrib.com)
  • PHOTO:Partial Solar Eclipse, New Mexico, USA
  • The Foreign Office is welcoming the arrest of three terrorist suspects said to be planning suicide attacks on British and US warships. (Ananova)
  • Captured al Qaeda Reveal bin Laden Attack Plans (Reuters)
  • Is the FBI Penetrated? -Terrorists' Boston hotel searched on Sept 10th? (by Whitley Strieber -Author of "Communion")
  • They Have Ways of Making Al-Qaida Talk Interrogations must be pretty damn crucial these days. Given advances in science during the past twenty years, how much more sophisticated can CIA methods have become since the 80's? (via Metafilter)
  • Truth Serums & Torture:On U.S. pundit shows this year, a hot topic has been whether captured Taliban fighters and alleged al-Qaeda operatives should be subjected to "truth serums" or physical torture to make them talk( http://www.consortiumnews.com)
  • French arrest 'aides to shoe bomber' (The Guardian)
  • Russians claim to have interviewed Mullah Omar-Argumenty I Fakty claims to have conducted an email interview with the cleric. (Yahoonews)
  • Moroccan Secret Agent 'Predicted New York Attack' (The Times - London)
  • U.S. Says It Halted Qaeda Plot to Use Radioactive Bomb- Suspect initially planned attacks on Hotel Rooms and Gas Stations (NewYorkTimes)
  • Pakistan: More Americans arrested- June 11 (UPI)
  • Bush says manhunt on for dirty bomb plotters
  • IMAGES:could the "dirty bomber" be the missing OKC bomber?
  • The mystery surrounding the death of John O'Neill:The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11-O'Neill, who died in his capacity as head of security for the World Trade Center, was also formerly the New York FBI Counterterror chief responsible for the investigation into Osama bin Laden.
  • Sep 11th Big Ben Attack Foiled (Skynews-June 11 2002)
  • IMAGES:Ideas for WTC memorial (Newsday.com)
  • Will Detrick Worker Ever Be Charged? Scientists Charge FBI Is Hiding Name Of The Anthrax Killer (TheScotsman.com)
  • Soviet hemorrhagic Smallpox Outbreak Report Worries Experts-(Reuters)
  • Smallpox Epidemic Rapidly Spreading In Pakistan Province (Dawn.com)
  • Three Die From Smallpox In Barachatti Village, India -Is smallpox really extinct in the wild? Were the anthrax attacks a controlled exercise in panic to allow mandatory smallpox vacination in US by a worried CDC? (Source: Jeff Rense.com)
  • UPDATE:WHO Terms Pakistan Outbreak Chickenpox Not Smallpox
  • WHO confirms Ebola cases in the Republic of Congo
  • Mysterious Children's Rash Has Now Spread To 27 States
  • Now showing on satellite TV: secret American spy photos -Security lapse allows viewers to see sensitive operations (UKGuardian)
  • Bookies taking bets on the location of the next suicide attack against Israel.-"Betting on Eilat, a Red Sea resort that has not seen any violence during the past 21 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, is a long shot at 17-1, while often-hit Jerusalem was given odds of 1.5-1." (UKGuardian)
  • "Israel will respond to acts of terror by capturing PA territory," says Sharon
  • More Than 10,000 Jews Fought For The Confederacy (Rense via Washington Times)
  • Sergei Torop was a traffic cop in the small Russian town of Minusinsk until 1989, when he announced that he was the son of God. Now he commands a following of thousands and rules over a large swath of the Siberian mountains.
  • Astronomers have revealed that on 14 June, an asteroid the size of a football pitch made one of the closest ever recorded approaches to the Earth.
  • An "impact winter" followed by a blistering heat wave killed off the dinosaurs after the Earth was hit by a giant object from space.
  • Volcanoes Loom As Sleeping Threat For Millions By Hillary Mayell (via National Geographic News)
  • A significant number of organisms that survived the five greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history subsequently failed to achieve evolutionary success.
  • New 'T-Ray' Space Camera Also Sees Through Walls, Clothes (Space.com)
  • Robot learns how to escape from exhibition
  • Will British 'tooth phone' take bite out of mobiles?
  • Thought-Controlled Prosthetics Inching Closer To Reality
  • Photo of an MRI Scan showing a brain implant (The Mind Control Forum)
  • Musicians found to have 'more sensitive brains'...(UKIndependent)
  • Serial Killer Caught By His Own Internet Footprint
  • Audiogalaxy moves to filter songs (BBCNEWS)-Bawahhh!
  • Chinese Scientists to Head for Suspected ET Relics
  • U.S. Air Force's Nuclear Flying Saucer (popularmechanics.com)
  • NASA Returning To Nuclear Programs (popularscience.com)
  • Thousands of Mysterious Balls Wash Up On New Hampshire Beach-Scientists Unsure What Spheres Are
  • PHOTO: 'Unidentified Floating Object' Washes Up On Beach-South Carolina Coast Residents Find Silver Orb
  • Long Island beaches closed after half-ton of a strange unidentifed rubbery substance washes shore
  • Is the equator tipping? Above freezing temperatures in Antartica? Hottest temperatures in Jordan for over 40 years.
  • Germans ask: Why doesn't anyone like us? (Reuters)
  • British Dumping Of Nazi Chemical Weapons in North Sea after WWII Threatens Europe
  • Documentary of US Afgan 'war crimes' shocks Europe (aka some German Communists) (South Africa's Independent Online iol.co.za)
  • Argentina Sends 'X-Files' Team to Probe Epidemic of Animal Mutilations (ABCNEWS)
  • There's Life in Old Dog Yet - Thanks to Hero Seal
  • Sea Lion Breaches Security at San Fransisco Airport: Heads for American Airlines Gate
  • Seal Disease Returns to Europe-Threatening thousands (BBCNEWS)
  • Mysterious giant beasts may lurk in the darkest depths of the ocean, making whale-like noises that are baffling scientists, it was disclosed today.
  • L.A. facing driest year on record - local expert says dying trees need human touch (LADailyNews)
  • PAPER: Average temperature has risen 7 degrees over the last 30 years in Alaska... Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn and Sag (NYT)
  • Penguins in the Falkland Islands are suffering mass-starvation. Biologists fear that nearly a quarter of the world's population of Rockhopper penguins might have perished. (NewScientist.com)
  • It's faster to ride penguins to work than take some NYC bus routes, says study (Yahoonews)
  • Revealed: How the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa (UK Independent)
  • Smoking Vaccine On The Horizon? (AP/CBS)
  • Proposed legislation would let FDA crack down on smoking big time
  • Negative ion fad has Japanese buying up feel-good gadgets
  • Transsexuals Sue Toys "R" Us (Newsday-NY-June 20th)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#27
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JUNE 9th 2002
  • Yoda on the Loose? "Small Green Dwarf" Reported In Argentina Cattle Mutilation Area
  • Renowned Spider Venom Authority Goes Missing-Oct '99
  • 19th Century Serb Prophet Mitar Tarabich Foresaw The Recent Balkan War And Much More
  • Nostradamus' famous 1999 prophecy arrives two years late and overbudget?
  • Traces of Nerve found in areas of a US base in Uzbekistan
  • Book taste linked to dreams (BBC)
  • Latest Photo's of that alleged 120 myo MAP (PRAVDA)
  • Arafat threatens 'disastrous explosion that will impact the stability of the whole world.'
  • N.Y. Jews to Start Armed Patrols
  • Here's an interesting article, masquerading as a book review, about NEOEUGENICS (from a website promoting racial purity as a means for success) using the disturbingly canny argument of emulating the Jews as a model for promoting your own tribal evolution. Not exactly Star Trek you could say. (Source: RobotWisdom.com)
    BOOK REVIEW:The Phenomenon of the Jews: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People by Steven Silbiger, 2000
  • All-American Osamas-We Americans have conjured so specific a vision of terrorists — swarthy, glowering Muslims mumbling fanatically about Allah — that we're missing the threat from home-grown nuts, people like David Burgert. Mr. Burgert, a 38-year-old who last made a living renting out snowmobiles here in this spectacularly beautiful nook of northwestern Montana, had a terror plan that made Osama bin Laden's look rinky-dink. Not content merely to kill a few thousand people, Mr. Burgert's nine-member militia was planning a violent revolution and civil war to overthrow the entire United States government. (NewYorkTimes)
  • South American Indians Said Slaughtered By US Geneticist-(The UKGuardian)
  • On Thursday Jun 7th, the FBI issued an alert to state and local law enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida supporters in the United States may use nerve gas to poison subway systems in New York, Washington D.C. and other major cities before or during the fourth of July, The alert states that 'this activity is allegedly intended to bring America to its knees on its Independence Day.'
  • UFOs Land In Turkey, ETs Get Out-Scare Children-Dozens Of Close Witnesses
  • Mystery 'Black' Contagious Disease Kills Ten In Pakistan Village
  • Worried Americans Buy Radiation Detectors (ABCNEWS)
  • Nuclear Plants and Terrorism-Detailed survey of nuclear power-plant vulnerabilities
  • Thai Water Bike-Photo
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs found in New South Wales, Australia tell tragic tale.
  • Bus plunges off bridge, crashes through roof of mattress store
  • Lightning hits teen: 'Whoa! Weird!'
  • British police hunting monkey burglar
  • Nostradamus' famous 1999 prophecy arrives two years late and overbudget?
  • GM Corn Pollen Deadly To Monarch Butterflies
  • Bees Can Spread GM Pollen For Miles Outside Test Areas
  • GM damages environment but not pests, says study- Monsanto dismisses research (UKGuardian)
  • Biotech firms found persuasion didn't work, so they are using a new tactic: coercion-(George Monbiot-The UK Guardian)
  • 'Sunken Lost Continent' Discovered In Indian Ocean (BBC News)
  • Sun's Magnetic Activity Varies In 100,000-Year Cycles-linked to Ice ages
  • Aliens Can't Find Time To Invade Because Of Gamma Ray Bursts?
  • The Gold Conspiracy: GATA Group seeks to prove unusually low gold prices since 1995 were not the result of market forces, but instead the product of price rigging that included governments and big commercial banks. (miamiherald.com)
  • Feds and Reagan Worked to Quash Dissent at US College
  • The Melungeons: An Untold Story of Ethnic cleansing in America -did Moors, fleeing the Spanish Inquisition reach and settle in North America before Columbus?
  • Spider Finds Home in Woman's Ear

    • Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#26
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JUNE 6th 2002
  • REPORT: 9/11 TERRORISTS FIRST PLOTTED SMALLER ACT. Hijacker Wanted US Loan to Buy Cropduster
  • Vigilant New York Transit Cops prevented October 2001 terrorist attack on Holland Tunnel. Arrested suspects on FBI's 200 most-wanted list.
  • Why do scientists think a tsunami is a hazard for the North Carolina coast?
  • Suspected Sept. 11 Mastermind Studied Engineering at North Carolina University
  • India plans war within two weeks (UKtelegraph-06/06/2002)
  • Many Pakistanis not really sure what 'nuclear war' means.
  • Report: Al Qaeda Tells U.S. to Get Ready for Another Attack that "will not be less than what has come"
  • Egypt warned U.S. of attack week before 911, Mubarak says-Egyptian agent was inside al-Qaida, said plans were brewing
  • The Death Of Dr. Wiley -The one person who was in a position to know about the origin of the anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service met with a very suspicious demise just a month after the attacks first began. (Counterpunch)
  • An attacker ambushed Memphis Medical Examiner Dr. O. C. Smith Saturday night, wrapped him from head to toe in barbed wire and strapped a bobby-trapped bomb to his body.
  • Startled UK Marines Hassled By Gay Afghans
  • Two killed as skydiver smashes through UK glider
  • Gold/Stock Market Manipulation - Plunge Protection Team At Work?
  • UK's Turner prize shocks with porn/toilet artists
  • TAMERS OF HURRICANES: Russia's HAARP and "chemtrails" experiments
  • Suburban New Yorkers living near the Indian Point nuclear power plant are getting potassium iodide pills to protect them against the possible release of radioactive fallout.
  • Israel: Technical Snafu Foiled Mega Cyanide Terror Strike
  • "It's the Settlements, Stupid.":A plea from Jacob Bleistein to the American Jewish community
  • Israel Plans 66-Mile 'Obstacle' Against Terror
  • Toddler Rescued From Bank Vault
  • THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: Bilderberg group meeting near D.C. -Powerful Secretive organization holds powwow in Virginia
  • GM potatoes deter one pest but attract another :Repel the aphids and you attract the leafhoppers
  • Sex and the 'Racist' City?
  • Ebola-type Disease kills 3 on Afghan Border
  • Virus of deadly disease spreads in Iran
  • Mysterious School Rash theory: It was all in their minds
  • Mold Contamination A Growing Problem For School Buildings-Kids Getting Sick From School
  • Bioterror Plans Approved for 24 States, Two Cities
  • 22 Cases in Rockland, NY E. Coli Outbreak-Jun 6, 2002
  • Did a catatrosphic drop in the Solar wind cause the death of the dinosaurs?
  • UPDATE:3-D MAP OF THE EARTH CREATED 120 MILLION YEARS AGO. (Pravda.ru)
  • A View from Russia: Popularization of Science as a Tool against Antiscience (SkepticalInquirer)
  • Arsenal fan Osama bin Laden tried to kill the 1998 US World Cup team. (Pravda)
  • Pravda - bin Laden Almost Got A Most Dangerous Weapon-Thallium-sufficient to poison water system of Moscow
  • ATMs that can sense what mood you are in (ABCNEWS via Fark)
  • Egyptian Shopkeepers Knew Of Planned 911 Attacks Last August (NewsMax.com)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#25
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 30th 2002
  • US Customs To Give Inspectors Radiation Detectors By January
  • Defiant Pakistan Threatens To Use Nukes On India
  • Paper: U.S. plans mass evacuation from India, Pakistan over nuke fears.
  • Earthquake experts 'can be terrorism neighbourhood watch'
  • Famine stalks 10 million southern Africans
  • Get Ready for Nicotine Water
  • Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I.-New Justice Department guidelines to be unveiled today will give FBI field agents latitude to monitor Internet sites, libraries and religious institutions without first having to offer evidence of potential criminal activity.
  • Tearful FBI Agent Apologizes To 911 Victim Families
  • Ex-FBI Agent Insider Stock Scam Linked To 911?
  • Current United Airlines CEO John Creighton sat on the board of an oil company that did what in 1997? a. Lobbied against importing Iraqi oil b. Threw Taliban delegates a party in Texas c. Created a 200 mpg diesel fuel (from maximonline-of all places)
  • EU Law Would Turn ISPs Into Spies
  • Britain's young offenders face electronic tracking
  • Adult smallpox immunity doubtful from early jab
  • "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God." -Owner Rev. Moon's Speech Raises Old Ghosts as the Times Turns 20
  • Who is the Rev. Moon?
  • 65 yo Georgia Man claims Ear of God-"He told me everything about everything. My eyes is like a camera. It's like making a movie. I see everything. I see it all."
  • UK Chemist obtains UFO secrets
  • The Israel Lobby (TheNation.com)
  • Message About LA Times Anti-semitic Cartoon Outdated (ADL.org)
  • ADL Calls on European Central Bank President to Publicly Condemn Wife's Anti-Semitic and Jewish Conspiracy Statements
  • An industrial chemical is collecting inside you. It gathers in your fat, accumulating year after year. You can't avoid absorbing it: The substance is all around you -- in your computer, your TV, your sofa, your rugs, your walls, your car, and the container you'll heat your lunch in. It's there, and almost everywhere else -- in seals, fish, birds, air, soil. No one knows what route it takes to get inside you. And no one knows exactly what it does, but scientists have linked it to thyroid imbalances and learning disabilities.
  • Expert proposes world eco-cops to guard resources
  • PSYCH SLEUTH -80-year-old Margaret Singer has made history delving into the psychology of brainwashing
  • Is God A Woman?
  • Britain's Queen urged to say sorry for Empire
  • "Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or what?"-A Postmodernist of the 1600's Is Back in Fashion
  • Palestinian Woman Tells of Changing Her Mind, Calling off Planned Suicide Attack
  • CHRONOLOGY-Suicide bombings in Israel
  • Lawmaker who said she can 'communicate with the dead' said Chandra body found where she envisioned it
  • You don't have to come from another planet to see ultraviolet light
  • Mystery Virus Hits London Hospital

