Get Ready For PATRIOT II
Matt Welch, 2 April 2003, AlterNet
Americans could have their citizenship revoked, if found to have contributed "material support" to organizations deemed by the government, even retroactively, to be "terrorist." "The intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct."
Legal permanent residents could be deported instantaneously, without a criminal charge or even evidence, if the Attorney General considers them a threat to national security. If they commit minor, non-terrorist offenses, they can still be booted out, without so much as a day in court, because the law would exempt habeas corpus review in some cases.
The government would be instructed to build a mammoth database of citizen DNA information, aimed at "detecting, investigating, prosecuting, preventing or responding to terrorist activities." Samples could be collected without a court order; one need only be suspected of wrongdoing by a law enforcement officer. Those refusing the cheek-swab could be fined $200,000 and jailed for a year.
Authorities could wiretap anybody for 15 days, and snoop on anyone's Internet usage (including chat and email), all without obtaining a warrant.
The government would be specifically instructed not to release any information about detainees held on suspicion of terrorist activities, until they are actually charged with a crime.
Police officers carrying out illegal searches would also be granted legal immunity if they were just carrying out orders.
Federal "consent decrees" limiting local law enforcement agencies' abilities to spy on citizens in their jurisdiction would be rolled back.
American citizens could be subject to secret surveillance by their own government on behalf of foreign countries, including dictatorships.
The death penalty would be expanded to cover 15 new offenses.
FULL ARTICLE: Get Ready for Patriot II
Detailed critiques of the Patriot II draft have been prepared by the ACLU and the Center for Public Integrity. The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights also has a useful 98-page report on post-Sept. 11 civil liberties, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center maintains an outstanding PATRIOT-related site.
Eric Lichtblau, 9 April 2003, New York Times, "Republicans Want Terror Law Made Permanent"
Army chaplain offers baptisms, baths
Meg Laughlin, 4 April 2003, Miami Herald
CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.
It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.
''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.
And agree they do. Every day, soldiers take the plunge for the Lord and come up clean for the first time in weeks.
''They do appear physically and spiritually cleansed,'' Llano said.
First, though, the soldiers have to go to one of Llano's hour-and-a-half sermons in his dirt-floor tent. Then the baptism takes an hour of quoting from the Bible.
''Regardless of their motives,'' Llano said, ``I get the chance to take them closer to the Lord.''
A blue-eyed 32-year-old with an abundance of energy, Llano goes out every day to drum up grimy soldiers for his pool.
He talks to truck drivers, tank drivers, computer specialists -- anyone and everyone. He goes out to the combat zone to the fighting soldiers and the combat support soldiers who keep them in supplies.
''You have to be aggressive to help people find themselves in God,'' he said.
He calls himself a ''Southern Baptist evangelist,'' and justifies the war and killing with a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, which he often recites: ``Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.
''This means we are called upon by our government to fight and that is giving unto Caesar, as the Bible tells us,'' he said.
Earlier this week, word went out that portable showers might be installed here soon, but Llano was undaunted.
''There is no fruit out here, and I have a stash of raisins, juice boxes and fruit rolls to pull out,'' the chaplain said optimistically.
"biodefense"
"Nearly all the know-how and equipment necessary for offensive biological warfare is also used in civilian biomedical research. A thin line separates offense and defense. For example, vaccines are currently developed for defense purposes. But vaccines are also a prerequisite to using biological weapons - to protect an aggressor's own population. In the course of the biodefense research, an offensive capability is generated."
Kristof investigates ANTHRAX
(5-part series)
January 4, 2002, Friday
Profile Of a Killer
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
I think I know who sent out the anthrax last fall.
He is an American insider, a man working in the military bio-weapons field. He's a skilled microbiologist who did not aim to kill anybody or even to disrupt the postal system. Rather, he wanted to sow terror. Like many in the bio-warfare field, he felt that the government was not sufficiently attuned to the risks of anthrax, so he seized upon the opportunity presented by Sept. 11 to get more attention and funding for bio-terror programs like those that have been his career.
