History > 2006 > USA > Terrorism (VI)

Jose Padilla,

fitted with blacked-out goggles, was videotaped by the government

when he was allowed outside solitary confinement to see a dentist

 Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation

NYT

4.12.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/us/04detain.html

U.S. military death toll in Iraq

exceeds number of deaths

in Sept. 11, 2001, attacks

Updated 12/26/2006 1:40 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — Two more American soldiers were killed in Iraq, officials said Tuesday, pushing the U.S. military death toll to at least 2,974 — one more than the number killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The tragic milestone came with the deaths of the two soldiers Monday in a bomb explosion southwest of Baghdad, the military said.

The deaths — announced Tuesday — raised the number of troops killed to 2,974 since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes at least seven military civilians.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks claimed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Opponents of President Bush have criticized him for raising the attacks as a justification for the protracted fight in Iraq.

"The joint patrol was conducting security operations in order to stop terrorists from placing roadside bombs in the area," the military said in a statement on the latest deaths. "As they conducted their mission, a roadside bomb exploded near one of their vehicles."

Another soldier was wounded in the explosion, the military said.

On Monday, the U.S. command announced the deaths of two other soldiers and a Marine. It said one soldier died and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle in southern Baghdad on Monday. An American soldier and a Marine died Sunday from combat wounds suffered in Anbar province.

Prior to the deaths announced Tuesday, the AP count was 15 higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. ET. At least 2,377 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The British military has reported 126 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 18; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, six; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Romania, one death each.

On Monday, British soldiers backed by tanks raided a police station in the southern city of Basra, killing seven gunmen in an effort to stop renegade Iraqi officers from executing their prisoners, the British military said.

After the British stormed the Basra police station, they removed the prisoners, who showed evidence of torture, then evacuated the building before blowing it up.

The operation showed how closely aligned some police units are with militias and death squads — and the challenges coalition forces face as they transfer authority for security to Iraqis.

In Baghdad, police found 40 bodies, apparent victims of sectarian violence. A car bomb exploded beside a market and a suicide bomber struck a bus in separate attacks that killed 14 civilians and wounded at least 33.

In the Basra raid, the British set out to arrest officers with the station's serious crimes unit who were suspected of involvement with Shiite death squads. Seven members of the rogue police unit were apprehended three days ago in other raids, said a British spokeswoman, Royal Navy Lt. Jenny Saleh.

"We had intelligence to indicate that the serious crimes unit would execute its prisoners in the coming days, so we decided to intervene," Saleh said.

British troops were fired on as they approached the station and their return fire killed seven gunmen, said Maj. Charlie Burbridge, another British military spokesman.

British and Iraqi forces transferred all 76 prisoners at the station to another facility in downtown Basra, he said. Some prisoners had "classic torture injuries" such as crushed hands and feet, cigarette and electrical burns and gunshot wounds in the knees, Burbridge said.

The British demolished the building in an effort to disband the unit. "We identified the serious crimes unit as, frankly, too far gone," Burbridge said. "We just had to get rid of it."

The unit's members, he alleged, were involved in tribal and political feuds in southern Iraq, which is mostly Shiite. They were not, he said, engaged in the kind of sectarian reprisal killings that have terrorized mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad.

Most of Britain's 7,200 troops in Iraq are based in the Basra area.

Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for Iraq's Defense Ministry, said the operation was coordinated with the Iraqi government. "Multinational forces got approval for this raid from this ministry and with participation of the Iraqi army," he said.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training Iraqi forces, said in Washington last week that efforts were underway to weed out Iraqi national police believed to be sympathetic to the militias.

Up to a quarter are thought to be aligned with the militias, which are engaged in sectarian violence.

The establishment of a viable Iraqi police force is vital to the U.S.-led coalition's goal of handing responsibility for security to Iraqis, so foreign troops can return home.

In another sign of lawlessness in Basra, gunmen on Monday robbed $740,000 from a bank about half a mile from the raided police station.

The car bomb in Baghdad, meanwhile, struck a mostly Shiite district to the east that attracts crowds of shoppers and laborers looking for work.

In another part of eastern Baghdad, a suicide bomber exploded in a minibus, killing three people and injuring 19, police said.

Another suicide bomber killed two policemen at a checkpoint at a university entrance in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

The deaths came a day after Iraq's interior minister said attacks targeting police had killed some 12,000 officers since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.

Christians attended Christmas services in Baghdad and northern Iraq, home to most of Iraq's 800,000 Christians. Some in Baghdad stayed home, however, fearing violence.

Christians are on the fringes of the conflict, which mostly involves Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs — but they have been targeted by Islamic militants.

"I hope next year will bring good things and unite all Iraqis because there is no difference between Christians and Muslims," said Abu Fadi, a worshipper who does not use his Christian name because he fears for his safety. "May God bring relief from this."

In another sign of escalating diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Iran, the White House said Monday that U.S. troops in Iraq detained at least two Iranians and released two others who had diplomatic immunity.

U.S. officials have charged that Iran provides training and other aid to Shiite militias in Iraq — including the equipment used to build roadside bombs. The Tehran regime says it only has political and religious links with Iraqi Shiites.

But Iran is believed to be expanding its shadowy role in Iraq, partly to counter U.S. influence in the region.

In Baghdad, a spokesman for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani confirmed that U.S. troops had detained two Iranians who were in Iraq at his invitation. "The president is unhappy about it," said Hiwa Osman, Talabani's media adviser.

He gave no further details, and the U.S. military said it had no comment.

"We suspect this event validates our claims about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the detained Iranians before characterizing their activities," White House spokesman Alex Conant said Monday. "We will be better able to explain what this means about the larger picture after we finish our investigation."

He said that a routine raid on suspected insurgents netted the Iranians. Two had diplomatic immunity and were released to the Iraqi government, which then released them to Iran, Conant said.

    U.S. military death toll in Iraq exceeds number of deaths in Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, UT, 26.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-12-25-iraq_x.htm

Nuclear Firms Seek Rules to Combat Attacks

December 25, 2006
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 — The nuclear power industry has asked the government to specify how new nuclear plants should minimize damage from airplane attacks, weeks after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided not to institute requirements on building new plants that are tougher than the rules that prevailed decades ago when the old ones were built.

At issue is a regulatory framework that the commission calls the Design Basis Threat, a list of weapons and abilities that an attacker is presumed to have, and that a company that has a reactor license must be prepared to defend against.

The details of the framework are secret, but it is limited to threats of attacks on land and from the water. It does not include hijacked airplanes like those used in the Sept. 11 attacks, and the five-member commission has decided not to make the rules for new reactors tougher than the ones for existing plants.

The chairman, Dale E. Klein, and other members have said that reactor owners should not be responsible for every possible threat, and that other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, must help guard against better-equipped attackers.

But the industry and the commission have been discussing threats that are beyond the design basis. And a Dec. 8 letter to the N.R.C. from the industry’s trade association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, said “the industry acknowledges that action should be taken to prevent or mitigate certain specific beyond design basis events including those resulting from large fires and explosions.”

One commissioner, Gregory B. Jaczko, has been pushing for the inclusion of airplanes in the design basis for new reactors. He said the letter was “the clearest acknowledgment so far” that the industry knew the lessons of recent history should be incorporated into the design rules.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, the commission has required existing plants to develop procedures to help cope with attack by airplane, and new plants would have to meet those procedures. Mr. Jaczko said in a telephone interview that this approach was insufficient. “I am encouraged the nuclear industry acknowledges the commission should do more to strengthen security requirements,” he said, adding that “this proposal does not ensure that any new nuclear reactors will be designed to withstand commercial aircraft crashes.”

