BAUAW NEWSLETTER-SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2004

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END THE U.S. OCCUPATION OF IRAQ!
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
MARCH AND RALLY TO STOP THE WAR NOW!
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 3RD, 5PM
POWELL AND MARKET-MARCH TO 24TH & MISSION ST., S.F.
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VOTE YES ON N! MEETING THURSDAY, OCT. 28, 7PM,
GLOBAL EXCHANGE, 2017 MISSION STREET, SUITE 303
(NEAR 16TH & MISSION STREETS)
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NEXT BAUAW MEETING
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 7 P.M.
1380 VALENCIA STREET
(BETWEEN 24TH & 25TH STREETS)

Dear All,

One thing is for sure, the war is not over and a new, massive
Offensive against the people of Iraq is about to begin-right
after the elections, of course.

We can't let this go on. We have to come together in a
massive outpouring of opposition to this war-
bigger than Feb. 15/16.

Vote Yes on N! Bring all the troops home now! Money for Human
Needs, not war!

All out Nov. 3rd, 5pm, Powell and Market Streets, S.F.
March to 24th and Mission.

Come to the meeting with your ideas for building these
actions and for future actions.

Peace and solidarity,
Bonnie


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1) An Evening of Anti-War Culture:
Art, Comment, Spoken Word, Poetry,
Music in support of Prop N
Saturday, October 23, 4-7 PM
523 Gallery, 523 Sutter between Powell and Mason near
Union Square

2) BVHP mothers fight for their children's environmental health
by Marie Harrison
http://www.sfbayview.com/102004/bvhpmothers102004.shtml

3) After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By TIM GOLDEN
WASHINGTON
October 24, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/international/worldspecial2/24gitmo.html?h
p&ex=1098590400&en=65eec9e56f90971f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

4) Rebel Attacks Kill 12 Iraqis; G.I.'s Injured
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
October 24, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/international/middleeast/24iraq.html?hp&ex
=1098590400&en=34534b10fa606fde&ei=5094&partner=homepage

5) CORRUPTION ACCUSATIONS
Memos Warned of Billing Fraud by Firm in Iraq
By ERIK ECKHOLM
October 23, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/politics/23whistle.html

6) Wife of Soldier Sentenced in Prison Abuse Scandal Speaks Out
By Brian Witte
The Associated Press
Baltimore
Friday 22 October 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102304V.shtml

7) Stand in Solidarity with the People of Haiti

8) Safeguarding Colombia's Oil
By JUAN FORERO
PUERTO VEGA, Colombia
October 22, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/business/worldbusiness/22colombia.html?ore
f=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position

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1) An Evening of Anti-War Culture:
Art, Comment, Spoken Word, Poetry,
Music in support of Prop N
Saturday, October 23, 4-7 PM
523 Gallery, 523 Sutter between Powell and Mason near
Union Square

Art: OUTRAGE exhibit of 60 paintings and sculpture
by Sheila Haligan-Waltz
www.outrage2004.org

Program Includes:
> Matt Gonzalez, President of SF Board of Supervisors
> Neeli Cherkovski, writer in residence New College
Spoken word by members of the Molotov Mouths
* Outspoken Word Troupe
> School of the Arts Creative Writing Program Students
> Ilya Kaminski
> Music by John Duke
> and more

Refreshments served
Suggested donation $5-$250
No one turned away for lack of funds
If you want to be in the program contact
Jim Dorenkott, 415-240-8839

More info: contact Howard Wallace 415-861-0318

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2) BVHP mothers fight for their children's environmental health
by Marie Harrison
http://www.sfbayview.com/102004/bvhpmothers102004.shtml

With San Francisco's No. 1 polluter, the Hunters Point power plant,
as a backdrop, BVHP residents teach about environmental racism at
a People's Earth Day celebration. Photo: www.greenaction.org (Go
to web site to view image.)

Young mothers straight out of Hunters Point - fighting for the
environmental health of their community. It's a great story and
a source of pride for all of us!

Tessie Ester, coordinator for the "Mothers Committee" and president
of the Huntersview Tenants Association said it best: "We want thing
to change. We have to fight for our community and our children. We
know we can't do it all, but it's time each one of us did something."

She is always emotional when she is talking about her community:
"You realize that people in Bay View Hunters Point are still eating
mercury contaminated fish? It's a disgrace that our people are
getting cancer because nobody took the time to tell them the
simple truth."

That was one of the first projects that the Mothers Committee took
on. Fifteen mothers canvassed the community door-to-door, handing
out leaflets on the dangers of subsistence fishing and telling their
neighbors about the dangers of eating fish from the Bay. Toxins like
DDE, chlordane, selenium, mercury and dioxins. "These were things
we had never heard of," said Ester. "It's no wonder we have one of the
highest rates of infant mortality in the Bay Area." The flier the Mothers
Committee put out explained the dangers of each chemical and the
health risks when toxins accumulate in the body.