How do I know all this? Well, I don't exactly. But talk to the people in the spooky world of bio-terror awhile, sop up the gossip and theories, and as you put the clues together -- as bio-terror experts and F.B.I. officials are now doing -- a hazy picture seems to come into focus. It's not a certainty but an educated guess, circulating among many who know their business.
"I think there are on the order of 100 people who could have done it, who have the access to the spores and the technical expertise to have done it," says one man with long experience in the shadows of the United States bio-defense program. "I've got to admit that I could be a suspect. I've been interviewed by the F.B.I."
The emerging image of the killer that many of the experts see (but not all; anthrax experts agree about as much as economists do) is precisely the opposite of the perpetrator whom we initially imagined. Our first impulse when catastrophes happen is to look for foreigners to round up, as we did after the Oklahoma City bombing and after the crash of Flight 800. The Bush administration tried hard to find evidence to pin the anthrax attacks on Iraq.
In fact, many experts believe that the killer is tied to the American bio-weapons program because the anthrax he sent out is genetically identical to the anthrax kept by the United States Army. A microbiologist named Paul Keim is helping the authorities compare the genetic fingerprint of the mailed anthrax, and every indication is that it derives at least indirectly from the mother lode of the military strain, kept at Fort Detrick, Md.
The mailed anthrax is also astonishingly pure and equivalent (in spore size and concentration) to the best the American Army ever achieved. Making anthrax in a dry powdered form of this quality is difficult, and beginning in 1959 took 900 workers in the "hot" area of Fort Detrick years of effort (and two accidental deaths, including that of an unlucky electrician who changed light bulbs at the wrong time). Thus it seems that the murderer had access not only to the American military germs but also to some knowledge of the American military method of preparing it in its dry form.
Why do specialists agree that the murderer was not trying to kill anybody? Because he taped the envelopes tightly, and as of September nobody expected that the spores could leak through envelopes. Moreover, each of the letters that has been recovered announced that the substance was anthrax and advised the recipient to take antibiotics.
"I don't think that he was trying to kill anybody," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a microbiologist who has studied the attacks for the Federation of American Scientists. "I think the motive was to create public fear, to raise the profile of biological warfare."
The F.B.I. may already have talked to the killer. There are not that many people with the access to germs, the knowledge and an anthrax vaccine booster shot in the last year. But the murderer showed a knowledge of forensics (apparently not licking a stamp or envelope, for example, to avoid leaving DNA), and it may be very difficult to move from suspicions to sufficient proof for an arrest.
Washington has been pressing Russia, Pakistan and other countries, quite rightly, to improve their control of germs, chemicals and nuclear weapons. But one of the lessons of the anthrax investigation is that the first thing we need to do to feel safer is put our own house in order. It is appalling that we cannot even determine which labs have exchanged anthrax with Fort Detrick.
Terrorism and laxity, it seems, afflict not only foreigners with different complexions and religions, but --in exceptional cases -- perhaps also those with white lab coats and military haircuts.
July 2, 2002, Tuesday
Anthrax? The F.B.I. Yawns
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
The F.B.I.'s bumbling before 9/11 is water under the bridge. But the bureau's lackadaisical ineptitude in pursuing the anthrax killer continues to threaten America's national security by permitting him to strike again or, more likely, to flee to Iran or North Korea.
Almost everyone who has encountered the F.B.I. anthrax investigation is aghast at the bureau's lethargy. Some in the biodefense community think they know a likely culprit, whom I'll call Mr. Z. Although the bureau has polygraphed Mr. Z, searched his home twice and interviewed him four times, it has not placed him under surveillance or asked its outside handwriting expert to compare his writing to that on the anthrax letters.
This is part of a larger pattern. Astonishingly, the F.B.I. allowed the destruction of anthrax stocks at Iowa State University, losing what might have been valuable genetic clues. Then it waited until December to open the intact anthrax envelope it found. The F.B.I. didn't obtain anthrax strains from various labs for comparison until March, and the testing is still not complete. The bureau did not systematically polygraph scientists at two suspect labs, Fort Detrick, Md., and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, until a month ago.
Perhaps it's a cheap shot for an armchair detective to whine about the caution of dedicated and exceptionally hard-working investigators. Yet months pass and the bureau continues to act like, well, a bureaucracy, plodding along in slow motion. People in the biodefense field first gave Mr. Z's name to the bureau as a suspect in October, and I wrote about him elliptically in a column on May 24.