Scott Peterson, a spokesman for the trade association, said that the group sent the letter because “they were going to regulate us anyway,” and because the industry preferred resolving the issue in the licensing rules for new plants. The industry argues that it should meet security requirements as much as possible with built-in design features, not with operating procedures after the plants are built.

Mr. Peterson said the industry wanted the regulations to be issued soon, because companies had expressed interest in building 30 new reactors. The actual number built is likely to be much smaller, experts say, but there is a widespread expectation of new orders, probably in 2007.

    Nuclear Firms Seek Rules to Combat Attacks, NYT, 25.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/washington/25nuke.html?hp&ex=1167109200&en=c57f13cb08b4920c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Judge: Iran Has Some Blame in '96 Attack

December 22, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Iranian government financed a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia and must pay $254 million to the victims' families, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth allows families of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing to seek their compensation from assets that have been seized from the conservative Islamic regime in Tehran.

On June 25, 1996, a truck bomb exploded in a military housing area known as the Khobar Towers dormitory near Dhahran. U.S. authorities have long alleged that the bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria.

Though Lamberth has previously ruled that a survivor of the blast could seek payment from Iran, Friday's ruling was the first time Tehran has been blamed for the deaths of the Americans in the bombing.

''The defendants also provided money, training and travel documents to Saudi Hezbollah members in order to facilitate the attacks,'' Lamberth wrote. ''Moreover, the sheer gravity and nature of the attack demonstrate the defendants' unlawful intent to inflict severe emotional distress upon the American servicemen as well as their close relatives.''

The lawsuit was brought by the families of 17 of the 19 people killed in the attack. Iran never responded to the lawsuit, did not send an attorney to appear in the case and isn't expected to pay the award.

But the family members can seek payment from seized Iranian accounts. The Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, which arbitrated such issues, has long been closed to new claims so the families likely would have to seek payment through foreign courts such as Italy that have seized Iranian assets.

Thaddeus C. Fennig of Wisconsin, whose son was killed in the explosion, was pleased by the opinion.

''It shows this is not forgotten,'' Fennig said. ''Once in a while, for some reason or another, this comes up with people and many of them don't even remember it anymore.''

Lamberth relied heavily on testimony by former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who investigated the bombings.

Two Iranian government security agencies and senior members of the Iranian government itself provided funding, training and logistical help to terrorists who carried out the attack on a dormitory that housed U.S. Air Force pilots and staff in Saudi Arabia, Freeh testified.

    Judge: Iran Has Some Blame in '96 Attack, NYT, 22.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorist-Bombing-Lawsuit.html

PATH Tunnels Seen as Fragile in Bomb Attack

December 22, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and WILLIAM NEUMAN

An analysis done for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says that the PATH train tunnels under the Hudson River are more vulnerable to a bomb attack than previously thought, and that a relatively small amount of high explosives could cause significant flooding of the rail system within hours.

The analysis, based on work by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, revises some critical aspects of an assessment of the system’s vulnerability that was presented to the agency last spring. It makes clear that the tunnels — four tubes of varying design and sturdiness that stretch across the Hudson riverbed — are structurally more fragile than first thought.

A draft summary of the most recent analysis was given to The New York Times by a government official who was troubled by what the official felt was a lack of action in response to the analysis, which the official said the Port Authority got about three weeks ago. The official said the latest analysis indicates that it would take only six minutes for one of the PATH tubes to flood if a significant but not necessarily very large bomb were detonated.

Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for the Port Authority, would not answer specific questions about the analysis, or with whom it had been shared.

“If we believed in any way that passengers were in danger, we’d close the system,” he said. “That would happen immediately.” He said the Port Authority police had substantially increased patrols and bag searches in the PATH system in recent weeks. In addition, the agency’s board voted on Dec. 14 to spend $180 million on PATH security improvements. He refused to say what had prompted the actions.

The vulnerability of the PATH tubes and other tunnels has long been a source of concern to security, transportation and government officials, as well as the public. It has given rise to various projections about their likelihood as a target and what ought to be done to safeguard them.

The fears have existed at least as far back as 1993, the year of the first terror attack on the World Trade Center. Various agencies, including New York City Transit and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, over the years have been studying ways to improve the tunnels’ security and stalwartness.

Just last July, several people were arrested overseas in what authorities said was a plot to bomb the PATH system — which has a weekday ridership of 230,000. The arrests halted what officials said was a bid to set off backpack bombs in a PATH train car and flood the tunnels. Some published reports said maps and other material relating to the PATH tunnels had been found on the computer of one of those arrested.

That investigation began a year before the arrests, about the same time that an analysis of the vulnerability of the transit system’s underwater train tubes was jointly commissioned by the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the operation of the city’s subways. It is unclear, however, whether the investigation prompted the analysis.

A 19-page summary of the analysis details some of the measures the Port Authority has been planning to put in place to better secure the PATH system: laying concrete blankets atop the tubes to plug holes caused by a blast, strengthening portions of the tubes and installing floodgates to prevent the system from being overwhelmed.

The official who gave a copy of the report to The Times said the Port Authority, whose executive director and board members are appointed by the governors of New York and New Jersey, had informed neither state executive of the most recent results. Neither has it yet shared the new findings with the United States Department of Homeland Security, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the New York Police Department or other law enforcement agencies, the official said.

The official disputed the Port Authority’s contention that it had increased patrols and bag searches.

Aides speaking for Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and Gov. George E. Pataki of New York would not comment on whether the two leaders had been apprised of the latest analysis, but they insisted that the governors are both fully and regularly briefed on the security of the region’s mass transportation system.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg would not comment on the analysis. But a senior Police Department official acknowledged that the police had not been informed of the newer findings. Yesterday afternoon, Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, said he could not determine whether anyone at the agency had been notified.

Speaking generally, Mr. La Vorgna of the Port Authority said the agency was “constantly undergoing threat assessment,” and that the analysis was regularly shared with its federal, state and city partners.

Since 9/11, government and security officials have emphasized that there is no way to fully protect every possible target. But in New York, officials have regularly sought to reassure the public that serious steps are being taken to address major vulnerabilities in the area’s array of tunnels, bridges and rail systems.

The analysis appears to be the most detailed and sophisticated government review of the train tubes’ vulnerability. Initial findings were shared last May with some members of the agency, but were not made public, and further tests were ordered. More tests are being done in an effort to come up with the best way to strengthen the tunnels.

The Hudson River tubes of the PATH system, which suffered serious damage in the 2001 terror attack, are more vulnerable than most other tunnels that pass under the city’s waterways because they lie in the soft riverbed, unlike other tunnels that are bored through the underlying bedrock. Silt over years has built up atop the tubes, which were laid roughly 90 years ago, but they are not in bedrock.

Several city subway tunnels beneath the East River are in many ways similar to the four PATH tunnels — essentially cast-iron tubes that run along the riverbed. An official at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said that agency is working on an analysis of its tubes.

The PATH analysis, which is characterized as preliminary and continuing, examines the three different types of PATH tubes under the Hudson. Roughly three-quarters of the tubes’ total length is made of unlined cast iron, with the balance made from concrete-lined cast iron or brick. Many of the details of the analysis — including the size of the bombs under discussion, their placement and the exact nature of the vulnerability — are being withheld by The Times.