"It was tough to decide where to begin," said Sabrina Warren, mother
of three. "This community is so screwed up - it's a toxic soup. "She
stops to listen to her 8-year-old talk about school work and continues,
"I still feel like Hunters Point Power Plant poses the biggest danger to
our children. The Mothers Committee did research on the plant. Did
you know that it sends up 600 tons of pollution every year!"

She looks angry and continues, "It's about time that we stop being
sick and just get plain mad! Gov. Schwarzenegger and Mayor Newsom
better start listening, because we're going to come gunning for them
next. And the ISO! Who gave these people the right to make decisions
about our lives? They don't even live here."

The Mothers Committee started out more than a year ago as
a collaboration between Huntersview Tenants Association and
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. The official name
was "Bayview Hunters Point Mothers Environmental Health and Justice
Committee," but that was a mouthful, so soon it was shortened
to the Mothers Committee.

The goal is to educate a new generation of environmental advocates,
mothers from public housing, to fight for their own and their children's
futures. Mothers Committee meetings were always open to the
public and tended to be spirited. Participants know first hand
how their community is being destroyed by pollution and neglect.

PG&E was a favorite subject. Everyone had a horror story about the
plant or their electric bill. Early on, it became a priority for the
Mothers Committee.

"Everyone knows that that plant should have been closed down
years ago," said Monica Autry. "Government agencies look right
through you like you were invisible. Our young men and woman
can't get jobs and can't take care of their families - and to add
insult to injury, die a little at a time to keep the lights on in other
parts of the Bay Area."

"Remember how Willie Brown said we'd get jobs when they put in
the light rail?"she asks. "We all know what happened to that promise."

The Mothers Committee set their targets high. They lobbied the
city, state agencies and even the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. They also circulated a petition calling on Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger and the California Independent System Operator
(ISO) to remove the Reliability Must Run Contract from PG&E's
Hunters Point Power Plant. Going door to door, they collected
more than 5,000 signatures that they plan to deliver to the state
capital. "We've listened to promises long enough,"says Ester,
"Now it's time for action."

The Mothers Committee is reaching out to other neighborhoods
in other areas of San Francisco to educate them on what's
happening in Bay View Hunters Point. "We're not looking for
a handout. This city is just 49 miles square. People have to
understand that pollution is a problem for everyone," says
Autry, a long-term resident of BVHP. "The soot from PG&E
hits us first," she continues, "but the other parts of San
Francisco are breathing the same toxic chemicals we are."

In a public meeting held at Milton Meyers Auditorium in
Hunters Point, Mothers Committee members unveiled
a year-long effort entitled "Pollution, Health, Environmental
Racism and Injustice: A Toxic Inventory of Bayview Hunters
Point, San Francisco." The 40-page report describes the
sources of water and air pollution in BVHP and talks about
the worst toxic waste sites in the community and the health
problems that the residents are suffering. The Mothers
Committee introduced it to the community at their meeting.
The full report can be read or downloaded at
www.greenaction.org/hunterspoint/documents/TheStateoftheEnvironment090204Fin
al.pdf.

The Mothers want to continue their work, perhaps expanding
it to youth activities that include parents and highlight
environmental issues. "It's still hard to figure out where
to begin,"says Ester. "We're a needy community but also
a community with a lot of heart."

As I walked away from the Mothers Committee meeting at
Milton Meyers, I had to agree. We do have a lot of heart. It's
amazing to see what a few mothers in public housing can do.
With the full support of the community, Bay View Hunters
Point could again become the safe and healthy community
we all hope for.

If you are interested in the work of the Mothers Committee,
contact me at marie@greenaction.org or Tessie Ester, president
of Huntersview Tenants Association, at (415) 821-2873 or
see www.greenaction.org for more information.
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3) After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By TIM GOLDEN
WASHINGTON
October 24, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/international/worldspecial2/24gitmo.html?h
p&ex=1098590400&en=65eec9e56f90971f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON - In early November 2001, with Americans still
staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House
officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice
for the new war they had declared on terrorism.

Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected
to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their
constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain
foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not
used since World War II.

The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials
kept its final details hidden from the president's national security
adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell,
officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they
hardly thought of consulting Congress.

White House officials said their use of extraordinary powers would
allow the Pentagon to collect crucial intelligence and mete out swift,
unmerciful justice. "We think it guarantees that we'll have the kind
of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve," said
Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a driving force behind the policy.

But three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted.
Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval base
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged.
Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage
of procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could
still be months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June
that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment
in federal court, the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home
hundreds of men whom it once branded as dangerous terrorists.

"We've cleared whole forests of paper developing procedures for
these tribunals, and no one has been tried yet," said Richard L. Shiffrin,
who worked on the issue as the Pentagon's deputy general counsel
for intelligence matters. "They just ended up in this Kafkaesque
sort of purgatory."