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#24
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 26th 2002
  • BLOND SMOKERS HAVE HIGH IQ
  • Testing Putin on Iran. By WILLIAM SAFIRE, NYT.
  • Mossad Warned CIA About 911 Threat On 5 Separate Occasions
  • US Soldier Tried To Plant Explosive At Florida Power Plant-Police
  • Sodium nitrite blamed in Yonkers tainted food outbreak
  • US Response: Officials to Discuss Additions to Pharmaceutical Stockpile
  • FBI whistle-blower: FBI Rewrote Moussaoui Request
  • San Diego stock adviser who is accused of bribing an F.B.I. agent to give him confidential government information may have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.
  • FBI Was Warned of Sept. 11 Hijacker-Informant Says He Provided Facts About Phoenix Hijacker
  • CIA sending help to FBI as questions mount
  • LIARS, MORONS, OR BOTH? The Beginning of the End for George W. Bush
  • Limited nuclear war in Asia would kill millions
  • Nuclear power plants on heightened state of alert
  • Zubaydah: White House Was Target of Crashed Pennsylvania Flight.
  • Patient Dies As New Killer Superbug Sweeps Scotland Hospitals
  •  Secret US Plan To Hit Enemy With Valium
  • An ominous bulge has developed on an Oregon volcano which has been dormant for 1500 years.
  • Mexico Volcano Threatens Eruption Soon
  • World's Tiniest Surviving Baby Spends First Day at Home
  • Oh, baby! Newborn enters world at whopping 15 pounds
  • Russian spy moved from jail to mental hospital
  • Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty on Terror Alert.
  • Face Scans Set Up at Lady Liberty - NEW YORK (AP) — As visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island board a ferry from Manhattan, a new surveillance system is taking their pictures and comparing them to a database of terror suspects compiled by the federal government.
  • FBI Warns of Possible Scuba Diver Terror Attacks
  • Subway systems may be targeted, U.S. warns
  • FBI alerts apartment managers of possible terrorism
  • The Federation of American Scientists recently mapped out for a Congressional hearing the consequences of various homemade dirty bombs detonated in New York or Washington.
  • Fire destroys Israeli Embassy in Paris. Delanoe, the city's mayor, called on France to stand by Israel. "It is traumatic when the embassy of a friendly country burns," he said.
  • Arab League Think Tank Hosts Frenchman Who Blames Pentagon For 911
  • YOU ARE BECOMING A GALACTIC HUMAN! Humanity and Planet Earth are currently going through a huge change or shift in consciousness and reality perception.
  • Britain Will Examine latest bin Laden Video
  • 3 admirals, an ambassador and a wounded survivor are demanding that Congress investigate Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty and subsequent cover-up. By James P. Tucker Jr.
  • New Ground Zero tower 'would withstand September 11th attack.'
  • Pentagon training bees to swarm into action against terrorism.
  • Star About To Explode Into Supernova Near Earth
  • New Robot Sings Baby Lullabies, Delivers Drinks LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Imagine having your laptop fetch a beer from the refrigerator and then roll over to the baby's room to sing a lullaby while e-mailing snapshots to grandma a thousand miles away.
  • Dogged "commando" refugees battle to enter Britain
  • Al Qaeda, Taliban smuggled into Europe -on way to UK
  • Britain Will Examine latest bin Laden Video-``Any country that steps into the same trench as the Jews has only herself to blame.''
  • Al-Qaida Trying for Pakistani Haven says US Army chief-``We can't defend an open democratic society of 285 million people. The only way we can protect Americans is to kill those who would kill them.''
  • 'Erotic gherkin' for London skyline
  • Has US Seized Control Of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons?
  • Iraq introduced the West Nile Virus through Cuba, say US doctor's group.
  • THE STRONGEST BOY OF THE PLANET – RUSSIAN BOY BRUCE KHLEBNIKOV
  • Health experts question water rule-Eight-glasses-a-day guideline may be bloated
  • Flooding of Soviet uranium mines threatens millions
  • Report: NYC Water Vulnerable To Attack
  • Weapons of Precise Destruction-How snipers in the sky might help revive the practice of assassination.
  • Scientists identify virus afflicting British troops in Afghanistan;Winter Vomiting Bug

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#23
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 17th 2002
  • 911 Top 500 Questions (Rense.com)
  • FBI knew for years about al-Qaida pilot training (NYT)
  • FBI Memo dated July 10 2001 said it was believed bin Laden sent terrorists to United States to learn how to fly commercial airliners...
  • BUSH: 'I WOULD HAVE DONE EVERYTHING IN MY POWER'...
  • LAURA DEFENDS HUSBAND...
  • Sen. Feinstein Fights Back...
  • 1999 REPORT WARNED: PLANE MAY BE USED TO HIT PENTAGON...
  • U.S. warned in 1995 of plot to hijack planes, attack buildings...
  • BARTCOP.com rant:Is James Woods (D-Actor, Clinton-hater, back-stabber) the guy who can prove that Governor Bush had advance warning about the terrors of September 11th?
  • The new U.S. $20 dollar bill contains hidden pictures of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.
  • Blair squirms over "Skinny & Wriggly" porn link
  • CONSPIRACIES FOR BREAKFAST: Is the Island Of Dr. Moreau 2 miles off the coast of Long Island?
  • Britain says 22 more soldiers ill in Afghanistan
  • 124F India Heatwave Deathtoll surpasses 600
  • 'Citizen Soldier' Proposal Clears Big Hurdle
  • Consciousness, the greatest enigma of all time, may have finally been solved, unbelievably it's an EMF.
  • Huge Asteroid Impact Paved the Way for Giant Dinosaurs
  • SADDAM HUSSEIN,THE STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN AND THE RETURN OF PLANET X
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 16th 2002
  • Yonkers, NYC building evacuated after cyanide scare; 6 people sick
  • Yonkers Cyanide scare and Milan Al Quaeda Group connection? FLASHBACK 2001_11_01:ABCNEWS.com:A Look Inside a Suspected Terror Cell EXCERPT:Investigators say they also discussed chemical weapons. In a conversation recorded on March 14, 2001, group member Essid Sami Ben Khemais, a Tunisian known as "The Traveler," appears to discuss the impending arrival of a poison substance that could be stored in tomato cans and used as a weapon. "The product is better. It's more efficient because this liquid, as soon as you open it, it suffocates people."
  • Nationwide alert issued for hijacked truck carrying deadly sodium cyanide
  • FOLLOWUP:Mexican Officials Find Cyanide Truck-Most of the Cyanide missing
  • White House: Bush Was Warned of Hijack Threat
  • Unidentified Fever Hits British Troops at Bagram
  • Jewish Militant Resurgenence Feared After Anti-Arab Bomb Plot Uncovered-Settlers planned bomb attack on Palestinian hospital and school.
  • >Every Group has it's extremist's: The Terrorism of the Jewish Defence League (JDL)
  • Zionist Terrorists Arrested Inside Mexican Congress -October 2001
  • Attempted Zionist terrorist attack on Mexican Congress compared to actual attack on India's Parliament
  • Report: Pollution kills 9,300 Californians a year
  • Map of Worldwide temparature anomolies for April 2002
  • Government Surveillance Of US Citizens Increasing
  • The Royal We-The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#22
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 14th 2002
  • Woody Allen Likens Jewish Cannes Boycott to Nazis...
  • Report:India, Pakistan Were Near Nuclear War in '99...
  • India Heatwave Kills 178, Toll Expected to Rise...
  • Terrorists plan July 4th attack on North-Eastern Nuclear Plant - claim, also Zubaydah claims Al Quaeda in US working on "dirty nuke"
  • U.S. Fears Use of Belt Bombs
  • CIA Again Warns Of Major Terror Attack On US
  • Fox News: Israelis Had Ryder Truck With Explosive Residue
  • UPDATE:FBI Drops Whidbey Island Budget Truck 'Explosives' Investigation say just Tobacco Residue. Comment :US Government Again Covering Up For Israelis?
  • THEY SAY THAT VITAMIN C CAN INCREASE THE RISK OF CANCER. Oh yes? And who’s ‘they’?
  • Inside Jesus' Birthplace L.A. Times staffer crosses a line, again. (source:conservative squawk-box The National Review)
  • Disease Scare in Negev (IsraeliNationalNews)
  • Arafat Calls For Another Million Martyrs (IsraeliNationalNews)
  • Who’s a genetic Jew? (NYT)
  • Why Jews Should Worry
  • 25 Islamic Extremists Enter U.S. as Stowaways, Feds Say
  • Rev. Moon's Unification Church under siege in Brazil-massive land purchases lead to major search-and-seizure op
  • Christendom: On the rise in the world-By the year 2050, 3 billion Christians will inhabit the globe
  • Monsanto's World Wide Web of Deceit:THE FAKE PERSUADERS-Corporations are inventing people to rubbish their opponents on the internet
  • U.S. pays PR guru to make its points-Firm's Pentagon work is lucrative, and top secret
  • In Defense of Elitism-We need it.(Jonah Goldberg-National Review Online)
  • Alastair Cooke's Letter from America:Persian poets need not apply
  • The Power of the Blogsphere:Persian Jew 'PejmanPundit' versus The Moonies-owned La Times' Arafat-lovin' Robert Scheer
  • "Opec chief warned Chavez about coup"-Greg Palast
  • CONSPIRACIES FOR BREAKFAST:The New U.S.-British Oil Imperialism-The American and British ruling circles have been engaged in a policy of military imperialism for several centuries and so it goes..
  • Courtesy of book of condolences for the Queen Mother.
  • A History of Secret US Human Experimentation
  • Are archaeological cover-ups a plot to control history?

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#21
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 8th 2002
  • THE ISRAELI "ART STUDENT" MYSTERY: US press remains silent on the deported Israeli "Art Students" who lived down the block from the 911 terrorists(Salon.com)
  • New book Seeds of Fire by Gordon Thomas alledges that the Israelis collaborated with the Communist Chinese in stealing US secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico with the PROMIS computer program.
  • The Strange Story Of Why Russian Mafia Boss Is Still Allowed To Travel On An Israeli Passport
  • UPI reports that French newspaper says Al-Qaida is preparing to kidnap hundreds of Europeans. Is this a new escalation of the War or is it simply a scare tactic designed to give the re-elected President more power?
  • Latest Crop Circle Shows hidden planet?
  • Patricia Doyle: Anthrax Investigator Under Possible Government Surveillance
  • US Military Wants Offensive BioWeapons Development (Rensewellbeforeuse)
  • CIA & DOJ Thwarting 911 Inquiry Say Senate & House Members (LAtimes)
  • Did 22 British "Star Wars" SDI Researchers really ALL Commit Suicide in the 80's?
  • Snipe Hunting In Afghanistan? British Troops sent on "Wild Goose" Chase?
  • Afghan 'Operation Snipe' To Rescue US And Canadian Troops?
  • Cosmic catastrophe 'a certainty':Sooner or later, a catastrophe from space will wipe out almost all life on Earth.
  • Did the CIA set up the suicidal Heaven's Gate Cult to test Mind Control techniques?
  • Canada Sad Over U.S. Rejection of World Court
  • Photo:An Israeli robot drags a badly wounded Palestinian
  • US close to default on national debt. If we default, we take the rest of the world with us (BostonGlobe via Fark)
  • Who Controls The US Federal Reserve System? (Rense.com)
  • Dark and Dangerous International Conspiracy -"The WTC attacks were a frame-up designed to benefit members of these four groups"
  • Thieves World: MARC RICH plus Credit Suisse et al-FINGERED BY A LETTER-2/28/01
  • WTC, Operation Northwoods And The Reichstag Fire
  • Nazis and the Republican Party
  • The Middle East Conflict- Has it Been Engineered by Extremist Rightwing Christians and Zionists Hoping to "Force" the "Rapture"?

