Banks Notify Customers of Data Theft

Yahoo! News
Banks Notify Customers of Data Theft

By PAUL NOWELL, AP Business Writer

More than 100,000 customers of Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp. have been notified that their financial records may have been stolen by bank employees and sold to collection agencies.

In all, nearly 700,000 customers of four banks may be affected, according to police in Hackensack, N.J., where the investigation was centered.

So far, Bank of America has alerted about 60,000 customers whose names were included on computer disks discovered by police, bank spokeswoman Alex Liftman said Monday.

"We are trying to communicate with our customers as promptly as possible," she said. "So far, we have no evidence that any of our customer information has been used for account fraud or identity theft."

Wachovia said it has identified 48,000 current and former account holders whose accounts may have been breached.

"The numbers have increased as we continue to receive additional names from police," Wachovia spokeswoman Christy Phillips said Monday.

Both banks are providing the affected customers with free credit reporting services.

In a separate case with the potential for identity theft, a laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of 16,500 current and former MCI Inc. employees was stolen last month from the car of an MCI financial analyst in Colorado, said company spokeswoman Linda Laughlin.

The car was parked in the analyst's home garage and the computer was password-protected, she said. MCI would not comment on whether the data was encrypted.

The bank record theft was exposed April 28 when police in Hackensack charged nine people, including seven bank workers, in an alleged plot to steal financial records of thousands of bank customers.


The bank employees accessed records for customers of Cherry Hill, N.J.-based Commerce Bank, PNC Bank of Pittsburgh, and Charlotte-based banks Wachovia and Bank of America, according to Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa.

Repeated calls seeking comment were not returned by Commerce Bank officials, while PNC officials declined to estimate how many of their customers' accounts may have been breached.

"We have no evidence that any of these accounts have been compromised at all. We continue to work with law enforcement officials," said Pat McMahon, a spokesman for PNC.

New Jersey authorities found 12 names and Social Security numbers belonging to PNC customers but the bank found no suspicious activity in the accounts, he said.

Collection agent Orazio Lembo Jr., 35, of Hackensack made millions of dollars through the scheme, Zisa has said.

Authorities said they discovered the plot after they executed a search warrant at Lembo's apartment in February as part of a separate investigation. They seized 13 computers which contained details about the plan, Zisa said.

Lembo received lists of people sought for debt collection and turned that information over to the seven bank workers, who would compare those names to their client lists. The bank workers were paid $10 for each account they turned over to Lembo, Zisa said.

In New Jersey, continued scrutiny of computer discs seized from Lembo's offices was yielding more names. Investigators have now identified nearly 700,000 potential victims, Hackensack police Capt. Frank Lomia said Monday.

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Dozens Have Alleged Koran's Mishandling

latimes.com
Dozens Have Alleged Koran's Mishandling

Complaints by inmates in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba emerged early. In 2003, the Pentagon set a sensitivity policy after trouble at Guantanamo.

By Richard A. Serrano and John Daniszewski
Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials reacted with outrage to a Newsweek report that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, and the magazine retracted the story last week. But allegations of disrespectful treatment of Islam's holy book are far from rare.

An examination of hearing transcripts, court records and government documents, as well as interviews with former detainees, their lawyers, civil liberties groups and U.S. military personnel, reveals dozens of accusations involving the Koran, not only at Guantanamo, but also at American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Pentagon is conducting an internal investigation of reported abuses at the naval base in Cuba, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt. The administration has refused to say what the inquiry, still weeks from completion, has found so far.

But two years ago, amid allegations of desecration and hunger strikes by inmates, the Army instituted elaborate procedures for sensitive treatment of the Koran at the prison camp. Once the new procedures were in place, complaints there stopped, said the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors conditions in prisons and detention facilities.

The allegations, both at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, contain detailed descriptions of what Muslim prisoners said was mishandling of the Koran — sometimes in a deliberately provocative manner.

In one instance, an Iraqi detainee alleged that a soldier had a guard dog carry a copy of the Koran in its mouth. In another, guards at Guantanamo were said to have scrawled obscenities inside Korans.

Other prisoners said Korans were kicked across floors, stomped on and thrown against walls. One said a soldier urinated on his copy, and others said guards ridiculed the religious text, declaring that Allah's words would not save detainees.

Some of the alleged incidents appear to have been inadvertent or to have resulted from U.S. personnel's lack of understanding about how sensitive Muslim detainees might be to mishandling of the Koran. In several cases, for instance, copies were allegedly knocked about during scuffles with prisoners who refused to leave their cells.

In other cases, the allegations seemed to describe instances of deliberate disrespect.

"They tore it and threw it on the floor," former detainee Mohammed Mazouz said of guards at Guantanamo Bay. "They urinated on it. They walked on top of the Koran. They used the Koran like a carpet."

"We told them not to do it. We begged. And then they did it some more," said Mazouz, a Moroccan who was seized in Pakistan soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Recently released, he described the alleged incidents in a telephone interview from his home in Marrakech.

Ahmad Naji Abid Ali Dulaymi, who was held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for 10 months, singled out a soldier or noncommissioned officer known to detainees only as "Fox." He said prisoners were forced to sit naked, were licked by dogs, and were soaked in cold water and then forced to sit in front of a powerful air-conditioner.

"But frankly," he said, "the worst insult and humiliation they were doing to us, especially for the religious ones among us, is when they, especially Fox, tore up holy books of Koran and threw them away into the trash or into dirty water.

"Almost every day, Fox used to take a brand new Koran, and tear off the plastic cover in front of us and then throw it away into the trash container."


The hunger strikes erupted in 2002 at Guantanamo when word swept the camp that Korans were being desecrated. In response, the Defense Department's Southern Command, which oversees the prison, issued four pages of guidelines instructing soldiers in the proper way of "inspecting and handling" Korans.

In essence, the books are generally to be handled only by Muslim chaplains working for the military, and guards were instructed not to touch the Koran unless absolutely necessary.

Muslims revere the Koran as the word of God and have rules for handling it. It is always kept in a high place with nothing on top of it. A ritual ablution is required before touching a copy, which must be held above the waist. Some Muslims hold that nonbelievers must not touch the holy book.

At that time, the Red Cross was fielding similar complaints from prisoners, and with the January 2003 written policy the problems seemed to cease.

"The ICRC believes the U.S. authorities did take corrective measures," said Simon Schorno, a spokesman in Washington.

Other sensitivity training is continuing. At Ft. Lewis in Washington state, guards and other soldiers headed to Guantanamo Bay and other facilities go through classes and exercises to increase awareness of Arab and Muslim customs, said Lt. Col. Warren Perry. Much of the training deals specifically with the Koran.

"Don't step on it, don't bump it, don't disrespect it," he said.

When handling a Koran can't be avoided, Perry said, soldiers are taught "to wash hands or put on sterile gloves before you touch."

But several military officials suggested it was ridiculous to think guards and interrogators would bother to desecrate the Koran in an environment as dangerous as a military prison.

"There were scuffles, there were problems, the prisoners were not happy," recalled Army Lt. Col. Raymond A. Tetreault, a Catholic priest and chaplain at Guantanamo Bay during 2002.

He said prisoners sometimes physically resisted when being removed from cells and belongings such as the Koran would be inadvertently knocked around. Other times the books had to be opened and inspected by guards to make sure weapons or other contraband were not hidden inside, he said.

"The guards were trying to do their job, and the detainees were not happy being there," Tetreault said.

Acknowledging that detainees continue to raise allegations of Koran mistreatment, the chaplain said, "Well, it's human nature to embellish a little bit."

Some reports on alleged Koran desecration have suggested it was sometimes a tactic to get prisoners to talk, but four interrogators interviewed by The Times said they never saw intentional mishandling of the Koran, or even its use as a prop during an interrogation.

"We never took the Koran into an interrogation or used it in any way against them," said Paul Holton, a chief warrant officer with the Army National Guard in Utah who questioned high-level Iraqi military officers after the U.S.-led invasion.

"It was just understood that that was off-limits." It was also considered counterproductive, he said.

"We figured it was going to bring about additional anger and hatred toward us," Holton said. "With certain fanatical and religious types, you don't want to inflame them and give them further reason to dislike us, even in an interrogation. They just become more firm, more staunch and more resistant."

An interrogator who served at Guantanamo Bay said he received no formal sensitivity training, and that there were miscues that offended Muslims.

When Korans were delivered to the prison, he said, guards issuing the holy books "would put them on the floor and a lot of the devout Muslims went nuts right away."

Later, guards allowed detainees to cradle their Korans in surgical masks hung from the mesh walls of their cells. The soldiers called them "Koran hammocks."

The recent furor began after Newsweek magazine reported in its May 9 issue that Schmidt and his investigators "have confirmed" several infractions, including an incident where a Koran was flushed down a toilet.