The story of how Guantánamo and the new military justice system
became an intractable legacy of Sept. 11 has been largely hidden
from public view.

But extensive interviews with current and former officials and a review
of confidential documents reveal that the legal strategy took shape
as the ambition of a small core of conservative administration
officials whose political influence and bureaucratic skill gave them
remarkable power in the aftermath of the attacks.

The strategy became a source of sharp conflict within the Bush
administration, eventually pitting the highest-profile cabinet
secretaries - including Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld - against one another over issues of due
process, intelligence-gathering and international law.

In fact, many officials contend, some of the most serious problems
with the military justice system are rooted in the secretive and
contentious process from which it emerged.

Military lawyers were largely excluded from that process in the
days after Sept. 11. They have since waged a long struggle to
ensure terrorist prosecutions meet what they say are basic standards
of fairness. Uniformed lawyers now assigned to defend Guantánamo
detainees have become among the most forceful critics of the
Pentagon's own system.

Foreign policy officials voiced concerns about the legal and diplomatic
ramifications, but had little influence. Increasingly, the administration's
plan has come under criticism even from close allies, complicating
efforts to transfer scores of Guantánamo prisoners back to their
home governments.

To the policy's architects, the attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon represented a stinging challenge to American
power and an imperative to consider measures that might have been
unimaginable in less threatening times. Yet some officials said the
strategy was also shaped by longstanding political agendas that
had relatively little to do with fighting terrorism.

The administration's claim of authority to set up military commissions,
as the tribunals are formally known, was guided by a desire to
strengthen executive power, officials said. Its legal approach, including
the decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions, reflected the
determination of some influential officials to halt what they viewed
as the United States' reflexive submission to international law.

In designing the new system, many of the officials said they had
Osama bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda in mind. But in
picking through the hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo Bay,
military investigators have struggled to find more than a dozen they
can tie directly to significant terrorist acts, officials said. While
important Qaeda figures have been captured and held by the C.I.A.,
administration officials said they were reluctant to bring those
prisoners before tribunals they still consider unreliable.

Some administration officials involved in the policy declined to be
interviewed, or would do so only on the condition they not be named.
Others defended it strongly, saying the administration had
a responsibility to consider extraordinary measures to protect
the country from a terrifying enemy.

"Everybody who was involved in this process had, in my mind,
a white hat on," Timothy E. Flanigan, the former deputy White
House counsel, said in an interview. "They were not out to be
cowboys or create a radical new legal regime. What they wanted
to do was to use existing legal models to assist in the process
of saving lives, to get information. And the war on terror is all
about information."

As the policy has faltered, other current and former officials
have criticized it on pragmatic grounds, arguing that many of
the problems could have been avoided. But some of the criticism
also has a moral tone.

"What several of us were concerned about was due process,"
said John A. Gordon, a retired Air Force general and former deputy
C.I.A. director who served as both the senior counterterrorism
official and homeland security adviser on President Bush's National
Security Council staff. "There was great concern that we were
setting up a process that was contrary to our own ideals."

An Aggressive Approach

The administration's legal approach to terrorism began to emerge
in the first turbulent days after Sept. 11, as the officials in charge
of key agencies exhorted their aides to confront Al Qaeda's threat
with bold imagination.

"Legally, the watchword became 'forward-leaning,' '' said a former
associate White House counsel, Bradford Berenson, "by which
everybody meant: 'We want to be aggressive. We want to take risks.' ''

That challenge resounded among young lawyers who were
settling into important posts at the White House, the Justice
Department and other agencies. Many of them were members
of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal fraternity. Some had
clerked for Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin
Scalia in particular. A striking number had clerked for a prominent
Reagan appointee, Lawrence H. Silberman of the United States
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

One young lawyer recalled looking around the room during a meeting
with Attorney General John Ashcroft. "Of 10 people, 7 of us were
former Silberman clerks," he said.

Mr. Berenson, then 36, had been consumed with the nomination
of federal judges until he was suddenly reassigned to terrorism
issues and thrown into intense, 15-hour workdays, filled with
competing urgencies and intermittent new alerts.

"All of a sudden, the curtain was lifted on this incredibly frightening
world," he said. "You were spending every day looking at the dossiers
of the world's leading terrorists. There was a palpable sense of threat."

As generals prepared for war in Afghanistan, lawyers scrambled to
understand how the new campaign against terrorism could be
waged within the confines of old laws.

Mr. Flanigan was at the center of the administration's legal
counteroffensive. A personable, soft-spoken father of 14 children,
Mr. Flanigan's easy manner sometimes belied the force of his beliefs.
He had arrived at the White House after distinguishing himself as
an agile legal thinker and a Republican stalwart: During the Clinton
scandals, he defended the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr,
saying he had conducted his investigation "in a moderate and
appropriate fashion." In 2000, he played an important role on
the Bush campaign's legal team in the Florida recount.

