Report says terror attacks up sharply

Report says terror attacks up sharply
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 30, 8:04 PM ET





Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up more than 25 percent last year, killing 40 percent more people than in 2005, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, the State Department said Monday.

Among countries, Iran remains the biggest supporter of terrorism, with elements of its government backing groups throughout the Middle East, notably in Iraq, giving material aid and guidance to Shiite insurgent groups that have attacked Sunnis, U.S. and Iraqi forces, it said.

In its annual global survey of terrorism, the department said 14,338 attacks took place in 2006, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, 3,185 more than in 2005 representing a 28.5 percent increase.

These strikes claimed a total of 20,498 lives, 13,340 of them in Iraq, 5,800 more, or a 40.2 percent increase, than last year, it said.

Despite the grim figures, State Department officials pointed to some successes in the war on terror, including improved counterterrorism cooperation with various nations and the thwarting of numerous plots, notably plans to down trans-Atlantic airliners.

"Serious challenges do remain, there's no question about that," said acting counterterrorism coordinator Frank Urbancic. "This is not the kind of war where you can measure success with conventional numbers. We cannot aspire to a single decisive battle that will break the enemy's back, nor can we hope for a signed peace accord to mark victory."

The report partly attributes the higher casualty figures to a 25 percent jump in the number of nonvehicular suicide bombings targeting large crowds. That overwhelmed a 12 percent dip in suicide attacks involving vehicles.

In Iraq, the use of chemical weapons, seen for the first time in a Nov. 23, 2006, attack in Sadr City, also "signaled a dangerous strategic shift in tactics," it said.

With the rise in fatalities, the number of injuries from terrorist attacks also rose, by 54 percent, between 2005 and 2006, and the number of wounded doubled in Iraq over the period, according to the department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2006.

The numbers were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center and refer to deaths and injuries sustained by "noncombatants," with significant increases in attacks targeting children, educators and journalists.

"By far the largest number of reported terrorist incidents occurred in the Near East and South Asia," said the 335-page report, referring to the regions where Iraq and Afghanistan are located.

"These two regions also were the locations for 90 percent of all the 290 high-casualty attacks that killed 10 or more people," it said.

The report said 6,600, or 45 percent, of the attacks took place in Iraq, killing about 13,000 people, or 65 percent of the worldwide total of terrorist-related deaths in 2006. Kidnappings by terrorists soared 300 percent in Iraq over 2005.

Afghanistan had 749 strikes in 2006, a 50 percent rise from 2005 when 491 attacks were tallied, according to the report.

However, it also detailed a surge in Africa, where 65 percent more attacks, 420 compared to 253 in 2005, were counted last year, largely due to turmoil in or near Sudan, including Darfur, and Nigeria where oil facilities and workers have been targeted.

As in previous years, the 2006 report identified Iran as the "most active state sponsor" of terror, accusing the Islamic republic of helping plan and foment attacks to destabilize Iraq and derail Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has been "linked to armor-piercing explosives that resulted in the deaths of coalition forces" and has helped, along with Lebanon's radical Hezbollah movement, train Iraqi extremists to build bombs, the report said.

Although the designation of Iran is not new, it appears in the report that is being released as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepares to attend a conference of Iraq's neighbors, at which she has not ruled out a meeting with Iran's foreign minister.

The report said that terrorists continue to rely mainly on conventional weapons in their attacks, but noted no let up in an alarming trend toward more sophisticated and better planned and coordinated strikes.

For instance, while the number of bombings increased by 30 percent between 2005 and 2006, the death tolls from these incidents rose by 39 percent and the number of injuries rose by 45 percent, it said.

The report attributed the higher casualty figures to a 25 percent jump in the number of non-vehicular suicide bombings targeting large crowds that more than made up for a slight 12 percent dip in suicide attacks involving vehicles.

Of the 58,000 people killed or wounded in terrorist attacks around the world in 2006, more than 50 percent were Muslims, the report, says with government officials, police and security guards accounting for a large proportion, the report said.

The number of child casualties from terrorist attacks soared by more than 80 percent between 2005 and 2006 to more than 1,800, while incidents involving educators were up more than 45 percent and those involving journalists up 20 percent, the report said.

Twenty-eight U.S. citizens were killed and 27 wounded in terrorist incidents in 2006, most of them in Iraq, where eight of the 12 Americans kidnapped by terrorists last year were taken captive, it said.



Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Corps asked to explain pump contract

Corps asked to explain pump contract
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
Mon Apr 30, 7:19 PM ET




When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract, a review of documents by The Associated Press found.

The pumps, supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, proved to be defective, as the AP reported in March. The matter is under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In a letter dated April 13, Sen. David Vitter (news, bio, voting record), R-La., called on the Corps to look into how the politically connected company got the post-Hurricane Katrina contract. MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party.

While it may not be a violation of federal regulations to adopt a company's technical specifications, it is frowned on, especially for large jobs like the MWI contract, because it could give the impression the job was rigged for the benefit of a certain company, contractors familiar with Corps practices say.

The Corps' January 2006 call for bids for 34 pumps used the wording on how the pumps should be built and tested, with minor changes, found in MWI catalogs.

The specifications were so similar that an erroneous phrase in MWI catalogs — "the discharge tube and head assembly shall be abrasive resistance steel" — also appears in the Corps specifications. The phrase should say "abrasion resistant steel." An incorrect reference to the type of steel that would be required apparently was also lifted.

Eugene Pawlik, a Corps spokesman in Washington, said the agency is working on a response to Vitter's letter.

MWI declined to discuss how it won the contract. GAO would not talk about its probe.

Richard White, a federal contracting expert, said it is "not unheard for a spec to be copied, in particular in cases of emergency purchases."

"It's not a good practice, but it's not anything egregious, especially if the Corps allowed other companies to negotiate to change it," White said.

After Katrina swamped about 80 percent of the city, Congress appropriated $5.7 billion to rebuild New Orleans' flood protection systems. Vitter and Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), D-La., have excoriated the Corps over its workmanship since Katrina.

In his letter to the commander of the Corps, Vitter said the bid solicitation for the pumps "includes specifications identical to those written and marketed by Moving Water Industries." In addition, "the testing specifications are also identical to the testing specifications developed and authored by MWI."

A May 2006 memo by a Corps inspector working on the project, provided to the AP earlier this year, warned that the pumps were faulty and would not work if needed to remove water during a hurricane. GAO opened its investigation after the memo surfaced.

The Corps and MWI insist the pumps would have worked, but last year's mild hurricane season never put them to the test. The pumps have been overhauled and are being reinstalled.

The Corps withheld about 20 percent of MWI's contract price — including an incentive of about $5 million to deliver them by June 1, 2006 — until the flaws have been resolved. But the Corps also spent $4.5 million for six additional MWI pumps for use in troubleshooting the defective ones.

The Corps contract officer overseeing the January 2006 bid, Cindy Nicholas, was told about the copied specifications during a conference call with FPI Inc., a Florida company that also bid on the project, shortly after MWI was awarded the contract. A recording of the briefing was provided to the AP by FPI.

"Are you folks aware that the specifications that you folks put out was a copy of the specifications in the MWI catalog?" asked Bob Purcell, who was an FPI salesman at the time the bids were taken.

"No, I'm not aware of that," Nicholas replied.

Corps official Dan Bradley said during the briefing that consulting engineers had a hand in drawing up the specifications.

Purcell then complained: "We were forced to meet someone else's specifications in entirety." He said the consultants did not cooperate with FPI, and he charged that MWI was given "a head's up" about the job. That, he said, was evident by MWI's order for pump engines before the contract was even put out to bid.

"I don't know anything about that, sir," Nicholas responded. She said that if MWI ordered the engines ahead of time, "they took a big risk."

"Obviously it was a risk that paid off, let's put it that way. They must have had some assurance!" Purcell exclaimed.

"Not from me," Nicholas said.

MWI would not comment on the alleged order for pump engines before the award of the contract.

Purcell, a former MWI employee, is a plaintiff in a federal whistleblower lawsuit accusing MWI of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary pumping equipment. The U.S. Justice Department has joined the suit as a plaintiff.



Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

5 squirrels with plague near Denver park

5 squirrels with plague near Denver park
By CARY LEIDER VOGRIN THE GAZETTE
April 28, 2007 - 1:30AM




Five plague-infected squirrels and a wild rabbit found in a Denver park are a reminder that Coloradans should take precautions to protect themselves from the potentially deadly disease, health officials say.

The animals’ carcasses were tested after a resident near City Park noticed a dieoff of squirrels — a sign of the disease.

Plague is transmitted by fleas, and people can be exposed through contact with wild animals or their pets.

“We know it’s here,” said Rick Miklich, director of environmental health for the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment. “What we’re trying to do is find out where and how much, and then to prepare people about what to do about it.”
The most recent human case of plague in El Paso County was in 1991.

Before that, a fatal case involving a child at the Air Force Academy occurred in 1984.

Of the 58 known cases of human plague statewide since 1957, nine were fatal, according to an epidemiologist with the state Health Department.
In 2004, three human cases — one of them fatal — were reported.
Four cases were reported in both 2005 and 2006; none were fatal.
“If it’s caught early enough, it’s highly treatable,” Miklich said.

Symptoms include sudden high fever, chills, nausea, muscle pain and painful or swollen lymph glands.

Miklich said the best protection from infected fleas is to ensure pets aren’t allowed to roam outside and to rodentproof the area around homes.
“Don’t feed the critters that come by,” he said.

“Don’t attract them to where you’re living because nothing good’s going to come of that.”

AVOIDING THE PLAGUE

To protect yourself from plague, health officials recommend:
- Don’t handle dead rodents, and report animal die-offs to the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment at 575-8635.
- Keep cats indoors. Cats, more than dogs, are highly susceptible to plague.
- Treat pets for fleas.
- Clear property of lumber piles and trash bins, where rodents often live or hide.
- Take down feeders that might attract squirrels.











Copyright © 2007, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information. All rights reserved.

Inspectors Find Rebuilt Projects Crumbling in Iraq

April 29, 2007
Inspectors Find Rebuilt Projects Crumbling in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ






In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.

At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital, a rehabilitation project in the northern city of Erbil, an expensive incinerator for medical waste was padlocked — Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment — and partly as a result, medical waste including syringes, used bandages and empty drug vials were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.

The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

Officials at the oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said they had made an effort to sample different regions and various types of projects, but that they were constrained from taking a true random sample in part because many projects were in areas too unsafe to visit. So, they said, the initial set of eight projects — which cost a total of about $150 million — cannot be seen as a true statistical measure of the thousands of projects in the roughly $30 billion American rebuilding program.

But the officials said the initial findings raised serious new concerns about the effort.

The reconstruction effort was originally designed as nearly equal to the military push to stabilize Iraq, allow the government to function and business to flourish, and promote good will toward the United States.

“These first inspections indicate that the concerns that we and others have had about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid,” Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads the office of the special inspector general, said in an interview on Friday.

The conclusions will be summarized in the latest quarterly report by Mr. Bowen’s office on Monday. Individual reports on each of the projects were released on Thursday and Friday.

Mr. Bowen said that because he suspected that completed projects were not being maintained, he had ordered his inspectors to undertake a wider program of returning to examine projects that had been completed for at least six months, a phase known as sustainment.

Exactly who is to blame for the poor record on sustainment for the first sample of eight projects was not laid out in the report, but the American reconstruction program has been repeatedly criticized for not including in its rebuilding budget enough of the costs for spare parts, training, stronger construction and other elements that would enable projects continue to function once they have been built.

The new reports provide some support for that position: a sophisticated system for distributing oxygen throughout the Erbil hospital had been ignored by medical staff members, who told inspectors that they distrusted the new equipment and had gone back to using tried-and-true oxygen tanks — which were stored unsafely throughout the building.

The Iraqis themselves appear to share responsibility for the latest problems, which cropped up after the United States turned the projects over to the Iraqi government. Still, the new findings show that the enormous American investment in the reconstruction program is at risk, Mr. Bowen said.

Besides the airport, hospital and special forces barracks, places where inspectors found serious problems included two projects at a military base near Nasiriya and one at a military recruiting center in Hilla — both cities in the south — and a police station in Mosul, a northern city. A second police station in Mosul was found to be in good condition.

The dates when the projects were completed and deemed successful ranged from six months to almost a year and a half before the latest inspections. But those inspections found numerous instances of power generators that no longer operated; sewage systems that had clogged and overflowed, damaging sections of buildings; electrical systems that had been jury-rigged or stripped of components; floors that had buckled; concrete that had crumbled; and expensive equipment that was simply not in use.

Curiously, most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect.

A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating.

The problems with the generators were seemingly minor: missing batteries, a failure to maintain adequate oil levels in the engines, fuel lines that had been pilfered or broken. That kind of neglect is typical of rebuilding programs in developing countries when local nationals are not closely involved in planning efforts, said Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington.

“What ultimately makes any project sustainable is local ownership from the beginning in designing the project, establishing the priorities,” Mr. Barton said. “If you don’t have those elements it’s an extension of colonialism and generally it’s resented.”

Mr. Barton, who has closely monitored reconstruction efforts in Iraq and other countries, said the American rebuilding program had too often created that resentment by imposing projects on Iraqis or relying solely on the advice of a local tribal chief or some “self-appointed representative” of local Iraqis.

The new findings come after years of insistence by American officials in Baghdad that too much attention has been paid to the failures in Iraq and not enough to the successes.

Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps, told a news conference in Baghdad late last month that with so much coverage of violence in Iraq “what you don’t see are the successes in the reconstruction program, how reconstruction is making a difference in the lives of everyday Iraqi people.”

And those declared successes are heavily promoted by the United States government. A 2006 news release by the Army Corps, titled “Erbil Maternity and Pediatric Hospital — not just bricks and mortar!” praises both the new water purification system and the incinerator. The incinerator, the release said, would “keep medical waste from entering into the solid waste and water systems.”

But when Mr. Bowen’s office presented the Army Corps with the finding that neither system was working at the struggling hospital and recommended a training program so that Iraqis could properly operate the equipment, General Walsh tersely disagreed with the recommendation in a letter appended to the report, which also noted that the building had suffered damage because workers used excess amounts of water to clean the floors.

The bureau within the United States Embassy in Baghdad that oversees reconstruction in Iraq was even more dismissive, disagreeing with all four of the inspector general’s recommendations, including those suggesting that the United States should lend advice on disposing of the waste and maintaining the floors.

“Recommendations such as how much water to use in cleaning floors or disposal of medical waste could be deemed as an intrusion on, or attempt to micromanage operations of an Iraqi entity that we have no controlling interest over,” wrote William Lynch, acting director of the embassy bureau, called the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.




Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key

April 29, 2007
A Saudi Prince Tied to Bush Is Sounding Off-Key
By HELENE COOPER and JIM RUTENBERG







WASHINGTON, April 28 — No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.

Prince Bandar has mentored Mr. Bush and his father through three wars and the broader campaign against terrorism, reliably delivering — sometimes in the Oval Office — his nation’s support for crucial Middle East initiatives dependent on the regional legitimacy the Saudis could bring, as well as timely warnings of Saudi regional priorities that might put it into apparent conflict with the United States. Even after his 22-year term as Saudi ambassador ended in 2005, he still seemed the insider’s insider. But now, current and former Bush administration officials are wondering if the longtime reliance on him has begun to outlive its usefulness.

Bush administration officials have been scratching their heads over steps taken by Prince Bandar’s uncle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, that have surprised them by going against the American playbook, after receiving assurances to the contrary from Prince Bandar during secret trips he made to Washington.

For instance, in February, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed plans by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a high-profile peace summit meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, by brokering a power-sharing agreement with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas that did not require Hamas to recognize Israel or forswear violence. The Americans had believed, after discussions with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis were on board with the strategy of isolating Hamas.

American officials also believed, again after speaking with Prince Bandar, that the Saudis might agree to direct engagement with Israel as part of a broad American plan to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. King Abdullah countermanded that plan.

Most bitingly, during a speech before Arab heads of state in Riyadh three weeks ago, the king condemned the American invasion of Iraq as “an illegal foreign occupation.” The Bush administration, caught off guard, was infuriated, and administration officials have found Prince Bandar hard to reach since.