The news item was blamed for a series of protests overseas. At least 14 people died in rioting in Afghanistan and protests were held in several other countries.

On May 15, Newsweek acknowledged that there were errors in the story, saying its source had backed away from an assertion that military investigators had concluded that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet. The next day the magazine retracted the story. "Based on what we know now," said Editor Mark Whitaker, "we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay."

Newsweek also apologized and expressed regret about the violence. But the anger in the Muslim world — and in the White House — has not dissipated.

On Friday, about 500 British Muslims prayed and chanted anti-U.S. slogans like "Desecrate today, die tomorrow," in front of the U.S. Embassy in London.

Martin Mubanga, a Zambian who was detained at Guantanamo Bay, participated in the rally. In an interview with The Times, he said two guards made him kneel and held his wrists in locked positions while others searched his cell. His Koran was thrown to the floor; "I saw it in the corner of my eye," he said.

As the protests continued over the last two weeks, Bush administration officials sought not only to denounce Newsweek, but also to state that the Pentagon did not deem the allegations credible. At the Pentagon, chief spokesman Lawrence Di Rita repeatedly dismissed them as untruths.

"We anticipate, and have seen, in fact, all manner of statements made by detainees," he said, "many of whom as members of Al Qaeda were trained to allege abuse and torture and all manner of other things."

The allegations have come in many forums.

Five former prisoners have told The Times of Koran desecration. Jamal Harith, a British Muslim, said interrogators at Guantanamo often kicked or knocked his Koran around. He said guards once deliberately targeted his holy book while hosing down his cell.

"Everybody was upset, but when you are in Cuba you learn to accept," Harith said after his return to Britain. "You accept it as the norm when you are in there."

Other accounts from former detainees have been posted on the Internet. Tarek Dergoul, another British Muslim who was held at Guantanamo Bay, recalled soldiers insulting Islam.

"They used to read the English translation of the Koran with their feet up, mocking, for example saying, 'There are more questions in it than answers,' " he said.

Other times, Dergoul said, they "ripped up" Korans. When some soldiers were rotating out of Cuba they would write obscenities in the Korans.

And some allegations are contained in lawsuits, such as one filed against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by seven men held in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the plaintiffs is Arkan M. Ali, who was held by U.S. authorities in Iraq for nearly a year, part of that time at Abu Ghraib.

Ali listed 11 incidents of torture and abuse. He said he was twice beaten unconscious during interrogations. He said his arm was stabbed and sliced, his forearm shocked and burned. He said he was locked for several days in a wooden coffin-like box, sometimes naked except for a hood over his head.

But it is his 11th and final allegation that in today's clamor over the Koran that stands out. Ali said U.S. soldiers repeatedly desecrated the Koran in front of him and other prisoners, "including having a military dog pick up the Koran in its mouth."

Serrano reported from Washington and Daniszewski from London. Staff writers Nicole Gaouette, John Hendren, Mark Mazzetti and Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

originally published May 22, 2005

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Technology Problems Limit Effectiveness of US-VISIT Program to Screen Foreigners

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Border Security at a Crossroads
Technology Problems Limit Effectiveness of US-VISIT Program to Screen Foreigners

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers

Second of two articles

The race to tighten the nation's borders began just after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Authorities learned that hijackers had lived illegally in the country, renting apartments, taking flying lessons and moving around freely.

Congress demanded changes in border controls and tight deadlines for building a computer network that would screen foreign visitors as they seek to enter or leave the country by scanning their fingerprints and matching them against databases of suspected terrorists.

Pressing to meet that goal, the Homeland Security Department last year awarded one of the most ambitious technology contracts in the war on terror -- a 10-year deal estimated at up to $10 billion -- to the global consulting firm Accenture. In return, the company and its subcontractors promised to create a "virtual border" that would electronically screen millions of foreign travelers.

Documents and interviews with people familiar with the program, called US-VISIT, show that government officials are betting on speculative technology while neglecting basic procedures to ensure that taxpayers get full value from government contractors.

"There's no question we could end up spending billions of dollars and end up with nothing," said Steven A. Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that has been monitoring efforts to improve border controls. "It creates an illusion of security that doesn't exist."

Although the government has already spent or budgeted about $1 billion for the US-VISIT program, the new system is being built on top of aging computer databases and software that government scientists concluded two years ago are out of date, poorly coordinated and ineffective. Among them is a fingerprint system that does not use the government's state-of-the-art biometric standard. As a consequence, millions of dollars are budgeted this year for upgrades, according to budget documents.

The technology problems diminish the current effectiveness of US-VISIT, according to audits and government documents. Today, only a small fraction of foreign visitors -- fewer than 1 percent -- is fully screened by the existing system.

US-VISIT director James L. Williams defended the program's strategy, saying officials plan to phase in new technology over the next decade while taking steps in the next several years to maintain security with current technology. He said people should understand that US-VISIT is in its infancy.

"We're not even close to having a full biometric entry-exit system," he said. "It's an archaic system of technology."

Williams said he is relying heavily on Accenture because the government cannot undertake the complex technological assignment without the expertise of private industry. He said he is proud that the losing bidders have not challenged the award to Accenture and its subcontractors, known as the Smart Border Alliance.

"Accenture was clearly the best value," Williams said.

Accenture was in a strong position even before the bidding began, according to documents and interviews. Its contracting team played a role in shaping the competition. "Limit the number of bidders, and streamline the procurement approach," Accenture officials recommended to Williams in August 2003, three months before the government began requesting bids, according to documents and interviews.

The US-VISIT contract with Accenture and its subcontractors exemplifies a fundamental shift in the arcane world of government contracting, said Steven L. Schooner, a procurement specialist at George Washington University. Increasingly, government is entering into "partnerships" with private companies.

Such partnerships can blur the lines between the government and corporations, Schooner and other contract specialists said.

In this case, the contractor and the government are working together without a clear idea of how the final virtual-border system will work or when it will be completed over the next decade. Such an arrangement is known as an "indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract." The government can cancel the project at any point. The contractor is paid for specific tasks along the way, even if the overall system ultimately does not work.

For all those reasons, no one is certain of the final cost.


"Who knows what it will end up being, because the system hasn't been defined yet," said Accenture spokeswoman Roxanne Taylor, adding that the government has the final say. "Isn't that the system of checks and balances?"
Tightening the Borders

The US-VISIT program office, officially known as the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, started in July 2003. The network it is trying to build is being sold to the public by homeland security officials as the ultimate solution to the nation's chronic border problems.

The US-VISIT system must eventually cover nearly 7,000 miles of borders along Mexico and Canada, including more than 300 land, air and sea ports where travelers make more than 450 million crossings a year.

Copies of an Accenture presentation to US-VISIT officials obtained by The Washington Post describe a futuristic surveillance and intelligence network. The system they envision could rely on databases, digital cameras, face- and voice-recognition systems and electronic-fingerprint readers, all linked by computer. Homeland security officials promised that US-VISIT would communicate quickly and easily with other computer systems.

Eventually all foreign visitors will be required to electronically register their fingerprints and photographs at U.S. embassies and consulates, along with other personal details. That information will then be matched against terrorist, criminal and intelligence files to determine whether the travelers pose threats.

Prospective visitors who flunk the screening process will be denied visas. Those who pass will be allowed into the country and then checked when they leave to make sure they did not overstay their visit. US-VISIT must accomplish its mission without impeding commerce or tourism, according its mission statement.

For now, US-VISIT is relying on several aging and ineffective computer systems that were designed in the 1990s by contractors for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was merged in 2003 into the new Homeland Security Department.

Not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, to assess the state of INS's technology programs. Fine told Congress he questioned close to $3 billion worth of projects, saying that his review "revealed significant problems that leave gaps in the INS's attempts to secure the nation's borders." At about the same time, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress, came to a similar conclusion about the INS technology.

Today, some of the same officials who were in charge of that flawed technology are in key positions at the US-VISIT program.

One of the programs targeted for criticism was a computer network known as IDENT, which requires travelers to submit prints of both index fingers at U.S. consulates and embassies overseas. IDENT then collects two index fingerprints from those visitors at the U.S. border and matches them against a database to determine whether they are allowed into the country.

Fine's auditors concluded that the system was flawed because it did not effectively link to such fingerprint databases as FBI files or government terrorist watch lists that rely on state-of-the-art, 10-fingerprint systems.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, under congressional mandate to develop biometric standards for screening foreign visitors, recommended the government use 10 fingerprints. Using all 10 prints provides better matching capabilities and interoperability with other databases, the scientists said in their 2003 report.

US-VISIT officials did not heed the scientists' advice. Officials later told Congress they relied on the old fingerprint technology as a stopgap while they overhauled the entire border-security system. They promised to upgrade the two-fingerprint IDENT system.

Last fall, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said authorities had made improvements to the IDENT system so it could communicate more effectively with the FBI's database.