In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Flanigan sought advice
from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel on "the
legality of the use of military force to prevent or deter terrorist
activity inside the United States,'' according to a previously
undisclosed department memorandum that was reviewed by
The New York Times.

The 20-page response came from John C. Yoo, a 34-year-old Bush
appointee with a glittering résumé and a reputation as perhaps the
most intellectually aggressive among a small group of legal scholars
who had challenged what they saw as the United States' excessive
deference to international law. On Sept. 21, 2001, Mr. Yoo wrote
that the question was how the Constitution's Fourth Amendment
rights against unreasonable search and seizure might apply if the
military used "deadly force in a manner that endangered the lives
of United States citizens."

Mr. Yoo listed an inventory of possible operations: shooting down
a civilian airliner hijacked by terrorists; setting up military
checkpoints inside an American city; employing surveillance
methods more sophisticated than those available to law
enforcement; or using military forces "to raid or attack dwellings
where terrorists were thought to be, despite risks that third parties
could be killed or injured by exchanges of fire."

Mr. Yoo noted that these actions could raise constitutional issues,
but said that in the face of devastating terrorist attacks, "the
government may be justified in taking measures which in less
troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual
liberties." If the president decided the threat justified deploying
the military inside the country, he wrote, then "we think that the
Fourth Amendment should be no more relevant than it would be
in cases of invasion or insurrection."

The prospect of such military action at home was mostly
hypothetical at that point, but with the government taking
the fight against terrorism to Afghanistan and elsewhere around
the world, lawyers in the administration took the same "forward-
leaning" approach to making plans for the terrorists they thought
would be captured.

The idea of using military commissions to try suspected terrorists
first came to Mr. Flanigan, he said, in a phone call a couple of days
after the attacks from William P. Barr, the former attorney general
under whom Mr. Flanigan had served as head of the Justice
Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the first Bush
administration.

Mr. Barr had first suggested the use of military tribunals a decade
before, to try suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland. Although the idea made little headway at the
time, Mr. Barr said he reminded Mr. Flanigan that the Legal Counsel's
Office had done considerable research on the question. Mr. Flanigan
had an aide call for the files.

"I thought it was a great idea," he recalled.

Military commissions, he thought, would give the government wide
latitude to hold, interrogate and prosecute the sort of suspects who
might be silenced by lawyers in criminal courts. They would also put
the control over prosecutions squarely in the hands of the president.


The same ideas were taking hold in the office of Vice President Cheney,
championed by his 44-year-old counsel, David S. Addington. At the
time, Mr. Addington, a longtime Cheney aide with an indistinct portfolio
and no real staff, was not well-known even in the government. But he
would become legendary as a voraciously hard-working official with
strongly conservative views, an unusually sharp pen and wide influence
over military, intelligence and other matters. In a matter of months, he
would make a mark as one of the most important architects of the
administration's legal strategy against foreign terrorism.

Beyond the prosecutorial benefits of military commissions, the two
lawyers saw a less tangible, but perhaps equally important advantage.
"From a political standpoint," Mr. Flanigan said, "it communicated the
message that we were at war, that this was not going to be business
as usual."

Changing the Rules

In fact, very little about how the tribunal policy came about resembled
business as usual. For half a century, since the end of World War II,
most major national-security initiatives had been forged through
interagency debate. But some senior Bush administration officials felt
that process placed undue power in the hands of cautious, slow-moving
foreign policy bureaucrats. The sense of urgency after Sept. 11 brought
that attitude to the surface.

Little more than a week after the attacks, officials said, the White House
counsel, Alberto F. Gonzales, set up an interagency group to draw up
options for prosecuting terrorists. They came together with high
expectations.

"We were going to go after the people responsible for the attacks,
and the operating assumption was that we would capture a significant
number of Al Qaeda operatives," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, the
State Department official assigned to lead the group. "We were
thinking hundreds."

Mr. Prosper, then 37, had just been sworn in as the department's
ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. As a prosecutor, he
had taken on street gangs and drug Mafias and had won the first
genocide conviction before the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda. Even so, some administration lawyers eyed him suspiciously
- as more diplomat than crime-fighter.

Mr. Gonzales had made it clear that he wanted Mr. Prosper's group
to put forward military commissions as a viable option, officials said.
The group laid out three others - criminal trials, military courts-martial
and tribunals with both civilian and military members, like those used
for Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

Representatives of the Justice Department's criminal division, which
had prosecuted a string of Qaeda defendants in federal district court
over the previous decade, argued that the federal courts could do the
job again. The option of toughening criminal laws or adapting the
courts, as several European countries had done, was discussed, but
only briefly, two officials said.

"The towers were still smoking, literally," Mr. Prosper said.
"I remember asking: Can the federal courts in New York handle
this? It wasn't a legal question so much as it was logistical. You
had 300 Al Qaeda members, potentially. And did we want to put
the judges and juries in harm's way?"