Since the Iraq war and the attendant plummeting of America’s image in the Muslim world, King Abdullah has been striving to set a more independent and less pro-American course, American and Arab officials said. And that has steered America’s relationship with its staunchest Arab ally into uncharted waters. Prince Bandar, they say, may no longer be able to serve as an unerring beacon of Saudi intent.

“The problem is that Bandar has been pursuing a policy that was music to the ears of the Bush administration, but was not what King Abdullah had in mind at all,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former United States ambassador to Israel who is now head of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Of course it is ultimately the king — and not the prince — who makes the final call on policy. More than a dozen associates of Prince Bandar, including personal friends and Saudi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if his counsel has led to the recent misunderstandings, it is due to his longtime penchant for leaving room in his dispatches for friends to hear what they want to hear. That approach, they said, is catching up to the prince as new tensions emerge between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Bandar, son of one of the powerful seven sons born to the favorite wife of Saudi Arabia’s founding king, “needs to personally regroup and figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty together again,” one associate said.

Robert Jordan, a former Bush administration ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis’ mixed signals have come at a time when King Abdullah — who has ruled the country since 1995 but became king only in 2005 after the death of his brother, Fahd — has said he does not want to go down in history as Mr. Bush’s Arab Tony Blair. “I think he feels the need as a kind of emerging leader of the Arab world right now to maintain a distance,” he said.

Mr. Jordan said that although the United States and Saudi Arabia “have different views on how to get there,” the countries still share the same long-term goals for the region and remain at heart strong allies.

An administration spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said none of the current issues threatened the relationship. “We may have differences on issues now and then,” he said, “but we remain close allies.”

Or, as Saleh al-Kallab, a former minister of information in Jordan, put it, “The relationship between the United States and the Arab regimes is like a Catholic marriage where you can have no divorce.”

But there can be separation. And several associates of Prince Bandar acknowledge that he feels caught between the opposing pressure of the king and that of his close friends in the Bush administration. It is a relationship that Prince Bandar has fostered with great care and attention to detail over the years, making himself practically indispensable to Mr. Bush, his family and his aides.

A few nights after he resigned his post as secretary of state two years ago, Colin L. Powell answered a ring at his front door. Standing outside was Prince Bandar, then Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, with a 1995 Jaguar. Mr. Powell’s wife, Alma, had once mentioned that she missed their 1995 Jaguar, which she and her husband had traded in. Prince Bandar had filed that information away, and presented the Powells that night with an identical, 10-year-old model. The Powells kept the car — a gift that the State Department said was legal — but recently traded it away.

The move was classic Bandar, who has been referred to as Bandar Bush, attending birthday celebrations, sending notes in times of personal crisis and entertaining the Bushes or top administration officials at sumptuous dinner parties at Prince Bandar’s opulent homes in McLean, Va., and Aspen, Colo.

He has invited top officials to pizza and movies out at a mall in suburban Virginia — and then rented out the movie theater (candy served chair-side, in a wagon) and the local Pizza Hut so he and his guests could enjoy themselves in solitude. He is said to feel a strong sense of loyalty toward Mr. Bush’s father dating to the Persian Gulf war, which transferred to the son, whom he counseled about international diplomacy during Mr. Bush’s first campaign for president.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, as the United States learned that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi and focused on the strict Wahhabi school of Islam that informed them and their leader and fellow Saudi, Osama bin Laden, Prince Bandar took a public role in assuring the Americans that his nation would cooperate in investigating and combating anti-American terrorism. He also helped arrange for more than a hundred members of the bin Laden family to be flown out of the United States.

Even since he left the Saudi ambassador’s post in Washington and returned to Saudi Arabia two years ago, Prince Bandar has continued his long courtship, over decades, of the Bush family and Vice President Dick Cheney, flying into Washington for unofficial meetings at the White House. He cruises in without consulting the Saudi Embassy in Washington, where miffed officials have sometimes said they had no idea that he was in town — a perceived slight that contributed to the resignation of his cousin Prince Turki al-Faisal as ambassador to the United States last year. He has been succeeded by Adel al-Jubeir, who is said to have strong support from the king.

Prince Turki was never able to match the role of Prince Bandar, whom the president, vice president and other officials regularly consult on every major Middle East initiative — from the approach to Iran to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to Iraq. Prince Bandar played a crucial role in securing the use of the Prince Sultan Air Base at Al Kharj, roughly 70 miles outside Riyadh, in the attacks led by the United States against Afghanistan and Iraq, despite chafing within his government.

He helped in the negotiations that led to Libya giving up its weapons programs, a victory for Mr. Bush. He pledged to protect the world economy from oil shocks after the invasion, the White House said in 2004, but he denied a report, by the author Bob Woodward, that he had promised to stabilize oil prices in time for Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign.

The cause of the latest friction in the American-Saudi relationship began in 2003, before the invasion of Iraq. The Saudis agreed with the Bush view of Saddam Hussein as a threat, but voiced concern about post-invasion contingencies and the fate of the Sunni minority. When it became clear that the administration was committed to invading Iraq, Prince Bandar took a lead role in negotiations between the Bush administration and Saudi officials over securing bases and staging grounds.

But Saudi frustration has mounted over the past four years, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated. King Abdullah was angry that the Bush administration ignored his advice against de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military. He became more frustrated as America’s image in the Muslim world deteriorated, because Saudi Arabia is viewed as a close American ally.

Tensions between King Abdullah and top Bush officials escalated further when Mr. Bush announced a new energy initiative to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil during his 2006 State of the Union address, and announced new initiatives in that direction this year.

Both American and Saudi officials say that King Abdullah clearly values — and uses — Prince Bandar’s close relationship with the White House. And that, associates said, will dictate what Prince Bandar can do.

“Don’t expect the man, because he happens to have an American background, not to play the game for his home team,” said William Simpson, Prince Bandar’s biographer, and a former classmate at the Royal Air Force College in England. “The home team is Saudi Arabia.”

Michael Slackman and Hassan M. Fattah contributed from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.





Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Former Mets Employee Sold Steroids To Players

Former Mets Employee Sold Steroids To Players
By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 28, 2007; A01





SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 -- A former employee of the New York Mets admitted to distributing a variety of performance-enhancing drugs, including anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, to dozens of Major League Baseball players over a 10-year period beginning in 1995, according to a felony plea agreement filed in federal court Friday.

Kirk J. Radomski, who worked for the Mets from 1985 to '95, agreed to provide information to the group led by former senator George Mitchell that is investigating drug use in Major League Baseball as part of the plea deal accepted at the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California by Judge Susan Illston.

The plea agreement represents a significant blow to MLB, which has been trying to shake free of the drug scandal as slugger Barry Bonds approaches the all-time major league home run record, which he is expected to eclipse this summer. Mitchell had complained that players weren't cooperating with his investigation, so Friday's plea deal could provide a breakthrough.

Radomski, 37, who has worked as a personal trainer since leaving the Mets, admitted supplying drugs to players throughout the league and laundering the proceeds of those sales.

"This individual was a major dealer of anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs whose clientele was focused almost exclusively on Major League Baseball players," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Parrella said. "He operated for approximately a decade."

Radomski began with the Mets as a batboy, Parrella said. The Mets confirmed that Radomski had been a clubhouse assistant with the team. Clubhouse assistants, or "clubbies" as they are known, perform such chores as cleaning the team's uniforms, setting up the postgame spread and fetching anything a player asks for.

Radomski admitted he operated his drug distribution network out of his New York home after he left the Mets, using his baseball connections.

No MLB players were identified in the court filings associated with the case, but names and paragraphs of text were redacted from the federal search warrant affidavit filed in December 2005.

The affidavit listed 23 checks worth nearly $34,000 that federal investigators alleged were deposited by individuals associated with MLB into Radomski's personal bank account between May 2003 and March 2005. The search warrant alleged that a confidential source received five orders of anabolic steroids from Radomski.

A confidential informant told the FBI that Radomski became a major drug source in professional baseball after the steroid bust of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco) in 2003, according to a federal search warrant affidavit filed in connection with the case.

The Balco investigation resulted in five criminal convictions and more than a dozen doping suspensions of track and field athletes. It also led to a perjury investigation of Bonds, and indictments of track coach Trevor Graham and former cyclist Tammy Thomas.

Friday's action suggests that the probe has continued despite the recent ouster of U.S. attorney Kevin Ryan, who oversaw the investigation until this spring when he was among the eight U.S. attorneys nationwide forced to depart.