He denies any wrongdoing, and his friends are heartsick at suspicions directed against a man they regard as a patriot. Some of his polygraphs show evasion, I hear, although that may be because of his temperament.
If Mr. Z were an Arab national, he would have been imprisoned long ago. But he is a true-blue American with close ties to the U.S. Defense Department, the C.I.A. and the American biodefense program. On the other hand, he was once caught with a girlfriend in a biohazard "hot suite" at Fort Detrick, surrounded only by blushing germs.
With many experts buzzing about Mr. Z behind his back, it's time for the F.B.I. to make a move: either it should go after him more aggressively, sifting thoroughly through his past and picking up loose threads, or it should seek to exculpate him and remove this cloud of suspicion.
Whoever sent the anthrax probably had no intention of killing people; the letters warned recipients to take antibiotics. My guess is that the goal was to help America by raising preparedness against biological attacks in the future.
So it seems fair to ask the F.B.I. a few questions:
Do you know how many identities and passports Mr. Z has and are you monitoring his international travel? I have found at least one alias for him, and he has continued to travel abroad on government assignments, even to Central Asia.
Why was his top security clearance suspended in August, less than a month before the anthrax attacks began? This move left him infuriated. Are the C.I.A. and military intelligence agencies cooperating fully with the investigation?
Have you searched the isolated residence that he had access to last fall? The F.B.I. has known about this building, and knows that Mr. Z gave Cipro to people who visited it. This property and many others are legally registered in the name of a friend of Mr. Z, but may be safe houses operated by American intelligence.
Have you examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978-80? There is evidence that the anthrax was released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting against black guerrillas, and Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in the white army's much-feared Selous Scouts. Could rogue elements of the American military have backed the Rhodesian Army in anthrax and cholera attacks against blacks? Mr. Z's résumé also claims involvement in the former South African Defense Force; all else aside, who knew that the U.S. Defense Department would pick an American who had served in the armed forces of two white-racist regimes to work in the American biodefense program with some of the world's deadliest germs?
What now? When do you shift into high gear?
July 12, 2002, Friday
The Anthrax Files
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
When someone expert in bio-warfare mailed anthrax last fall, it may not have been the first time he had struck.
So while the F.B.I. has been unbelievably lethargic in its investigation so far, any year now it will re-examine the package that arrived on April 24, 1997, at the B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington D.C. The package contained a petri dish mislabeled "anthracks."
The dish did not contain anthrax. But a Navy lab determined that it was bacillus cereus, a very close, non-toxic cousin of anthrax used by the U.S. Defense Department.
Anybody able to obtain bacillus cereus knew how to spell "anthrax." An echo of that deliberate misspelling came last fall when the anthrax letters suggested taking "penacilin."
The choice of B'nai B'rith probably was meant to suggest Arab terrorists, because the building had once been the target of an assault by Muslim gunmen. In the same way, F.B.I. profilers are convinced that the real anthrax attacks last year were conducted by an American scientist trying to pin the blame on Arabs.
In a column on July 2 I wrote about "Mr. Z," an American bio-defense insider who intrigues investigators and whose career has been spent in the shadowy world of counterterror and intelligence. He denies any involvement in the anthrax attacks.
On the date that the perpetrator chose for the B'nai B'rith attack, a terrorism seminar was under way in the Washington area and Mr. Z seemed peeved that neither he nor any other bio-defense expert had been included as a speaker. The next day, Mr. Z sent a letter to the organizer saying that he was "rather concerned" at the omission and added: "As was evidenced in downtown Washington D.C. a few hours later, this topic is vital to the security of the United States. I am tremendously interested in becoming more involved in this area. . . ."
Over the next couple of years, Mr. Z used the B'nai B'rith attack to underscore the importance of his field and his own status within it. "Remember B'nai B'rith," he noted at one point. In examples he gave of how anthrax attacks might happen, he had a penchant for dropping Arab names.
The F.B.I. must be on top of the B'nai B'rith episode, right? Well, it was told about it months ago. But B'nai B'rith says it hasn't been asked about the incident by the F.B.I.