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#20
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 5th 2002
  • CONSPIRACIES FOR BREAKFAST presents:The Most Powerful Man In The World? The "Black" Pope: Count Hans Kolvenbach—The Jesuit’s General
  • Terror alert issued in Europe-"Al Quaeda to kidnap about 300 to 400 people in France, Great Britain and Germany"
  • Buffett: Nuke Attack in USA 'Virtual Certainty'
  • THE OLDEST PARROT IN THE WORLDS USES FOUL LANGUAGE LIKE CHURCHILL
  • TIME MAG: Saddam Working Feverishly to Build Nuclear Bomb; Hussein Preparing for Attack
  • Neutron Bombs and Red Mercury, Chavez, and the WTC
  • Has Russia Given Iraq Red Mercury technology: The Balance of Terror and the Red Mercury Nightmare
  • Weather Warfare:A New World Order weapon could trigger climate change
  • Brits Plan to Break Altitude Balloon Flight Record
  • BOOK BLURB:"The Stargate Conspiracy"-Revealing the truth behind extraterrestrial contact, military intelligence and the mysteries of Ancient Egypt.
  • Fans love Clones; critics are not so hot (contains spoilers) "This second generation of Star Wars characters all sound like Keanu Reeves delivering a soliloquy from Hamlet. Alas, poor Star Wars, I knew it well."
  • No Evidence of Bomb at Tenn. Plant
  • Nazis and the Republican Party
  • British scientists hope to exhume 1918 flu victim
  • Actor Malkovich accused of threat against Scottish politician, British journalist... Galloway, Fisk in the line of fire from actor Malkovich
  • "WEIRD SKELETONS IN MANKIND'S CLOSET"
  • Connecticut Physics Professor believes he can build a time machine

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#19
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR MAY 3RD 2002
  • Scientists in Bashkir are claiming to have found a 120 million year map of the Ural Region along with unrecognized hieroglyphs. Evidence of an ancient Earth civilisation predating the end of the dinosaurs by 60 million years? (Pravda)
  • Holocaust of Giants:-The Great Smithsonian Cover-up of 8 foot tall Ancient Peoples
  • 'Pleased' Chalk Giant is 'The Great Orion Hunter'?
  • Vandals Damage 50,000yo Historic Cave
  • Could a Huge Solar Flare called a 'Solar Typhoon' cause a sudden and catastrophic separation of the earth's crust from it's mantle and core?
  • A pole-flip is a matter of "when", not "if". In South Africa there is a large region that already has a magnetic field pointing in the opposite direction from the rest of the earth's field and is getting stronger all the time.
  • FBI: US Airways Flight Turned Around-APRIL 29
  • Multistate Tornados Kill Six-Including First ever F5 recorded in Maryland
  • Prince Philip jokes about the blind and the anorexic
  • Earthquakes & New York City?
  • EPA Coverup Of Ground Zero WTC Toxics Alleged
  • Four Port Authority police officers working at ground zero have been reassigned after tests showed elevated levels of mercury in their blood
  • Where have all the cockroaches and fleas gone? (Whitmire Micro-Gen Corporate Pest Control Quarterly)
  • PLOT FOR THE MOVIE 'MIMIC':. The film begins in New York, where we see children dying from a mysterious disease, which is being carried by cockroaches.
  • Did the dust spread over NYC by the WTC collapse cause a dramatic drop in the cockroach population?
  • An Avenging Angel on the Trail of the New York Pigeon Poisoner
  • Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers flew within 37 miles of Alaska recently in a rare probe of U.S. air defenses, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
  • Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic? Some Israel Opponents Can Face Branding as Racists; Is it Justified?
  • It's Time to Cut Israel Loose
  • HAPPY BIRTHDAY SADDAM: U.S. Blueprint to Topple Hussein Envisions Big Invasion Next Year- (NYT)
  • How Wal-Mart bullies the world. (alternet.org)
  • Wal-Mart, WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER CLINTON And The Red Chinese Secret Police
  • China's Army Operates Over 2000 Front Companies In US
  • Bull Clone Stumps Red-faced Brazil Scientists Expecting Cow
  • Remote-controlled rats may hunt bombs and bodies
  • Big Apple Not Quite 'Urinetown' but Getting There
  • Vegan Diet Left Baby Near Death
  • Protesters hound Kissinger on visit to Britain
  • Bacteria Caught Passing Information To Each Other-even when separated by a plastic wall.
  • Latest Osama Video Misleading claim officials
  • BIN LADEN SIGHTED IN PAKISTAN
  • A "monkey" has been elected Mayor of Hartlepool.
  • Replacement Broadcast Towers from WTC may be World's Tallest Structure on Governor's Island

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#18

    HEADLINE INDEX FOR APRIL 25th 2002

  • 5.1 Earthquake Rattles U.S. Northeast
  • Nevermind S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and Blofeld are a secret group of scientists named the "Munich Group" capable of causing earthquakes using Electromagnetic Tesla's Pyramids secretly constructed around the world?-(By the entertainingly scary-albeit seemingly rabidly anti-Jewish Joe Vialls)
  • On October 29th 1998 , the space shuttle Discovery, blasted off from Kennedy with a very special payload. That payload was the retired astronaut/congressman John Glenn. They stayed up until November 7th and returned to earth. We have a question: DID NEGOTIATIONS FAIL?
  • Chinese Hatch Chicken Eggs After Orbital Space Trip
  • In February of this year TRW sent a secret project to LAX to be flown to Cape Canaveral. It was loaded on a large flatbed truck and was the size of a house. Much larger than your average satellite. It was guarded by automatic weapon toting marines on the top and round about, and had Department of Justice (DOJ) guards in those black windowed Suburbans, plus who knows how many cops on motorbikes and in squad cars.
  • Deadly Mystery Virus In Greece Closes All Schools And Colleges-4/23/02
  • Greece Reports New Cases of Possible Killer Bug-April 25, 2002
  • 36 children hospitalized after becoming ill at Missouri school... Pupils are rushed to hospitals, causing scare at Eureka school
  • 2002 'warmest for 1,000 years'
  • Egypt ready to wage war on Israel ... for $US100 billion
  • A Crystal ball shows 3d holographic images-windows compatible
  • "Cover-up of Convenience—the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie"
  • Lightning Can Strike Inside Airplanes: Report
  • Al Qaeda Captive Claims Terrorists Could Strike Supermarkets, Malls, Shopping Areas, and have 'Dirty' Nuke Bomb
  • Global search to identify mysterious Oz lake ooze
  • NET WIDENS IN PROBE FOR UK CATTLE TB OUTBREAK SOURCE
  • A disease outbreak in India in February and March 2001 could be the first sign of an entirely new virus, as lethal as Ebola, researchers believe.
  • Much of Britain was exposed to bacteria sprayed in secret trials between 1940 and 1979 (UK Observer)
  • U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich’s Space Preservation Act of 2001, introduced last October seeking a “permanent ban on basing of weapons in space,” specifically banned chemtrails as weapons. Now, in a new version of the bill, the “chemtrails” language has disappeared. The missing words are part of an eyes-wide-open denial that says as much about the cover-up as it does about the spraying that’s plainly visible in the sky.
  • Ex-Strategic Air Command Chief Says Nuke Terror Strike On US Inevitable
  • Melting glaciers are filling Himalayan mountain lakes too quickly, threatening tens of thousands of lives with colossal floods.
  • House husbands heart risk
  • Forget pheromones-Sexual desire of women boosted by breastfeeding odours and smell of newborns
  • New York on nuclear alert after "chemical" blast in Chelsea
  • NY Trade Center workers moved due to mercury worry
  • Industry Attacks on Dissent: From Rachel Carson and Oprah to the Monsanto Giant

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#17
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR 18 APRIL 2002
  • Rare Planetary Traffic Jam Above-Similar to "Star of Bethlehem"
  • I'm not certain but is this Nostradamus on New York 2002?
  • REPOST:It is April 2002, and a smallpox outbreak occures in New York. 4 and a half months later and 60 million people across the planet are dead.
  • THE HISTORY OF GOG AND MAGOG and the origin of the city of London
  • US weather goes awry: severe storms, tornados and record-breaking heat. April 17th
  • Israel captured by Russian Ashkenazim Khazarians
  • Is "www" in Hebrew equal to 666?
  • Could a little red calf born last month in Israel bring about Armageddon?
  • Studies of scripture lead to the controversial view that civilizations of pre-rebellion angels lived on the planets of our solar system before the creation of man.
  • Gruesome pics of Possible Israeli Fake Suicide Bomber set-up (Adbusters.org)
  • Nigerian Boy Raised by Chimps.
  • Antibiotic-resistant strain of strep throat discovered in 46 Pittsburgh schoolchildren
  • Smoking parents produce fewer boys
  • New tests say Vatican banker Calvi was murdered (BBCNEWS)
  • Mosquitoes Prefer Blondes
  • Be Afraid: The New World Order's Fascist Pedigree
  • Feds consider using Microsoft Passport as national ID
  • China's Army Operates Over 2000 Front Companies In US
  • Boeing Loses More Of China Market After Crash
  • Italy Seeks Answers to Mysterious Skyscraper Crash (ABCNEWS)
  • Was the White House attacked by a drone aircraft with a dead pilot?(Joe Vialls) January 2002
  • Operation Shekhinah In the pipeline? Israel Plans Blitzkrieg to Capture Arab Oil Fields by Joe Vialls
  • Agent Of Disinformation - Who is Joe Vialls? Details That Point to a Coverup At Port Arthur
  • Alaska drilling bill now includes aid for Israel. (CNN)
  • Bush strongly endorses Sharon-Apr. 19, 2002 (WASHPOST)
  • Bush Orders $98M to Korean Energy Corp (cryptome)
  • Boeing wins disputed Korean deal. Boeing was chosen over Eurofighter, Dassault and Russia's Soi, to fulfil a contract worth more than $4bn. (BBCNEWS)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#16
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR 15th APRIL 2002
  • The Swastika & the Crescent (splcenter.org)
  • Debunking Six Common Israeli Myths (electronicintifada.net)
  • Probe launched after UK chemical blaze
  • Saudi Telethon Benefits Palestinians
  • Toronto Jewish Fest Drops BBC Sharon Film
  • Bush Backs Rumsfield's Overhaul of Military's Top Ranks
  • Israeli devastation of West Bank paves way for mass expulsions
  • William F. Buckley Jr: Sharon 's offensive is the stupidest campaign in recent memory.
  • Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi; an iconoclastic Italian Moslem scholar who believes the Jewish right to the Land of Israel is inscribed in the Koran
  • A Danish man having surgery on his backside broke wind and set his genitals alight.
  • Huge hydrogen stores found below Earth's crust-Discovery suggests near limitless supply of clean fuel
  • Ever wondered why it is hard to find right- and left-foot thongs washed up on the same beach?
  • There is increasing evidence that giant dust storms originating in China and Africa may be blowing a toxic soup of air pollution, pesticides, insects, bacteria and viruses thousands of miles across the ocean to the United States.
  • Oceans swell towards new El Niño-The event could also make 2002 the hottest on record worldwide.
  • US Forecaster Predicts 7 Hurricanes
  • Dormant Andean Volcanoes Coming to Life
  • An Australian volcano is waking up
  • Ugandan garden hit by space debris (BBC)
  • A last wave goodbye-An asteroid landing in the ocean would produce the tsunami to end them all
  • Giant Ant Empire:A supercolony of ants has been discovered stretching thousands of miles from the Italian Riviera along the coastline to northwest Spain.
  • Please, Dad, Tell Me: How Do I Stop Being Complicit?
  • Many Israelis Shun Sharon's Madness
  • Chernobyl-on-Hudson? Calls to close New York's Indian Point Nuclear Facilty grow
  • Osama bin Laden, originally hired by the Central Intelligence Agency to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, is working on a new project: the derussification of Central Asia.
  • Smoking "may cause mental illness"
  • Your likeness in a puppet for $125
  • Scientists link bald men to notorious, man-eating short-haired lion
  • Allergic to Sex? Dutch doctor identifies post-orgasmic syndrome

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#15
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR APR 11th 2002
  • April 28th is Saddam's 65 birthday
  • Claims of Woman 8 weeks pregnant with "Wealthy Arab" clone
  • Bin Laden safe, planning new terror attack: says Islamic group
  • Adam Shapiro: The "Jewish Taliban" in Arafat's "bunker"
  • Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot
  • US Media Silent On Israeli Raids Of News Organizations and vetting of Reports (via PRwatch.org)
  • Jenin: 'My mother ran for help. A soldier shot her in the head' (UKIndependent)
  • The Trilateral Commission — long viewed by critics and conspiracy theorists as a secret world-government-in-waiting — will begin its annual meeting today in Washington to discuss the future of the world's three main industrialized continents post-September 11.
  • Anomalies hint at magnetic pole flip
  • DUE TO EXCEPTIONALLY WARM WINTER IN SIBERIA PEOPLE CAN SEE BLUE SUN AND PINK SNOW
  • Sahara comes to Switzerland-80,000 tonnes sand fell from the skies this weekend, turning the pistes reddish brown.
  • May blossom heralded Britain's warmest day of the year yesterday with temperatures in London much higher than the average for the time of the year. April 3rd
  • Evidence found of ancient climate swings-New York,London, Paris could be "tropical paradises" within 25 years
  • Shake-up for US climate research-The United States is planning to restructure its climate-change research programmes in an effort to make them more relevant to government policy. (Nature)
  • Lost ancient sunken city found off coast of SE India (BBCNEWS)
  • Another Lost ancient sunken city found off western coast of India 'could rewrite history' (BBCNEWS)
  • Probe Into Cuba's Possible 'Sunken City' Advances
  • Milky Way 'may hold a billion planets like Earth'
  • Welsh girl cries acid tears
  • Snip, snip...Tired of 'flied lice' cracks, Asians the surgical route to perfect English
  • More Parkinson's Clusters Suspected-Disease in Michael J. Fox, 3 Co-Workers Spurs New Reports
  • Vatican hints next pope may be black
  • Red Heifer born In Isreal!
  • Middle East conflict sparks apocalypse fears-Conflict begins a new debate on end times
  • British 'Supergerm' Created For Defense-'Ethnic Specific' Germs Discussed (UK Telegraph-1999)
  • US Space Command! Bruce Sterling talks about the militarization of space, citing "The more people learn how dependent we are on space, the more likely they are to figure out, as the Chinese and Russians have, that being able to interfere with our satellites is essential to their strategic interest. The threat to space assets is real and growing." Does the rest of the world suffer from a satellite gap with the US? Plus, some scenario planning :) and a sensible missile defense program?
  • US Loses Edge on Spy Satellites
  • Astronomers Spy Unregistered Satellite
  • Vreeland Interview:"The name of the defense system is SSST [Stealth Satellite System Terminator]....The satellites of some countries that are shielded with titanium are protected from these weapons. The protected countries are Russia and China, but U.S. satellites are vulnerable and Putin has told Bush that the U.S. missile defense system doesn't work, and that Bush knows it."
  • Star wars projects have no conceivable purpose. Rogue states and ICBMs is bullshit. The US military have to believe that there is a threat to their existence that is already out in space.
  • China to put astronaut in space within two years
  • Explosions and Strange lights in the sky baffle Bavarians
  • KILLER SATELLITES AND A BATTLE STATION-It seems that the Soviets had their own "Star Wars" program
  • China Building Satellite-Busting Laser Weapons
  • Did you know there is a Federal law that the U.S. Military and Department of Defense can use *ANY* Biological and Chemical Agents on the American Public without their knowledge or consent?
  • Bizarre 1947 'Ulimate Secret Weapon' News Story
  • MANCHURIAN CANDY DATE:To the world she was one of the most successful American fashion models of the 1940s – but she led a secret life as a Manchurian Candidate-style agent for the US intelligence services during the Cold War. A tale of multiple personality, conspiracy, hypnotic mind-control and fantasy life.
  • Russia's security police are accusing the U.S. of doping a scientist with mind-bending drugs in a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy to steal military secrets. (CNN)
  • Army needs more musical instruments-N.Korea's Kim
  • Nature's Editors Disavow GE Corn Article
  • Monsanto Sues Nelson farm:North Dakota family's frustrations
    with genetically engineered soybeans.
  • Monsanto Sues Midwest Farmers for Saving GM Soybean Seeds Evidence
  • BBC News | AMERICAS | GM firm sues Canadian farmer:Can GM crops really be contained? US biotechnology company Monsanto has taken a Canadian farmer to court over his fight over GM contaminated crops
  • GM-free nations fall to Monsanto
  • Scientists Create GM Corn Which Prevents Human Conception (UK Observer)
  • Another Top Microbiologist Dies-12 In The Last Five Months-Latest studied the life of the hardy polar microbe and from it evolved theories of life on Mars hit by car.