Lawyers at the White House saw criminal courts as a minefield,
several officials said.

Much of the evidence against terror suspects would be classified
intelligence that would be difficult to air in court or too sketchy to
meet federal standards, the lawyers warned. Another issue was
security: Was it safe to try Osama bin Laden in Manhattan, where
he was facing federal charges for the 1998 bombings of American
embassies in East Africa?

Then there was a tactical question. To act pre-emptively against
Al Qaeda, the authorities would need information that defense
lawyers and due-process rules might discourage suspects from
giving up.

Mr. Flanigan framed the choice starkly: "are we going to go with
a system that is really guaranteed to prevent us from getting
information in every case or are we going to go another route?"

Military commissions had no statutory rules of their own.
In past American wars, when such tribunals had been used
to carry out battlefield justice against spies, saboteurs and
others accused of violating the laws of war, they had generally
hewed to prevailing standards of military justice. But the
advocates for commissions in the Bush administration saw
no reason they could not adapt the rules, officials said. Standards
of proof could be lowered. Secrecy provisions could be expanded.
The death penalty could be more liberally applied.

But some members of the interagency group saw it as more
complicated. Terrorism had not been clearly established as
a war crime under international law. Writing new law for
a military tribunal might end up being more difficult than
prosecuting terrorism cases in existing courts.

By late October 2001, the White House lawyers had grown
impatient with what they saw as the dithering of Mr. Prosper's
group and what one former official called the "cold feet" of
some of its members. Mr. Flanigan said he thought the
government needed to move urgently in case a major
terrorist linked to the attacks was apprehended.

He gathered up the research that the Prosper group had
completed on military commissions and took charge of the
matter himself. Suddenly, the other options were off the table
and the Prosper group was out of business.

"Prosper is a thoughtful, gentle, process-oriented guy," the
former official said. "At that time, gentle was not an adjective
that anybody wanted."

A Secretive Circle

With the White House in charge, officials said, the planning
for tribunals moved forward more quickly, and more secretly.
Whole agencies were left out of the discussion. So were most
of the government's experts in military and international law.

The legal basis for the administration's approach was laid
out on Nov. 6 in a confidential 35-page memorandum sent
to Mr. Gonzales from Patrick F. Philbin, a deputy in the
Legal Counsel's office. (Attorney General Ashcroft has
refused recent Congressional requests for the document,
but a copy was reviewed by The Times.)

The memorandum's plain legalese belied its bold assertions.

It said that the president, as commander-in-chief, has
"inherent authority'' to establish military commissions
without Congressional authorization. It concluded that
the Sept. 11 attacks were "plainly sufficient" to warrant
applying the laws of war.

Opening a debate that would later divide the administration,
the memorandum also suggested that the White House could
apply international law selectively. It stated specifically that
trying terrorists under the laws of war "does not mean that
terrorists will receive the protections of the Geneva Conventions
or the rights that laws of war accord to lawful combatants."

The central legal precedent cited in the memorandum was
a 1942 case in which the Supreme Court upheld President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's use of a military commission to try
eight Nazi saboteurs who had sneaked into the United States
aboard submarines. Since that ruling, revolutions had taken
place in both international and military law, with the adoption
of the Geneva Conventions in 1949 and the Uniform Code of
Military Justice in 1951. Even so, the Justice memorandum said
the 1942 ruling had "set a clear constitutional analysis" under
which due process rights do not apply to military commissions.

Roosevelt, too, created his military commission without new
and explicit Congressional approval, and authorized the
military to fashion its own procedural rules. He also established
himself, rather than a military judge, as the "final reviewing
authority'' for the case.

Mr. Addington seized on the Roosevelt precedent as a model,
two people involved in the process said, despite vast differences.
Roosevelt acted against enemy agents in a traditional war among
nations. Mr. Bush would be asserting the same power to take on
a shadowy network of adversaries with no geographic boundaries,
in a conflict with no foreseeable end.

Mr. Addington, who drafted the order with Mr. Flanigan, was
particularly influential, several officials said, because he represented
Mr. Cheney and brought formidable experience in national-security
law to a small circle of senior officials. Mr. Addington turned down
several requests for interviews and a spokesman for the vice
president's office declined to comment.

"He was probably the only one there who would know what an order
would look like, what it would say," a former Justice Department
official said, noting Mr. Addington's work at the Defense Department,
the C.I.A., and Congressional intelligence committees. "He didn't
have authority over anyone. But he's a persuasive guy."

To many officials outside the circle, the secrecy was remarkable.

While Mr. Ashcroft and his deputy, Larry D. Thompson, were closely
consulted, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division,
Michael Chertoff, who had argued for trying terror suspects in federal
court, saw the military order only when it was published, officials
said. Mr. Rumsfeld was kept informed of the plan mainly through
his general counsel, William J. Haynes II, several Pentagon officials
said.