IDENT has fingerprints on 15,000 suspected terrorists and their alleged associates and about 1 million known criminals or deportees overall; the FBI keeps fingerprint records on 47 million people.

"Before, we had a flashlight, and we were only able to see into small areas with IDENT," Bonner said at a press conference on Oct. 7, 2004. By integrating with the FBI system, Bonner said, "we've turned on the overhead, and we can see it all."

But the government's own studies show IDENT is not fully integrated with the FBI system. One study by the Justice Department's inspector general's office, released three months after Bonner's remarks, concluded that progress toward making IDENT fully interoperable with other systems, including the FBI's, has "stalled."

The technology's limits and the government's desire to avoid long delays curbs the number of people who can be thoroughly screened. This year, homeland security officials expect to check about 800 people out of the roughly 118,000 visitors a day who should be screened against the FBI database, the Justice Department's inspector general said.

"The lack of immediate access to the FBI's full criminal master file creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected," the inspector general found.

Last fall, Stanford University researcher Lawrence M. Wein testified before Congress that US-VISIT, using IDENT, had no more than a 53 percent chance of catching a terrorist who had altered his or her fingerprints, even if that person was on a terrorist watch list. Wein said authorities should not assume the current two-fingerprint system is sufficient to stop terrorists. "It would be naive to think that these people are not trying to defeat the system," he said.

Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), who has repeatedly questioned IDENT's effectiveness, said homeland security officials should have listened to their experts rather than trying to upgrade the old fingerprint technology. Dicks said homeland security officials opted to use the flawed technology already in place to demonstrate they were making progress.

"They wanted to show they were getting something done," Dicks said. "The problem is, they made a mistake."

US-VISIT also incorporates another technology with interoperability problems: border-crossing cards that have been issued for years to Mexicans who want to visit and work in the United States. The cards are designed to encode the visitors' personal data electronically, but they do not work well with the IDENT system because the two technologies were not designed to interact, US-VISIT officials said.

The cards are manufactured at a six-year-old government plant run by a company called Datatrac Information Services Inc. in the congressional district of Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee.

In the late 1990s, Rogers had urged government officials to build the card-manufacturing facility in his district, one of the poorest in the nation, according to a congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Then, in June 2003, Rogers added language to an appropriations bill emphasizing that new card technology should not be adopted in a TSA pilot program as long as the existing technology is "good enough."

The next month, Datatrac received a 10-year contract extension worth up to $200 million, according to a company press release.

"The cards produced at facilities like the one in Corbin, Ky., are on the cutting edge of technology," Rogers was quoted as saying in the release. "I am pleased the Department has chosen to continue the use of these proven products."

A congressional aide said Rogers did not weigh in on Datatrac's behalf over the contract extension but considered it a "victory" because of the jobs it protected in the district Rogers represents.

The decision to stick with the cards comes with costs. This year, US-VISIT officials requested another $51 million for new technology, including equipment needed to study whether the cards can eventually work well with IDENT, Williams said.

Datatrac's border-crossing cards are often not used as intended, the homeland security department's inspector general reported this year. Border agents are supposed to run the cards through machines that can verify the visitors' identity. Instead, the agents often only eyeball the cards. The machines usually are installed away from the crossing points and used only with visitors who are pulled aside for additional screening.

Datatrac declined to discuss details of its contract.

Rogers declined to be interviewed for this article. He said in a prepared statement: "While the long-term future of the cards is unknown, they currently provide a vital security service along our borders."
'Industry Day'

Datatrac was one of dozens of companies seeking homeland security work on the borders. In 2003, it was part of the Accenture team seeking the contract to create the US-VISIT system.

Homeland security officials running that competition declared their intentions to rely heavily on the private sector. Speaking at a US-VISIT "Industry Day" in July 2003, they called on scores of corporate representatives gathered in suburban Virginia to form teams to address the government's ambitious goals.

US-VISIT officials told the companies they would welcome "direct and candid" comments in the coming months before the formal requests for bids were scheduled to be issued, according to documents that US-VISIT distributed at the session. Those comments could include recommendations for constructing the bid request itself, the document said. The winner would be a government "partner," and together the government and contractor would have shared accountability.

Within weeks, three bidding teams emerged: Computer Sciences Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Accenture. Each had more than a dozen potential subcontractors. The US-VISIT team maintained contact with all three teams over the next few months. But it was Accenture that captured the attention of US-VISIT program director Williams, according to documents and interviews with people involved in the process.

Accenture had once been associated with the now-defunct Arthur Andersen LLP accounting firm. The company, then operating as Andersen Consulting, blossomed during the high-tech boom of the late 1990s, in part by offering governments and businesses solutions to their technology problems.

In 2001, the company renamed itself Accenture. It employed 75,000 people in 47 countries and had revenue of more than $11 billion. Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, the company called itself a "global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company."

Before long, it was also fashioning itself into a homeland security specialist. In its first three years under its new name, Accenture rose to 24th from 59th in the rankings of the government's prime information technology contractors, its contracts surging to $427 million from $81 million, according to Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., a private company that sells data on federal contracts.

In August 2003, at the same time Accenture executives were offering advice to Williams, they were lobbying Rogers, the chairman of the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, documents and interviews show. That committee has a strong say over funding for US-VISIT and other homeland security programs.

Accenture, with help from its subcontractor, Datatrac, secured a meeting with Rogers's chief of staff, according to officials at Rogers's office and Accenture. The Accenture officials downplayed the importance and timing of the meeting, saying in an e-mail "that all the bidders were actively lobbying members of Congress on US-VISIT, so our actions were not unique."

Accenture also raised its profile by hiring former government officials who had personal or professional ties to US-VISIT managers. One of the people Accenture hired as a lobbyist and consultant was Steve Kelman. As chief of procurement policy for the Clinton administration, he helped create rules that eased the outsourcing of government work to private companies. Kelman had worked closely on that project with Williams, who was then at the Internal Revenue Service.

In his role as a consultant, Kelman helped Accenture draft a document urging Williams's US-VISIT team to give contractors great latitude in designing the system and to limit the number of bid competitors to "2 or 3" as a way to speed the process of choosing a victor. Kelman said his advice focused on linking the winning bidder's pay to its performance.

Williams, who was one of several officials responsible for awarding the contract, recently said he was unaware of Kelman's role. Kelman said in an interview: "I would have thought [Williams] would have known" about Kelman's involvement.

The lines between the government and Accenture continued to blur. On Nov. 28, 2003, the US-VISIT program requested bids from the three teams. Two months later -- and four months before the contract was awarded -- Accenture's team moved into the 13th-floor of a Rosslyn office building, just below the floors occupied by US-VISIT officials.

"The space came available, and someone on the team saw it and realized this would be convenient space if we eventually won the project," said Taylor, the Accenture spokeswoman.

In February 2004, Accenture's team put on a demonstration for Williams in the suburban Virginia parking lot of another Accenture subcontractor. Accenture set up a make-believe checkpoint to simulate a border-crossing post. Williams was told to drive through to test Accenture's technical savvy. He accelerated to 40 miles per hour and passed through electronic sensors.

As Williams drove past the sensors, playing the role of foreign visitor, the system scanned a chip embedded in a mock passport. Moments later, an electronic sign proclaimed that "James Williams" was the man behind the wheel of the car. The show was a rousing success, Williams said.

But Accenture said that the demonstration had little to do with what will eventually be built.

Peter Soh, another Accenture spokesman, said in an e-mail that the "simulation Accenture staged was for demonstration purposes only. It was not a recommended solution or a technology offering, and in no way did it represent what the final US-VISIT solution will look like."

Accenture's team won the contract in May 2004. Company officials said the division working on US-VISIT is Accenture LLP, based in Northern Virginia.

Williams said Accenture officials are playing an important role in shaping the vision for US-VISIT by helping him and his team understand how to buy and organize such a complex system. He said such a role is increasingly common in federal contracting. Of the three bidders, he said, Accenture was consistently the most helpful and convincing.

"Accenture listened well to the approach the government wanted to take and said: 'You're taking the right approach,' " Williams said.
Oversight From Afar

In each of the past three years, numerous questions have been raised about US-VISIT's management, oversight and costs.

In 2003, GAO auditors reported that the costs could rise far above the official $7.2 billion estimate -- likely "in the tens of billions." The report concluded that US-VISIT was a financially "very risky endeavor" because there were not enough government officials to properly manage the program.

In 2004, another GAO analysis said the government's US-VISIT team had not moved quickly enough on its earlier findings, chiding the government for failing to correct "fundamental limitations in the program office's ability to manage US-VISIT." That was in part because the US-VISIT office had only about half the 115 employees that officials said were needed to run the project.

In February, another audit reported that the current US-VISIT system has trouble tracking "the entry and exit of persons entering the United States at air, land, and sea ports of entry." The report said the homeland security department "has not employed rigorous, disciplined processes typically associated with successful programs."