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#14
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR APR 07 2002
  • 'Unprecedented Revenge' Coming To Israel Says Hamas (AFP) - The armed wing of radical Islamic militant group Hamas vowed today an unprecedented revenge against Israel after six of its fighters were killed in an Israeli missile strike. "It will be a new kind of punishment this time, of an unaccustomed type that will shake their entity and destroy its pillars," the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said.
  • Strange cases of HUMAN SPONTANEOUS INVOLUNTARY INVISIBILITY
  • Is Israel preparing to dismantle the Palestinian Authority?
  • US Credit Card and banking Firms eye anti-terror profiling of customers
  • "Rather large" amount of Pig Shit turns Phildelphia river black (Philadephia Inquirer)
  • Signs of virus from human faeces found in bottled water. (Nature.com)
  • Pollutants found in fish oil capsules (BBC)
  • The Jewish side of Elvis
  • Angry at his predictions of global warming, the Bush administration and the energy industry strive to unseat a prominent scientist. (Salon)
  • Vatican file shows pope pardoned massacred Knights Templar
  • LT Gen Gul, an old hawk of the PAK ISI speaks:
  • Birds of a Feather? Gulbuddin Hekmatyar behind Aghan Coup Plot. An Old Foe Returns.
  • Blasts From Past-Seismic Research In Yellowstone Caldera
  • Was the Ice Age Deliberately Ended?
  • Scientists Probe Possible Sunken Ancient City Off Cuba
  • Ancient Writings Samarangana Sutradhara and the charged sheath vortex tornado fusion drive
  • The Secrets of Thoth and our lost "Parent Civilisation" (Labyrinthina.com)
  • Map of Nazca MegaGlyphs
  • The HAB THEORY. Capsizing the planet? Cataclysms occur when the Earth is thrown off balance due to a massive, unbalanced accumulation of ice at the polar regions
  • Asteroid Could Hit in 878 Years
  • Strange lights in the sky baffle Bavarians
  • New Study Reveals Twice As Many Asteroids As Previously Believed (Space Daily)
  • MODERN MEAT PROCESSING IN AMERICA:"the potential for one mistake rippling out and causing thousands of deaths is there"
  • 'Oil slick' of jelly fishlike creatures hovers off North Coast
  • Puffins deaths may be linked to jellyfish
  • US Jellyfish Invasion Threatens Caspian Seas' Survival
  • Dozens of beach goers are recovering from the painful sting of man-of-war along Florida Brevard County beaches. March 27, 2002

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#13
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR APR 02 2002
  • THE ALIEN BABY OF RUSSIA
  • Planet X to return in 2003? IT'S out there somewhere, big, brown and dangerous -- and it's heading our way.
  • Cold Fusion Rides Again-Cheap Energy for all spells end for Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Fission Reactors
  • Photo showing Aircraft wreckage at pentagon
  • 'Rippy and Zack' behind anthrax attack?
  • FBI Closes in on Anthrax Terrorist-Prime Suspect is a Zionist?
  • Salon's story of the attempt to frame Dr. Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian, for the Anthrax letters
  • If assassinated, Yasser Arafat really would be an 'enemy' to be reckoned with (UKGuardian)
  • OSAMA CALLS UK 260 TIMES FROM AFGHAN HILLS- 200 times to "Dr. Haider"
  • UPDATE:A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN’T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING?
  • Another Top Infectious Disease Scientist Dies - Plane Crash
  • The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality
  • Mystery cloaks the chalk carving in that's been galloping across the English countryside for 3,000-years. (via Daily Grail)
  • Adversaries go inside ADL's spying operation :Locked in a nondescript computer database, a shadowy operative named Roy Bullock kept file upon file on liberal San Francisco Jews who disagreed with Israeli policies.
  • EXODUS DENIERS:Archaeologists and other experts are finding no solid evidence outside Scripture that the Exodus, and the slavery in Egypt, ever really happened.
  • The Copper Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which lists treasures buried in the Holy Land, is written in Egyptian not in Hebrew.
  • Search for yourself online-Best way to protect your privacy—do it yourself-Woman finds CC details via google (MSNBC)
  • Lettuce in Short Supply Nationwide
  • Former NZ Prime Minister claims Dan Quayle threatened to have him "liquidated"
  • UNSEASONABLY EARLY CANADIAN ICE PACK MELTING HURTS BABY SEALS AND CLUBBING INDUSTRY
  • Carving the Cosmos: An Arizonan Ancient Hopi Star Map In Stone?
  • Using everyday astronomy software, an archaeoastronomer pins a date on an ancient solar eclipse.
  • Earth Kills 250,000 People A Year- mostly Asians
  • Research into chemicals in rivers "useless" unless industry acts-WWF
  • Dying sponges hold clues to sea 'blob' off Florida
  • No cause discovered for school rash in Phillips, Maine
  • Nutritional Supplements from Ground Antlers may cause Mad ELk Disease to pass to humans
  • Grand Juries in New York and Washington Expose Major Ashcroft Conflicts of Interest - Cheney’s Task Force Met with Targets of Grand Jury Probes -- Cheney Connected to Investigations -- Served on Kazakh State Oil Board When Reported Bribes Took Place (FTW)
  • Pentagon Returns Confiscated Fox News Tape
  • While much of the world sees Mideast conflict through Palestinian eyes, in America, Israel’s view prevails-By Eric Alterman (MSNBC)
  • SAID AND ALTERMAN - TOGETHER AT LAST (AndrewSullivan.com)
  • The Turin Shroud: A photograph of the head of the Ancient Knights Templar?
  • 18 Tales of Media Censorship: "Into the Buzzsaw":What happens to true investigative journalists
  • Smallpox Vaccinations Considered For Entire US
  • Shoe bomber Richard Reid and the Israeli-owned Airport Screeners
  • ALL THE 9-11 AIRPORTS SERVICED BY ONE ISRAELI OWNED COMPANY (whatreallyhappened-ultimate selfhating)
  • Sharon Considering Reopending Temple Mount To Jews, Christians "He is bringing (on) a religious war with all of the Islamic world."-- An Arab member of the Israeli Knesset
  • Israeli Patent Of Solomon's Temple Granted
  • The GOG INDEX reaches end-time high? (GOGIndex.com)

    Pete'n'Bob's Weblog- Archive#12
  • BLOG IDEX FOR 24 MAR 2002
  • UNRANDOM QUOTE FROM 9/13:"The real motive of the destruction of the buildings? Somebody was behind the theft of trillions of dollars from the American economy in the last few years. No one will ever know who after this week."
  • NASA tests anti-gravity machine
  • Saudi President calls for "regime change" in the United States
  • Blowback, CIA-style-Who created Osama?
  • When Osama Bin Ladin Was Tim Osman
  • Britain accused on terror lab claim -Story of find in Afghan cave 'was made up' to justify sending marines (UKobserver)
  • THE BIOTERROR IN YOUR BURGER
  • Japan Demands Answers from North Korea on Brainwashed Spy Abductions
  • Natural toxin suspected in deaths of 22 dolphins
  • Time accountancy got in touch with the real world
  • Pictures of Mysterious Black Water off Florida’s Gulf Coast
  • BLOG INDEX FOR MAR 22 2002
  • TWO NEW `SADDAM' NOVELS TO BE RELEASED (AP)
  • Islam Expert Claims Three 'Dirty' Nuke Bombs Now In US
  • Feds Launch Nuke Probe, Online Security Lapses Raise Concerns of Terror Attacks Following Recent Thefts
  • Plot Thickens in PAK ISS US Nuclear Spying Incident
  • Two New Israeli US Spy Scandals 'Too Big To Bury'-A New Pollard Affair?
  • Read the 60-page DEA draft report on the Israeli 'spy' apparatus leaked to the online press
  • Sept 11 suspect (Dohu AKA Dr. Haider) faces UK to US extradition hearing
  • Taliban Said Bargaining On 18 Captured US Soldiers
  • Freeing Of Genetically-Modified Fish And Insects Feared
  • Professor becomes world's first cyborg
  • FBI chief in top-secret NZ talks
  • U.S. Troops Found Afghan Biological Weapons Lab During Operation Anaconda
  • Rashes Send More Phila. Schoolkids Home
  • THE MYCOPLASMA MYTH-MORE SETBACKS FOR Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Gulf War Syndrome RESEARCH
  • Garth Nicolson Responds To Howard Urnovitz’s " Mycoplasma Myth"
  • Howard Urnovitz Replies to Garth Nicolson
  • Gulf War Syndrome: Did Saddam's Scuds Give US troops GM AIDS? (PBS.org)
  • Some Oklahoma City bombing victims allege there was a conspiracy involving Iraq
  • Dick Spotted? Cheney Under Raven Rock?
  • Did Pygmies kill a Mokele-mbembe at Lake Tele in the 60's? By Dr. Bill Gibbons
  • Tom Clancy: Disinformation Artist?
  • TNN Renews Conspiracy
  • BBC: The Bushes and the Bin Ladens. The FBI and WAMY. The CIA and Saudi Arabia. Did their connections cause America to turn a blind eye to the impending attacks?

    BLOG INDEX FOR MAR 21 2002

  • PENTAGON POLICE GRAB TAPE FROM FOX NEWSMAN
  • Carlyle Cabal Cashing In Again (CBSmarketWatch)
  • White House orders all federal agencies to scrub their Web sites of sensitive info
  • S Korea launches major war games-biggest since war (BBCNEWS)
  • Did NASA study "space kids?"
  • School Meals May Have Spread Mad Cow Disease
  • Why do we have seasons?-Infographic
  • Archimedes may have discovered lasers
  • Islamic Republic of Great Britain?
  • Atlantic Gas Rupture Could Trigger Tsunami Scenario
  • Man's farts were so foul that supermarket had to be evacuated (Fark)
  • The Dropas: Living in the Himalayan Mountains between China and Tibet--a race of extraterrestrial peoples that survive from legends of a spacecraft that crashed on Earth 12,000 years ago.
  • Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say (Space.com)
  • Nemesis: The Theory of the Sun's 'Evil' Brown Dwarf Twin
  • Mysteries of the World Theme Park-Close encounters in the home land of Erich von Däniken
  • Are Crop Circles Caused by Solar Radiation?
  • Reality Creation For The Ignorant-Ancient Palestine is a myth
  • Blog Index for Mar 19 2002
  • Little Walking Sony Man Can Recognise and Talk to up to 10 people
  • Did Secret CIA Anthrax Mailing 'Test' Go Terribly Wrong?
  • CIA chief says Iraq had contact with al-Qaeda
  • CIA warns Germany, Britain of bomb attacks-report
  • Fathers Say 9-11 Suspects Showed No Warning Signs
  • Indian comic strip spoofs US president George Bush
  • Saturn by the Moon
  • North Korea Accused Of Using Abducted Brainwashed 'Sleeper Agents'
  • Israeli Spy Network Dismantled in the United States
  • U.S. busts huge Israeli spy ring, says French paper -FBI calls story 'bogus': Network may have secretly tracked al-Qaeda members before Sept. 11
  • REPOST:U.S. Police and Intelligence Hit by Spy Network-Spies Tap Police and Government Phones
  • Florida Commercial Fishermen Find Massive 'Black Water' Dead Zone-Flesh-eating bacteria hits local Fishermen
  • Mysterious Giant Fish Washes Up on Florida Beach
  • Birth defects in UK babies rise by 50%
  • Firefighters need 90 minutes to drag 740 pound woman out of her house
  • We saw 'Bigfoot', claim villagers
  • Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses -Biggest Event Of Last 30 Years
  • Confirmed African Ebola Cases Rise to 91
  • "Superbeings" May Mave Created the Universe in a Lab - Scientist
  • Makings of a 'Dirty Bomb'-Radioactive Devices Left by Soviets Could Attract Terrorists
  • Storm experts make cloud vanish-BBCNEWS
  • Are Chemtrails Causing Drought?
  • STAR WARS EPISODE TWO: ATTACK OF THE CLONES early cut review by Harry Knowles

    Pete'n'Bob's Weblog- Archive#10
  • March 17 2002 Blog Index
  • Britain's Porton Down Focus Of FBI Hunt For Anthrax Terrorist
  • SUV emission defeat
  • Iraq: the myth and the reality
  • The actual text (and annotated subtext) of President Bush's remarks on Osama bin Laden at his press conference on Wednesday
  • Shoe-bomber Richard Reid has given the FBI the first detailed insights into the preparation of a suicide mission.
  • Rejection massively reduces IQ
  • Revenge drove pilot to crash EgyptAir Flight 990, killing 217
  • Remarkable UFOs Captured On NASA Open Broadcasts
  • Asteroid buzzes Earth from "blind spot"
  • Can asteroid impacts cause an immediate catastrophic reversal of the North and South Poles?
  • New Photo Of Bigfoot In Oregon
  • Disturbing questions continue to be asked about the September 11 attacks.
  • Schizophrenia linked to mother's lack of sunlight
  • More sunshine means more suicides: report
  • Feisty little wiener dog survives bald eagle attack
  • Male fertility fears over pollution in water supply-British men are less fertile than hamsters
  • Antibiotics Found In 48 Percent Of Streams Studied
  • Mutant polio vaccine regains virulence-kills 21 in Haiti
  • School closed by rash
  • One of our main weaknesses is the fact that we are looking for dramatic examples of terrorism and never seem to think that terrorism can involve foreign agents doing such things as spraying PCB on the playgrounds of children.
  • March 15 2002 Blog Index
  • NewsMax.com has learned that active FBI Special Agent Robert Wright is about to blow the whistle on his superiors for hindering investigations that might have prevented the terrorist attacks of September 11.
  • Script Pages from Ms. Cleo Telephone Calls- US Psychic Phoneline
  • Executive editor of Elle magazine:"The worst thing about women's magazines is how much "we lie about sex." (ALternet.org)
  • Guerrilla drive-in
  • Russia unveils tourists' spaceship
  • Vreeland Ordered Released On Bail To Mother's Residence.US NAVAL OFFICER WHO WROTE ADVANCE WARNINGS OF 9-11 ORDERED FREED ON BAIL WHILE LAWYERS NOT PRESENT, JUDGE MAKES PUBLIC THE ADDRESS WHERE MIKE VREELAND WILL BE LIVING AND ORDERS CURFEW HOURS - THE SAME ORDER IN 1986 LED TO THE PUBLIC EXECUTION OF INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE AND DRUG SMUGGLER BARRY SEAL-
  • PASSENGERS EXPOSED: NEW SECURITY MEASURES GIVE screeners x-ray vision.
  • US sends suspects to face torture-Giardian
  • Terrorist says orders come from Arafat
  • Russia 'will stand by coalition even if Iraq is attacked'
  • September 11: the great lie of the United States- (YahooFrance)
  • Furor Rises Over Visa Extensions Just Sent To Dead 911 Hijackers
  • 2001 disaster toll: 33,000 dead, $66 bn in losses
  • The no-sweat secret behind African women's ability to carry that weight
  • March 14 2002 Blog Index
  • American plastic surgeon-within five years he will graft wings and tails on to human beings
  • One in four 'can forecast the weather'
  • Physicists Forecast 'Super- El Niño'- The Mother of All El Nino's
  • A powerful group of neo-conservatives is launching a new public relations campaign in support of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism.
  • Breeding a press of water carriers
  • A international right-wing conspiracy within a conspiracy?- Who funds the Conspiracy Press?
  • London Irish go green...English see red
  • Lochside video footage shortens odds on Nessie (Scotsman)
  • March 13 2002 Blog Index
  • Attackers must have watched Springer, says Bush
  • Alcohol researchers find genetic locus of human brain wave
  • "Shard of Glass," will rise 66 storeys above the River Thames
  • When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad
  • Researchers link human lymphomas to polio vaccine tainted with monkey virus.
  • 3rd ex-Phalangist linked to Sabra and Shatila murdered
  • Controversial body show defended
  • France was top UK ally in Falklands--ex-minister
  • US could beam neutrinos to Japan
  • "Hidden Stories of the Childhood of Jesus" By Glenn Kimball
  • Christ visited Michigan? creepyd9.html