"This investigation shows that distribution of performance-enhancing drugs continues to be an issue for sport in America," said U.S. Attorney Scott N. Schools, who replaced Ryan. "This office is dedicated to pursuing those who benefit from such crimes."

As part of the plea deal, Radomski agreed to testify at any grand jury proceeding requested by the government and participate in undercover activities under the supervision of law enforcement officials. He pleaded guilty to one felony count of distributing anabolic steroids and one count of felony money laundering and faces up to 25 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

Human growth hormone, anabolic steroids, clomiphene, insulin growth factor and clenbuterol were seized from Radomski's New York home on Dec. 14, 2005.

Jeff Novitzky, an IRS special agent who has been the lead investigator on the Balco case, wrote in the affidavit that he received a tip about Radomski from a confidential FBI source in February 2005. The source placed the first of five drug orders from Radomski through an unidentified MLB contact on March 19, 2005.

The source said Radomski provided drugs to at least one MLB player publicly associated with the Balco investigation. Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield have all been implicated in connection with the probe. Giambi and Sheffield told a federal grand jury they used performance-enhancing substances from Balco, the San Francisco Chronicle has reported.

Bonds, a Balco customer, said he used substances provided by Balco but did not believe they were steroids.

Radomski's cooperation could result in grave embarrassment for MLB should Mitchell's group make public the information it receives from him.

"We look forward to working together with federal law enforcement toward our shared goal of dealing effectively with illegal performance-enhancing drug use in baseball," Mitchell said in a statement.

MLB President and Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy lauded Friday's deal in a statement and urged all baseball personnel to cooperate with the Mitchell commission.

Radomski, a burly man with closely shaved hair, appeared in court Friday with his attorney, John Riley. Parrella and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow appeared for the prosecution. Radomski is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 7.














Web of Drugs, Money

Highlights from former New York Mets employee Kirk J. Radomski's plea agreement and related court documents:

-- Between 1995 and 2005, he distributed anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, amphetamines and other drugs to dozens of major leaguers.

-- Cashed 23 large checks worth nearly $34,000 from individuals associated with MLB between May 2003 and March 2005.

-- Pleaded guilty to one felony count of distributing anabolic steroids and one count of felony money laundering and faces up to 25 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

-- Agreed to cooperate with the committee looking into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball led by former senator George Mitchell.

-- No players were identified, but names and paragraphs of text were redacted.












© 2007 The Washington Post Company

Guilty Plea Widens Baseball’s Steroids Scandal

Guilty Plea Widens Baseball’s Steroids Scandal
By JULIET MACUR
Published: April 28, 2007





A former Mets clubhouse assistant pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court in San Francisco to distributing performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of former and current Major League Baseball players for a 10-year period, the latest blow to a sport that has been battered by the issue of steroid use.

Kirk Radomski, 37, who worked as a bat boy, equipment manager and clubhouse assistant for the Mets from 1985-95, admitted to selling banned drugs, including anabolic steroids, amphetamines and human growth hormone, from 1995 through 2005, according to a plea agreement filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of California. Mr. Radomski, who listed himself as a personal trainer on recent tax returns, also pleaded guilty to laundering the money from the drug transactions. The two felony charges carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison and a maximum of $500,000 in fines.

None of his clients were named in the plea agreement, and players’ names were redacted from a search warrant affidavit dated Dec. 13, 2005, which was used for a federal raid on Mr. Radomski’s Long Island home.

Mr. Radomski has been working with federal steroids investigators since that raid, according to Matt Parrella, an assistant United States attorney. Assisting those investigations typically includes providing background information, going undercover, recording telephone conversations and setting up transactions that are monitored by authorities.

Mr. Parrella is part of the United States Attorney’s office that prosecuted the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroid-distribution case, in which a number of baseball players, including Barry Bonds, testified before a grand jury because of suspected steroid use.

None of those players have been indicted, but Mr. Bonds is still being investigated in the case even as he draws closer to Hank Aaron’s career home run record. Mr. Bonds’s pursuit has created an uncomfortable position for Major League Baseball, and yesterday’s revelations created a new set of problems regarding performance-enhancing drugs.

The search warrant affidavit in Mr. Radomski’s case described how his drug distribution worked. Although the names of his clients were blackened out in the affidavit, it said that Mr. Radomski had been distributing performance-enhancing drugs to professional baseball players, including at least one major league player “who was publicly identified as being associated with Balco Laboratories.”

In a telephone interview yesterday, Bonds’s criminal defense lawyer, Michael Rains, said: “As of now, I have not heard anything about this. I have never heard this guy’s name. This has nothing to with Barry.”

Jeff Novitzky, the lead investigator in the Balco case, signed the affidavit, which outlined how a tip was first received from an F.B.I. informant in February 2005 about someone in New York distributing steroids. The subsequent federal criminal grand jury investigation unfolded as Congress intensified its pressure on Major League Baseball over steroid use among players.

A week before Commissioner Bud Selig and several star players testified before a Congressional committee in March 2005, the F.B.I. informant placed a call to his major league baseball source to inquire about getting steroids, according to the affidavit.

Mr. Selig and Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players association, testified before the Congressional hearing on March 17 and defended baseball’s policies. Mr. Selig told the committee that the steroid problem in baseball had been blown out of proportion.

“Do we have a major problem? No,” he said.

According to the affidavit, two days after the Congressional hearing, on March 19, the source told the F.B.I. that his contact in major league baseball “had placed an order with his ‘New York contact.’ ” The next day, the source received a package containing “two full vials, labeled testosterone and deca-durabolin respectively, along with ten syringes.”

Mr. Radomski’s statement in his plea agreement painted a sweeping portrait of drug distribution in the heart of the sport.

“During my past employment in Major League Baseball I developed contacts with Major League Baseball players throughout the country to whom I subsequently distributed anabolic steroids and athletic performance-enhancing drugs,” Mr. Radomski said.

“I had personal contact with some of my baseball drug clients, but consulted and conducted drug transactions with others over the telephone and mail.”

Mr. Radomski also agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and nongovernmental investigators, which includes a continuing investigation into steroid use in baseball that is now being conducted by former Senator George J. Mitchell.

Travis Tygart, the senior managing director and general counsel for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said, “If you’re a player that was using and receiving steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs from Radomski, I think you are pretty nervous right now.”

Mr. Radomski’s home was searched on Dec. 14, 2005, and the federal search warrant affidavit filed in connection with that raid detailed some of his drug transactions. In that raid, federal agents seized “thousands of doses of numerous types of anabolic steroids in both pill and injectable form,” according to a statement from United States Attorney Scott N. Schools, who recently replaced Kevin Ryan, who had overseen the original prosecution of the Balco case.

Obtained in the raid of Mr. Radomski’s home were human growth hormone; insulin growth factor; clomiphene, a fertility drug that can be used as a masking agent; and the steroid Clenbuterol, which was the same drug that the journeyman pitcher Jason Grimsley admitted to using in the search warrant affidavit on his home in Arizona last year.

Federal agents also seized shipping records, financial records, correspondences and contact lists that detailed the distribution of drugs to major league baseball players.

According to the affidavit, an F.B.I. informant set up five transactions with Mr. Radomski, through a mutual acquaintance in baseball. During one conversation between the informant and that baseball source, the source said that if a professional baseball player was currently using performance-enhancing drugs, “then that player likely would be getting it from Kirk Radomski.” The baseball source also called Radomski a “major drug source in professional baseball, who took over after the Balco Laboratories individuals were taken down,” in 2003.

According to the affidavit, Mr. Radomski had accepted personal checks from his clients, but often cashed them instead of depositing them in his account, where they would leave a paper trail. The affidavit listed 23 check transactions with names of current and former Major League Baseball players and their affiliates. Those checks ranged from $200 to $3,500.

Mr. Novitzky wrote that Mr. Radomski was running a cash business, for the most part.

Mr. Radomski’s financial records from 2003 to 2005 were analyzed. Major League Baseball did not have a steroid testing policy until 2003 and did not suspend any players for a positive test until 2005. Since then, 15 major leaguers have been suspended for violating the drug policy.

Major League Baseball issued a statement saying it supported “the efforts of the U.S. attorney’s office in combating the illegal use of performance-enhancing substances.”