Last week, homeland security officials said the fledgling system has blocked the admission of nearly 600 people and led to the arrest of 39.

"US-VISIT works," Williams said. "The results have shown that it works. We are working hard to meet the congressional and presidential mandates to complete the system."

The US-VISIT program now has 100 government employees.The program has turned to contractors for administrative and clerical support -- 94 people from Mitre Corp. and PEC Solutions Inc.

Today, an official responsible for oversight of the US-VISIT contract works out of an office in her home in Bradenton, Fla.

Dana Schmitt is the director of the Office of Acquisition and Program Management for US-VISIT -- which is responsible for "support, oversight, and control" of Accenture and its subcontractors. Schmitt, a former immigration service official who earns $114,344 a year, said she visits the US-VISIT offices in Rosslyn once every six weeks or so.

She and her supervisors said she can capably handle the job from about 950 miles away. But she said that her program management office has only nine of the 40 government employees she deemed necessary.

US-VISIT officials were interested in Schmitt because of her experience working with large technology projects at the immigration service. She agreed to work on US-VISIT, she said in an interview, as long as she could stay in Florida.

She said she has become good at working with contractors and her colleagues from afar, using conference calls and e-mails. She said she has no trouble monitoring the contract and overseeing the work of her colleagues.

"I can actually tell by tone of voice if people are getting agitated," she said. "It's basically an oversight function. . . . Being in Florida doesn't hamper it."

D. Kent Goodger, a veteran contracting officer for several federal agencies who now teaches procurement rules to government officials, said oversight managers need regular, face-to-face interaction to do their jobs.

"I don't see how she can have such a very important, visible role without having daily contact," he said.

Williams, the US-VISIT program director and Schmitt's boss, described her as immensely talented and an important asset to the project. He said he initially had doubts about allowing her to work from Florida.

"I absolutely had those worries," Williams said. "To me, it became kind of an experiment. So far, it is an experiment that's working very well."

originally published May 23, 2005

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Plan to Let F.B.I. Track Mail in Terrorism Inquiries

The New York Times

Plan to Let F.B.I. Track Mail in Terrorism Inquiries
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, May 20 - The F.B.I. would gain broad authority to track the mail of people in terror investigations under a Bush administration proposal, officials said Friday, but the Postal Service is already raising privacy concerns about the plan.

The proposal, to be considered next week in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would allow the bureau to direct postal inspectors to turn over the names, addresses and all other material appearing on the outside of letters sent to or from people connected to foreign intelligence investigations.

The plan would effectively eliminate the postal inspectors' discretion in deciding when so-called mail covers are needed and give sole authority to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if it determines that the material is "relevant to an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence," according to a draft of the bill.


The proposal would not allow the bureau to open mail or review its content. Such a move would require a search warrant, officials said.

The Intelligence Committee has not publicly released the proposal, but a draft was obtained by The New York Times.

The provision is part of a broader package that also strengthens the bureau's power to demand business records in intelligence investigations without approval by a judge or grand jury.

The proposals reflect efforts by the administration and Senate Republicans to bolster and, in some ways, broaden the power of the bureau to fight terrorism, even as critics are seeking to scale back its authority under the law known as the USA Patriot Act.

A debate over the government's terrorism powers is to begin in earnest at a session of the Intelligence Committee on Thursday, in what is shaping up as a heated battle over the balance between fighting terrorism and protecting civil rights in the post-Sept. 11 era.

The F.B.I. has conducted mail covers for decades in criminal and national security investigations. But the prospect of expanding its authority to monitor mailings alarmed some privacy and civil rights advocates and caused concerns among postal officials, as well. They said the proposal caught them off guard.

"This is a major step," the chief privacy officer for the Postal Service, Zoe Strickland, said. "From a privacy perspective, you want to make sure that the right balance is struck between protecting people's mail and aiding law enforcement, and this legislation could impact that balance negatively."

The new proposal "removes discretion from the Postal Inspection Service as to how the mail covers are implemented," Ms. Strickland said in an interview. "I worry quite a bit about the balance being struck here, and we're quite mystified as to how this got put in the legislation."

Officials on the Intelligence Committee said the legislation was intended to make the F.B.I. the sole arbiter of when a mail cover should be conducted, after complaints that undue interference from postal inspectors had slowed operations.

"The F.B.I. would be able to control its own investigations of terrorists and spies, and the postal service would have to comply with those requests," said an aide to the Intelligence Committee who is involved in the proposal but insisted on anonymity because the proposal remains confidential.

"The postmaster general shouldn't be able to substitute his judgment for that of the director of the F.B.I. on national security matters," the aide said.

The proposal would generally prevent the post office from disclosing a mail cover. It would also require the Justice Department to report to Congress twice a year on the number of times the power had been used.

Civil rights advocates said they thought that the proposal went too far.

"Prison wardens may be able to monitor their prisoners' mail," said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, "but ordinary Americans shouldn't be treated as prisoners in their own country."

Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest group here, said the proposal "certainly opens the door to abuse in our view."

"The Postal Service would be losing its ability to act as a check on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers," Ms. Hofmann said.

Postal officials refused to provide a tally of mail covers, saying the information was confidential. They said the Postal Service had not formally rejected any requests from the bureau in recent years.

A tally in 2000 said the Postal Service conducted 14,000 mail covers that year for a variety of law enforcement agencies, a sharp increase over the previous year.

The program has led to sporadic reports of abuse. In the mid-1970's the Church Committee, a Senate panel that documented C.I.A. abuses, faulted a program created in the 1950's in New York that used mail covers to trace and sometimes open mail going to the Soviet Union from the United States.

A suit brought in 1973 by a high school student in New Jersey, whose letter to the Socialist Workers Party was traced by the F.B.I. as part of an investigation into the group, led to a rebuke from a federal judge, who found that the national security grounds for such mail covers were unconstitutionally vague.

originally published May 21, 2005

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US Faces Pressure Over Abductions

arabnews.com

US Faces Pressure Over Abductions
Reuters —

BERLIN, 21 May 2005 — Pressure is growing on the United States to respond to allegations that its agents were involved in spiriting terrorist suspects out of three European countries and sending them to nations where they may have been tortured.

In Italy, a judge said this week that foreign intelligence officials “kidnapped” an Egyptian suspect in Milan two years ago and took him to a US base from where he was flown home.

In Germany, a Munich prosecutor is preparing a batch of questions to US authorities on the case of a Lebanese-born German who says he was arrested in Macedonia on New Year’s Eve 2003 and flown by US agents to a jail in Afghanistan.

And in Sweden, a parliamentary ombudsman has criticized the security services over the expulsion of two Egyptian terrorism suspects who were handed over to US agents and flown home aboard a US government-leased plane in 2001.

Campaign group Human Rights Watch said there was credible evidence the pair had been tortured while being held incommunicado for five weeks after their return. One was later convicted in a “patently unfair” trial.

“We know it’s not right to send people back to torture. That’s criminal. That’s the one factor that ties all these cases together right now,” Julia Hall of Human Rights Watch said in a telephone interview.

Secret transfers of suspects to foreign states for interrogation are an acknowledged tool of the United States in the war on terrorism, but it denies charges that the practice — known as rendition — amounts to outsourcing torture.


The latest twist came in the case of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who disappeared from a Milan street in February 2003.

Italian judge Guido Salvini said in a court document, obtained by Reuters: “It is now possible to affirm with certainty that he was kidnapped by people belonging to foreign intelligence networks interested in interrogating him and neutralizing him, to then hand him over to Egyptian authorities.”

Although he did not identify the foreign agents responsible, Salvini said Nasr had been “taken to an American base, interrogated and beaten and taken the next day on board a US military plane” to Egypt.

It was not until a year later, Salvini said, that Nasr was heard from again in phone calls, including one to his wife. Italian media have reported he told her he was tortured in Egypt and partially lost his hearing.

Salvini is investigating suspects linked to Nasr and is not responsible for the probe into his disappearance. That case is being handled by the Milan prosecutor’s office, which said Salvini did not have access to all the documents and expressed surprise at his conclusions.

But his comments were the hardest yet by judicial authorities in Europe on the alleged renditions.

In Germany, Munich prosecutor Martin Hofmann said he was finalizing an official request to the United States for information on the case of Khaled el-Masri.

The German citizen says he was arrested in Macedonia on Dec. 31, 2003 and flown by US agents to an Afghan jail. Only five months after being seized was he flown back to Europe and dumped without explanation in Albania, from where he made his way home.

NBC News reported last month that Masri was snatched because he shared the same name as an Al-Qaeda suspect. It said even when investigators realized the error, he was held another six weeks in an Afghan jail dubbed the Salt Pit before being freed.

“I’m investigating kidnapping, physical injury, duress and deprivation of freedom,” said Hofmann, who is also seeking information from Macedonia and Albania.