Many of the Pentagon's experts on military justice, uniformed
lawyers who had spent their careers working on such issues, were
mostly kept in the dark. "I can't tell you how compartmented things
were," said retired Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, who was then the
Navy's senior military lawyer, or judge advocate general. "This was
a closed administration."

A group of experienced Army lawyers had been meeting with
Mr. Haynes repeatedly on the process, but began to suspect that
what they said did not resonate outside the Pentagon, several of
them said.

On Friday, Nov. 9, Defense Department officials said, Mr. Haynes
called the head of the team, Col. Lawrence J. Morris, into his office
to review a draft of the presidential order. He was given 30 minutes
to study it but was not allowed to keep a copy or even take notes.

The following day, the Army's judge advocate general, Maj.
Gen. Thomas J. Romig, hurriedly convened a meeting of senior
military lawyers to discuss a response. The group worked through
the Veterans Day weekend to prepare suggestions that would have
moved the tribunals closer to existing military justice. But when
the final document was issued that Tuesday, it reflected none of
the officers' ideas, several military officials said.

"They hadn't changed a thing," one official said.

In fact, while the military lawyers were pulling together their
response, they were unaware that senior administration officials
were already at the White House putting finishing touches on the
plan. At a meeting that Saturday in the Roosevelt Room,
Mr. Cheney led a discussion among Attorney General Ashcroft,
Mr. Haynes of the Defense Department, the White House lawyers
and a few other aides.

Senior officials of the State Department and the National Security
Council staff were excluded from final discussions of the policy,
even at a time when they were meeting daily about Afghanistan
with the officials who were drafting the order. According to two
people involved in the process, Mr. Cheney advocated withholding
the draft from Ms. Rice and Secretary Powell.

When the two cabinet members found out about the military
order - upon its public release - Ms. Rice was particularly angry,
several senior officials said. Spokesmen for both officials
declined to comment.

Mr. Bush played only a modest role in the debate, senior
administration officials said. In an initial discussion, he agreed
that military commissions should be an option, the officials said.
Later, Mr. Cheney discussed a draft of the order with Mr. Bush
over lunch, one former official said. The president signed the
three-page order on Nov. 13.

No ceremony accompanied the signing, and the order was released
to the public that day without so much as a press briefing. But its
historic significance was unmistakable.

The military could detain and prosecute any foreigner whom the
president or his representative determined to have "engaged in,
aided or abetted, or conspired to commit" terrorism. Echoing the
Roosevelt order, the Bush document promised "free and fair"
tribunals but offered few guarantees: There was no promise of
public trials, no right to remain silent, no presumption of innocence.
As in 1942, guilt did not necessarily have to be proven beyond
a reasonable doubt and a death sentence could be imposed even
with a divided verdict.

Despite those similarities, some military and international lawyers
were struck by the differences.

"The Roosevelt order referred specifically to eight people, the eight
Nazi saboteurs," said Mr. Shiffrin, who was then the Defense
Department's deputy general counsel for intelligence matters and
had studied the Nazi saboteurs' case. "Here we were putting in
place a parallel system of justice for a universe of people who we
had no idea about - who they would be, how many of them there
would be. It was a very dramatic measure."

Mounting Criticism

The White House did its best to play down the drama, but criticism
of the order was immediate and widespread.

Civil libertarians and some Congressional leaders saw an attempt
to supplant the criminal justice system. Critics also worried about
the concentration of power: The president or his proxies would
define the crimes (often after an act had been committed); set the
rules for trial; and choose the judges, juries and appellate panels.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who was then
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was among a handful
of legislators who argued that the administration's plan required
explicit Congressional authorization. The Congress had just passed
the Patriot Act by a huge margin, and Mr. Leahy proposed authorizing
military commissions, but with some important changes, including
a presumption of innocence for defendants and appellate review
by the Supreme Court.

Critics seized on complaints from abroad, including an
announcement from the Spanish authorities that they would
not extradite some terrorist suspects to the United States if they
would face the tribunals. "We are the most powerful nation on
earth," Mr. Leahy said. "But in the struggle against terrorism, we
don't have the option of going it alone. Would these military
tribunals be worth jeopardizing the cooperation we expect and
need from our allies?"

Senators called for Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Ashcroft to testify about
the tribunals plan. Instead, the administration sent Mr. Prosper
from the State Department and Mr. Chertoff of the Justice
Department - both of whom had questioned the use of commissions
and were later excluded from the administration's final deliberations.

But the Congressional opposition melted in the face of opinion
polls showing strong support for the president's measures against
terrorism.

There was another reason fears were allayed. With the order
signed, the Pentagon was writing rules for exactly how the
commissions would be conducted, and an early draft that was
leaked to the news media suggested defendants' rights would
be expanded. Mr. Rumsfeld, who assembled a group of outside
legal experts - including some who had worked on World War II-
era tribunals - to consult on the rules, said critics' concerns would
be taken into account.