The authorities seem equally oblivious to another round of intriguing anthrax hoaxes in February 1999. As with last fall's anthrax letters, a handful of envelopes with almost identical messages were sent to a combination of media and government targets including The Washington Post, NBC's Atlanta office, a post office in Columbus, Ga. (next to Fort Benning, an Army base), and the Old Executive Office Building in Washington (where Mr. Z had given a briefing three months earlier).
I found a local policeman in Columbus willing to dig out his file on that 1999 anthrax hoax. There are several similarities with last fall's mailing. For example, one page of the 1999 letter says, in big, bold capitals: "WARNING: THIS BUILDING AND EVERYTHING IN IT HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO ANTHRAX. CALL 911 NOW AND SECURE THE BUILDING. OTHERWISE THE GERM WILL SPREAD."
Last fall's letters are also in bold capitals and use similar language patterns.
In contrast to the 1997 package with fake anthrax gelatin, the 1999 letters each contained a teaspoon of fake anthrax powder (roughly the same amount as of real anthrax in 2001). That's interesting because as of 1997, U.S. bio-defense scientists were working basically only with wet anthrax, while by 1999 some had experimented with making powders.
For example, Mr. Z apparently learned about powders during those two years. His 1999 résumé adds something missing from the 1997 version: "working knowledge of wet and dry BW [biological warfare] agents, large-scale production of bacterial, rickettsial and viral BW pathogens and toxins."
Two outside consultants used by the F.B.I. to examine documents in the anthrax case, Don Foster and Mark Smith, both say they have not been shown the 1997 or 1999 hoax letters. The 1999 envelopes carried stamps, which may have been licked.
It would be fascinating to know whose DNA that is. Perhaps when the F.B.I. is finished defending itself from charges of lethargy, it will check.
July 19, 2002, Friday
Case of the Missing Anthrax
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
It's bad enough that we can't find Iraqi anthrax hidden in the desert. But it turns out that we also misplaced anthrax and Ebola kept in a lab outside Washington D.C.
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. Moreover, germ warriors in the C.I.A. and the Defense Department decided -- without bothering to consult the White House -- to produce anthrax secretly and tinker with it in ways that arguably put the U.S. in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.
It's time for Congress or an outside commission to investigate our nation's biodefense program and establish oversight.
"Shenanigans have been going on," declares one internal Army memo about the labs at ground zero of the biodefense world: USAMRIID, the acronym for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, based at Fort Detrick, Md.
The 400 pages of documents, which I've obtained and which were described by The Hartford Courant earlier this year, quote a newly arrived officer named Michael Langford as saying that he found "little or no organization," "little or no accountability," "a very lax and unorganized system" and signs of covert work and cover-ups.
Mr. Langford requested an inventory of pathogens acquired in 1991. The resulting memo shows that 62 samples had vanished, including Ebola, hantavirus, anthrax, S.I.V. (the monkey version of the virus that causes AIDS), and several described only as "unknown."
USAMRIID says that it rechecked this year and was able to account for virtually all of the missing specimens except one set that would have been irradiated to render it harmless. But a decade's delay in bothering to look for missing Ebola seems a bit much, and conversations with scientists who have worked at USAMRIID do not inspire confidence (although, in fairness, many who talk publicly have lawsuits pending against the lab).
"When I was laid off, I walked out for three days in a row with boxes, and no one looked inside them," recalled Richard Crosland, who worked at USAMRIID from 1986 to 1997. "I was there for 11 years, and never once did anyone ask, `Where is the substance you ordered?'
"I could have walked out with it when I left, and no one would have known. I didn't, but I could have. 7-Eleven had better inventory control. And I was working with botulinum, which is one of the deadliest substances on earth.
"If you couldn't find a microscope, you were in real trouble. But if you misplaced five micrograms of botulinum that could kill thousands of people, nobody would notice."
In truth, many microbiology labs are pretty chaotic, and ultimately labs have to pick reliable people and then trust them. But that's what piqued my interest in USAMRIID in the first place -- my research about a man I've called "Mr. Z," who has been interviewed four times by the F.B.I. and whose home has been searched twice in connection with the anthrax investigation. USAMRIID hired Mr. Z in 1997 to work with Ebola and Marburg viruses, although he had spent years in the armed forces of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.