But investigators face formidable obstacles to prove what happened and hold anyone to account. Hofmann said he could not bring any charges unless he could identify those individuals involved in Masri’s alleged abduction.

originally published 21, May, 2005

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Hussein photos reinforce view of U.S. for Arab press

USA TODAY

Hussein photos reinforce view of U.S. for Arab press
By Dan Murphy, The Christian Science Monitor

CAIRO — It was a damaging week for American public relations in the Arab world.

What started with deadly riots over allegations that U.S. interrogators flushed the Koran ended with leaked photos of Saddam Hussein in his underwear.

To The New York Post, which first published the pictures on Friday along with its sister publication The Sun of Britain, the photographs were a chance to emphasis Mr. Hussein's crimes and indulge in public humiliation of the former strongman. The Sun and The Post say a U.S. military source gave them the pictures.

But for the most of the Arab press the pictures are being treated as a small piece in an overall pattern of alleged American violations of prisoners' rights. And as confirmation, to many, of U.S. contempt for Arabs and Islam.

Al-Hayat, one of two major pan-Arab dailies, followed the story on the front page Saturday, with the headline "Pictures of Saddam in His Cell Violate the Geneva Conventions." The paper, like many in the region, didn't show the photos of Hussein.

Al Jazeera, the dominant regional satellite news channel, which is frequently attacked by U.S. politicians for alleged bias, has reported briefly on the pictures, but didn't show them. "The picture in itself isn't newsworthy, and we felt that it was denigrating in general," says Jihad Ballout, Al Jazeera's spokesman in Qatar.

Mr. Ballout says the decision is consistent with Al Jazeera's general policies, though it has shown pictures of U.S. servicemen and other hostages in insurgent custody in Iraq.

How one organization sees the importance of the photos, however, seems to follow how they felt about the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. Al Jazeera has been opposed to the war, and tends to paint Iraq's insurgency as nationalist resistance to occupation.

The Sun and The Post, both owned by Rupbert Murdoch, supported the war and tend to paint the insurgency there as Baathist terrorists. The Sun quotes the unnamed source of the pictures as saying: "It's important that the people of Iraq see him like that to destroy the myth. Maybe that will kill a bit of the passion in the fanatics who still follow him."


President Bush doubted that the pictures would have much impact on Iraq's insurgency. "I don't think a photo inspires murderers. I think they're inspired by an ideology that's so barbaric and backwards that it's hard for many in the Western world to comprehend how they think."

The minor flap over the release over the pictures, which presidential spokesman Trent Duffy said are a "clear violation of [Department of Defense] directives and possibly Geneva Convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals," has been overshadowed in the Arab media by more serious allegations.

Over the weekend, The New York Times reported the results of a U.S. military investigation into a pattern of torture and abuse of prisoners, which led to the deaths of at least two detainees, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Pakistani and Middle Eastern newspapers have continued to run stories from former prisoners at the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention camp alleging torture and desecration of the Koran.

A Newsweek story two weeks ago, since retracted, told of U.S. interrogators flushing the Koran down toilets to break the will of prisoners. Retraction or not, it's become an article of faith in the Arab world.

The pictures from Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad prison where U.S. soldiers abused Iraqi are still frequently shown on Arab TV. Most in the region have been disappointed with the Abu Ghraib investigation and sentences so far. Army Specialist Charles Graner, the accused ringleader of the abuse, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in January. Sabrina Harman, the only other soldier yet convicted, received a six-month sentence last week.

"The event that had the biggest impact for me was when I saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib in the newspapers," says Samir Naguib, manager of a Cairo mobile phone company. "What do I think of when I hear 'America' now? The global bully."

Mr. Naguib, who has vacationed in America and once entertained offers to work there, is among the millions of past admirers of America. A report earlier this month from the Council on Foreign Relations summarizing a series of focus groups in Morocco, Egypt, and Indonesia found that America's efforts to win hearts and minds aren't working.

"The growth of hostility to America in Muslim countries increases recruitment, and support for extremism and terror," the authors write. "This hostility is a change for focus group members: Most recall that their earlier attitudes towards the U.S. were quite favorable."

Mr. Naguib says the pictures of Hussein aren't nearly as interesting to him as news on Iraqi war casualties, claims of U.S. abuses of detainees, and the Abu Ghraib scandal.

"Saddam ... deserves what he gets, but the pictures show that if a person is behind U.S.-controlled bars then anything can happen to him. It's clear now that America isn't very different from the Arab states in this," he says. "The Abu Ghraib trials were only at the level of the soldiers, not raised to the levels of the generals that permitted this to happen."

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Supreme Court Taking Up Abortion Notification

readingeagle.com
Court to hear N.H. appeal seeking to reinstate law requiring parental notification for abortions

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday it would take up a new abortion case this fall, raising the political stakes just as the court faces the possibility of replacing ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

The justices, in agreeing to review a parental notification law from New Hampshire, showed surprising zeal to take on a divisive subject - especially considering the uncertainty of the court's future and the partisan fighting in the Senate over President Bush's nominees for federal judgeships.

The last major Supreme Court abortion case splintered the justices 5-4. A similar split could occur again, with or without Rehnquist, with additional drama outside the court.

"It is a bold step to take the case, bold in a political sense," said Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University. "It may well be the court's way of reminding the president there's a lot at stake in a Supreme Court vacancy."

Rehnquist, 80, has thyroid cancer and was seen being wheeled Monday into the Capitol, apparently for medical treatment. A Rehnquist retirement would give Bush his first vacancy on the Supreme Court, and abortion would be the flashpoint in the debate over a replacement.


"Boy it does make for an interesting summer - potential chief justice retirement, the filibuster fight and the Supreme Court delving into the abortion issue once again," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice. "This is the first order of business for a new justice. It wouldn't just be hypothetically talking about Roe v. Wade."

Jennifer Dalven, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer handling the new case, said: "We are welcoming the opportunity to put to rest any lingering questions about whether a woman's right to an abortion is entitled to full constitutional protection."

The timing, she said, "is a reminder to the American public about how important this issue is."

Rehnquist has opposed abortion rights but has not been able to persuade his colleagues to roll back the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, made when Rehnquist had been on the court just a year.

The case that will be argued near the end of 2005 does not deal with the legality of abortion, but a victory for New Hampshire on parental notification could give states more flexibility to make it harder for women to get abortions. The court is clarifying the legal standard that is applied when courts review the constitutionality of abortion laws.

In its last major abortion decision in 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that state abortion laws must provide an exception to protect the mother's health. Justices at the time reasoned that a Nebraska law, which banned so-called "partial-birth" abortions, placed an "undue burden" on women's abortion rights.

In this case, the justices will decide whether health exceptions are required in abortion laws requiring parental notification. A lower court struck down New Hampshire's law.

Dalven said 34 states have notification laws, and most have health exceptions.

In their appeal, New Hampshire officials argued that the abortion law need not have an "explicit health exception" because other state provisions call for exceptions when the mother's health is at risk.

The New Hampshire law required that a parent or guardian be notified if an abortion was to be done on a woman under 18. The notification had to be made in person or by certified mail 48 hours before the pregnancy was terminated.

The Supreme Court has passed up other opportunities to consider abortion cases. Earlier this year, justices declined to hear a challenge to the Roe v. Wade ruling by the woman known as "Jane Roe" who was at the center of the historic case. They also declined to consider reinstating an Idaho law requiring girls under age 18 to get parental consent for abortions except under the most dire of medical emergencies.

The latest case is Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, 04-1144.

---

On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

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Riders get 'marooned' in subway

nydailynews.com
Riders get 'marooned' in subway

BY BILL EGBERT
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Jessica and Declan O'Neill were racing to the airport when they learned the hard way the downside to yesterday's subway token booth shutdowns.

After Jessica's MetroCard jammed at the 16th St. entrance to the Union Square station, the couple looked for help.

But the nearby token booth was one of eight that closed yesterday as part of a plan to free clerks to become roving customer service agents in maroon blazers. Eventually, 160 booths that are now staffed part of the day will close under the controversial Transit Authority plan.


"It says I have to wait 18 minutes to swipe again," the 34-year-old woman told her husband, who had breezed ahead of her through the turnstile. "What are we supposed to do?"

Finding no one to help, she squeezed with another rider through the uprights about 4 p.m. A reporter waited 30 minutes, but never saw the station's roving agent. A TA spokesman did not return calls yesterday.

The booth closure plan does have its fans.

Veteran subway booth clerk Derek Pimble happily dashed around the Delancey St. station yesterday, eagerly helping an elderly man having trouble swiping a MetroCard. "When I'm out here, I can help the customers better," said Pimble, a 15-year employee. "That's why I took this job."

But some of what can be done in a token booth can't be done in a maroon vest.