But all of the critics were not outside the administration.

Many of the Pentagon's uniformed lawyers were angered by the
implication that the military would be used to deliver "rough justice"
for the terrorists. The Uniform Code of Military Justice had moved
steadily into line with the due-process standards of the federal
courts, and senior military lawyers were proud and protective of
their system. They generally supported using commissions for
terrorists, but argued that the system would not be fair without
greater rights for defendants.

"The military lawyers would from time to time remind the civilians
that there was a Constitution that we had to pay attention to," said
Admiral Guter, who, after retiring as the Navy judge advocate general,
signed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of plaintiffs in the
Guantánamo Supreme Court case.

Even as uniformed lawyers were given a greater role in writing
rules for the commissions, they still felt out of the loop.

In early 2002, Admiral Guter said, during a weekly lunch with
Mr. Haynes and the top lawyers for the military branches, he
raised the issue with Mr. Haynes directly: "we need more
information."

Mr. Haynes looked at him coldly. "No, you don't," he quoted
Mr. Haynes as saying.

Mr. Haynes declined to comment on the exchange.

Lt. Col. William K. Lietzau, a Yale-trained Marine lawyer on
Mr. Haynes's staff, often found himself in the middle. "I could
see how the JAGs were frustrated that the task of setting up the
commissions hadn't been delegated to them,'' he said, referring
to the senior military lawyers. "On the other hand, I could see
how some of their recommendations frustrated the leadership
because they didn't always appear to embrace the paradigm
shift needed to deal with terrorism."

Some Justice Department officials also urged changes in the
commission rules, current and former officials said. While
Attorney General Ashcroft staunchly defended the policy in
public, in a private meeting with Pentagon officials, he said
some of the proposed commission rules would be seen as
"draconian," two officials said.

On nearly every issue, interviews and documents show, the
harder line was staked out by White House lawyers: Mr. Addington,
Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Flanigan. They opposed allowing civilian
lawyers to assist the tribunal defendants, as military courts-
martial permit, or allowing civilians to serve on the appellate
panel that would oversee the commissions. They also opposed
granting defendants a presumption of innocence.

In the end, Mr. Rumsfeld compromised. He granted defendants
a presumption of innocence and set "beyond a reasonable doubt"
as a standard for proving guilt. He also allowed the defendants
to hire civilian lawyers, but restricted the lawyers' access to case
information. And he gave the presiding officer at a tribunal license
to admit any evidence he thought might be convincing to a
"reasonable person.''

One right the administration sought to deny the prisoners was
the ability to appeal the legality of their detentions in federal
court. The administration had done its best to decide the question
when searching for a place to detain hundreds of prisoners captured
in Afghanistan. Every location it seriously considered - including an
American military base in Germany and islands in the South Pacific -
was outside the United States and, the administration believed,
beyond the reach of the federal judiciary.

On Dec. 28, 2001, after officials settled on Guantánamo Bay,
Mr. Philbin and Mr. Yoo told the Pentagon in a memorandum that
it could make a "very strong" claim that prisoners there would be
outside the purview of American courts. But the memorandum
cautioned that a reasonable argument could also be made that
Guantánamo "while not part of the sovereign territory of the United
States, is within the territorial jurisdiction of a federal court." That
warning would come back to haunt the administration.

A Shift in Power

Some of the officials who helped design the new system of justice
would later explain the influence they exercised in the chaotic days
after Sept. 11 as a response to a crisis. But a more enduring shift of
power within the administration was taking place - one that became
apparent in a decision that would have significant consequences for
how terror suspects were interrogated and detained.

At issue was whether the administration would apply the Geneva
Conventions to the conflicts with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and
whether those enemies would be treated as prisoners of war.

Based on the advice of White House and Justice Department lawyers,
Mr. Bush initially decided on Jan. 18, 2002, that the conventions
would not apply to either conflict. But at a meeting of senior national
security officials several days later, Secretary of State Powell asked
him to reconsider.

Mr. Powell agreed that the conventions did not apply to the global
fight against Al Qaeda. But he said troops could be put at risk if the
United States disavowed the conventions in dealing with the Taliban -
the de facto government of Afghanistan. Both Mr. Rumsfeld and the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, supported
his position, Pentagon officials said.

In a debate that included the administration's most experienced
national-security officials, the voice that was heard belonged to
Mr. Yoo, who was only a deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel. He
cast Afghanistan as a "failed state," and said its fighters should not
be considered a real army but a "militant, terrorist-like group."
In a Jan. 25 memorandum to the president, the White House counsel,
Mr. Gonzales, characterized that opinion as "definitive."

The Gonzales memorandum suggested that the "new kind of war"
Mr. Bush wanted to fight could hardly be reconciled with the "quaint"
privileges that the Geneva Conventions gave to prisoners of war, or
the "strict limitations" they imposed on interrogations.