The statement also said that baseball was “encouraged” that prosecutors were insisting that Radomski cooperate with Mr. Mitchell’s investigation.

That cooperation could give Mr. Mitchell the teeth he has seemed to lack since agreeing in March 2006 to head the investigation on behalf of Mr. Selig.

Mr. Mitchell does not have subpoena power and has struggled to get current and former baseball employees to describe what they know about steroid use.

The Mets issued a statement saying the team was “disappointed” to hear about the guilty plea and that “the conduct in question is diametrically opposed to the values and standards of the Mets organization and our owners.”


Jack Curry, Ben Shpigel and Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Lenders Misusing Student Database

Lenders Misusing Student Database
Improper Searches Raise Privacy Fears
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 15, 2007; A01





Some lending companies with access to a national database that contains confidential information on tens of millions of student borrowers have repeatedly searched it in ways that violate federal rules, raising alarms about data mining and abuse of privacy, government and university officials said.

The improper searching has grown so pervasive that officials said the Education Department is considering a temporary shutdown of the government-run database to review access policies and tighten security. Some worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations.

Students' Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and sensitive financial information such as loan balances are in the database, which contains 60 million student records and is covered by federal privacy laws. "We are just in shock that student data could be compromised like this," said Nancy Hoover, director of financial aid at Denison University in Ohio.

Education Department spokeswoman Katherine McLane said the agency has spent more than $650,000 since 2003 to safeguard the database. The department has blocked thousands of users that it deemed unqualified for access after security reviews, McLane said, and it has blocked 246 users from the student loan industry for inappropriately accessing the data.

In general, the department allows lenders to search records in the database only if they have a student's permission or a financial relationship with the student.

The department has been "vigilant in its monitoring for unauthorized uses" of the database, McLane said.

Concerns about possible abuses of the database are emerging as the student loan industry is under investigation by congressional Democrats and the New York attorney general. Critics say the $85 billion-a-year industry has cozied up to government and university officials who are in a position to help lenders.

This month, a previously obscure Education Department official named Matteo Fontana was suspended after the revelation that he owned more than $100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company while he worked in a unit that helped oversee the industry -- and the student loan database. The stock holding raised questions about a possible violation of conflict-of-interest rules.

The database, known as the National Student Loan Data System, was created in 1993 to help determine whether students are eligible for student aid and to assist in collecting loan payments. About 29,000 university financial aid administrators and 7,500 loan company employees have access to it.

In a recent meeting with university financial aid directors, Theresa S. Shaw, chief operating officer of the department's Office of Federal Student Aid, which manages the database, said lenders have been mining it for student data with increasing frequency, according to three participants at the meeting. In the department's hierarchy, Shaw ranks above Fontana.

"She said the data mining had gotten out of control, and they were trying to tone it down," said Eileen K. O'Leary, director of student aid and finance at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, who was at the Feb. 26 session. "They'd seen the mining for a few years, but now they felt it had grown exponentially."

The department first started noticing a problem in mid-2003 when loan consolidation became more popular, according to an agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. As companies began to aggressively look for low-risk borrowers to target for consolidation plans, they turned to the database for prospective customers, the official said.

Database users can view only one student record at a time, and the department can monitor each time they view an entry. "When we see them go in and out very quickly, that's when it raises flags" about data mining, the official said. Such abuse would violate department rules.

Officials grew so concerned that in April 2005, the department sent out a letter to database users warning that inappropriate use of the system -- in other words, looking for information without authorization -- could cause their access to be revoked. The letter said the agency was "specifically troubled" that lenders were giving unauthorized users -- such as marketing firms, collection agencies and loan brokerage firms -- the ability to access the database.

"Information may not be used for any other purpose, including the marketing of student loans or other products," wrote Fontana, then general manager of a unit in the department that oversaw the lending industry.

In August 2005, Cathy H. Lewis, the department's assistant inspector general, echoed those concerns in a memo to Shaw that warned of security problems with the database and the lack of regular audit trails on the system.

Through a spokeswoman, Shaw declined to comment. Fontana did not return telephone calls.

After the warnings, inappropriate usage of the system seemed to decline, according to the department official who requested anonymity. But several months ago, top managers learned that the practice had resumed -- "a pattern that's very alarming," the official said.

Some senior education officials are advocating a temporary shutdown of access to the database until tighter security measures can be put in place, the official said. McLane confirmed that such deliberations are taking place.

It is not certain that the lenders that inappropriately used the database used information from it to market directly to students. Credit bureaus, for instance, also hold personal information on borrowers that can be used to solicit customers.

But department officials believe lenders are probably using the database for marketing, according to three current and former agency employees who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Some university financial aid administrators suspect loan companies are probably targeting students in the database who take out loans directly with the government, known as direct loans.

"The database is being misused by the industry to raid the direct loan portfolio," said Craig Munier, director of scholarships and financial aid at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, who was at the meeting with Shaw. "It's certainly a misuse of the intended purpose of the information and was certainly not what we intended in the higher education community when we built" the database.

Some financial aid directors say abuse of the database would explain why some students who have taken out loans only directly with the government are deluged by up to a half-dozen solicitations a day from private loan companies.

"Our students are being inundated with marketing from consolidation companies," said O'Leary, of Stonehill College. "How else are the consolidation companies getting our students' information?"

Some financial aid administrators hope inquiries into the student loan industry will extend to the possible abuse of the database.

"We are hoping that a full congressional investigation can happen," said Hoover, the Denison aid director, who also met with Shaw. "And maybe then we will find out what's really happening."












© 2007 The Washington Post Company

Fish kill again observed in river

Fish kill again observed in river
Public asked to report deaths in north, south forks of Shenandoah
Friday, Apr 27, 2007 - 12:10 AM Updated: 12:27 AM
By REX SPRINGSTON
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER





A mysterious affliction is killing fish once again in the Shenandoah River region.

Anglers and state scientists are reporting hundreds of dead and sick fish in the Shenandoah River and its north and south forks. The fish apparently began dying last weekend.

"We're seeing dead and dying fish on numerous locations on those rivers," said Bill Hayden, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The DEQ yesterday asked the public to report fish deaths so scientists can document the affected area and collect specimens to study.

"We want to get on top of this as quickly as we can," Hayden said.

The deaths have become a grim spring ritual since they began in 2003. No one knows what's killing the fish.

A task force, including state and federal agencies, universities and community groups, is investigating.

The task force was established in July 2005 after most adult smallmouth bass and redbreast sunfish died in the Shenandoah and its south fork.

Those two species have suffered the most.

In October, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made up to $150,000 available to step up the investigation.

The fish deaths have hurt the tourism and recreation industries in the Shenandoah Valley, state officials say.

The north and south forks of the Shenandoah flow generally north through the Valley, joining at Front Royal to form the Shenandoah about 120 miles northwest of Richmond.

From there, the Shenandoah runs north to Harpers Ferry, W.Va., where it joins the Potomac River.

The dead and dying fish are typically afflicted with sores.

Something apparently is reducing the resistance of the fish to illness, but no one knows why that is happening, Hayden said.

Scientists will check some of the recently killed fish for parasites, viruses and other problems.


Contact staff writer Rex Springston at rspringston@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6453.










© 2007, Media General Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Durbin kept silent on prewar knowledge

Durbin kept silent on prewar knowledge
By Sean Lengell
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published April 27, 2007






The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee.

"The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.

"I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress."

Mr. Durbin's comments come after years of inquiries and debate about prewar intelligence, and as congressional leaders clash over Democrats' calls to pull out of Iraq.

The White House responded by saying Congress had access to the same intelligence and voted overwhelmingly to go to war.

"We all understand today that there were intelligence failures, but there was no effort to mislead either members of Congress or the American people," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Mr. Durbin yesterday said there was no "ethical" way to notify the public of specific misleading information being touted by the Bush administration because it would have required revealing top-secret information being provided to the intelligence committee.

He cited the White House's claim that Iraq was trying to acquire aluminum tubes needed for a nuclear weapons program -- details of which have since been declassified -- as an example of bad intelligence, saying that there was an ongoing debate within the administration as it was being used in public.

Mr. Durbin, whose floor comments were part of the debate before yesterday's passage of an emergency war-funding bill, said he and half the Democrats on the intelligence committee voted against the war over concerns of the White House's "very flimsy case, but it was given to the American people as a proven fact."