The worst case included in the analysis suggests that a bomb that could be easily carried aboard a train could punch a 50-square-foot hole in one side of a tube, possibly breaching both sides of the tunnel. Under that situation, 1.2 million gallons of water a minute could pour into the tunnel, flooding parts of the system in a matter of hours.

That is a much more dire view than an earlier draft of the analysis — completed last May — contemplated.

PATH trains run in sets of seven cars, each with a capacity of 130, so that there could potentially be about 900 people on a crowded train. New cars on order would allow 10-car trains that could carry more people.

The analysis — presented in November by a senior member of the Port Authority’s engineering department to a small group of the agency’s senior managers, says that the new results are based on a combination of tests on the cast iron from the tunnels and computer modeling. It recommends seeking an additional $3.8 million to supplement the $4.5 million already authorized for the continuing analysis.

Additional computer models, it said, were also being run to develop more specific results. The Livermore laboratory, a government-financed institution that evaluates security threats, has also done blast analysis for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the San Francisco Bay area.

The strategy to minimize the impact of explosions in the tunnels has been organized into a three-part program, according to the report: Laying down the material to cover the tubes, known as Geotextile Concrete Mats; installing floodgates on the tunnels to minimize flooding, protect other parts of the system and allow repair after a blast; and strengthening critical portions of the tubes.

Simulations show how, “in the event of a tunnel breach the mat would be pulled into and clog the opening to at least reduce the rate of inflow of soil and water into the tunnel,” the summary said.

The summary recommended that Port Authority officials seek authorization for an additional $71 million to build and install floodgates at the World Trade Center and Exchange Place stops at the agency’s December board meeting, which occurred Dec. 14. Mr. La Vorgna would not say what measures were covered by the $180 million the agency voted to spend on PATH security improvements or whether that sum included the $71 million.

    PATH Tunnels Seen as Fragile in Bomb Attack, NYT, 22.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/nyregion/22security.html?hp&ex=1166850000&en=afb631e839568d31&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. military: Senior al-Qaeda leader was captured in Mosul

Updated 12/20/2006 7:58 AM ET
AP
USA Today

BAGHDAD (AP) — U.S.-led forces captured a senior al-Qaeda leader who was responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths and housed foreign fighters who carried out suicide bombings, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The leader, who was not identified, was arrested in a raid in Mosul on Dec. 14, the military said in a statement.

"The terrorist leader was attempting to flee from the location when Coalition Forces chased him across a street and detained him," the statement said.

It said the suspect served as al-Qaeda's military chief in Mosul in 2005, and then took up the same job in western Baghdad.

"During that time, he coordinated car vehicle-borne improvised explosives device attacks and kidnap for ransom operations in Baghdad," the military said. It cited reports that said he organized an attempt to shoot down a U.S. military helicopter in May this year.

"After a few months he fled Baghdad due to Coalition Forces closing in on him," the statement said.

The military said the capture would lead them closer to Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who took over as leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq after his predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June.

Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government's national security adviser, said this month that 60% of al-Qaeda in Iraq's leadership has now been captured or killed.

    U.S. military: Senior al-Qaeda leader was captured in Mosul, UT, 20.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-20-mosul-capture_x.htm

Al-Zawahri: U.S. is talking to wrong people in Iraq

Updated 12/20/2006 8:13 AM ET
AP
USA Today

CAIRO (AP) — The deputy leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, told the United States on Wednesday that it was negotiating with the wrong people in Iraq, strongly implying in a video broadcast on Al-Jazeera that Washington should be talking to his terror group.

"I want to tell the Republicans and the Democrats together ... you are trying to negotiate with some parties to secure your withdrawal, but these parities won't find you an exit (from Iraq) and your attempts will yield nothing but failure," al-Zawahri said on the tape, sections of which were aired in successive news bulletins.

"It seems that you will go through a painful journey of failed negotiations until you will be forced to return to negotiate with the real powers," he said, without identifying these powers.

The video — which bore the logo of al-Qaeda's media production house, al-Sahab — was the 15th time this year that al-Zawahri has sent out a statement. In Wednesday's tape, he appeared exactly as in previous videos that have been authenticated by CIA analysts. He wore a black turban and white robe and pointed his finger at the camera for emphasis. As usual, he had a rifle behind his right shoulder that was leaning against a plain brown backdrop.

Al-Zawahri appeared to be trying to mobilise support against a range of Middle Eastern players — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his Hamas opponents, Iran and its Shiite allies in Iraq and elsewhere.

He attacked the proposal of Abbas to hold early elections to resolve the contest between the Fatah and Hamas parties, which has degenerated to daily gunbattles in the streets of Gaza.

In the clips broadcast by Al-Jazeera, al-Zawahri did not say how the two parties should settle their dispute, but he scoffed at elections, saying: "Any way other than holy war, will lead us only to loss and defeat."

He did not say whom the Palestinians should fight, but previously he has always recommended "holy war" against Israel and the West.

He described Abbas as "America's man in Palestine," and warned that if Palestinians accepted him as their president, it would be "the end of holy war."

In what appeared to be a reference to Abbas and his Fatah party, al-Zawahri said: "Those who are trying to liberate the Islamic territories through elections based on secular constitutions, or on decisions to hand over Palestine to the Jews, will not liberate one grain of sand of Palestine."

He also criticized the militant Hamas party — although he did not name it — which has condemned the proposal for early elections. He accused Hamas of making a number of concessions that would ultimately lead to "the recognition of Israel."

He said these concessions began with Hamas' signing "the truce" with Israel last year, then the group took part in the January elections "based on a secular constitution," and recognized Abbas as the head of the Palestinian authority.

Al-Zawahri rebuked Hamas particularly for not pushing for an Islamic constitution before it contested the elections.

"Aren't they an Islamic movement? Aren't they campaigning for the word of God to be supreme?" he said, adding the party should have insisted on the drafting of "an Islamic constitution for Palestine."

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum brushed off al-Zawahri's criticism and defended the party's electoral policy.

"Our Palestinian institutions are in need of reform, and to fix them we need to participate in the parliament and other institutions," Barhoum said.

"We are not responding to al-Zawahri so much as we are affirming who we are as a movement," Barhoum added.

Al-Zawahri's comments were expected to have little influence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hamas has distanced itself from al-Qaeda, saying its struggle is against Israel, not the West at large.

"I don't think it would have any impact," said analyst Diaa Rashwan of the tape.

Rashwan, an expert on militant groups at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said Hamas is a strong critic of al-Qaeda, although both groups call for Israel's destruction.

Abbas has accused al-Qaeda of infiltrating the Palestinian territories, but Palestinian security officials say there is no hard evidence of that. They accuse local groups of fabricating links to al-Qaeda as a diversion.

Al-Zawahri criticized Iran and Shiites abroad who supported the U.S.-backed governments in Iraq and Afghanistan while they also backed the anti-Israeli forces in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

"How come the rush to deal with the two governments appointed by the occupier in Iraq and Afghanistan — support them, celebrate them, defend them, challenge their oppositions — while cooperation with the Zionist enemy in Lebanon and Palestine is labelled a betrayal?" he said.

Al-Jazeera staff declined to comment on how and when they obtained the tape.

The broadcast came two days after a posting on a militant Islamic website announced that a message from al-Zawahri was coming.