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#9
  • March 12 2002 Blog Index
  • An American researcher who believes she has found the final resting place of Jesus Christ is campaigning to exhume a body at a Muslim shrine in Kashmir for scientific tests.
  • Strangest Story Ever Told- Weird Legend of Jesus in Japan
  • Mujahideen may demand freedom of Camp X-Ray inmates in prisoner exchange-11 March 2002
  • 3rd ex-Phalangist linked to Sabra and Shatila murdered-Robert Fisk
  • Satellite images show London is sinking
  • Polar ice shrinking fast.
  • Depleted uranium may cause kidney failure "in days"
  • Roman commanders Dark Age kings
  • New documentary:Was actor and landowner William Shakespeare a front man for Christopher Marlowe?
  • Who would have expected Hitchens, Amis and Rushdie to support a Republican president in a war?
  • China finds oil in Tibet
  • Tibetan Gov-in-Exile's Statement of Opposition On Sebei-Lanzhou Pipeline and Increased Oil & Gas Exploration On the Tibetan Plateau
  • The (Pro-Israel) Anti-Defamation League Spying Case Is Over, But The Struggle Continues
  • The Evolution of the Alphabet
  • The Secret Mark-Missing 'Gay Jesus' passages from the gospel
  • Childhood Pet May Be World's Oldest Turtle
  • The arrest of FBI agent Richard P. Hanssen is a another bad FBI cover story + Columbia's FARC threatens US with domestic terrorism over pipeline protection
  • Proposal to End NYC Recycling Raises Old Questions
  • Guess who's tracking you by cell phone?
  • Remote islands tuning into digital cellular services
  • Sit and Wait? We have been informed by the Prophet sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam about many events that will occur in the future. What attitude should we take in this regard? (Islaam.com)
  • Conspiracies for Breakfast:The Illuminati and the CFR (Council of Foreign Affairs)
  • BLOG INDEX FOR MAR 9th 2002
  • Gifted few make order out of chaos (New Scientist)
    Some people have a special gift for predicting the twists and turns of chaotic systems like the weather and perhaps even financial markets, according to an Australian psychologist.
  • UNIVERSAL RIPS DRUDGE REPORT AFTER NASH BASH; ACADEMY VOTERS QUESTION 'BEAUTIFUL' OMISSIONS
  • Gulf War Pilot believed alive, held in Iraq (By Bill Gertz -WASHINGTON TIMES)
  • Envoy's role linked to Arab backing on Iraq (UKGuardian)
  • U.S. military in Georgia will increase Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline security(Turkish Daily News)
  • More Doubts Cast Over Tabletop Fusion Device (Space.com)
  • As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting (New York Times)
  • "My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific." —George W. Bush, who apparently forgot about a little something called World War II, Tokyo, Feb. 18, 2002
  • tri·fec·ta Pronunciation Key (tr-fkt)n. -
    A system of betting in which the bettor must pick the first three winners in the correct sequence. Also called triple.
    [tri- + (per)fecta.]
  • Did President Bush brag and laugh about hitting the trifecta of National Emergency, War and Recession? let your ears decide (Via Fark.com)
    If he hits another one do we get the fourfuctus? AKA the horsemen?

  • Hitting the Trifecta (New York Times) Shortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush interrupted his inveighing against evildoers to crack a joke. Mr. Bush had repeatedly promised to run an overall budget surplus at least as large as the Social Security surplus, except in the event of recession, war or national emergency. "Lucky me," he remarked to Mitch Daniels, his budget director. "I hit the trifecta."
  • Ashcroft Distances Himself From Islam Slur-Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday distanced himself from remarks attributed to him by columnist Cal Thomas, who quoted Ashcroft as saying that "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him." (Yahoonews)
  • Multiple Oceans Of Water May Be Deep Underground On Earth (UPI)
  • Pop princess Minogue rides high is US charts (Reuters)
  • U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms; calls for a strategy against at least seven nations: China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria.(LATIMES)
  • Another Murdered Biotech Scientist and a suicide: Dr. Tanya Holzmayer. Dr.Guyang Huang (mercurynews)
  • Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund has landed on the (NYPOST Gossip) Page Six in a bizarre tale that is almost too weird to write down. (via Bartcop.com)
  • "Magic number" for space pioneers calculated (NewScientist)
    The "magic number" of people needed to create a viable population for multi-generational space travel has been calculated by researchers. It is about the size of a small village - 160. But with some social engineering it might even be possible to halve this to 80.
  • Complete collapse of North Atlantic fishing predicted (NewScientist)
  • A postcard showing Ogopogo in Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, Canada.
  • Officials: Source made up New York City nuke plot
  • A private investigation into the attack on the Pentagon on 11th September 2001 (by David Bosankoe, BSc)
  • French Website claims Pentagon was NOT hit by a Boeing
  • Security Camera Images show September 11 Pentagon crash (CNN)
  • Excited Bush waves to Stevie Wonder (Washington Post)
  • Things are getting intense in the world. India and Pakistan almost went to war today, they were very close. What happened was two cabs collided on 34th Street.-Craig Kilborn
  • Drug Fools Body, Has The Effect Of Active Exercise (Unisci)
  • New Drug Stops Liver Damage from Alcohol (Cosmiverse.com)
  • Urine tests may reveal al Qaeda's nuclear secrets (ABCNEWS)
  • Steel holds clues to WTC collapse
  • U.S. Deports Israelis Amid Warnings of Espionage Activities (AP)
  • French Say US Has Busted Yet Another Big Israeli Spy Ring -Possibly Monitored Sept 11th Terrorists (Reuters)
  • U.S. to Curb Computer Access by Foreigners-Government: To boost security, some Defense Department work will be done only by citizens. (LAtimes)
  • Air Traffic Controllers Concerned Over Chemtrails(via Rense)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#8
  • Blog Index for 7 Mar 2002
  • REPOST:These colors don't run? Shades of Purple - the Myth of the Red and the Blue America
  • March 2002 Drought Map OF US
  • The Myth of The Liberal Media
  • Early man evolved by spreading love, not war
  • Haemorrhagic Fever Outbreak Kills 28 in Afghanistan
  • Top US Climate Scientists Suggest Catastrophe May Be Near
  • The Universe is not turquoise-it's beige
  • NEW JERSEY A LARGE BLUE SPHERE OBJECT
  • Data Shows World Awash in Stolen Nuclear Material
  • Sunday Afghan quake might have been caused by bombing
  • MONSANTO MOVES TO CONTROL WATER RESOURCES AND FISH FARMING IN INDIA AND THE THIRD WORLD
  • The Big Ten World Media Companies
  • Liar, Liar; Planet on Fire – Or, How I Learned to Cope With Conspiracies
  • Muslims And The West After September 11 (The Nautilus Institute)
  • The US and the ISI-Lt.Gen.Mahmud Ahmad resigned his post as head of the Pak Security Service on October 8, after the FBI discovered "that he wired $100,000 to hijacker Mohammad Atta from Pakistan"
  • Powell sees no ISI role in Pearl case
  • Will Taliban, al-Qaida retake Kabul?
  • Slain Scientist's Daughter Arrested
  • U.S. Knew of Suicide Hijack Threat in 1995-(AP/FOXNEWS)
  • Bloomberg: NY Should Have Been Told About Nuke Fear
  • Fears Prompt U.S. to Beef Up Nuclear Terror Detection
  • NYPD's Prepping for War
  • Pakistani Scientist Who Met Bin Laden Failed Polygraphs, Renewing Suspicions-Believes in Genies
  • OCTOBER BULLETIN SAID AL-QAEDA TERRORISTS THOUGHT TO HAVE 10 KILOTON NUCLEAR WEAPON TO BE SMUGGLED INTO NEW YORK CITY (Time.com)
  • Microbiologist Death Toll Mounts, 12 in last 5 months, As Connections To Dyncorp,Hadron, Promis Software & Disease Research Emerge
  • Vreeland Attacked In Canadian Jail - Court Resists Intro Of New Evidence -US And Canadian Government Positions Crumbling In The Case Of A US Intel Officer With Foreknowledge Of 911 Attacks.
  • US Intel Chiefs Oppose Israel's Choice Of Mossad Super Spook
  • Staff cry poetic injustice as singing, Calico-cat fearing, Vegetable Oil-annointing Ashcroft introduces patriot games
  • Blair's Wife, MP's assistant receive toxic packages
  • How bin Laden got away-A day-by-day account of how Osama bin Laden eluded the world's most powerful military machine.
  • Police round up a suspected terrorist cell in Italy and prevent a possible chemical attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome. But will leaks to the press hurt the investigation? (TimeEurope.com)
  • Sabotaging Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools-Catastrophe In Waiting
  • Nefertiti Rocks Mars?-Or is it Elizabeth Taylor?
  • Fade away for Buddy Brilliance
  • Nixon And Billy Graham Anti-Semitism Caught On Tape
  • Hitler's Jewish clairvoyant (Salon.com)
  • Drought Grips Much of Country
  • Warmest Winter Ever Record Will Likely Be Set On Thursday
  • Earthquakes may be phoning us before they happen
  • HAARP:From a rural location in Alaska, controlled by "Big Oil", the US government is blasting billions of watts of high frequency microwave energy at our protective ionospheric shell which surrounds the earth.
  • A Stargate? Anomalous Images of the Sun and on TV weather maps
  • Official HAARP website
  • Hurricane Forecasting Expert Predicts Very Active 2002 Season
  • British foot-and-mouth scare a false alarm
  • Manhattan Plans $375M Film Studio
  • Thousands Of Children Stolen From Early Jewish Immigrants To Israel
  • Toxic Cow Pats Killing Insects, Threatening Ecology Of Alps
  • "Sheer scale and complexity" of crop circle baffles experts.
  • 'A Mouthful Of Radioactive Waste'-Nuke Waste In Consumer Products
  • Tiny Bubbles Create Nuclear Fusion--Maybe
  • Queen kept in dark on nuclear threat, papers show
  • Was Bin Laden Duped on Nukes?
  • Did Bin Laden Smuggle Nukes into the U.S.? 02-Jan-2002
  • Nukes Found in Georgia Forest
  • Why U.S. Arrival in Georgia Has Moscow Hopping Mad
  • A can of worms is about to open in the Republic of Georgia-by Dr. Joan Padro.
  • Caffeine Does Not Impact the Growth of Foetus
  • Famous 'Remote Viewer' Stuns Japan Police By Finding Missing Person
  • Britain urged to crack down on ape meat trade
  • Government confirms: “This is Noah’s Ark”
  • Explorer from China who 'beat Columbus to America', Magellan Round World

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#7

  • Blog Index for Mar 01 2002
  • Mysterious skull was found in Rodopi Mountain, Bulgaria. Alien?
  • ‘Cyclops skulls’ baffle tribal folk
  • Giant Squid Babies Captured
  • Mayor backs Ground Zero 'towers of light' memorial
  • U.S. 'Shadow' Government in Position
  • Authorities investigating massive assassination plot by Montana militia group
  • Prince Philip in "Spearchucker" Debacle
  • Heckler forcibly removed from Clinton dinner
  • 'Evil' Iraq must face action says Blair
  • Poultry Companies Halting Use Of Antibiotics
  • House Bill Would Ban Most Antibiotic Use In Farm Animals
  • Florida Terrorist Flight School Linked To CIA Firm
  • Hijacker Shot Passenger On Flight 11-FAA Memo:'One Bullet Fired'
  • Shipping Containers Could Hide Threats To US
  • Massive Chunk Of Hawaii Volcano Slides Toward Ocean
  • Coming One Day Near You--a Mega-Tsunami
  • A newly discovered comet will grace the night skies in the coming weeks.
  • VULCAN, COMETS AND THE IMPENDING CATASTROPHE
  • Comedian Spike Milligan dies
  • The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals our Genetic Ancestry
  • History of the Goblin race.
  • Virus 2: The Real Story of the 'Mir' Threat
  • REPOST:A mysterious marine animal has appeared in a New Zealand harbor.
  • 1960s germ tests carried out in London Underground
  • Castro Accuses U.S. of Dozens of 'Biological Attacks' against Cuba
  • FBI agents tells farmers to keep alert for terrorism
  • Cow Conundrum-Could Crohn's Disease Causing Microbe in Dairy Cattle Be Found in Milk?
  • Rumsfeld: Pentagon to Close 'Disinformation' Office
  • Britain plans electronic tags for teenage offenders
  • U.S. to Weigh Computer Chip Implant
  • Democracy is expensive. New York Times article examines the high costs of building the government infrastructure of a democracy, and suggests that they may be too high for a poor or war-torn country.
  • National Enquirer-Enron Had Wild Sex Parties And Clinton CIA Help
  • Ancient Peruvian 2,600 BC Pyramid Site Studied
  • Sunken British Treasure Ship With Billions In Gold (Lost Americas Bribe) Apparently Found
  • Whole Albums for free
  • "Never-ending" ski slope planned for Wales
  • Man's Burmese Python Eats His Pit Bull

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archivecreepyd6.html#6
  • HEADLINE IDEX FOR Feb 24 2002
  • March 1960 - The Martian moon Phobos, generally accepted as a celestial body, actually may be an artificial satellite launched long ago by an advanced Martian race, according to Dr. S. Fred Singer, special advisor to President Eisenhower on space developments. (Rense.com)
  • Hole Under U.S. Embassy in Rome Fuels Chemical Terror Probe
    ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have discovered a hole recently carved into an underground passageway next to the U.S. embassy and suspect terrorists were planning to plant a chemical bomb there, a judicial source said on Sunday.
  • Iran group uses internet for martyr recruitment (FT.com)
  • In 1999, more than two-thirds of all murders in Gaza strip and West bank were most likely honor killings. (NationalGeographic)
    There is nothing in the Koran, the book of basic Islamic teachings, that permits or sanctions honor killings. However, the view of women as property with no rights of their own is deeply rooted in Islamic culture, Tahira Shahid Khan, a professor specializing in women's issues at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, wrote in Chained to Custom, a review of honor killings published in 1999.