Most researchers at USAMRIID are dedicated patriots who could earn more in the private sector. When Mr. Z left USAMRIID in 1999, he was making $58,000 a year -- and jumped to a $150,000-a-year job with a private contractor. Many bio-defense scientists risk their lives working with deadly germs to improve vaccines for American troops, and they deserve our gratitude.
Still, the Army documents indisputably point out serious problems. They recount incidents in 1992 when someone appeared to be working secretly with anthrax at night and on weekends and then trying to cover it up. Memos describe how someone tried to roll back a numerical counter on an electron microscope to hide his work with anthrax.
As recently as April of this year, anthrax spores were found in a hallway and administrative area of USAMRIID -- shortly after Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, visited the complex. Anthrax spores seem to have it in for Democratic senators.
August 13, 2002, Tuesday
The Anthrax Files
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF (NYT)
It's time for me to come clean on "Mr. Z."
Since May, I've written periodically about a former U.S. Army scientist who, authorities say privately, has become the overwhelming focus of the investigation into the anthrax attacks last fall. I didn't name him.
But over the weekend, Mr. Z named himself: He is Steven J. Hatfill, 48, a prominent germ warfare specialist who formerly worked in the Army labs at Fort Detrick, Md. Dr. Hatfill made a televised statement on Sunday, describing himself as "a loyal American" and attacking the authorities and the media for trying "to smear me and gratuitously make a wasteland of my life."
The first thing to say is that the presumption of innocence has already been maimed since 9/11 for foreign Muslims, and it should not be similarly cheapened with respect to Dr. Hatfill. It must be a genuine assumption that he is an innocent man caught in a nightmare. There is not a shred of traditional physical evidence linking him to the attacks.
Still, Dr. Hatfill is wrong to suggest that the F.B.I. has casually designated him the anthrax "fall guy." The authorities' interest in Dr. Hatfill arises from a range of factors, including his expertise in dry biological warfare agents, his access to Fort Detrick labs where anthrax spores were kept (although he did not work with anthrax there) and the animus to some federal agencies that shows up in his private writings. He has also failed three successive polygraph examinations since January, and canceled plans for another polygraph exam two weeks ago.
So far, the only physical evidence is obscure: smell. Specially trained bloodhounds were given scent packets preserved from the anthrax letters and were introduced to a variety of people and locations. This month, they responded strongly to Dr. Hatfill, to his apartment, to his girlfriend's apartment and even to his former girlfriend's apartment, as well as to restaurants that he had recently entered (he is under constant surveillance). The dogs did not respond to other people, apartments or restaurants.
Putting aside the question of Dr. Hatfill and the anthrax, there are two larger issues.
First is the F.B.I.'s initial slowness in carrying out the anthrax investigation. Why did it take nine months to call in the bloodhounds, or to read Dr. Hatfill's unpublished novel, "Emergence," which has been sitting in the copyright office since 1998 and draws on his experiences in South Africa and Antarctica to recount a biological warfare attack on Congress?
Second is the need for much greater care within the U.S. biodefense program. Dr. Hatfill's résumé made claims (a Ph.D. degree, work with the U.S. Special Forces, membership in Britain's Royal Society of Medicine) that appear false, but these were never checked.
Moreover, what was a man like Dr. Hatfill who had served in the armed forces of two white racist governments (Rhodesia and South Africa) doing in a U.S. Army lab working with Ebola? With a new wave of funding for smallpox and anthrax research, we must be doubly careful that the spread of pathogens to new labs solves problems rather than creates them.
The White House is putting strong pressure on the F.B.I. to solve the anthrax murders. Top administration officials would love to find an Iraqi connection, but would settle for solving the case. The F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, is pushing back, saying that nothing would be worse for the bureau than a premature prosecution that would fizzle in court.
To its credit, in the last few months, the bureau has finally picked up its pace. Its experts in Quantico are belatedly examining anthrax hoax letters sent in 1997 and 1999 that bear fascinating resemblance to the real anthrax letters. Investigators are looking at another hoax letter with intriguing parallels to the real one; that hoax was sent to Senator Tom Daschle from London in mid-November, when Dr. Hatfill was visiting a biodefense center in England.