    Al-Zawahri: U.S. is talking to wrong people in Iraq, UT, 20.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-20-al-qaeda-palestinians_x.htm

First steel column for WTC skyscraper installed at ground zero

Updated 12/20/2006 7:53 AM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — The first 25-ton steel column for the new Freedom Tower was installed Tuesday at ground zero, another milestone in prolonged efforts to build a new office tower to replace the World Trade Center.

The 31-foot high white steel column, painted with an American flag and the words "Freedom Tower," was picked up by a crane and set into place on the southern edge of the planned 1,776-foot building. Politicians and workers at the site cheered as the column was installed shortly after 11:30 a.m.

"Today the steel rises, the Freedom Tower rises from the ashes of Sept. 11, and the people of New York and the people of American can be proud," said Gov. George Pataki. A second column, about a foot taller and covered with signatures from steelworkers and politicians in Virginia, was installed a short time later.

Officials hoped to raise a third column later Tuesday.

In the next two weeks, more columns will be set around the perimeter, including two covered with signatures of Sept. 11 families, steelworkers, architects and politicians. Officials said the signature-free column that was installed Tuesday was a slightly different length than the others and was long ago scheduled to be installed first.

By next spring, builders say the jumbo steel columns will rise to street level — about 70 feet from the bottom of ground zero.

The 27 columns — among the largest made in the world — were forged in Luxembourg, then shipped to Lynchburg, Va., to be fabricated so they could be installed at the foundation. The entire tower will eventually be built with 45,000 tons of steel, builders say.

Virginia residents and steelworkers signed one of the columns earlier this month and Sept. 11 victims' relatives and first responders wrote messages on another on Sunday.

The tower has been redesigned several times; politicians lay a granite cornerstone in July 2004 to begin construction, but later had to move the building after city police said it would be vulnerable to terrorism in its location, too close to traffic. It was redesigned, the cornerstone moved off the site and construction began again this spring.

Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer and the incoming head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is building the tower, recently said they planned to look again at the tower's designs. Spitzer has also questioned the tower's economic viability, although he has committed to moving the governor's office there when it opens in 2011. State and federal agencies have already agreed to occupy half of the building's office space.

    First steel column for WTC skyscraper installed at ground zero, UT, 20.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-12-20-freedom-tower_x.htm

Money to Treat 9/11 Workers Will Run Out, Officials Say

December 19, 2006
The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN

The roughly $40 million that was set aside by the federal government to treat rescue workers, volunteers and firefighters who became ill after helping with the 9/11 cleanup and recovery will run out in months, physicians and federal officials said yesterday.

Members of Congress from New York and New Jersey secured $75 million a year ago to pay for health care expenses — including $40 million for treatments like drugs and medical procedures — for about 32,000 workers who reported ailments after working at ground zero. Distribution of the treatment money did not begin in earnest until October.

Officials at the two major monitoring and treatment programs, one run by Mount Sinai Medical Center and the other by the Fire Department, said yesterday that at the current spending rate, the treatment money would run out by spring or summer. They told top federal health officials that unless more financing was provided, they would be forced to notify thousands of patients that their treatment could soon end.

If all the workers needing treatment were to receive it, according to a new estimate by federal officials, the cost could exceed $250 million a year — a figure that may well meet with resistance from lawmakers in Washington, who are facing intense budget pressures. Several Democratic legislators have said they will make 9/11 health a priority when their party takes control of Congress next month.

The two-page federal estimate, which projects total annual costs of $256.6 million, was provided to The New York Times by an official involved in talks over how to pay for the care. It includes $163.6 million in direct medical expenses for 19,200 patients: $91.2 million for 9,600 patients with respiratory or digestive disorders, $58 million for 8,000 patients with 9/11-related mental illnesses and $14.4 million for 1,600 patients with musculoskeletal conditions. Medications account for more than half of the treatment cost.

About 32,000 people are registered in the two treatment programs. Some are only monitored periodically, but even the monitoring (including exams) will cost $30 million a year, according to the estimate. The estimate also anticipates that hospitalization costs will start at $8 million a year and “will increase significantly over time.”

It anticipates $49.1 million a year in administrative costs, $6 million for translation services and an as-yet-undetermined figure for “emerging issues” like complicated orthopedic diseases and disorders that may not become evident for many years, including certain lung and autoimmune diseases and cancers.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and others have long argued that the federal commitment to aiding 9/11 workers was too little and too late. Yesterday morning, Mrs. Clinton, three House members from New York City and labor representatives and medical experts met with federal health officials at Hunter College in Manhattan.

Mrs. Clinton said the new Congress faces “a lot of tough choices.” She added: “I am not going to say where the money should come from, I’m merely saying that this should be a national priority. It is not just a New York priority.”

Dr. John O. Agwunobi, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, made no commitments other than promising to convey the urgency of the matter to Michael O. Leavitt, the department’s secretary, according to several participants in the meeting, which was not open to the public.

Dr. Agwunobi and Dr. John Howard, the director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which prepared the estimate, are co-chairmen of a task force appointed by Mr. Leavitt to examine 9/11 health issues.

Holly Babin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said yesterday that she was not familiar with the estimate and that several approaches were being considered. “The task force is to come up with a number of different options and models,” she wrote in an e-mail message, adding that it was looking at a variety of approaches and preparing cost estimates for each.

“This work is ongoing, and therefore it is premature to speculate on cost for any or all, particularly since we do not know what option the secretary will choose,” Ms. Babin wrote.

At the meeting, Dr. Agwunobi said the task force might not complete its analysis until February or March, and New York officials responded that that would be too late to affect President Bush’s budget presentation, according to Representative Jerrold L. Nadler, who attended the meeting with two other House members, Vito J. Fossella and Carolyn B. Maloney.

In an interview, Dr. Agwunobi, who heard personal accounts from two men — Marvin E. Bethea, a paramedic, and Jonathan F. Sferazo, a structural-iron worker — who founded Unsung Heroes Helping Heroes, a support group for rescue workers, described the meeting as “very honest.”

“This was actually a very humbling experience,” he said. “It was an opportunity for me to put the voices with all the data that we see in Washington, to put a face to the victims.” After the meeting, Dr. Agwunobi visited the two treatment program centers.

Other participants left the meeting frustrated. “We had two questions for Dr. Agwunobi: Will you put it in the president’s budget and what is your plan?” said Micki Siegel de Hernández, a district health and safety director for the Communications Workers of America. “He skirted around the issue and did not answer.”

Dr. Howard, who in February was named the federal coordinator for 9/11 health efforts, expressed sympathy for the local officials. He said of Dr. Agwunobi, “We hope that we’re able to fill his mind with all the good works that we’re doing here and the need that people have in New York.”

    Money to Treat 9/11 Workers Will Run Out, Officials Say, NYT, 19.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/nyregion/19health.html

Editorial

Unfinished Business

December 17, 2006
The New York Times
 

Some recent images from George W. Bush’s war on terror:

¶Jose Padilla, the supposed dirty bomber, submitting while guards blindfolded him and covered his ears for a walk from his cell to a dentist’s chair.

¶Government lawyers arguing that a prisoner could not testify that he was tortured by American agents, because their brutality was a secret.

¶A judge dismissing another prisoner’s challenge to his detention, after a new law stripped basic rights from those Mr. Bush has designated “illegal enemy combatants.”

¶The White House scorning lawmakers’ attempts to rein in Mr. Bush’s illegal domestic spying.