  • Freeing Sudanese 'Slaves' From 'Arab Captors' Scam Exposed
    (The Independent - London)
    High-profile Western campaigners who spent millions of dollars buying the freedom of slaves in war-torn Sudan have been the victims of a scam, it is alleged.

  • Infant tagging scheme widely attacked (Scotsman)
    PARENTS’ groups and teachers last night attacked the introduction of electronic tagging systems in nursery schools across Scotland.
  • Toddler attacks strangers with toy truck
  • Acid Reflux Afflicts Those at Ground Zero (HealthScout)
  • 24-stone man dies after sitting on hidden gun. (Source:Ananova)
  • Britain buried by wave of blizzards (Sunday February 24, 2002-The Observer)
  • A CURRENT CONTROVERSY: IS EUROPE ABOUT TO FREEZE?(Oregon State Univ)
  • Animals and Earthquakes (levity.com)
    James Berkland-- a retired USGS geologist from Santa Clara County, California-- claims to be able to predict earthquakes with greater than 75% accuracy rate simply by counting the number of lost pet ads in the daily newspaper, and correlating this relationship to lunar-tide cycles.
  • Pakistan: Pearl Video Too Gruesome to Release (Yahoonews)
  • Israeli Settlers Wrap Palestinian Terrorist's Body In Pigskin (IsraelNationalNews.com)
  • Missing Time Experience, a Ghost Train, Earthlights and a Cat Circle (Source:Ley Lines, Earth Energies, Geopathic Stress and Ill-health )
  • The Voices In Your Head May Be Real (Wired.com-2-21-2)
    Researchers have developed technology that can project a beam of sound so narrow that only one person can hear it. Inventors of the new "ventriloquist" technology say it could provide an added dimension to entertainment. The military, however, is investigating using it to confuse opponents or even inflict pain.
  • OHIO UFO FLAP DEVELOPS ON RADIO SHOW (Rense.com)
  • London-based terror chief plotted mayhem in Europe (The Observer)
  • Leading Islamist terror groups (Observer)
  • In 2 Strict Sects, Terror Suspects Find Inspiration (cult expert RickRoss.com in Los Angeles Times)
    Takfiri and the Salafist Groups offered men linked to Bin Laden a way to justify attacks on West.

  • Essex boys sign up for 'holy war' Observer)
  • American Taliban Made Mideast Faux Pas (The Associated Press)
  • Al-Qaeda trained hundreds from UK (The Observer)
  • The Takfiri - Sudden Death Cult (TimeAsia.com) On one matter European investigators are clear: there is something truly ruthless about the suspected terrorists they are finding. After six Algerians were picked up in Spain in September, police found videotapes in the apartment of one of the men. One tape showed four Algerian soldiers, with their throats cut, dying in a burning jeep.
  • Tracking the Shoebomber (TimeEurope)
  • The secret war. (Sunday September 30, 2001-The Observer)
    A matrix of terrorist cells - allied to bin Laden but often more extreme than him - planned mayhem across the continent from bases in Britain, Spain, Germany and France. Only now are the links between these shadowy groups coming to light as intelligence services realise that, unknown to them, the battle had started long before 11 September
  • Blair and Bush to discuss action against Iraq (Ananova)
  • Calphalon Corp. Has Recalled Stainless Steel Kettles (SafetyAlerts.com)
    Reason: May pose a serious burn hazard.
  • Review of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
    (by Dennis R. MacDonald; Yale University, 2000     (infidels.org)
    MacDonald's shocking thesis is that the Gospel of Mark is a deliberate and conscious anti-epic, an inversion of the Greek "Bible" of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which in a sense "updates" and Judaizes the outdated heroic values presented by Homer, in the figure of a new hero, Jesus
  • Phone bills help US map al-Qaeda (Newsweek)
  • Web site says Area 51 has moved to Maine
    Locals are skeptical, but author Stephen King, a Durham native, didn’t seem surprised by the rumor. King toiled in the mill for a time as a young man.
    “If ever there was a place to stick aliens, Worumbo Mill was it,” the author said through his assistant.