Congress authorized the 2003 use of armed force against Iraq by votes of 296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate. Five of nine Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted for the measure as did all eight Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office circulated an e-mail Wednesday highlighting Mr. Durbin's comments, but his office didn't respond to requests yesterday to elaborate on the e-mail.

The e-mail said Mr. Durbin's comments were inconsistent with the words of other Democrats on the committee, including Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Carl Levin of Michigan. Those two Democrats said publicly before the war that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was intent on pursuing nuclear weapons. Mr. Rockefeller voted for the war, but Mr. Levin did not.

A congressional official familiar with the information about Iraq that was provided to the intelligence committee in 2002 said it did not differ from what the administration was saying publicly about the need to go to war in Iraq.

"If [Mr. Durbin] thinks the president of the United States is lying to the American public about the war, he's wrong," the official said.

The official added that if Mr. Durbin felt so strongly that the administration was misleading the public, "he should've done something about it."

But a spokesman for Mr. Durbin said the senator did publicly voice general, nonspecific concerns about the administration's promotion of the need for military intervention in Iraq prior to the war.

He added Mr. Durbin could have faced criminal charges if he had publicly revealed specific intelligence details before the Iraq war.

"For a senator on the [intelligence] committee, it's a pretty bright line that they can't cross," Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker said, adding that his boss has repeated the same concerns he voiced on the Senate floor Wednesday "maybe seven or eight times" in recent years.

"The other side is just throwing mud and seeing if it'll stick." Mr. Shoemaker said.

Mr. Durbin drew rebukes from Republicans in June 2005 when he compared the U.S. military's treatment of a suspected al Qaeda terrorist at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay with the regimes of dictators Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, whose regimes each killed millions of their own people.




Copyright © 2007 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.



All site contents copyright © 2007 The Washington Times, LLC.

Boy, 11, Charged With Impaling 12-Year-Old

Apr 24, 2007 1:25 am US/Eastern
Boy, 11, Charged With Impaling 12-Year-Old
Cops: Attacker Lodged Wooden Stick Into Student's Head
Tanya Rivero
Reporting





(CBS) NEW YORK A 12-year-old Brooklyn boy is clinging to life after being impaled in the head with a stick, and police have charged an 11-year-old with the vicious attack.

The victim, Stevenson Celius, was rushed to Kings County Hospital on Thursday evening when police say two inches of a wooden stick was lodged into his brain. His family says the attack happened when the boy went to the store to buy candy. The suspect, an 11-year-old classmate of his, demanded his change and when he refused, a chase ensued.

Stevenson made it as far as the vestibule of his building before the brutal attack occurred.

An NYPD surveillance camera on the corner of Fenimore Street was able to snap a good shot of the boys. Detectives were able to go to their school the next day and identify the suspect, who was still wearing the same clothes.

"They had to call in the fire department to saw a piece of the wood off from his head so they can put him in the CAT scan machine," said Guirlaine Celius, the victim's aunt.

Doctors say Stevenson is on life support after suffering a reaction from the attack similar to a massive stroke.

"He is likely not to be going home, he will be going straight to a nursing home," his aunt said.

Stevenson's father, Antoine Celius, is Haitian-born, but has been living in Brooklyn with his son for five years. He says the boy's mother and sister are still in Haiti and are devastated by the news, but he cannot get a visa to visit.

Neighbors say the boys were friends and call it a tragic accident, but in the meantime, the suspect is in police custody and is being charged as a juvenile with first-degree assault.

"We're just praying for some sort of a miracle," his aunt said.











(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Toyota passes GM for first time in global sales

Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Toyota passes GM for first time in global sales
Hans Greimel / Associated Press






TOKYO -- Toyota Motor Corp. became the world's top auto seller in the first three months of the year, passing rival General Motors Corp. for the first time, the Japanese automaker said Tuesday.

Toyota sold 2.348 million vehicles worldwide in the January-March quarter, company official Satoshi Yamaguchi said, surpassing the 2.260 million vehicles that GM said it sold during the same period.

The results mark the first time Toyota has beat GM in global sales on a quarterly basis, he said.

While the figures represent only quarterly sales results, they foreshadow a tough challenge for GM as it fights to hold onto it title as world's top automaker -- a claim usually staked on annual production figures.

In 2006, Toyota's global production surged 10 percent to 9.018 million vehicles, while GM and its group automakers produced 9.180 million vehicles worldwide -- a gap of about 162,000. In the first quarter, Toyota made 2.367 million vehicles worldwide, while GM had expected to produce 2.335 million.

It's no time to start popping the champagne, however, because overtaking GM is not Toyota's first priority, said Paul Nolasco, a spokesman for the Japanese company.

"Our goal has never been to sell the most cars in the world," Nolasco said. "We simply want to be the best in quality. After that, sales will take care of themselves."

Indeed, it is Toyota's sterling reputation for quality and fuel efficiency that has lifted its global sales, including the popular Camry, Corolla and Prius gas-and-electric hybrid.

GM, meanwhile, cut production last year as high fuel prices drove people away from its trucks and sport utility vehicles. To shore up earnings, it has cut jobs and closed plants.

Toyota has been gaining steadily on GM in recent years, and analysts have been saying it is only a matter of time before it eclipses its Detroit-based rival, which has seen its market share shrink in the United States even as it leads sales in China.

In the vital American market, Toyota's sales rose 12.9 percent last year, catapulting it past DaimlerChrysler AG as the No. 3 seller of autos in the U.S. Toyota's share of the U.S. market climbed to 16 percent in March, behind GM's 22 percent and Ford Motor Co.'s 17 percent.

A copy of Toyota's "global master plan" leaked to the news media late last year calls for grabbing 15 percent of the world car market by 2010 in the company's quest to unseat GM.

GM hasn't released a forecast for this year, but Toyota is shooting for global output of 9.42 million vehicles and sales of 9.34 million units.

While Toyota appears on course to supplant General Motors this year, GM's moves to boost overseas production could keep it in the running. The company's sales in China jumped 32 percent last year to 876,747 units, and it is also building a new factory in India, another market with tremendous potential.

GM launched a major restructuring in November 2005 that called for closing 12 plants by 2008, slashing its work force, reducing capacity and cutting costs.

But as Toyota rolls on, its executives are growing concerned about a possible political backlash in the U.S., even though American consumers continue to flock to Toyota dealerships. U.S. lawmakers from manufacturing states charge that the Japanese government has kept the yen artificially low, giving Japanese automakers an advantage.

"We are certainly concerned," Toyota Senior Adviser Hiroshi Okuda said earlier this year, adding that Toyota needed to "significantly" increase the number of foreigners on its board.

At that time, there were no foreigners in top positions at Toyota. But earlier this month, Toyota promoted American James Press, president of the automaker's North American division, to the inner circle.

Toyota's shares closed down 0.54 percent to 7,370 yen (US$62.46) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday.












© Copyright 2007 The Detroit News. All rights reserved.

White House Seeks Boost to Spy Powers

White House Seeks Boost to Spy Powers
Apr 13, 5:26 PM (ET)
By KATHERINE SHRADER





WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration asked Congress Friday to allow monitoring of more foreigners in the United States during intelligence investigations.

The plan is one of several proposed changes, which have been in the works for more than a year, that go to the heart of a key U.S. surveillance law.

The administration says the changes are intended to help the government better address national security threats by updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to bring it into line with rapid changes in communications technology.

Civil liberties groups see the government's effort as a needless power grab.

The proposal would revise the way the government gets warrants from the secretive FISA court to investigate suspected terrorists, spies and other national security threats.

The administration wants to be able to monitor foreign nationals on American soil if they are thought to have significant intelligence information, but no known links to a foreign power. Under current law, the government must convince a FISA judge that an individual is an agent of a government, terror group or some other foreign adversary.

The administration also wants new provisions to ease surveillance of people suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction internationally.

And the administration wants to allow government lawyers to decide whether a FISA court order is needed for electronic eavesdropping based on the target of the monitoring, not the mode of communication or the location where the surveillance is being conducted.

One effect of such a change: the National Security Agency would have the authority to monitor foreigners without seeking court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States.