This is the legacy of a Republican Congress that enabled the president’s imperial visions of his authority. It leaves the new Democratic majority with much urgent, unfinished business to restore due process, civil liberties and the balance of powers.

Military Tribunals

In the heat of the midterm campaign, Congress was stampeded into establishing military courts for suspected terrorists. The measure improved on Mr. Bush’s own kangaroo courts, which were struck down by the Supreme Court. But the bill over all was a national disgrace.

Among the many things that Congress needs to fix are the bill’s broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant,” which could subject legal United States residents to summary imprisonment; its repudiation of the Geneva Conventions to allow the president to decide what prisoner abuse he will permit; its denial of the basic right of appeal to any noncitizen designated as an “illegal enemy combatant”; and its stripping of the powers of federal courts. The law is also far too lax on the use of coerced evidence and secret evidence. The definition of torture should be changed to reflect civilized norms.

We were greatly encouraged last week when Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who will head the Judiciary Committee, said fixing this bill would be a priority for his panel.

The C.I.A. Prisons

At the insistence of Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Military Commissions Act gave legal cover to the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret illegal prisons, which house foreign citizens who are often abducted off the streets of their hometowns and brutalized. Congress should at minimum bring these prisons under the rule of law, and make sure that C.I.A. interrogators are given clear instructions comporting with American values. Ideally, Congress would investigate and decide whether this operation has any national security value, and if it doesn’t, immediately close the prisons down.

Domestic Spying

Mr. Bush personally authorized the National Security Agency to ignore federal law and eavesdrop on telephone calls and e-mail between the United States and other countries without a warrant. Republican lawmakers have introduced bills that would legalize the program after the fact. The only remotely sensible measure is from Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who has proposed forcing the eavesdropping back under the 1978 surveillance law and giving the administration a bit more flexibility to do electronic surveillance.

But we agree with Senator John Rockefeller IV, the incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who says more needs to be known about the program before enacting new laws. The administration has stymied Congressional efforts to look into the spying operation, refusing even to turn over the presidential order creating it.

The Intelligence on Iraq

Nearly two and a half years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported on the nation’s spy agencies’ prewar failure to figure out that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and promised to deliver a report on whether Mr. Bush and his team pressured the agencies to cherry-pick or hype evidence — or lied outright to Americans.

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican head of the intelligence panel, dragged out the second phase of the report, with the aim of killing it. We hope Mr. Rockefeller finishes the job.

That will require heavy lifting on the most important section, comparing the statements of administration officials to what they knew about the intelligence. Mr. Roberts insisted that it cover every public statement by any administration official or member of Congress dating back to 1991. What President Bill Clinton or Senator Hillary Clinton said about Iraq is irrelevant. What matters is what was said by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney — who ordered the invasion of Iraq — and by their aides. We hope Mr. Rockefeller’s committee will sift through the hundreds of statements collected so far and focus on the ones that matter.

Unhappily, this is not an exhaustive list and there will be big fights over many of these issues. But it is not too late to take action. The midterm elections prove that despite all the posturing and fearmongering, the American public has not been blinded or deafened to what this country stands for and the need for truth.

    Unfinished Business, NYT, 17.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/opinion/17sun1.html

The cells at Camp 6, which began to house its first prisoners last week.
Following a riot at Guantánamo in May, the facility has been retrofitted to make it more difficult to attack guards and commit suicide.

Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

Military Taking a Tougher Line With Detainees        NYT        16.12.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/washington/16gitmo.html?hp&ex=
1166331600&en=dfe964562e1373aa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Military Taking a Tougher Line

With Detainees

December 16, 2006
The New York Times
By TIM GOLDEN

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Dec. 10 — As the first detainees began moving last week into Guantánamo’s modern, new detention facility, Camp 6, the military guard commander stood beneath the high, concrete walls of the compound, looking out on a fenced-in athletic yard.

The yard, where the detainees were to have played soccer and other sports, had been part of a plan to ease the conditions under which more than 400 men are imprisoned here, nearly all of them without having been charged. But that plan has changed.

“At this point, I just don’t see using that,” the guard commander, Col. Wade F. Dennis, said.

After two years in which the military sought to manage terrorism suspects at Guantánamo with incentives for good behavior, steady improvements in their living conditions and even dialogue with prison leaders, the authorities here have clamped down decisively in recent months.

Security procedures have been tightened. Group activities have been scaled back. With the retrofitting of Camp 6 and the near-emptying of another showcase camp for compliant prisoners, military officials said about three-fourths of the detainees would eventually be held in maximum-security cells. That is a stark departure from earlier plans to hold a similar number in medium-security units.

Officials said the shift reflected the military’s analysis — after a series of hunger strikes, a riot last May and three suicides by detainees in June — that earlier efforts to ease restrictions on the detainees had gone too far.

The commander of the Guantánamo task force, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., said the tougher approach also reflected the changing nature of the prison population, and his conviction that all of those now held here are dangerous men. “They’re all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants,” Admiral Harris said in an interview.

He added, “I don’t think there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist.”

Admiral Harris, who took command on March 31, referred in part to the recent departure from Guantánamo of the last of 38 men whom the military had classified since early 2005 as “no longer enemy combatants.” Still, about 100 others who had been cleared by the military for transfer or release remained here while the State Department tried to arrange their repatriation.

[Shortly after Admiral Harris’s remarks, another 15 detainees were sent home to Saudi Arabia, where they were promptly returned to their families.]

The detainee population here has also been reshaped by the arrival in September of 14 terror suspects, including the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who had been held by the Central Intelligence Agency in secret prisons overseas.

United States officials said these so-called high-value suspects were being held apart from the rest of the Guantánamo prisoners, at a secret detention facility supervised by C.I.A. officers. The 14 have been visited twice by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, but have not yet been interrogated by military intelligence officials, these officials said.

Next year, after the Defense Department finishes rewriting rules for the military tribunals that the Bush administration first established in November 2001, the intelligence agency’s prisoners are to be charged with war crimes. The timetable for their prosecutions remains uncertain.

Military officials said they would continue to try to improve conditions at the prison to the extent that security considerations allowed. They said they have abandoned special cell blocks for discipline and segregation, so that prisoners who violate rules are now punished simply by the withdrawal of various privileges in their regular cells. The authorities have also standardized rules for exercise, allowing each detainee at least two hours a day, they said.

Nonetheless, the tightening of security at the detention center represents a significant shift in Guantánamo’s operations.

Since spring 2004, the military’s handling of the detainees had been heavily influenced by the political and diplomatic pressures that grew out of the Abu Ghraib scandal and other cases of prisoner abuse. At the same time, Guantánamo’s focus was shifting from interrogations to the long-term detention of men who, for the most part, would never be charged with any crime.

With little guidance from Washington, senior officers here began in 2005 to edge back toward the traditional Geneva Convention rules for prisoner treatment that President Bush had disavowed after 9/11 for the fight against terrorism, military officials said. Military officers began listening more attentively to the prisoners’ complaints, and eventually met a few times with a council of detainee leaders.

Those talks were quickly aborted in August 2005. The hunger strikes were effectively broken last January, when the military began strapping detainees into padded “restraint chairs” to force-feed them through stomach tubes.

But those protests gave way to several drug overdoses in May and the hangings in June of three prisoners — all of whom had previously been hunger strikers.

The current Guantánamo commanders eschewed any criticism of their predecessors. But they were blunt in laying out a different approach.