  • New 'Super Area 51' Said Being Built In Colorado (Rense.com)
  • Columbine Killers Considered Hijacking Plane For NYC Attack
  • Mystery Rash With Fever Plagues 14 County Schools In Virginia (PatomacNews.com 11-30-01)
  • Duchovny Returns for "X-Files" Finale (E! USA)
  • HAARP has also become a favorite of conspiracy theorists who see it as a “death ray,” a means of “mind control” on a massive scale, an instrument for manipulating the weather and a phenomenon responsible for widespread buzzing sounds heard in Germany and during Turkish earthquakes.
    Just a week before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Office of Naval Research announced that it was negotiating with a Washington contractor, Advanced Power Technologies Inc., to enhance the system and bring it to full power. HAARP has been running at about one-quarter of its planned power. (MSNBC)
  • French Terror Chief Warns Of New US Attacks, Possibly Cyanide (NewsMax.com-11-27-01)
  • Al Quaeda Cyanide attack on US embassy in Italy foiled (Reuters)
  • Israelis Capture Man With Radiological Backpack Bomb (Rense)
  • Team 'Find Traces of Sumatran Yeti' (The London Times)
  • North Pole could migrate to Russia(CBC NEWS)
  • World War III Almost Started in 1995 (BlackVault)
  • The cancer time bomb facing Scots born during Cold War(scotlandonsunday.com)
  • Ancient North American Drought Lasted 3 Thousand Years (The Billings Gazette)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#5
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR FEB 20, 2002
  • Glow-In-The-Dark Al-Quaeda Graves Worry Police (Reuters)
  • Minimum number of Saudis who have been trained in Al-Qaeda camps : 5,000.
  • New Yorker Mag-Did Bush Let Taliban & Al-Qaeda Escape?
  • MYSTERY JET NOISE STIRS EERIE ECHO OF 9/11 (Source:NYPOST)
  • Mystery Boom Echoes Across 4 States-Astronomer Guesses Meteoroid Caused Commotion
  • Dead Microbiologist Watch-Update-2 more dead this week-UK/Russia
  • Deadly Ebola Spreads To Gabon's Northern Borders
    2-19-2
    LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - Ebola, a deadly virus which has already claimed 55 lives, has spread from a remote region to Gabon's more populated north near its borders with three other countries, health officials said on Tuesday.
  • Mystery Death Of Yet Another Top Microbiologist
    2-15-02     (LondonTimes via Rense.com)
    DETECTIVES were last night trying to unravel the circumstances in which a leading university research scientist was found dead at his blood-spattered and apparently ransacked home.
  • Satelite Photo shows illuminated Earth
  • ALIENS 'KNOW WE'RE HERE' (ANANOVA)
  • Keeping Alien Samples Safe For Study (Nasa via Space.com)
  • US Defense department cannot account for 25% of spending (CBSNEWS via Fark)
  • The All-Seeing Eye In DC: 50 officials monitor a wall of 40 video screens (NYT)
  • Police Catch Man After His Flaming Pants Fall
  • Concern At Pentagon Over 'Strategic Influence' Disfinformation Plan (Reuters)
  • Bigfoot Footprints in Pa.
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR FEB 19, 2002
  • FBI May Know Name Of The Anthrax Mailer Says BioWeapons Expert (NewJerseyTimes-02/19/02)
  • FLESH-eating killer sheep have been found living on a remote moor. (thesun.co.uk)
  • Pope has performed 3 exorcisms to ward off devil (Reuters)
  • Trio beaten up over kebabs (Bracknell News)
    THREE men were attacked by a group who tried to take their kebabs in the early hours of Saturday morning.
  • Percentage of Americans who believe that the theory of human evolution is "probably" or "definitely" not true : 47
  • Massive Underground Phenomena Reported In Northern Chile (Rense)
  • A Scathing Review of Graham Hancock's "Underworld" about lost 10Kyo civilisations by the Director Southampton Oceongraphy Centre(via the DailyGrail)
  • "Save water. It's precious." --Coke billboard in Zimbabwe, where the Wall Street Journal (8/25/97) reports the product has become a staple in the wake of a water shortage.
  • Record Dry Spell Plagues US East Coast (ABCNEWS)
  • NASA to begin searching for water on Mars (Nandotimes)
  • THE SCENT OF SPRING IN FEBRUARY FOR ENGLAND (DAILY MAIL)
  • Kenya minister urges review of Nile water treaty (Reuters)
  • Drought Sparks Utility Battle in North Jersey (1010wins.com)
  • “Running Dry: What Happens When the World No Longer Has Enough Freshwater?”(Harper’s, July 2000)
  • POPULATION GROWTH SENTENCING MILLIONS TO HYDROLOGICAL POVERTY (Worldwatch.org)
  • Pollution drying up rainfall (UPI Science News)
  • NYC: No Cause for Concern About Water Supply (New York-AP)
  • Number of mock biological attacks with live bacteria carried out domestically by the U.S. Army between 1949 and 1969 : 199
  • Year in which the Army released bacteria into New York City's subway system : 1966
  • Common Mycoplasmas-Now Weaponized,Pathogenic & Deadly(NexusMagazine)
    Several strains of mycoplasma have been "engineered" to become more dangerous. They are now being blamed for AIDS, cancer, CFS, MS, CJD and other neurosystemic diseases.
  • Yen dips against dollar after Bush's slip of the tongue (ananova)
    A slip of the tongue from George W Bush has caused the yen to dip against the dollar. Mr Bush said he had discussed devaluation with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
    White House officials quickly said Mr Bush had 'mis-spoken' and he had meant to say they had talked about deflation
  • 'Seeds Of Fire' By Gordon Thomas -The Story of Israeli spies selling US secrets to China (UPI)
    Seeds of Fire already a runaway Internet bestseller has explosive implications for U.S. relations with Israel
  • China To Mass Publish Gordon Thomas' 'Seeds Of Fire'
  • Lest we forget:From Sept 16th 2001
     In New York, several blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center, a passport authorities said belonged to one of the hijackers was discovered a few days ago, according to city Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.(CNN)
  • World Trade Centre Scrap Sails For India And China (Reuters)
  • Bin Laden Underwent Dialysis In Pakistan September 10 (Reuters)
  • UK Train Passengers Pass By Gay Man Having Sex With Goat (TheSun.co.uk)
  • Hitler's Jewish Soldiers-Perhaps 150,000 Jews Fought Valiantly (Rense)
  • Eating vegetables can seriously damage your health (Mail on Sunday)
  • People who sleep less may live longer (MSNBC)
  • Vitamins in beer plan considered (BBC)
  • UK - One Loaf Bread In Seven Has GM Soy (UK Telegraph)
  • Genetically Modified Crops Could Create Superweed (Reuters)
  • GM Corn Running Rampant-Invades Mexico Countryside (Reuters)
  • Once in a lifetime mouth spray could spell the end for the dentist's chair-GM Spray 'Prevents Tooth Decay For Life'(The Independent-London)
  • Tobacco likely next bioengineered crop to enter marketplace (AP)
  • $7 for a pack of cigarettes in NY. Time to switch to crack? (Yahoonews via Fark.com )
  • Strange, Unknown Frog Unique in Nature Discovered Near Pak-Afghan Border (PAKNEWS)
  • New York nuclear power plant leaking radioactive coolant (Nandotimes)
  • Fallout Shelters Fall Short In US (NewsMax.com)
    "Evacuation is still the primary protective measure in the event of a nuclear incident."
  • Tightening nuclear power plant security (MSNBC)
  • Woman's Flaming Car Death Was No Accident Says FBI
    "Katherine Smith obviously lived two lives, maybe more. She may have had other things going on in her life that may have led to her death." - Karen Cicala
    Her testimony came during a probable cause and bond hearing for three of Smith's five co-defendants in an alleged scheme to get Tennessee driver's licenses using false information for men with Middle Eastern ties who lived in New York City.
  • Icke Addresses US Conspiracy Conference (csicop.org)
  • Why Do White People Smell Like WET DOGS When They Come Out Of The Rain?
  • Unprecedented Pollutant Levels Found Over NY After 911 (AP)
  • Haider quits national politics over Iraq(BBCNEWS)
  • Toymaker under fire as Hitler dolls unveiled (Ananova)
  • Streaks across sky light up phone lines in Ohio (Ohio.com)
  • Private moonshot 'may be just months away' (Ananova)
    The first commercial moonshot may be only months away as private companies race to cash in on space exploration.
  • Medical Sleuths Probe Mysterious School Rash affecting over Seven States (FOXNEWS)
  • New rashes but school will resume (Phillyburbs.com)
  • Prodigy or pawn? The troubled saga of Justin Chapman (RockyMountainNews)
    Justin Chapman, described as the "greatest genius to ever grace the Earth" by a Denver IQ expert, engages in music therapy at the Center for Inner Change in Cherry Creek. In recent months, the 8-year-old has gone from being a symbol of childhood genius to a source of serious concern for mental health professionals.
  • HIDDEN FROM HISTORY-The CanadianHolocaust (NexusMagazine.com)
    Through the Canadian residential school system, the Christian churches along with state authorities, the judiciary, doctors and the police implemented a policy of genocide against the native population.
  • Millions of butterflies killed by freak Mexican snowstorm (UKTelegraph)
  • Battling Over Records of Bush's Governorship (NYTIMES)
    Sweeping the pretzel crumbs of truth under the iron carpet of history.
  • Olympic Skier uses crushed cockroaches as remedy
  • Pfiesteria-"In the Rivers and Coastal Waters of North Carolina an Ancient and Deadly Organism, Reawakened by Man-Made Pollution (Raw Pig Sewage), May Become the Ultimate Biological Threat" (Nandotimes)
  • Jesuit manuscript may hold key to El Dorado quest (TimesOfLondon)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#3
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR Jan 24, 2002
  • Germany Deploys Chemical War Troops to MidEast(UKGuardian)
  • Thousands ordered to stay at home after chemical explosion (Ananova)
  • Al Qaida moving into Gaza, may join fight against Israel (WorldTribune)
  • British security services knew of links between shoe bomber Richard Reid and one 11 September hijack suspect late last year, but failed to track Reid before he tried to blow up an airliner, according to US intelligence reports.(Observer)
  • British device sniffs out shoebombs (Observer)
  • Was Richard Reid 'Shoe Bomber No. 2'? Some experts believe Flight 587 downed by Shoe Bomber No. 1 (DEBKA)
  • Shoe bomb suspect 'linked to radical Islamic leader' Sheik Mubarik Ali Gilani who trained more than 100 Americans in terror techniques (BostonGlobe)
  • Iraqi Republican Guard, resettled after the Gulf War, near Oklahoma City by former Pres. Bush.(INFOWAR.com)
  • Crony Capitalism, U.S.A.-"a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit." (NYT)
  • Bohemian Club and its secret ceremonies, which some critics claim involve pagan rituals and human sacrifices, decides the fate of the world deep in the heart of Texas. Or not? (PressDemocrat c/o DailyGrail)
  • The New Barbarians - Russia's extremist neo-pagan movements.
  • "Castrate 'em, Castrate 'em" - this battle cry of Ku Klux Klan regained its currency in the Jewish supremacist state. A leading Russian Israeli newspaper, edited by an Orthodox Jew, published yesterday (8.01.02) a call to the Jewish vigilantes to castrate captured Arab prisoners.(mediamonitors.net)
  • JEWISH MUSEUM IN HOLOCAUST-‘ART' FLAP (NYPOST)
  • Hitler's relatives have been living in Long Island for the past 50 years(UKTelegraph)
  • Documents Show Nazis Planned to Eliminate Christianity (FOXNEWS)
  • Hitler's war on Christ(WorldNetDaily)
    One popular myth about the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust is that the persecution of the Jews was fundamentally a Christian enterprise, the anti-Semitism of Luther trading its pen and cross for a rifle and swastika.
  • Would you like a conspiracy theory with your morning cup of tea?
    The Return Of The Lost Tribes Of Israel :Dead And Missing Microbiologists, Armageddon, Genetic Bioweapons...(WorldMessenger:http://www.worldmessenger.20m.com/scientist.html)
  • Prominent Arabs blame 9-11 on Jews (from the christian WorldNetDaily.com)
    Middle East media filled with talk of 'Zionist conspiracy'
  • Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.(CNN)
  • FBI: Al Qaeda may have probed government nuclear facility websites. (CNN)
  • U.S. tentatively concludes al-Qaida lacked weapons of mass destruction. (AP)
  • Missiles Not Biggest Threat, Report Says (Rev. Moon-Owned LaTimes)
    Terrorism: 'Ships, trucks, airplanes and other means' are called likely methods of conveyance for chemical, biological or nuclear attack on U.S. China could have "tens" of missiles able to hit U.S. shores by 2015. The current report says China's expected nuclear strike force will be "around 75 to 100."
    China currently has about 20 such missiles, the same as before. Russia and the U.S. each have more than 4,000.
    North Korea "may be ready" to test a multiple-stage Taepo Dong-2 missile capable of reaching U.S. shores with a nuclear weapon-size payload, North Korea "has assumed the role as the missile and manufacturing technology source" for many countries, including Pakistan and Iran.
  • Israel bracing for Iraq attack-Sources report Saddam working with Arafat on imminent assault (Source:DEBKA-Israeli Intelligence)
  • Lieberman calls for targeting of Hussein">Lieberman calls for targeting of Hussein (CNN)
  • Who Fired Up the Missile Threat? Republicans in Congress Know. This abrupt shift in thinking was prompted, in part, by a series of troubling events, including missile tests in North Korea and Iran, nuclear tests in India and Pakistan, and reports of Russian scientists selling their services. But there is also evidence that the new intelligence forecasts were a result of something else: a concerted campaign by the Republican-dominated Congress, supported by Israel, to focus attention on the leakage of missile technology from Russia to Iran.(WASHPOST)
  • "U.S.-Puppet on End of Zionist Strings" (TehranTimes)
  • WTC II designs (NEWSWEEK)
  • September 11 Victims' Families Will Travel to Afghanistan to Meet With Afghans Who Lost Loved Ones in US Bombing Campaign
  • Terror exam tests found in al-Qaeda caves (news.com.au)
  • Indonesian police have been questioning the man alleged to be South East Asia's own Osama Bin Laden. Abu Bakar Bashir is said to be the ringleader behind a series of militant Islamic cells with direct links to al-Qaeda.(UKChannel4news)
  • How bin Laden network spread its tentacles-Up to 1,000 al-Qaeda men are still active in the UK (Observer)
  • Bomb goes off at American embassy-Helicopter crash and warnings of attack on a major installation add to the air of menace in Kabul (UKGuardian)
  • Texas Boy, 13, Planned to Blow Up School, Cops Say (FOXNEWS)
  • MOST DANGEROUS PSYCHOTIC TERRORIST IN THE WORLD is Imad Mughniyeh - leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah - linked to al-Qaeda activities. (DEBKA via enemy WorldMessenger)
  • Osama bin Laden Is No Longer in Afghanistan (Debka- Israeli intelligence)
    Iran and Mughniyeh Abetted His Escape Through Arms Smuggling Route from Bandar Abbas Before Tora Bora Cave Hunt Was Launched.
  • Al Qaeda’s Post-Afghanistan Plot - Top-Level Assassinations to Destabilize the West (Debka)
  • President Faints at White House (NY NEWSDAY)
  • Possible plot to kill Florida Gov. Jeb Bush under investigation (MiamiHerald)
  • US intelligence to analyse Al Qaeda training tapes (Oz -ABCNEWS)
  • The body of John P. O'Neill a Deputy Director of the FBI who quit in disgust because he believed that the Bush administration had stymied the intelligence agency's investigations on Bin Laden, was found in the rubble of the World Trade Towers. (from the DailyBrew.com)
  • Bin Laden‘s terror mastermind identified; Abu Zubeida(Londontimes)
    INVESTIGATORS believe that they have identified the terrorist mastermind picked by Osama bin Laden to carry out future attacks on the West.
  • Kandahar comes out of the closet (LondonTimes)
  • Enrongate blog
  • Population anxiety (WashTimes)
    Try to imagine a world in which people of European ancestry are not only a minority of the world population, but are a beleaguered minority of Europe's and North America's population. Would that spell the end of Western civilization, or would a civilization born in the Judeo-Christian and Greek-Roman societies be carried forward by a predominantly African-Muslim-Hispanic recent immigrant population in Europe and North America?
    And, if Western civilization perishes, does that matter to you? What, if anything, can be done? These are the stark questions that face the readers of Pat Buchanan's astonishing new book, "The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization."
  • What Happened to the Neanderthals??
    Latest studies show that Neanderthals were well-adapted, resilient and culturally very capable people, on a par with "modern" humans.
    So if the two groups had attained a similar level of cultural achievement, why then did modern humans prevail?
  • Neanderthals were a lot more intelligent than they looked (UKIndependent)
    Neanderthals were not dumb, lumbering idiots after all. New evidence suggests that they had considerable technical and intellectual skills, as well as ingenuity, to put them on a par with modern humans.
  • White House defends Bush's use of 'Pakis' (Reuters)
  • British Islamist Hassan Butt Issues Warning (AP)-A British Muslim who claims to have sent volunteers to Afghanistan to aid the Taliban said Monday they may return to Britain to launch terrorist attacks against government and military targets.
  • Could terrorists strike from Caribbean?(WorldNetDaily)
    Lax airport security and offshore dealings reportedly worry area's officials.
  • Scientists breed pigs with spinach genes (REUTERS)
  • An 18in stone pig appears to be travelling the world after disappearing from a Suffolk woman's garden.(ANANOVA)
  • Hunt for Haggis online
  • Goat Milk Carries Spider Silk in Canada Experiment (Reuters)
  • Cloning laws in Japan to allow human-animal mix (Ananova)
  • ABCNEWS: Dog Mauling Trial Weighs Blame, Bestiality
  • Scientists working on discovering an elixir of life say it has already worked on fruit flies. (NEWSCIENTIST)
  • Liz Taylor amoureuse de Jeff Goldblum (Accustar)
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JAN 23 2001
  • Singer Peggy Lee Dies at Age 81 (AP)
  • Evidence is mounting that some solar cycles are doubled-peaked. The ongoing solar maximum may itself be a double -- and the second peak has arrived.
  • Scientists basically agree that an asteroid struck the Earth some 65 million years ago and its impact created the Chicxulub crater in Yucatan, Mexico.(eurekalert.org)
  • It has been a pipe dream of inventors since Leonardo da Vinci, but has the secret of free energy now been found in Ireland? (Reuters)
  • PHOTO:Japanese Electric Car
  • PHOTO:Hand mouse
  • "We have pictures of 3 similar looking UFO's" (RENSE)
  • David Icke 'knew space was turquoise first' (Ananova)
  • Recent UFO sightings-INCLUDING:LONG ISLAND CITY -- On December 30(RENSE)
  • Man wants $10 million for 'metal piece from UFO' (Ananova)
  • Winter Vomiting Bug Outbreak Continues To Spread (Ananova)
  • Virus-hit school may stay shut (BBCNEWS)
  • Virus-hit hospital remains closed(BBCNEWS)
  • Mystery illness empties school (BBCNEWS)
  • Spanish Flu Defrosts-Frozen tissue from a victim of the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918 who was buried in the Alaskan permafrost is helping to piece together the genome of a virus that caused one of the most devastating outbreaks of epidemic disease in modern times.(Nature)
  • Cows could foster flu pandemics. (Nature)
  • Animal Virus May Contribute to Mental Illness (Reuters)
  • Anthrax Missing From Fort Detrick Army Lab (CT Courant)
  • Live Bacteria Found Buried At Fort Detrick-Material Is Not Anthrax Or Other Known Biological Weapon
  • Government May Offer Experimental Anthrax Treatment (AP)
  • Soon you'll be able to post a message in the air wherever you go-Pinning messages in mid-air, using the location's Global Positioning System (GPS) reference, could become the next craze in communications. (NewScientist via Fark)
  • People who've grown up with mobile phones tend to use their thumbs when others would use their fingers.
  • The Wherify GPS locator for children.
  • Interactive Map of Terrestrial Asteroid Impact Craters
    A handy guide for Holidaying Meteors?
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR JAN 2OTH 2001
  • What was an apparently European man doing in North America over 9,000 years ago? (BBCNEWS)
  • Did you know that PLANET X will pass through our solar system again in spring 2003 after approximately 3660 years of absence on its regular orbit? In the last visit the Planet X destroyed over 90% of human population.
  • What Lurks in the Outer Solar System?-It's just a matter of time, say researchers, before astronomers find something as big as Pluto in the chilly outer reaches of the solar system. (NASA)
  • 'Planet X' - Nibiru Myth Rising On The Internet-A Call For Skepticism, By Bill Hamilton (RENSE)
  • Researchers suggest that a huge unseen object orbits on fringe of solar system-Two teams of researchers have proposed the existence of an unseen planet or a failed star circling the sun at a distance of more than 2 trillion miles, far beyond the orbits of the nine known planets. (MSNBC)
  • 7500 BC lost civilisation discovered off India's coast (TimesofIndia)
  • Goo Globs over Washington State-Military Conducting Biological Warfare Tests? (Zetatalk)
  • Are aircraft 'chemtrails' evidence of covert USAF climate control? (WorldNetDaily.com)
  • Mystery surrounds the discovery of giant bamboo rafts carrying human skeletons washed ashore on Pacific islands. (Ananova)
  • Robot stars 'will be the top earners by 2010' (UKTelegraph)
  • PHOTO:Electric family-sized Supertram test to ease traffic (BBCNEWS)
  • PHOTO:Personal helicopter gets off the ground (NewScientist)
  • IMAGE:Setting Sail on a Giant, Floating City (FOXNEWS)
  • Thousands flee as volcano erupts in eastern Congo (Ananova)
  • McDonalds issues national alert after powder found in mail (ABCNEWS-Oz)
  • The Real Roots of Terror-All but three of the terrorists, like Bin Laden himself, were from Saudi Arabia (Atlantic Journal)
  • British birdwatchers flock to see American rarity (Reuters)
  • Fire destroys years of genetic research at the University of California at Santa Cruz.(NYT)
  • Universe computer ruined by intruders (Ananova)
  • Asteroid may have slammed mineral wealth into Shark Bay
  • "Feed a cold, starve a fever" may be right (yahoonews)
  • THE GREAT PYRAMID AND THE FREEMASONS(via DailyGrail)Why did the Egyptians cancel the most dramatic ceremony of the Millennium? Amid accusations of bizarre 'Zionist' plots and strange 'Masonic' machinations, the Egyptian government cancelled the placing of a golden capstone on top of the Great Pyramid which was scheduled to take place at midnight on on the eve of the new millennium.
  • Scientists are puzzled after the 'virgin birth' of a baby shark at a US zoo that has no male sharks (Ananova)
  • El Nino May Be Returning (AP)
  • Baby with tail 'reincarnation of Hindu god'-with picture (Ananova)
  • Egyptian man charged with lying about pilot radio found in hotel overlooking WTC (WASHPOST)
  • DEPRESSED NY MAN DIAGNOSED AS "BRITISH" (BrainsTrust)
  • "FAT GEORDIES" TELLY JOKE UPHELD (UK Megastar.com)
  • Today's Orwells?
    Ron Rosenbaum writes interestingly in the NY Observer about how Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, expatriate Brits both, have become the "most forceful, eloquent and influential voices in the American debate over the Sept. 11 attacks and their meaning."
  • Feds Monitoring Book Purchases; Store Owners 'Gagged' From Telling You
    'Seven' was right.
  • Slowing and Storing Light in a Solid (PhysicsNewsUpdate)
  • Man stretchered out of 'disgusting' horror film.
  • Ancient Supernova May Have Triggered Eco-Catastrophe (JohnHopkinsUni)
    An exploding star may have destroyed part of Earth's protective ozone layer 2 million years ago, devastating some forms of ancient marine life