Partly because of the newfound energy, the F.B.I. has lately been enjoying genuine progress in its anthrax investigation. People very close to Dr. Hatfill are now cooperating with the authorities, information has been presented to a grand jury, and there is reason to hope that the bureau may soon be able to end this unseemly limbo by either exculpating Dr. Hatfill or arresting him.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
ANTHRAX = $$$
21 May 2002, George Monbiot, The Guardian
"... while we should be asking what George Bush and his cabinet knew and failed to respond to before September 11, we should also be exploring another, related, question: what do they know now and yet still refuse to act upon? Another way of asking the question is this: whatever happened to the anthrax investigation?"
"Why Has The FBI Investigation Into The Anthrax Attacks Stalled?"
ANTHRAX = $ $ $
FDA Talk Paper
Cipro (Bayer)
FDA Press Release
BioPort
Hollister-Stier (formerly Bayer)
Montana Associated Technology Roundtables
HHS Press Release
Avecia
VaxGen
Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy
Battelle Chemical and Biological Defense
Battelle Defense Systems
HGS Press Release
25 February 2002 Daily Briefing
4 October 2002 Daily Briefing
16 October 2002 Daily Briefing
Anthrax: "The Threat is Real" (AVIP, DoD)
Dept. of Homeland Security
BioDefense and Homeland Security Funding and Resource Guide
DynPort Vaccine Co.
CSC/DynCorp
SEE ALSO:
Laura Rozen: Who is Steven Hatfill?
Laura Rozen: Fort Detrick's Anthrax Mystery
New military mortuary is state-of-the-art
Beth Miller, 3 March 2003, The NewsJournal
Construction should be completed by June at Dover Air Force Base's new $20 million mortuary, and Army Corps of Engineers officials led a tour through the facility Friday to reveal some of the enhancements it will provide for the military's largest such operation. As they steered guests through what will be hospital-quality radiology units, autopsy and embalming facilities, workers at the old Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs nearby were preparing to receive more remains from the war in Iraq. Dover is designated to receive all casualties from the war.
Officials said the new building - and the $10 million of new equipment it will contain - will streamline the mortuary staff's ability to prepare remains for return to families and loved ones. It is expected to be fully operational by October. When complete, the facility will cover 70,000 square feet and will be about twice the size of the current mortuary, said Joe Zurzolo, project engineer for the Army Corps.
Among the design features are a new screening area for remains that are just arriving. Because many are coming straight from combat, the remains are scanned before processing begins to determine whether any unexploded ordnance was undetected. In the new facility, that scanning will take place in a 12-inch-thick, steel-reinforced concrete bunker with blast-proof doors and windows, giving workers maximum protection. "Because this is the only stateside mortuary for the military, an accident in this facility disrupts a lot of things," Zurzolo said.
The new mortuary will include state-of-the-art digital imaging equipment, enhanced ventilation to protect workers from vapors, an entry area equipped with briefing rooms, counseling rooms and places for escorts and military officials to relax as they wait for remains to arrive or depart. Storage capacity also is enhanced at the new facility, Zurzolo said. Refrigerated facilities will be available for storage of more than 100 remains. After the embalming process, 200 to 500 remains can be stored while awaiting transport to their hometowns or Arlington National Cemetery.
The Caterpillar D9
Steve Weizman in Jerusalem, 30 March 2003, The Associated Press
With U.S. forces in Iraq coming up against suicide attackers and wary of ambush by hostile forces mingling with civilians, the military has been listening closely to Israeli experts and picking up tips from years of Israeli army operations in Palestinian areas and Lebanese towns.
Martin Van Creveld, professor of military history and strategy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, briefed U.S. Marine Corps officers in September at Camp Lejeune, N.C. He said he was quizzed about the April 2002 battle in the Jenin refugee camp, where 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed in fierce firefights as troops hunted suspected militants. The refugee camp's narrow alleys at first prevented Israeli tanks from advancing against about 150 Palestinian gunmen. Instead, infantrymen backed by helicopter gunships slowly made their way forward, moving house to house by blowing holes through inner walls, limiting exposure to dangerous streets where militiamen had planted explosives and snipers waited on rooftops. At the time, Israel was widely accused of having used excessive force, but the army said it made every attempt to spare civilians - and that this was a factor in the high Israeli death toll.