Asked about his discussions with prisoners, Colonel Dennis said he basically had none. As for the handful of detainees who have continued to wage hunger strikes, including three who were being force-fed last week, he said they would get no “special attention” from him.

“If they want to do that, hook it up,” he said, apparently referring to the restraint chair system for force-feeding. “If that’s what you want to do, that’s your choice.”

Admiral Harris said he had ordered a hardening of the security posture on the basis of new insights into the threat that the detainees pose. “We have learned how committed they are, just how serious they are, and how dangerous they are,” he said.

Several military officials said Admiral Harris took over the Guantánamo task force with a greater concern about security, and soon ordered his aides to draw up plans to deal with hostage-takings and other emergencies.

He and Colonel Dennis both asserted that Camp 4 — where dozens of detainees rioted during an aggressive search of their quarters last May — represented a particular danger.

Admiral Harris said detainees there had used the freedom of the camp to train one another in terrorist tactics, and in 2004 plotted unsuccessfully to seize a food truck and use it to run over guards.

“Camp 4 is an ideal planning ground for nefarious activity,” he said.

But according to several recent interviews with military personnel who served here at the time, the riot in May did not transpire precisely as military officials had described it. The disturbance culminated with what the military had said was an attack by detainees on members of a Quick Reaction Force that burst into one barracks to stop a detainee who appeared to be hanging himself.

But officers familiar with the event said the force stormed in after a guard saw a detainee merely holding up a sheet and that his intentions were ambiguous. A guard also mistakenly broadcast the radio code for multiple suicide attempts, heightening the alarm, the officers said.

Admiral Harris conceded that an error “could have been” made, but said “it was certainly no accident” that the prisoners had slicked the floor of their quarters with soapy water and excrement, and fought the guards with makeshift weapons. He said he believed the guards acted properly.

The May 18 search took place after at least two prisoners were found unconscious from overdoses of hoarded drugs. The detainees who attacked the guards were known as especially religious, and had been angered in the past by searches of their Korans.

After the three suicides in June, Camp 6 was substantially reconfigured. Staircases and catwalks were fenced in so that detainees could not jump from them to attack guards or try to kill themselves. Shower stalls were built higher so they could not be used for hangings. Exercise yards were divided up into a series of one-man pens.

The detainees will still look out the small windows of their computer-controlled cell doors to see the stainless steel picnic tables where they were once supposed to have shared their meals; they just will not be able to sit at those tables with other detainees.

Military officials confirmed that since the suicides in June, three detainees who were part of the council that negotiated with military commanders had been kept isolated from nearly all other prisoners in Camp Echo, a collection of bungalows where detainees often see their lawyers.

Those detainees include Shaker Aamer, a Saudi resident of Britain who is accused of having ties to Al Qaeda; Ghassan al-Sharbi, a Saudi electrical engineer who was charged earlier with plotting to make bombs for Qaeda forces in Afghanistan; and Saber Lahmar, an Algerian religious scholar seized in Bosnia.

Lawyers for Mr. Aamer and Mr. Lahmar said that they had been alone for most of that time, and that the isolation was causing them psychological damage.

“They have thrown away the key and forgotten him even though he is spiraling down physically and psychologically,” Mr. Lahmar’s lawyer, Stephen H. Olesky, said.

Noting that a petition for relief on behalf of Mr. Lahmar has been before a federal appeals court for nearly two years, he added, “They know we do not have a judge to take this case to, so they can pile on the detainee.”

Colonel Dennis, the commander of the detention group, said Mr. Lahmar was being allowed to exercise and had access to any medical attention he required.

    Military Taking a Tougher Line With Detainees, NYT, 16.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/washington/16gitmo.html?hp&ex=1166331600&en=dfe964562e1373aa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Op-Ed Contributor

A Fair Deal for 9/11’s Injured

December 14, 2006
The New York Times
By KENNETH R. FEINBERG

FIVE years have passed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but the flood of litigation continues unabated in federal court in Manhattan. Some 6,000 people are suing New York City, the Port Authority and more than 100 private contractors for negligence in exposing workers to toxic dust and fumes after the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Thousands of additional claims are expected in the next few months. Waiting in the wings are approximately 40,000 workers who cleaned up the site after Sept. 11, as well as residents of Lower Manhattan, observers of the cleanup effort and people who simply breathed the harmful air on their way to work — all potential litigants. Some will probably eventually suffer the same ailments that have led to the current lawsuits.

The federal judge presiding over the lawsuits has urged settlement, warning that continuing the litigation is inefficient, expensive and risky to all parties. The mere existence of thousands of lawsuits fuels uncertainty and delays the payment of compensation to eligible victims.

Two local members of Congress have introduced federal legislation to provide compensation to people injured by the toxic dust. Congress is understandably reluctant: why open the doors of the federal Treasury yet again to New Yorkers and not provide something similar to the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane Katrina and other calamities? The government is generally not in the business of compensating the victims of life’s misfortune.

The federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which I oversaw, paid more than $7 billion in public compensation to the families of those who died in the World Trade Center attacks and to injured survivors. Of that, about $500 million went to more than 1,300 recovery workers and others suffering from the same respiratory injuries that now plague those in the courtroom. Since none of these 6,000 people who have filed lawsuits received diagnoses of 9/11-related injuries until after the fund’s filing deadline of Dec. 22, 2003, they were ineligible for compensation. So, reluctantly, they have turned to the courts.

There is a better way: use the principles of the 9/11 fund as a blueprint to resolve the current litigation and get money into the hands of recovery workers and others quickly.

More than $1 billion in public funds is currently available for distribution as part of the initial federal appropriation earmarked for New York City’s 9/11 recovery. If you add financial contributions from those contractors and others involved in the litigation, and supplement that with funds from various city charities, a total of at least $1.5 billion is available to settle the pending lawsuits — more than sufficient to pay all eligible claims, as well as lawyers’ fees and costs.

Eligibility for compensation under the settlement would require proof that the victim was in the general proximity of the World Trade Center during the cleanup period. Each claimant would also supply medical documentation of an illness caused by exposure to harmful air at the site (the medical criteria would be negotiated as part of the settlement to avoid a rush of spurious claims).

New York City and the other defendants would not admit they were at fault for these injuries; they would merely agree to use available funds to pay all documented claims. (It remains an open question whether the defendants are legally responsible for such injuries.) Up to half of this money should be set aside to pay for claims stemming from future diagnoses of injuries caused by breathing the toxic air.

As with the 9/11 fund, the neediest victims, those without a financial safety net, should be the priority. Firefighters, police officers and other uniformed responders at the World Trade Center already receive benefits from pension and health insurance policies, and these amounts should be subtracted from any payments made as a result of the settlement. Funds received by eligible claimants would be used primarily for medical monitoring and other health-related services.

And, just as the 9/11 fund should be viewed as a unique public policy response to an unprecedented national calamity, so, too, would this settlement be considered a one-time solution to all remaining physical injury claims occurring at the World Trade Center.

It is unlikely that such a settlement would expose New York City and others to future demands for similar compensation. The defendants and the court could make clear that the settlement was achieved only because of the existence of available funds and the unparalleled nature of the attack.

In any event, concern about future legal liability is no excuse for refusing to act now in compensating victims in distress.

Kenneth R. Feinberg is the former administrator of the federal Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.