Most often used by the FBI and the NSA, the 1978 FISA law has been updated several times since it was first passed, including in 2001 to allow government access to certain business records.

Among other tools available now, the government can break into homes, hotel rooms and cars to install hidden cameras and listening devices, as well as search drawers, luggage or hard drives.

President Bush has been under fire for his program allowing the NSA to monitor international calls and e-mails coming into the United States, when one party in the communication had suspected links to international terrorism. Earlier this year, Bush asked a federal court to oversee the operations, known as the terrorist surveillance program.

"This legislation is important to ensure that FISA continues to serve the nation as a means to protect our country from foreign security threats, while also continuing to protect the valued privacy interests and civil liberties of persons located in the United States," the Justice Department said in a fact sheet released Friday.

But civil liberties advocates at the American Civil Liberties Union and elsewhere see the changes as a sweeping overhaul that would undermine long-standing protections. Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies said the changes are "poorly conceived" and "not justified," given a lack of oversight on the government's current powers.

The Associated Press reported many of the bill's details earlier this week. Among other changes, the legislation would:

_Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails - such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.

_Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge. The Justice Department says this would allow the government to focus its resources on cases involving U.S. citizens because it wouldn't have to get as many time-consuming renewals on warrants for cases involving foreigners.

_Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with any intelligence communications program, such as Bush's terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.

_Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.












Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

© 2007 IAC Search & Media. All rights reserved.

McConnell seeks to boost U.S. spy powers

McConnell seeks to boost U.S. spy powers
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 10, 6:53 PM ET






WASHINGTON - President Bush's spy chief is pushing to expand the government's surveillance authority at the same time the administration is under attack for stretching its domestic eavesdropping powers.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government's powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used.

Known as "FISA," the 1978 law was passed to allow surveillance in espionage and other foreign intelligence investigations, but still allow federal judges on a secretive panel to ensure protections for U.S. citizens — at home or abroad — and other permanent U.S. residents.

The changes McConnell is seeking mostly affect a cloak-and-dagger category of warrants used to investigate suspected spies, terrorists and other national security threats. The court-approved surveillance could include planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives.

McConnell, who took over the 16 U.S. spy agencies and their 100,000 employees less than three months ago, is signaling a more aggressive posture for his office and will lay out his broad priorities on Wednesday as part of a 100-day plan.

The retired Navy vice admiral recently met with leaders at the National Security Agency, Justice Department and other agencies to learn more about the rules they operate under and what ties their hands, according to officials familiar with the discussions and McConnell's proposals. The officials described them on condition that they not be identified because the plans are still being developed.

According to officials familiar with the draft changes to FISA, McConnell wants to:

_Give the NSA the power to monitor foreigners without seeking FISA court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States.

"Determinations about whether a court order is required should be based on considerations about the target of the surveillance, rather than the particular means of communication or the location from which the surveillance is being conducted," NSA Director Keith Alexander told the Senate last year.

_Clarify the standards the FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails — such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.

_Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge.

_Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with Bush's terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.

_Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

McConnell, Alexander and a senior Justice Department official will appear at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on April 17 to discuss whether to amend the FISA law. Chad Kolton, McConnell's spokesman, declined to comment on the director's proposals.

Government officials have been publicly and privately discussing changes to FISA since last year. A senior intelligence official said the goal is to update the law to ensure Americans' constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure, while improving use of government resources to pursue threats against U.S. interests.

Critics question whether the changes are needed and worry about what the Bush administration has in store, given a rash of allegations about domestic surveillance and abuse of power. "Congress should certainly be very skeptical about proposals to give this government greater powers to spy on its own citizens," said Caroline Fredrickson, the Washington legislative office director for the American Civil Liberties Union.

The proposed changes to domestic surveillance would be so broad that "you have basically done away with the protections of the FISA," said Kate Martin, head of the Center for National Security Studies.

Rep. Heather Wilson (news, bio, voting record), R-N.M., who unsuccessfully sponsored legislation last year to update FISA, said Congress must act because current court orders bolstering the president's terrorist surveillance program are legally shaky. She wants the law to be rewritten to ensure the NSA can continue the program.

Bush has faced months of criticism for his 2001 decision to order the NSA to monitor the international calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when terrorism is suspected. More recently, the Justice Department and FBI have been sharply rebuked for bad bookkeeping and other mistakes involving their powers under the USA Patriot Act to secretly demand Americans' e-mail, financial and other personal records through so-called national security letters. Top government officials have tried to dampen the outrage by promising accountability and have argued that the letters are essential tools to protect against terror threats.

McConnell hinted at his discomfort with current laws last week during a speech before an audience of government executives, saying he worries that current laws and regulations prevent intelligence agencies from using all of their capabilities to protect the nation.

"That's the big challenge going forward," he said, acknowledging changes would require significant congressional debate.












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WTO: China overtakes U.S. in exports

WTO: China overtakes U.S. in exports
By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, Associated Press Writer
Thu Apr 12, 7:47 AM ET





GENEVA - China surpassed the United States as the world's second-largest exporter in the middle of last year, according to figures released Thursday by the World Trade Organization, and the Asian country is pulling further and further ahead.

Export growth from China boomed 27 percent last year, outpacing all other major trading nations, the WTO said in releasing its first batch of global trade statistics for 2006.

While China finished behind Germany and the United States in total exports for the full year, it overtook the United States in the last six months of 2006 and will almost certainly finish above the U.S. in the 2007 totals.

At current growth rates, China is projected to overtake Germany as the world's biggest exporter in 2008.

"China's merchandise trade expansion remained outstandingly strong," the WTO said in its 21-page report. "Office and telecom equipment continued to be the mainstay of Chinese export growth, but significant gains in world market shares in 2006 could be observed in 'traditional' exports such as clothing and 'new' products such as iron and steel."

The WTO report comes at a time of rising tension between China and the United States and some of the findings will surely fuel debate that Beijing's trade policies are preventing American goods from entering its vast market. U.S. critics accuse the Chinese economy of benefiting from an undervalued currency, illegal government subsidies, unfair barriers to foreign competition and widespread piracy.

The United States filed two new complaints against China at the WTO on Tuesday over copyright policy and restrictions on the sale of American movies, music and books — the culmination of years of agitation in Washington over one of the world's biggest sources of illegally copied goods ranging from DVDs, CDs and designer clothes to sporting goods and medications.

The new cases are the latest move against China by the Bush administration, which is trying to deal with America's rising political anger over its soaring trade deficit that set a record for the fifth consecutive year in 2006 at $765.3 billion. The U.S. imbalance with China grew to $232.5 billion, the highest ever with a single country.

The WTO report said China's imports rose 20 percent last year to $792 billion — a surge that was "faster than global trade but continued to lag behind export growth."

The commerce body partly attributed the weaker import figures to lower oil prices, but did not cite any other factors. The WTO tends to avoid issues tied to energy or currency valuation.

Since 2000, China has more than doubled its share in world merchandise exports to 8 percent. Those figures do not include the goods sold abroad by Hong Kong producers because the "special administrative region" entered the WTO as a separate member in 1995 while still under British rule.

Overall real goods trade throughout the world achieved 8 percent growth in 2006, the highest in six years, the report said. High prices for fuels and metals meant the trade expansion was 15 percent when measured in monetary terms, reaching $11.76 trillion.

"The strong performance in 2006 is welcome, particularly the gains made by developing and least-developed countries," WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said.

The world's poorest countries boosted their trade by about 30 percent, fueled by sales of petroleum and other basic commodities. Developing nations as a whole increased their share of global goods trade to a record 36 percent.

Europe recorded its strongest growth in merchandise exports since 2000, but continued to lag behind the global rate of expansion, the report said. Even as its trade deficit soared, the U.S. recorded its best export growth in more than a decade.

Africa's goods exports rose 21 percent to give the continent its highest share of global trade since 1990, but most of the growth was due to increased oil sales, the WTO said. Latin America's commercial expansion decelerated slightly, while Asia remained the most buoyant of all regions for exports.

For 2007, the WTO predicted that a slowdown in global economic growth to 3 percent could also keep real goods trade growth to about 6 percent. Risks facing financial and property markets, and the large trade imbalances in goods and services have raised the level of uncertainty for this year and the likelihood of weaker trade expansion, WTO economists said.