Van Creveld said he told his hosts the most effective tools in Jenin were Apache helicopters and giant, armored D9 bulldozers that cut wide swaths through alleys to clear the way for tanks. The D9s are manufactured for civilian use in the United States but fitted with armor in Israel. The Americans have bought nine of the converted machines from Israel, Van Creveld said. A spokeswoman at Israel's Defense Ministry declined to comment.
The U.S. armed forces are also using Israeli-made Pioneer pilotless planes to scout Iraqi defenses. Van Creveld said he counseled against the use of helicopters in Baghdad, where they would be more at risk than against the lightly armed Palestinians in Jenin. A U.S. Apache was forced down by ground fire over central Iraq on Monday and its two-man crew taken prisoner.
Neither the Pentagon nor the Israeli army are publicly giving details of their cooperation. But Israeli security sources said the American military requested - and received - reports on the Israeli army's techniques in built-up Palestinian areas, including videotaped records of incursions. An Israeli security source said American officers visited a mock-up of an Arab town used for training in an Israeli army base and received a briefing on urban combat procedures. In January and February, Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev desert, focusing on air defenses. Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a counterterrorism seminar.
The Israeli press was quick to point out the similarities between Israel's Arab wars and the coalition campaign in Iraq. The Maariv daily on Wednesday paired strikingly similar shots from Iraq and the Palestinian areas: smoke of explosions hanging in the air over Baghdad and Gaza; Arab prisoners with their hands behind their heads in Basra and Nablus; weary troops dozing by roadsides in southern Iraq and Bethlehem.
The images are not lost on Palestinians.
Israel, The US And Targeted Killings
Chris Toensing and Ian Urbina, 17 February 2003, Middle East Report
... the Bush administration, besides winking at Sharon's conflation of the Palestinians with al-Qaeda, seems to be moving ever closer to Sharon's view of counter-terrorism as solely a security matter to be addressed with military force. In May 2002, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's hawkish undersecretary for policy, made a much-publicized trip to Tel Aviv to talk to Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer. The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported that the meeting covered "war games, intelligence sharing and other cooperation." Four weeks later, Israel's top two security chiefs, Brig. Gen. David Tzur and Uzi Landau, minister of interior security, went to Washington to propose the creation of a new US-Israeli office to combat terrorism. Tzur and Landau met Feith on June 27.
According to The Guardian, the joint office, to be located in Washington, would operate a communications link between the newly inaugurated Department of Homeland Security and the Israeli government for swapping visa policies, terrorist profiles and other internal security data. While countries like India and Pakistan regularly send representatives to bilateral "working committees on counter-terrorism" in Washington, no foreign country has a standing office within a department of the US government. In an interview with the Washington Times, Landau said that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) are "especially receptive" to his idea. (Feinstein's office confirmed her continued interest to Middle East Report.) Added the interior minister: "Israel is a laboratory for fighting terror."
Donald Rumsfeld And The Pentagon
Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker
... in the months before the war the Bush Administration courted Al Dawa by including it among the opposition groups that would control postwar Iraq. "Dawa is one group that could kill Saddam," a former American intelligence official told me. "They hate Saddam because he suppressed the Shiites. They exist to kill Saddam." He said that their apparent decision to stand with the Iraqi regime now was a "disaster" for us. "They're like hard-core Vietcong."
There were reports last week that Iraqi exiles, including fervent Shiites, were crossing into Iraq by car and bus from Jordan and Syria to get into the fight on the side of the Iraqi government. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. Middle East operative, told me in a telephone call from Jordan, "Everybody wants to fight. The whole nation of Iraq is fighting to defend Iraq. Not Saddam. They've been given the high sign, and we are courting disaster. If we take fifty or sixty casualties a day and they die by the thousands, they're still winning. It's a jihad, and it's a good thing to die. This is no longer a secular war." There were press reports of mujahideen arriving from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Algeria for "martyrdom operations."
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