Manhattan banker Laura Lindsey, 32, needed to refill her MetroCard. Because she'd used an employer-subsidized TransitCheck, she couldn't use the vending machine. Pimble sent her across the street to the full-service booth. "If they're really trying to make things more convenient, I'd rather have somebody who can help me," said Lindsey as she shlepped across Delancey St. in the rain.

Union leaders warned again yesterday that the absence of token booth clerks will lead to increased crime. "The criminals will watch as the roving station agents move around the platform and take advantage of an opportunity to commit a crime," TWU Secretary-Treasurer Ed Watts said.

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Tillman's kin rap Army's 'outright lies'

nydailynews.com
Tillman's kin rap Army's 'outright lies'

BY BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The parents of slain NFL star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman are blasting military brass for the "outright lies" they told about their son's death.

"They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up," Patrick Tillman Sr. told The Washington Post about his son's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan last year.

"I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy."

Tillman, 27, turned down a multimillion-dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He was killed April 22, 2004, while hunting Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. The military initially claimed he was killed by the enemy, and even awarded him the Silver Star posthumously. Army brass waited weeks after they knew the real cause of Tillman's death to tell his family.


"The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him isabsolutely heartbreaking and tragic," his mother, Mary Tillman, said. "The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."

Patrick Tillman Sr. ripped military officials for conducting a "botched homicide investigation" and said high-ranking Army officers told him and his family "outright lies."

"Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," the father said. "Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny ... and no one has."

Mary Tillman said her son's death and the deception about it "keeps slapping me in the face."

"I think there's a lot more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their tails," she said.

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True Conservatives Oppose Nuclear Option

thinkprogress.org
True Conservatives Oppose Nuclear Option

On the eve of the Senate majority’s crass political ploy to overturn 217 years of tradition and rules that have maintained a balance of power, here’s a rundown of traditional conservatives/interest groups who are urging Bill Frist to employ some common sense:


Former Republican Sen. Bill Armstrong: “Nobody ever accused Bill Armstrong of being an ideological squish. Or a liberal. Maybe that’s why it’s so noteworthy that the former two-term United States Senator from Colorado – who was about as conservative as any Member during his 18 years in Congress – says that he is ‘deeply skeptical’ about the Republican effort to eliminate the filibuster during the process of confirming judges.” [Roll Call, 4/25/05]

Former Republican Sens. Jim McClure of Idaho and Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming: “At this point, no one knows how the ‘nuclear option’ drama will play out, but we would respectfully offer to senators, both Republican and Democratic, a bit of back-country wisdom: When you find a bear in your cabin, it’s not smart to try to burn him out.” [Op-Ed, WSJ, 3/15/05]

Former Republican Sen. Dave Durenberger: “Today’s rules allow a screening of judges by the Senate. Most presidential nominees are confirmed, but there are always a few instances where the nominee is unable to obtain the Senate’s approval. We think this process has been good for the judiciary and good for the country. This Senate rule has led to a stronger, less partisan, truly independent court.” [Durenberger and Mondale Op-Ed, Star Tribune, 5/5/05]

National Right to Work and Gun Owners of America: “Two groups normally allied with Republicans have bolted from the party’s effort to ban judicial filibusters – the first major defections from a conservative push to prevent Senate Democrats from blocking President Bush’s judicial nominees.” The National Right to Work Committee, “a 2.2 million-member group critical of unions,” and the Gun Owners of America, “with 300,000 members, say they fear eliminating judicial filibusters could eventually lead to doing away with filibusters altogether.” [AP, 4/13/05]

Corporate Lobbyists/Business Leaders: “Worried that their agenda will come to a screeching halt, business leaders are urging Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) not to exercise a bold parliamentary tactic known as the ‘nuclear option’ on judicial nominees. [The Hill, 4/5/05]

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All was peacful

All was peacful

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Square Peg. Round Hole.

Square Peg. Round Hole.

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Not to worry

Not to worry

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Blame it on Newsweek

Blame it on Newsweek

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Phil's Phaith Pharmacy

Phil's Phaith Pharmacy

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Stuff Happens

Stuff Happens

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Stuff Happens

Stuff Happens

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The New Patriot Act

The New Patriot Act

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Prewar Findings Worried Analysts

washingtonpost.com
Prewar Findings Worried Analysts

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 22, 2005; A26

On Jan. 24, 2003, four days before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address presenting the case for war against Iraq, the National Security Council staff put out a call for new intelligence to bolster claims that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or programs.

The person receiving the request, Robert Walpole, then the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, would later tell investigators that "the NSC believed the nuclear case was weak," according to a 500-page report released last year by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

It has been clear since the September report of the Iraq Survey Group -- a CIA-sponsored weapons search in Iraq -- that the United States would not find the weapons of mass destruction cited by Bush as the rationale for going to war against Iraq. But as the Walpole episode suggests, it appears that even before the war many senior intelligence officials in the government had doubts about the case being trumpeted in public by the president and his senior advisers.

The question of prewar intelligence has been thrust back into the public eye with the disclosure of a secret British memo showing that, eight months before the March 2003 start of the war, a senior British intelligence official reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that U.S. intelligence was being shaped to support a policy of invading Iraq.

Moreover, a close reading of the recent 600-page report by the president's commission on intelligence, and the previous report by the Senate panel, shows that as war approached, many U.S. intelligence analysts were internally questioning almost every major piece of prewar intelligence about Hussein's alleged weapons programs.


These included claims that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium in Africa for its nuclear program, had mobile labs for producing biological weapons, ran an active chemical weapons program and possessed unmanned aircraft that could deliver weapons of mass destruction. All these claims were made by Bush or then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in public addresses even though, the reports made clear, they had yet to be verified by U.S. intelligence agencies.

For instance, Bush said in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address that Hussein was working to obtain "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa, a conclusion the president attributed to British intelligence and made a key part of his assertion that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program.

More than a year later, the White House retracted the statement after its veracity was questioned. But the Senate report makes it clear that even in January 2003, just before the president's speech, analysts at the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center were still investigating the reliability of the uranium information.

Similarly, the president's intelligence commission, chaired by former appellate judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), disclosed that senior intelligence officials had serious questions about "Curveball," the code name for an Iraqi informant who provided the key information on Hussein's alleged mobile biological facilities.

The CIA clandestine service's European division chief had met in 2002 with a German intelligence officer whose service was handling Curveball. The German said his service "was not sure whether Curveball was actually telling the truth," according to the commission report. When it appeared that Curveball's material would be in Bush's State of the Union speech, the CIA Berlin station chief was asked to get the Germans to allow him to question Curveball directly.

On the day before the president's speech, the Berlin station chief warned about using Curveball's information on the mobile biological units in Bush's speech. The station chief warned that the German intelligence service considered Curveball "problematical" and said its officers had been unable to confirm his assertions. The station chief recommended that CIA headquarters give "serious consideration" before using that unverified information, according to the commission report.

The next day, Bush told the world: "We know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile weapons labs . . . designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors." He attributed that information to "three Iraqi defectors."

A week later, Powell said in an address to the United Nations that the information on mobile labs came from four defectors, and he described one as "an eyewitness . . . who supervised one of these facilities" and was at the site when an accident killed 12 technicians.

Within a year, doubts emerged about the truthfulness of all four, and the "eyewitness" turned out to be Curveball, the informant the CIA station chief had red-flagged as unreliable. Curveball was subsequently determined to be a fabricator who had been fired from the Iraqi facility years before the alleged accident, according to the commission and Senate reports.

As Bush speeches were being drafted in the prewar period, serious questions were also being raised within the intelligence community about purported threats from biologically armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

In an Oct. 7, 2002, speech, Bush mentioned a potential threat to the U.S. mainland being explored by Iraq through unmanned aircraft "that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons." The basis for that analysis was a single report that an Iraqi general in late 2000 or early 2001 indicated interest in buying autopilots and gyroscopes for Hussein's UAV program. The manufacturer automatically included topographic mapping software of the United States in the package.

When the list was submitted in early 2002, the manufacturer's distributor determined that the U.S. mapping software would not be included in the autopilot package, and told the procurement agent in March 2002. By then, however, U.S. intelligence, which closely followed Iraqi procurement of such material, had already concluded as early as the summer of 2001 that this was the "first indication that the UAVs might be used to target the U.S."

When a foreign intelligence service questioned the procurement agent, he originally said he had never intended to purchase the U.S. mapping software, but he refused to submit to a thorough examination, according to the president's commission. "By fall 2002, the CIA was still uncertain whether the procurement agent was lying," the commission said. Nonetheless, a National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002 said the attempted procurement "strongly suggested" Iraq was interested in targeting UAVs on the United States. Senior members of Congress were told in September 2002 that this was the "smoking gun" in a special briefing by Vice President Cheney and then-CIA Director George J. Tenet.