    A Fair Deal for 9/11’s Injured, NYT, 14.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/opinion/14feinberg.html

Muslim Charity Sues Treasury Dept. and Seeks Dismissal of Charges of Terrorism

December 12, 2006
The New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 11 — In a new challenge to Washington over its closing several American Muslim charities that it has accused of aiding terrorism, the largest such group sued on Monday seeking dismissal of many of the charges.

Lawyers for the group, the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Tex., filed suit in Federal District Court in Dallas two weeks after a federal judge in California called into question a crucial provision in designating terrorist supporters. Since December 2001, the Treasury Department has designated Holy Land and five other Muslim charities in the United States as terrorist supporters, seizing millions of dollars in assets and halting their activities.

No accused charity or any senior officer have been convicted on a charge of terrorism. Some charities have faced no criminal charges.

In a separate case against a Georgia man whom the prosecution identified as a fund-raiser for Holy Land, the defendant pleaded guilty this year to sending money to Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian political party that Washington first designated as a terrorist organization in 1995.

The foundation denies that the man had an official post.

The government has accused the foundation of having been the American fund-raising arm of Hamas. The charity and five officers are expected to go on trial in July on charges of financing a foreign terrorist organization, money laundering and tax fraud.

In October, Ghassan Elashi, a founder and former chairman of the charity, was sentenced to more than six years in prison after he and four brothers were convicted of violating export laws by shipping computers to Syria and Libya, both once on the United States list of terrorism sponsors. Libya was removed this year.

Last year, Mr. Elashi and two brothers were convicted of helping a Hamas leader launder money.

The Treasury Department’s repeated refusal to unfreeze charities’ assets so they can be sent abroad has provoked alarm and frustration in the philanthropic world.

“The question is not whether the individual nonprofits are guilty as organizations,” said Kay Guinane of OMB Watch, a Washington group advocating government transparency.

“The issue is whether there is a fair process to determine that and how to protect the charitable dollars so they are used for the intended purposes,” Ms. Guinane said. “What Treasury has done is treat charities the same way they treat the criminal process. It has really hurt the U.S. image in the places where the aid was expected and where people were depending on it.”

Early last month, philanthropic groups from across the nation sent Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulsen Jr. a letter asking that he find a way to release the assets to their intended recipients. Mr. Paulsen has not responded, Ms. Guinane said.

A spokeswoman for the department, Molly Millerwise, said courts, citing national security, had repeatedly upheld the government’s use of secret evidence to freeze assets of charitable organizations.

“These institutions have been designated because they are financing terrorism,” Ms. Millerwise said. “We have to make sure that the money is kept in place and does not go to illicit ends.”

Critics say the law prevents the airing of secret evidence in such cases. “When Treasury says the courts have upheld its action, they are saying the courts found its action was not arbitrary and capricious,” Ms. Guinane said. “Not that the court made any kind of independent determination of the merits or factual accuracy.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Bryan Sierra, said he could not comment on the Holy Land motion because it was too new. As a matter of procedure, Mr. Sierra said, prosecution does not automatically follow the designation of a charity as a terrorist organization.

“Not every case is a criminal case,” he said. “It’s a question of can you come up with enough evidence to prosecute based on a violation of the statutes of material support for terrorism.”

Charitable giving is one of the five pillars of Islam, and the closing of Muslim charities has become a major source of American Muslims’ distrust of the federal government.

Many American Muslims accuse the government of, at best, acting out of fear and ignorance to tamp contributions. At worst, they say the Bush administration focuses on Arab and Muslim groups critical of United States policy in the Middle East, particularly charities that aid poor Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel.

“That was a valve that does not put the Palestinian population under pressure,” Hatem Bazian, a professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said. “If you starve them, they will take the deal the least acceptable to them.”

The government says just Muslim charities have been designated because they are the ones that terrorist groups have penetrated.

“The sad truth is that we have seen groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda infiltrate the charitable community, and specifically the Arab and Muslim charitable community,” Ms. Millerwise said. “When we do find evidence that any group is providing material or financial support, we have a responsibility to act against them and designate them and put the world on notice that this group is facilitating terrorists.”

Holy Land was once the largest American Muslim charity, receiving more than $57 million in contributions, gifts and grants from 1992 to 2001, the indictment says. It seeks to have more than half the charges in the 42-count indictment dismissed, based on the ruling last month by Judge Audrey B. Collins in Federal District Court in Los Angeles.

Judge Collins said an executive order used to identify organizations and individuals as “specially designated global terrorists” violated the Constitution because it was too vague. Other districts are not bound by the ruling. Congress has largely ignored the question.

Lawyers for two other charities said they expected to file similar motions. Lawyers for two others said they were defunct, left bankrupt by challenging terrorism designations.

American Muslim organizations acknowledge that Islamic charities overseas funneled money and arms to support Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. But they say guilt by association rather than hard evidence has become a judicial standard for them in the United States.

“The government’s claim of national security is a way to conceal government misconduct rather than state secrets,” said Matthew J. Piers, the lawyer for the Benevolence International Foundation, a defunct charity that had been in Illinois.

Charity officials say the United States is shooting itself in the foot. Rather than spending millions on failed advertising to improve its image, the officials say, Washington should let the charities work where it is not welcome.

“People are saying that this is not about this or that charity, it’s about Islam,” said Khalil Jassemm, who helped found Life for Relief and Development, a charity in Michigan. “We could be a humanitarian bridge to the Muslim world, but nobody thinks about that.”

    Muslim Charity Sues Treasury Dept. and Seeks Dismissal of Charges of Terrorism, NYT, 12.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/washington/12charity.html

Former Detainees Argue for Right to Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture

December 9, 2006
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — Lawyers for former detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan argued in federal court on Friday that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was personally responsible, and thus legally liable, for acts of torture inflicted on their clients by American military interrogators.

The nine plaintiffs, Iraqi and Afghan men held at American-run prisons, endured an array of physical and psychological abuse during their confinements in 2003 and 2004, including beatings, mock executions and painful physical restraints, their lawyers said in court papers. All were eventually released without being charged with crimes.

The hearing Friday, before Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Federal District Court in Washington, was the first time a federal court had considered whether top administration officials could be liable for the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the hearing concerned only questions of jurisdiction and did not delve into whether Mr. Rumsfeld, because he personally approved certain interrogation techniques in 2002 like the use of “stress positions,” was legally responsible for specific acts of torture committed in overseas military prisons.

Instead, lawyers from each side argued over whether noncitizens confined in prisons outside the United States had legal standing to sue Mr. Rumsfeld and other American military officials for constitutional violations.

The suit, filed on behalf of the nine plaintiffs last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, also names as defendants three officials responsible for running military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq; Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who was the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq; and a former brigadier general, Col. Janis L. Karpinski, who before her demotion to colonel was the military police commander at Abu Ghraib. She was relieved of her command and demoted after abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light.

During the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Judge Hogan took turns questioning the lawyers. He repeatedly asked lawyers for the former detainees to cite precedents in law that would allow foreigners to sue American officials for what in the United States would be violations of their civil rights.

“How can this work, this theory that nonresident aliens have a right to sue to prevent being tortured?” Judge Hogan asked Lucas Guttentag, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer in the case. What would prevent Osama bin Laden, the judge asked Mr. Guttentag, from taking President Bush to court for authorizing the military to kill him?

Mr. Guttentag, citing several Supreme Court decisions, said that American laws prohibiting torture should apply to foreign civilians under exclusively American control and jurisdiction overseas. He also noted that in Iraq, American military personnel were immune from prosecution under Iraqi laws. “Iraqi law cannot govern, and unless the United States does, nothing else applies.”