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#2
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR 26th DEC 2001
  • Woman gives birth to 13 pound, 1 ounce baby
  • Deborah Orr: I'm fed up being called an anti-Semite(UKIndepenedent Opinion)
  • JACK DUGGAN: FROM TORA BORA TO BORA BORA (Ye Olde Pravda)
    It seems that our government has allowed ex-CIA agent Osama Bin Laden and over 3,000 of his Al Queda terrorist regulars to fly out of Afghanistan under the guise of evacuating Pakistani wounded. They are now laughing at us as they sun themselves in Somalia and Abu Dhabi, while our grunts are chasing their tails inside the caves of Tora Bora. George Duhhhbya has enacted a War-On-Terrorism economic stimulus package to save the free world..... Thanks to his brilliant defense of freedom, the supranational corporations no longer have to pay any income taxes! In fact, they are being refunded for past years, to the tune of 140 billion dollars. Billions of tax refunds to IBM, GM, Ford – all FOG, "Friends Of George."
  • Osama has died a natural death (PAK Observer)
  • U.S. sees bin Laden leaving by sea.
  • Biographer Says Osama Bin Laden Alive
  • U.S. removing al Qaeda fingers for DNA analysis
  • India airlifts 1,000 artificial limbs to Afghanistan
  • Curry Spice May Help Heal Wounds
  • India Troop Deployment Almost Complete
  • Discovering What It Takes to Live to 100
  • Fly Naked
  • Scotland Yard confirms men removed from Sydney bound flight
  • Arabnews.com: Political cartoon on Air Travel Profiling
  • John Walker, American prisoner of war By Fawaz Turki
  • Monkey on your back: apes may use drugs recreationally
  • Today we can read human and ape genetic legacies. In 50 years, we could resurrect the past, says Richard Dawkins.
  • Eating Raw Sprouts Linked to Foodborne Illness
  • Egyptian: "Tape Shows bin Laden Guilt"
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR 26TH DEC 2001
  • Cough lingering in California firefighters who helped in N.Y.
  • Pak President extends "heartiest greetings and facilitations on the auspicious occasion of Christmas" (PAKNEWS)
  • Without bombs, United States may already be fighting anti-terrorism war in Somalia
  • Food Safety Confronted by 'Bioterror' Threat
  • Last week, an asteroid approached unusually close to the Earth.
  • Birds are being spotted in places hundreds and even thousands of miles from their traditional habitats. Scientists really don't know why.
  • RSPCA baffled by stray pelican
  • GM Xmas tree will light up on its own
  • Neandertals are Human?
  • French geologist suggests that Atlantis was a real place -- a small mid-channel island sitting in what is now the Strait of Gibraltar.
  • "The Far-reaching Effects of Major Eruptions,"
  • Foxnews.com deletes Israeli-spies in US series, FreeRepublic offers backups
  • HEADLINE INDEX FOR 24TH DEC 2001
  • PLO chief Yasser Arafat, who once gave the slip to enemy forces by dressing in drag, may try to smuggle himself into Bethlehem today inside an ambulance or diplomatic car, Israeli sources say.
  • AUSTRALIA ON HIGH ALERT AFTER POSSIBLE THREAT
  • ANTI-TERROR COPS RAID SHIP-Channel swoop after alert over plot to blitz London (UK Mirror)
  • An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has spread from Gabon to the neighbouring Republic of Congo, raising fears of a regional epidemic.
  • Body From River Identified as Missing Harvard Ebola Biologist
  • Inside the War Room-Time on Bush(TW-AOL)
  • Giuliani:"I anticipate another attack"
  • Microchips Under the Skin Offer ID, Raise Questions
  • Sexual apartheid supported by American companies such as McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms operating in Saudi Arabia.
  • Muslims are seething at CNN and MTV after the cable-TV giants teamed up to surprise sheltered Afghan kids with sexy, skin-baring photos of Jennifer Lopez and get their reactions on camera.
  • McDonald's will replace Ronald McDonald with Asterix in France. Hoping to appease anti-American attacks and anti-junk food sentiments in France, they're giving Ronald the boot
  • The Real Story of Flight 93(NEWSWEEK)

  • Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba

    (ABCNEWS)
  • Hunt for 20 terror ships-The Armada of Terror(UKObserver)
  • REPORT: CHINA SUPPLIED ARMS TO BIN LADEN'S TERRORISTS AFTER SEPT 11(Source:WashTimes)
  • Flight instructor warned FBI in August: terrorist taking lessons to fly jumbo jet
  • Al-Qaida fighters airlifted to safety
  • FBI focusing on portable nuke threat (UPI)

    Creepy Disclosures Weblog- Archive#1
  • Nov 29 2001 Blog Index
  • Iranians a few years away from being Nuclear!
  • Putin's the big winner in Bush's war
  • Northern Alliance rules out need for outside peace force(Independent)
  • In retrospect Osama bin Laden may be seen as the most effective terrorist since Gavrilo Princip killed the Hapsburg heir Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. Young Princip's goal was the removal of the Austro-Hungarian rule of Serbia, not the destruction of the entire structure of monarchic Europe that resulted. But Osama bin Laden should be credited with knowing exactly what he was trying to achieve.
  • New York CCTV Surveillance Camera Route Planner
  • Bin Laden's Mountain Fortress
  • Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Guilliani's Bunker's Diesel Fuel Supply
  • Nov 28 2001 Blog Index
  • Since the war on terrorism began, Americans have been buying up so-called ‘nuclear disaster pills’ -powerful prevention or a risky remedy?
  • Ryan and Dave are identical twins. After tiring of piercing, tattoos, and implants they began exploring much heavier surgical modifications.
  • 25 Cases of Hepatitis A Reported In Southeastern Massachusetts
  • Are Crop Circles at Chilbolton Observatory A Response to a 1974 SETI Earth Transmission?
  • From the Makers of Fartbusters comes ColonBlow
  • Conspracies for breakfast:“The Black Pope” ordered the attack on the World Trade Center?
  • The 4 'common' groups of bioweapons
  • Maps of Nuclear Plants remain accessible thru Web archives.
  • Abnormal Phenomena Occur Before Turkey Quake in 1999
  • Nov 27 2001 Blog Index
  • Naughty UK children to be registered as potential criminals
  • A War in the Planning for Four Years?
  • House of Saud looks close to collapse
  • "Why Do They Hate Us?"-(NewYorkPost Editorial)
  • Selling THE “END TIMES” (PRAVDA)
  • Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations (DailyTelegraph)
  • Nov 26 2001 Blog Index
  • Amateur rocket builder successfully launches unmanned test rocket
  • Overview Of Sept 11th "conspiracy"
  • Bill White:Horowitz was a CIA agent:THE BUSINESSMEN BEHIND DAVID HOROWITZ AND THE LIBERTARIAN WAR FRONT (Pravda)
  • Clintonized FBI Fingers 'Right-Wing Hate Groups'in Anthrax Probe
  • The Deconstruction of the World Trade Center
  • The FBI is monitoring the investigation into the disappearance of a Harvard biologist because of his research into potentially lethal viruses, including Ebola.
  • Nov 25 2001 Blog Index
  • Black Death caused by 'ebola' virus, not bubonic plague thru rats
  • Ebola-style killer virus sweeps Afghan border
  • Suggestions that the two OKC bombers had been manipulated by an Arab terror cell were rejected by the FBI, but are still a source of speculation in America (UKTelegraph)
  • ASHCROFT DETAINS 60 ISRAELI JEWS
  • Hundreds of small earthquakes are been detected near Mount St. Helens in Southwest Washington.
  • A race by UK's SAS and American special forces to catch Osama Bin Laden has led to a serious rift between London and Washington(Drudgereport)
  • With Latest High-Tech Sensors, U.S. Can 'See' 100ft Down Inside Caves
  • The war on terrorism is to be extended to three new countries as soon as the campaign in Afghanistan is over.
  • Hillary's Nuke Safety Scheme Would Evacuate 20 Million
  • Was Gore's Concession Speech A Death Warrant?
  • Nov 23 2001 Blog Index
  • He was the man who did most to bring peace to the Balkans. So what would Richard Holbrooke, now leader of a task force on terrorism, do about the current crisis?
  • Anthrax confirmed in letter sent to Chilean doctor(SANTIAGO, Nov 23 AFP)
  • Anthrax Natural Remedies
  • Home Run “piggy backs” a data transmission onto the transponder channel and takes direct control from the ground. This explains why none of the aircraft sent a special “I have been hijacked” transponder code, despite multiple activation points on all four aircraft
  • New Scientist Magazine: Just imagining exercising can increase the strength of even large muscles
  • Nov 22 2001 Blog Index
  • The FBI's "Magic Lantern" "Trojan horse" program would allow investigators, via the Internet, to secretly install powerful software that records every keystroke on a person's computer
  • Scientists Build Tiny Computer From DNA
  • DNA IN THE USA: PATRIOT ACT ALLOWS FORMATION OF DNA DATABASE of criminal offenders
  • LIGHTING UP AT HOME: MARYLAND COUNTY PASSES MEASURE ORDERING FINES IF SMOKE OFFENDS NEIGHBORS
  • WTC site may have "half-size" new towers in five years, leasing agent says
  • BUSH SR.IN BUSINESS WITH BIN LADEN FAMILY CONGLOMERATE THROUGH CARLYLE GROUP
  • Few Westerners have seen Osama bin Laden's recruitment video in full. So what did Julia Magnet, a young Jewish New Yorker, make of it?
  • Al Quaeda atomic-bomb recipe was a parody that has been circulating on the Internet for years.
  • SLAIN REPORTERS FOUND DEATH GAS (New York Post)
  • So why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving, and not duck or venison or lobster?
  • 3 Knee Patients Die, Apparently of Rare Germ (NewYorkTimes)
  • Catastrophic event preceded Dark Ages - scientist
  • Nov 19 2001 Blog Index
  • One of our main weaknesses is the fact that we are looking for dramatic examples of terrorism and never seem to think that terrorism can involve foreign agents doing such things as spraying PCB on the playgrounds of children.
  • Flight 587 Video Shows 'Puff of Smoke' in Sky
  • After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who gets tried. Tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy.
  • U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors. PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) July 2001 meeting- 'either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option'. The words used were 'a military operation'
  • Muslim Moderate US Resident Kabbani Firm on Terrorist Nuclear Threat-more than 20 suitcase nukes in US
  • Osama built a shadow air force to support his terrorist activities, using Afghanistan's national airline, a surplus U.S. Air Force jet and clandestine charters.
  • After 911: the public's shrinking access to information that many once took for granted.
  • Times of London, quoting U.S. intelligence sources and noting the plane's low altitude and erratic course, suggested the real target of downed Flight 93 might have been one of the state's nuclear power plants. At 500 mph, the Three Mile Island plant, near Harrisburg, was about than 10 or 15 minutes away
  • Nov 18 2001 Blog Index
  • FBI is considering using "Brain Fingerprinting" technology to identify terrorists (CNN)
  • Brain scans can reveal liars
  • Kabul paper trail damns al-Qaeda-evidence uncovered at al-Qaeda sites indicates that major power plants in the US and Europe - some of them nuclear - were being targeted for attack.
  • Nov 17 2001 Blog Index
  • US confused where to go next (By Nusrat Javeed- Jang)
  • Defectors Cite Iraqi Training for Terrorism-including Boeing 707 assaults
  • New Scientist-"A CONCERNED reader who wishes to remain anonymous tells us of his worries that anthrax is almost the same organism as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is produced commercially as a pesticide.
  • DRUG SMUGGLERS at Canadian prisons and airports are about to encounter a new force in the campaign to protect public morals-a team of highly trained gerbils.
  • Tinseltown Answers the Call
  • 911 reached DEFCON5
  • Nov 16 2001 Blog Index
  • Al-Qaeda's $1m hunt for atomic weapons-Russia confesses it has “mislaid” more than 300 “suitcase bombs” made before the fall of communism.
  • Bin Laden's nuclear secrets found
  • Mullah Muhammad Omar:"there is a giant project to annihilate America. Soon we will demolish America, remember my words," the Taliban head emphasised.
  • "IT'S A CINCH" to make sarin nerve gas from off-the-shelf chemicals, says chemist.
  • Scientists think they have evidence that fish oil could cure mental disorders such as depression and dyslexia
  • Bush now has complete control over what we will officially know or not know about what the U.S. government is doing in our name in this extraordinary time.(Op/Ed-Richard Reeves)-Nov 14
  • Soviet weapons experts succeeded in weaponizing smallpox
  • Nov 15 2001 Blog Index
  • Al-Qaeda may have sent nukes, bio, chemical weapons to US: report (Hindustantimes)
  • Mirror columnist Tony Parsons' brilliant insight into the shocking events of Sept 11th
  • "In Sweeping Campus Canvasses, U.S. Checks on Mideast Students" (NYT)
  • By using the BugStik, dealing with bugs is no longer a scary or messy problem.
  • Yankee exile in NE England sees former Queens New york home in flames
  • Airport news censorship angers many travelers
  • Doctor May Be Missing Anthrax Link
  • TWA Flight 800 downed by Possible Meteor-Official Report
  • Leonid Meteor Shower Greatest In Decades.
  • Hidden deep beneath the Earth's surface lie one of the most destructive and yet least-understood natural phenomena in the world, not seen in human memory- supervolcanoes.
  • Sunspot Activity and World Events
  • Interview with Osama: My kidneys are all right. I did not go to Dubai last year.
  • Cover-up or Complicity of the Bush Administration? The Role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence Agency (ISI) in the September 11 attacks (Michel Chossudovsky Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa)
  • Nov 10 2001 Blog Index
  • Gaping Holes in the 'Washington Hates bin Laden' Story
  • US intelligence agencies recruiting psychics to help predict future attacks.(UK Sunday Times)
  • Bizarre chemical discovery gives homeopathic hint
  • Nov 9 2001 Blog Index
  • Bin Laden claims he has nuclear weapons "as deterrent"
  • 'Boozing? It's Practically Therapy,' Men Told-(Reuters)
  • Investigators considering the use of truth serum to sweat information out of suspected al Qaeda terrorists likely would find federal courts on their side because public safety is at imminent risk-WashPost
  • "Britain and the US claim the support of most Middle Eastern governments in the war against terrorism, but what do ordinary Arabs think?
  • GENEVA, SWITZERLAND—According to a study released Monday by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, 4.2 billion people—a full 70 percent of the planet's inhabitants—could use an all-star benefit concert.
  • Parachute manufacturers are marketing products as a safety device to those who live or work in skyscrapers
  • In September, a few days before the attack on New York, the US Energy Information Administration reported that "Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes the construction of oil pipelines.
  • For the past 55 years the US has been running a terrorist training camp in Fort Benning, Georgia
  • Actor James Woods observed and reported four hijackers making a trial run on an airline flight before the September 11 but was ignored
  • Six men of Middle Eastern appearance were stopped by police in the Midwest but released, even though they possessed Israeli passports and photographs and descriptions of a nuclear power plant in Florida and the Trans-Alaska pipeline.
  • Nov 7 2001 Blog Index
  • 'Jackpot' for terrorists are "backpack" nuclear weapons.
  • 300mil yo Giant Fossil Cockroach found
  • Nov 5 2001 Blog Index
  • Sleep Experts Call for Siestas
  • Baxter may be linked to deaths
  • Bin Laden video message?: Report says next target is identified: next week’s UNO General Assembly meeting in New York
  • The earth's climate does great flip-flops every few thousand years, and with breathtaking speed...Europe's climate could become more like Siberia's
  • Secretive U.S. detention efforts target Middle Eastern men
  • Bush can now keep history a secret
  • SIR MICHAEL HOWARD: MISTAKE TO DECLARE THIS A 'WAR'
  • Ananova - Bin Laden 'met CIA agent before terror attacks'
  • Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
  • '92 WTC Terrorist Cell Trained Near 3 Mile Island
  • FBI picks up 2 men possessing anthrax
  • School Suspends Student for Wearing Vagina Costume

    Creepy Disclosures Index of Headlines
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