By January 2003, however, it became publicly known that the director of Air Force intelligence dissented from the view that UAVs were to be used for biological or chemical delivery, saying instead they were for reconnaissance. In addition, according to the president's commission, the CIA "increasingly believed that the attempted purchase of the mapping software . . . may have been inadvertent."

In an intelligence estimate on threats to the U.S. homeland published in January 2003, Air Force, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army analysts agreed that the proposed purchase was "not necessarily indicative of an intent to target the U.S. homeland."

By late January 2003, the number of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf area was approaching 150,000, and the invasion of Iraq was all but guaranteed. Neither Bush nor Powell reflected in their speeches the many doubts that had surfaced at that time about Iraq's weapons programs.

Instead, Bush said, "With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region." He added: "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own."

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Pentagon Caught In Fib about Koran-gate?

Pentagon Caught In Fib about Koran-gate?
David Corn

Here's a posting I put up on the HuffingtonPost site. It may not be as juicy as Robert Evans' celebration of a menage a trois. But I do hope that this issue--the chief Pentagon spokesperson misleading the public about allegations concerning the desecration and mistreatement of the Koran at Gitmo--will get some attention:

The Bush administration really knows how to exploit a tragedy and deflect attention in order to duck responsibility. After Newsweek retracted its ten-sentence Koran-in-a-john item, Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, claimed that the Pentagon had never received any "credible allegations" about "the willful desecration of the Koran as a component of interrogations" at Guantanamo. At a press briefing on Tuesday, Di Rita said that after the Pentagon had checked logs and found "several instances...that suggested that detainees have, for whatever reason, torn pages from the Koran." But these log reports, he added, were not corroborated. He claimed that standard operating procedures at Guantanamo are very focused on the proper respect for the Koran, and in fact those standard operating procedures have been reviewed over time to make sure that they are as careful as they should be. We, I think, provided that to most of you all in the last day or two. But I think what you'll see there is a command philosophy that is clearly one of treating religious items, including the Koran, with a great deal of respect.

That being said, there have been instances, and we'll have more to say about it as we learn more, but where a Koran may have fallen to the floor in the course of searching a cell. And so they've reviewed the standard operating procedures to see if perhaps we could have been more careful in those cases/ But as I said, the philosophy as reflected in the standard operating procedures is one of great respect for the Koran and other religious articles, and for the detainees' practice of their faith, and that's what we're doing.

And he repeated his main point: "We have received no credible and specific allegations" of Koran desecration or Koran mistreatment conducted by US personnel at Gitmo.

How then does Di Rita explain the International Committee of the Red Cross' claim--which became news yesterday and today--that in 2002 and 2003 it told the Pentagon multiple times that prisoners in Guantanamo had said that US officials there showed disrespect for the Koran. Here's the lead of the Chicago Tribune's piece on this:


The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003, an ICRC spokesman said Wednesday.

And Reuters noted:

The International Red Cross told the Pentagon as early as 2002 detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison had reported U.S. officials mishandled the Koran, Red Cross and Pentagon officials said on Thursday.

The acknowledgment of the documentation of alleged abuse of the Koran came as Washington sought to defuse anger in the Muslim world after a U.S. news magazine reported the Muslim holy book was flushed down the toilet at the Guantanamo prison. The magazine later retracted the article.

The International Committee for the Red Cross told the Pentagon "multiple" times in 2002 and early 2003 that prisoners at Guantanamo said U.S. officials showed "disrespect" for the Muslim holy book, said Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman.

"The U.S. government took corrective measures and those allegations have not resurfaced," Schorno said.

The ICRC spokesman declined to specify if the allegations included the flushing of the Koran down the toilet or if U.S. officials used the disrespect as part of interrogations.

This sure indicates that, despite what Di Rita said on Tuesday, the Pentagon did receive credible allegations about the mistreatment of the Koran--credible enough to do something about the matter. Reuters further reported:

In January 2003, the U.S. military issued guidelines to personnel at the base outlining how to handle and inspect detainees' Korans.

The memorandum included the order: "Ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet or dirty/wet areas."

"The guidelines didn't come out of nowhere. You don't get such orders unless there's some problem, concern or controversy," a U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said.

This report does undermine Di Rita's assertions that there were no hints of any problems with the Koran in Gitmo except for a few log entries that raised the possibility the prisoners themselves had defaced their holy book. Will there be pressure on Di Rita to retract his remarks? To apologize? Has he undermined US credibility abroad? Has he been caught in a fib?

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U.N. condemns reported U.S. abuse in Afghanistan

Yahoo! News
U.N. condemns reported U.S. abuse in Afghanistan

By Robert Birsel
Sun May 22, 4:34 AM ET

A report of U.S. military abuse of detainees in Afghanistan is deeply disturbing and those involved should be punished, the United Nations said on Sunday.

The abuse, including details of the deaths of two inmates at an Afghan detention center, took place in 2002 and emerged from a nearly 2,000-page file of U.S. Army investigators, The New York Times said on Friday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaking before leaving on a U.S. trip, said on Saturday he was shocked and was demanding action against the culprits as well as custody of Afghan prisoners and supervision of U.S. military searches.

Jean Arnault, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general in Afghanistan, said the abuse reported in the New York Times was unacceptable and an affront to everything the international community stood for.

"The gravity of these abuses calls for the punishment of all those involved in such inexcusable crimes, as demanded by President Karzai," Arnault said in a statement.

Arnault said steps taken since 2002 to eradicate mistreatment and improve conditions should be made public. Complaints that continue to be made of arbitrary arrest and detention without charge should be fully addressed, he said.


The United States commands a foreign force in Afghanistan of about 18,300, most of them American, fighting Taliban insurgents and hunting militant leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

The United States is holding more than 500 prisoners from its war on terrorism at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba. Many of them were detained in Afghanistan after the Taliban overthrow in late 2001.

U.S. forces are also believed to be holding several hundred Afghans in Afghanistan.

"YOUNG, POORLY TRAINED SOLDIERS"

The New York Times said U.S. army report centers on the death of a 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died at the U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, in December 2002.

According to the report, Dilawar was chained by his wrists to the top of his cell for several days before he died and his legs had been pummeled by guards.

"The file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths," the newspaper said.

In sworn statements to army investigators, soldiers described mistreatment ranging from a female interrogator stepping on a detainee's neck and kicking another in the genitals to a shackled prisoner being made to kiss the boots of interrogators, according to the newspaper.

U.S. officials have characterized incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002 as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated, the newspaper said.

Two army interrogators have been reprimanded and seven soldiers have been charged, it said.

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Words to heed

"Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security,
unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm
programs, you would not hear of that party again in our
political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course,
that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt
(you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil
millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from
other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Who said it? Click below.


--Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter to his brother Edgar, Nov. 8, 1954

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It's All Newsweek's Fault

The New York Times
May 22, 2005
It's All Newsweek's Fault
By FRANK RICH

IN the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Fareed Zakaria wrote a 6,791-word cover story for Newsweek titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" Think how much effort he could have saved if he'd waited a few years. As we learned last week, the question of why they hate us can now be answered in just one word: Newsweek.

"Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care," said the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, as he eagerly made the magazine the scapegoat for lethal anti-American riots in Afghanistan. Indeed, Mr. McClellan was so fixated on destroying Newsweek - and on mouthing his own phony P.C. pieties about the Koran - that by omission he whitewashed the rioters themselves, Islamic extremists who routinely misuse that holy book as a pretext for murder.

That's how absurdly over-the-top the assault on Newsweek has been. The administration has been so successful at bullying the news media in order to cover up its own fictions and failings in Iraq that it now believes it can get away with pinning some 17 deaths on an errant single sentence in a 10-sentence Periscope item that few noticed until days after its publication. Coming just as the latest CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll finds that only 41 percent of Americans think the war in Iraq is "worth fighting" and only 42 percent think it's going well, this smells like desperation. In its war on the press, this hubristic administration may finally have crossed a bridge too far.

Let's stipulate flatly that Newsweek made a serious error. For the sake of argument, let's even posit that the many other similar accounts of Koran desecration (with and without toilets) by American interrogators over the past two years are fantasy - even though they've been given credence by the International Committee of the Red Cross and have turned up repeatedly in legal depositions by torture victims and in newspapers as various as The Denver Post and The Financial Times. Let's also ignore the May 1 New York Times report that a former American interrogator at Guantánamo has corroborated a detainee's account of guards tossing Korans into a pile and stepping on them, thereby prompting a hunger strike. Why don't we just go all the way and erase those photographs of female guards sexually humiliating Muslims (among other heinous crimes) at Abu Ghraib?