Lamy said the current round of global free trade talks, which have stumbled through nearly six years, could help stabilize the global trading system.

"The uncertainties that lie ahead are a warning for us not to lose sight of the need to continue to reform the world economy," he said.

Top trade officials from the U.S., the European Union, Brazil and India said Thursday they were making progress in talks aimed at reviving treaty negotiations, but many months of inaction have dimmed prospects for a breakthrough.















Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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White House E-Mail Lost in Private Accounts

White House E-Mail Lost in Private Accounts
Messages May Have Included Discussions About Firing of Eight Prosecutors
By Michael Abramowitz and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 12, 2007; Page A04






The White House acknowledged yesterday that e-mails dealing with official government business may have been lost because they were improperly sent through private accounts intended to be used for political activities. Democrats have been seeking such missives as part of an investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Administration officials said they could offer no estimate of how many e-mails were lost but indicated that some may involve messages from White House senior adviser Karl Rove, whose role in the firings has been under scrutiny by congressional Democrats.

Democrats have charged that Rove and other officials may have used the private accounts, set up through the Republican National Committee, in an effort to avoid normal review. Under federal law, the White House is required to maintain records, including e-mails, involving presidential decision-making and deliberations. White House aides' use of their political e-mail accounts to discuss the prosecutor firings has also fanned Democratic accusations that the actions were politically motivated.

Briefing reporters yesterday about an initial review of the private e-mail system, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to discuss whether the political aides were driven by a desire to conduct business outside of potential review. "I can't speak to people's individual e-mail practices," he said.

Stanzel conceded that the White House had done a poor job of instructing staff members how to save politically oriented e-mail and said that it has developed new guidance for the more than 20 staffers who have official as well as political e-mail addresses. He also said that the White House is trying to recover the lost e-mails.

"The White House has not at this point done a good enough job at overseeing the practices of staff with political e-mail accounts," Stanzel said. "Some officials' e-mails have potentially been lost and that is a mistake that the White House is aggressively working to fix."

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the use of outside accounts, issued a statement saying that the White House disclosure is "a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," adding: "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."

The controversy over the outside e-mail accounts is a byproduct of the ongoing showdown over the prosecutor firings, emerging after the administration recently provided to Congress e-mails from some White House officials that had been sent from their RNC accounts. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, used a "gwb43.com" e-mail account last August to discuss the replacement of Bud Cummins, who was dismissed as the U.S. attorney for Arkansas, according to one e-mail.

In another e-mail exchange revealed during the investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a White House official was described as warning that "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] . . . email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." Abramoff responded in an e-mail that the message in question "was not supposed to go into the WH system."

The heads of the House and Senate judiciary committees, which are investigating the prosecutor firings, wrote White House counsel Fred F. Fielding on March 28 asking that he preserve any e-mails written by White House employees from non-government e-mail addresses.

Stanzel said in the telephone briefing yesterday that there was a good reason for providing officials such as Rove and his deputies with political e-mail accounts: to help them avoid violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from carrying out political business by using government resources.

The problem, White House officials said, is that the staffers did not receive proper guidance about what to do about e-mails that fall into a gray area between official and political business.

One White House lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under the ground rules of the briefing, said staffers are now being advised that if they have any questions about whether an e-mail is political or official, they should use their private accounts but preserve a copy for review by White House lawyers to see whether it needs to be saved under the Presidential Records Act.













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StratCom says nuclear warheads ready for a trade-in

Published Sunday April 8, 2007
StratCom says nuclear warheads ready for a trade-in
BY TIM ELFRINK
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER






Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has steadily reduced its nuclear arsenal, halted nuclear testing and stopped producing nuclear weapons.

But officials at the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls the nation's nuclear weapons from its Offutt Air Force Base headquarters, say it's time to start developing a new generation of warheads.

The estimated 6,000 nuclear warheads still in U.S. submarines, missile silos and aircraft facilities remain reliable and safely stored. But StratCom officials warn that without restarting nuclear testing, scientists aren't certain how long they can continue to give those assurances.

A new warhead, made with less hazardous materials and easier-to-test components, could ensure a reliable stockpile for years - and even lower the total number of nuclear weapons, officials say.

"The goal . . . is the fewest weapons necessary to ensure national security," StratCom's commander, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, recently told Congress. "To move in that direction, we need to move towards a safe, secure, reliable weapon."

Questions have been raised about whether spending billions to develop and produce new warheads would send the wrong signal at a time when the United States is seeking to pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs.

Critics also question the need for such a program. A recent report from the Federation of American Scientists said that nuclear components in current weapons are not in danger of becoming unreliable.

"At this point, there's no serious question about reliability or safety. We've been testing in a variety of ways all sorts of safety measures for 15 years now, and there's a long history of effectively maintaining the weapons we already have," said John Isaacs, senior policy director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

StratCom officials agree that the weapons are not at immediate risk of becoming unsafe or unreliable.

In the absence of nuclear tests, scientists have developed effective computer programs that regularly evaluate the weapons. Warheads also are regularly disassembled, so parts and nuclear components can be individually tested for reliability.

But like a classic car, the aging warheads - more than 20 years old on average - are full of parts that must be regularly repaired and sometimes replaced.

Numerous parts in each warhead must be maintained - from myriad security devices to the complex web of mechanical and electronic components that trigger the chain reaction at the heart of a nuclear explosion.

Over time, those highly specialized parts have become harder to find and reproduce, officials said.

Also, because warheads are built from rigidly precise plans, scientists can rarely add modern safety or security features.

"Imagine a high-performance car, where all the weight is shaved to the last ounce to get everything you can out of it," said Army Lt. Col. Mark Wittig, StratCom's representative to the team working on the new warhead.

"With that car crammed with a powerful engine and everything else, you're not going to have much room to install an air bag after the fact."

Because the warheads are so difficult to modify, StratCom officials would like to scrap them and replace them with a newly designed model.

The new design would be engineered so that nuclear tests could be avoided. Instead, the warheads would be easily tested with supercomputer simulations and safer to handle. They would contain new security features that could render them useless if they ever fell into the wrong hands.

Despite the improvements, the new warheads would not be new kinds of weapons, officials insist.

Their plan would only redesign and replace warheads - the devices that actually cause a nuclear explosion - not the missiles that carry them.

The newly designed warheads would fit neatly inside the old missiles. They would not produce larger explosions, nor would the missiles fly farther or faster to their targets.

The new warhead "has no different characteristics than the weapons we have today, other than it is safer, more secure and more reliable," Cartwright said.

The new warheads could help StratCom further reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile, officials said.

With Cold War-era weapons, the military must keep many redundant warheads on hand, ready to swap if mainline weapons require time-consuming repairs.

With a more reliable, easier-to-fix arsenal, the need for redundant weapons could be reduced, they say.

"You can either keep all these backup cars around in your garage, or you can find a shop that can get you back on the road in a couple of hours if you break down," said Gene Schroeder, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist consulting with StratCom.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., has been briefed on the proposal and agreed that the program could improve the "safety, security and reliability of our nuclear weapons . . . (and) allow for reduction in the overall stockpile," said Mike Buttry, Hagel's spokesman.

For now, the new warheads are in a conceptual stage. The National Nuclear Security Administration selected an initial design in March and is working with the Navy on a cost estimate.

The Navy hopes to replace a portion of its submarine-launched missile warheads by 2012. Congress first must approve the plans, and some on Capitol Hill have raised questions.

"What worries me is that the minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear warhead," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "And it's just a matter of time before other nations start to do the same thing."

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who heard Cartwright discuss the proposal before the Armed Services Committee in March, said he also has reservations.

"The program would actually lead to a substantial reduction in our stockpile and resolve concerns about unreliable and aging warheads. But I am concerned about sending mixed messages on nuclear weapons development to Iran or North Korea," Nelson said.

Some experts question the need for keeping any stockpile of nuclear weapons on hand in the absence of Cold War tensions.

"The maintenance of 6,000 nuclear warheads was insane during the Cold War," said Matthew Bunn, a senior researcher at Harvard University and an expert on nuclear proliferation. "Sixteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's doubly insane, creating far more danger than safety for the United States."

Bunn said keeping more weapons on hand increases the risk of accidents or theft. He said a new warhead program shouldn't be considered until independent analysis shows that such a plan could reduce the stockpile and control costs.









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