Rick Beckner, a deputy assistant attorney general representing Mr. Rumsfeld, argued that foreigners held in an American-run prison in foreign territory had no legal standing to sue. “There’s never been any finding that the Constitution applies to these plaintiffs,” he told Judge Hogan.

Judge Hogan, clearly skeptical of the plaintiffs’ attempt to open federal officials to legal liability for actions by troops overseas, said he hoped to make a decision quickly to dismiss the case or allow some or all claims to proceed.

But in his closing remarks, the judge also acknowledged being disturbed by the allegations of detainee abuse and torture. “It is unfortunate, to say the least, that there has to be an argument” about whether the American military tortures foreign citizens.

    Former Detainees Argue for Right to Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture, NYT, 9.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/washington/09torture.html

EPA Sets Final Sept. 11 Building Testing

December 7, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:23 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency plans to launch its final Sept. 11 contamination cleanup program next month, more than five years after the attacks and following years of criticism that the agency still has not done enough.

The $7 million cleanup will test the air and dust in nearby apartments and buildings for four contaminants linked to debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers: asbestos, lead, man-made fibers and polycyclic armoatic hydrocarbons.

Officials say the amount of testing and cleanup this time will depend largely on how many people sign up for testing. In 2002 and 2003, the EPA visited more than 4,000 units in the area.

''The vast majority of occupied residential and commercial spaces in lower Manhattan have been repeatedly cleaned, and we believe the potential for exposure related to dust that may remain from the collapse of the World Trade Center building is low,'' EPA official Dr. George Gray said Wednesday as the new cleanup program was announced.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of several New York lawmakers who have complained that the EPA failed to protect public health following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, called the new plan ''incredibly frustrating and disappointing.''

''EPA has now acknowledged that additional testing is necessary, but the program announced today is totally inadequate,'' Clinton said in a statement Wednesday.

Clinton has said the plan should expand the area tested and charged that the agency ''is essentially throwing up its hands and washing them of this problem.'' She said she would use her new position as incoming chairwoman of an environmental subcommittee to push the agency for more testing and cleaning.

The lawmakers' fight with the administration on 9/11 health matters began after the EPA asserted within days of the terrorist attacks that the dust from 1.8 million tons of World Trade Center debris posed no public health threat.

Since then, doctors have found thousands of ground zero workers suffered a variety of ailments, primarily lung and gastrointestinal disorders. The demands for treatment grew more urgent after the January death of a 34-year-old former police detective was blamed on his exposure at the site.

------

On the Net:

EPA's World Trade Center site: http://www.epa.gov/wtc/ 

    EPA Sets Final Sept. 11 Building Testing, NYT, 7.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Attacks-Health.html

Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation

December 4, 2006
The New York Times
By DEBORAH SONTAG

One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.

That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times, offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s electronic court file late Friday.

To Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, the pictures capture the dehumanization of their client during his military detention from mid-2002 until earlier this year, when the government changed his status from enemy combatant to criminal defendant and transferred him to the federal detention center in Miami. He now awaits trial scheduled for late January.

Together with other documents filed late Friday, the images represent the latest and most aggressive sally by defense lawyers who declared this fall that charges against Mr. Padilla should be dismissed for “outrageous government conduct,” saying that he was mistreated and tortured during his years as an enemy combatant.

Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of “truth serums.”

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said Sunday that the military disputes Mr. Padilla’s accusations of mistreatment. And, in court papers, prosecutors deny “in the strongest terms” the accusations of torture and say that “Padilla’s conditions of confinement were humane and designed to ensure his safety and security.”

“His basic needs were met in a conscientious manner, including Halal (Muslim acceptable) food, clothing, sleep and daily medical assessment and treatment when necessary,” the government stated. “While in the brig, Padilla never reported any abusive treatment to the staff or medical personnel.”

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an interrogation plan.”

Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.

Philip D. Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now a lawyer specializing in military law, said, “There’s nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement.”

Ali al-Marri, a Qatari and Saudi dual citizen and the only enemy combatant currently detained in the United States, has made similar claims of isolation and deprivation at the brig in South Carolina. The Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Vician, said Sunday that he could not comment on the methods used to escort Mr. Padilla to the dentist. Blackened goggles and earphones are rarely employed in internal prison transports in the United States, but riot gear is sometimes used for violent prisoners.

One of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, Orlando do Campo, said, however, that Mr. Padilla was a “completely docile” prisoner. “There was not one disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, not one act of disobedience,” said Mr. do Campo, who is a lawyer at the Miami federal public defender’s office.

In his affidavit, Mr. Patel said, “I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla’s temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of ‘a piece of furniture.’ ”

Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers are locked in a tug of war over the relevancy of Mr. Padilla’s military detention to the present criminal case. Federal prosecutors have asked the judge to forbid Mr. Padilla’s lawyers from mentioning the circumstances of his military detention during the trial, maintaining that their accusations could “distract and inflame the jury.”

But defense lawyers say it is unconscionable to ignore Mr. Padilla’s military detention because, among other reasons, it altered him in a way that will impinge on his trial.

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.”

“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,” Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.

Mr. Padilla’s status was abruptly changed to criminal defendant from enemy combatant last fall. At the time, the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take up the legality of his military detention — and thus the issue of the president’s authority to seize an American citizen on American soil and hold him indefinitely without charges — when the Bush administration pre-empted its decision by filing criminal charges against Mr. Padilla.

Mr. Padilla was added as a defendant in a terrorism conspiracy case already under way in Miami. The strong public accusations made during his military detention — about the dirty bomb, Al Qaeda connections and supposed plans to set off natural gas explosions in apartment buildings — appear nowhere in the indictment against him. The indictment does not allege any specific violent plot against America.

Mr. Padilla is portrayed in the indictment as the recruit of a “North American terror support cell” that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist “global jihad” in general, with a special interest in Bosnia and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled overseas “to participate in violent jihad” and filled out an application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan.

Michael Caruso, a public defender for Mr. Padilla, pleaded “absolutely not guilty” for him to charges of conspiracy and of providing material support to terrorists. Mr. Padilla faces two charges that each carry a maximum penalty of 15 years.

Over the summer, Judge Marcia G. Cooke of United States District Court in Miami threw out the most serious charge, of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country, saying that it replicated accusations in the other counts and could lead to multiple punishments for a single crime. This was a setback for the government, which has appealed the dismissal.

Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading him that they are on his side.

From the time Mr. Padilla was allowed access to counsel, Mr. Patel visited him repeatedly in the brig and in the Miami detention center, and Mr. Padilla has observed Mr. Patel arguing on his behalf in Miami federal court.

But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,” Mr. Patel said.

Mr. do Campo said that Mr. Padilla was not incommunicative, and that he expressed curiosity about what was going on in the world, liked to talk about sports and demonstrated particularly keen interest in the Chicago Bears.

But the defense lawyers’ questions often echo the questions interrogators have asked Mr. Padilla, and when that happens, he gets jumpy and shuts down, the lawyers said.

Dr. Hegarty said Mr. Padilla refuses to review the video recordings of his interrogations, which have been released to his lawyers but remain classified.

He is especially reluctant to discuss what happened in the brig, fearful that he will be returned there some day, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit.

“During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body,” Mr. Patel said. “The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”

    Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation, NYT, 4.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/us/04detain.html