Even with all that evidence off the table, there is still an overwhelming record, much of it in government documents, that American interrogators have abused Muslim detainees with methods specifically chosen to hit their religious hot buttons. A Defense Department memo of October 2002 (published in full in Mark Danner's book "Torture and Truth") authorized such Muslim-baiting practices as depriving prisoners of "published religious items or materials" and forcing the removal of beards and clothing. A cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez called for interrogators to "exploit Arab fear of dogs." (Muslims view them as unclean.) Even a weak-kneed government investigation of prison abuses (and deaths) in Iraq and Afghanistan issued in March by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy authenticated two cases in which female interrogators "touched and spoke to detainees in a sexually suggestive manner in order to incur stress based on the detainees' religious beliefs."


About the Newsweek matter Donald Rumsfeld had a moral to bequeath the land. "People need to be careful what they say," he said, channeling Ari Fleischer, and added, "just as people need to be careful what they do." How true. If one of his right-hand men, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, hadn't been barnstorming American churches making internationally publicized pronouncements that his own Christian God is "a real god" and Islam's god is "an idol," maybe anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, at record highs even before the Newsweek incident, would have been a shade less lethal. If higher-ups had been called to account for the abuses of Abu Ghraib, maybe Newsweek might have had as little traction in the Arab world as The Onion.

Then again, even the administration's touchy-feely proactive outreach to Muslims in the Middle East is baloney: Karen Hughes, appointed with great fanfare by the president in March as our latest under secretary of state for public diplomacy (the third since 9/11), runs a shop with no Muslims at the top - or would, if she were there. As The Washington Post reported, she doesn't intend to assume her duties until the fall and the paperwork for her confirmation has yet to be sent to the Senate. Why rush? It's not as if there's a war on.

Given this context, the administration's attempt to pass the entire buck to Newsweek for our ill odor among Muslims, including those Muslims who abhor jihadists committing murder, is laughable. Yet there's something weirdly self-incriminating about the language it uses to do it. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman whose previous boss, Colin Powell, delivered a fictional recitation of Saddam Hussein's weapon capabilities before the United Nations Security Council, said it's "shocking" that Newsweek used "facts that have not been substantiated." Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, attacked Newsweek for hiding "behind anonymous sources," yet it was an anonymous source, an Iraqi defector known as Curveball, who fed the fictions that Mr. Powell spouted to gin up America for war. Psychological displacement of this magnitude might give even Freud pause.

The only thing more ridiculous is the spectacle of the White House's various knee-jerk flacks on cable news shoutfests and in the blogosphere characterizing Newsweek as representative of a supposedly anti-American, military-hating "mainstream media." It wasn't long ago that the magazine and the co-author of the Periscope item, Michael Isikoff, were being cheered by the same crowd for their pursuit of Monica Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey.

As for the supposed antimilitary agenda of the so-called mainstream media, the right should look first at itself. In its eagerness to parrot the administration line, it's as ready to sell out the military as any clichéd leftist. For starters, it thought nothing of dismissing the judgment of Gen. Carl Eichenberry, our top commander in Afghanistan, who, according to Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the riots were "not at all tied to the article in the magazine."

The right's rage at Newsweek is all too reminiscent of the contempt it heaped on Specialist Thomas Wilson, the soldier who dared to ask Mr. Rumsfeld at a town hall meeting in Kuwait in December about the shortage of armored vehicles. Mr. Wilson was guilty of "near-insubordination," said Rush Limbaugh; the embedded reporter who helped him frame his question was reviled by bloggers as a traitor. Yet Mr. Wilson's question was legitimate, and Mr. Rumsfeld's answer (that the shortage was only "a matter of production and capability") was a lie. As USA Today reported in March, the Pentagon has known for nearly two years that it didn't have enough armored Humvees but let the problem fester until that insubordinate questioner gave the defense secretary no choice but to act.

It's also because of incompetent Pentagon planning that other troops may now be victims of weapons looted from Saddam's munitions depots after the fall of Baghdad. Yet when The New York Times reported one such looting incident, in Al Qaqaa, before the election, the administration and many in the blogosphere reflexively branded the story fraudulent. But the story was true. It was later corroborated not only by United States Army reservists and national guardsmen who spoke to The Los Angeles Times but also by Iraq's own deputy minister of industry, who told The New York Times two months ago that Al Qaqaa was only one of many such weapon caches hijacked on America's undermanned post-invasion watch.

IT is terrible that Newsweek was wrong, though it's worth noting, as John Donvan of ABC News did, that the Defense Department's claim that its story was "demonstrably" false is also an overreach. Almost nothing that happens in the sealed prison at Guantánamo is as demonstrable as, say, Saddam's underwear. But if something good can come out of something bad, the administration's overkill of Newsweek may focus greater public attention on just how much it is using press-bashing to deflect attention from the fictions spun by its own propaganda machine.

Just since the election, we've witnessed the unmasking of Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon. We've learned - thanks to Newsweek's parent publication, The Washington Post - that the Pentagon went so far as to deliberately hide the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death from his own family for weeks, lest the truth mar the P.R. advantages to be reaped from his memorial service. Even as Scott McClellan instructs Newsweek on just what stories it should write to atone for its sins, a professional propagandist sits as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Kenneth Tomlinson, who also runs the board supervising Voice of America and other government-run media outlets. He's been hard at work meddling in the journalism on NPR and PBS.

This steady drip of subterfuge and news manipulation increasingly tells a more compelling story than the old news that Newsweek so egregiously botched.

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Inside the Kill Zone

The New York Times
May 22, 2005
Inside the Kill Zone

There is a park outside New Orleans with rows of old oak trees and the ruins of a colonial plantation. It is a pleasant place to take a stroll - and it would be an ideal staging ground for a terrorist attack on Chalmette Refining. An attack on the refinery, which has 600,000 pounds of hydrofluoric acid on hand, could put the entire population of New Orleans at risk of death or serious injury.

Chalmette Refining, a joint venture of Exxon Mobil, is one of more than 15,000 potentially deadly chemical plants and refineries nationwide. More than 100 of them put a million or more people at risk. These time bombs are everywhere, from big cities like Los Angeles to small towns like Barberton, Ohio. Many are so inconspicuous - a chlorine plant may be a couple of tanks and access to a railroad line - that the people in the kill zone do not even know to be worried.

The worst possible outcomes are chilling. A successful terrorist attack on a chlorine tank could produce, according to a Department of Homeland Security report, 17,500 deaths, 10,000 severe injuries and 100,000 hospitalizations. In Bhopal, India, in 1984, when methyl isocyanate escaped accidentally from a chemical plant, at least 3,800 people were killed and as many as 600,000 injured.

The security holes at chemical facilities are glaringly obvious. On a recent visit to Chalmette Refining, a Times editorial writer had no trouble standing in the nearby park for 15 minutes with a large knapsack. At two plants in Dallas that use large amounts of chlorine, the same writer parked a car on the periphery and milled about for more than a half-hour without being stopped. The fencing was minimal - far less than at a nearby automobile factory. It would not have been hard to explode a bomb or fire a weapon near the chlorine.

Nuclear power plants are required by federal law to have physical barriers and trained security forces, and to hold simulated terrorist attack exercises. Chemical plants should be subject to the same sort of requirements. But common-sense safety measures are being blocked by special interest politics. Chemical companies do not want to pay for reasonable security, and the industry, a major contributor to presidential and Congressional campaigns, has succeeded in preventing Congress from acting.


There is no way to guarantee that terrorists will not successfully attack a chemical facility. But it would be grossly negligent not to take defensive measures. The question Americans should be asking themselves, says Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign, is, "If you fast-forward to a disaster, what would you want to have done?" These should be some of the priorities:

1. Tighter plant security There should be tough federal standards for perimeter fencing, concrete blockades, armed guards and other forms of security at all of the 15,000 facilities that use deadly chemicals.

2. Use of safer chemicals Refineries, when practical, should adopt processes that do not use hydrofluoric acid, the chemical that is now putting New Orleans at risk. Some plants that once used chlorine, such as the Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant in Washington, D.C., have switched to safer alternatives.

3. Reducing quantities of dangerous chemicals An important reason that chemical facilities make such tempting targets for terrorists is the enormous quantity of chemicals they have on hand. The industry should be encouraged, and in some cases required, to store and transport dangerous chemicals in smaller quantities.

4. Limiting chemical facilities in highly populated areas Many chemical facilities were built long before terrorism was a concern, and when fewer people lived in their surrounding areas. There should be a national initiative to move dangerous chemical facilities, where practical, to low-population areas.

5. Government oversight of chemical safety The chemical industry wants to police itself through voluntary programs. But the risks are too great to leave chemical security in private hands. Facilities that use dangerous chemicals should be required to identify their vulnerabilities to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, and to meet federal safety standards.

A bill being developed by Senator Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, could go a long way toward making these facilities safer. But it could be watered down, or outflanked by an industry-backed alternative sponsored by James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, that would leave many of the biggest risks in place.

Those who live near one of the 15,000 chemical facilities scattered across the country - that is, most Americans - have an important stake in this fight. They should urge their senators and representatives to pass a tough law that keeps America safe from the weapons of mass destruction hidden in its own backyard.

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