Military lawyers disputed the idea that applying the conventions
would necessarily limit interrogators to the name, rank and serial
number of their captives. "There were very good reasons not to
designate the detainees as prisoners of war, but the claim that
they couldn't be interrogated was not one of them," Colonel Lietzau
said. Again, though, such questions were scarcely heard, officials
involved in the discussions said.

Mr. Yoo's rise reflected a different approach by the Bush administration
to sensitive legal questions concerning foreign affairs, defense and
intelligence.

In past administrations, officials said, the Office of Legal Counsel
usually weighed in with opinions on questions that had already been
deliberated by the legal staffs of the agencies involved. Under
Mr. Bush, the office frequently had a first and final say on such
questions.

"O.L.C. was definitely running the show legally, and John Yoo in
particular," a former Pentagon lawyer said. "He's kind of fun to be
around, and he has an opinion on everything. Even though he was
quite young, he exercised disproportionate authority because of his
personality and his strong opinions."

Mr. Yoo's influence was amplified by friendships he developed not
just with Mr. Addington and Mr. Flanigan, but also Mr. Haynes, with
whom he played squash as often as three or four times a week at
the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club.

If the Geneva Conventions debate raised Mr. Yoo's stature, it had the
opposite effect on lawyers at the State Department, who were later
excluded from sensitive discussions on matters like the interrogation
of detainees, officials from several agencies said.

"State was cut out of a lot of this activity from February of 2002 on,"
one senior administration official said. "These were treaties that we
were dealing with; they are meant to know about that."

The State Department legal adviser, William H. Taft IV, was shunned
by the lawyers who dominated the detainee policy, officials said.
Although Mr. Taft had served as the deputy secretary of defense
during the Reagan administration, more conservative colleagues
whispered that he lacked the constitution to fight terrorists.

"He was seen as ideologically squishy and suspect," a former White
House official said. "People did not take him very seriously."

Through a State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher,
Mr. Taft declined to comment.

The rivalries could be almost adolescent. When field trips to
Guantánamo Bay were arranged for administration lawyers, the
invitations were sometimes relayed last to the State Department
and National Security Council, officials said, in the hope that lawyers
there would not be able to come on short notice.

It was on the first field trip, 10 days after detainees began to arrive
there on Jan. 11, 2002, that White House lawyers made clear their
intention to move forward quickly with military commissions.

On the flight home, several officials said, Mr. Addington urged
Mr. Gonzales to seek a blanket designation of all the detainees
being sent to Guantánamo as eligible for trial under the president's
order. Mr. Gonzales agreed.

The next day, the Pentagon instructed military intelligence officers
at the base to start filling out one-page forms for each detainee,
describing their alleged offenses. Weeks later, Mr. Haynes issued
an urgent call to the military services, asking them to submit
nominations for a chief prosecutor.

The first trials, many military and administration officials believed,
were just around the corner.Next: A Policy Unravels

Jack Begg contributed research for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

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4) Rebel Attacks Kill 12 Iraqis; G.I.'s Injured
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD, Iraq
October 24, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/international/middleeast/24iraq.html?hp&ex
=1098590400&en=34534b10fa606fde&ei=5094&partner=homepage

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 23 - Insurgents launched strikes on Saturday
at United States and Iraqi outposts across Iraq, killing at least
a dozen Iraqi police officers and national guardsmen in car bombings
and wounding dozens of Iraqis and Americans in the assaults,
which included mortars and hidden roadside bombs.

No American soldiers were killed but six were wounded when their
Bradley fighting vehicle was attacked on the dangerous road that
leads to the Baghdad airport.

The deadliest attack occurred outside the gates of a Marine base in
Baghdadi, in the restive Anbar Province of western Iraq, a Sunni
area where a car bomber killed at least 10 Iraqi policemen and
wounded 5 others, according to the Marines. The police were
gathered at a checkpoint on the perimeter of the base, which is
home to a Marine aircraft wing near the Euphrates River about
110 miles west of Baghdad.

Mujtaba Ahmed al-Hiti, the police chief in Hit, a nearby town, told
Agence France-Presse that a total of 40 people had been wounded,
and he said the attacker had been trying to drive into an academy
where police were training.

In Falluja, the insurgent-controlled stronghold west of Baghdad
where a major offensive is being planned to take back the city,
United States officials say an early morning raid led to the capture
of a lieutenant to the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Mr. Zarqawi is the Jordanian militant said to have sworn allegiance
to Al l Qaeda and taken responsibility for scores of car bombings,
beheadings and other acts of terror.

American officials said the "individual targeted and captured today
was recently assessed to be a relatively minor member of the
Zarqawi network." But with more important Zarqawi aides having
been detained or killed in recent weeks, the aide captured at a safe
house south of Falluja at 1:30 a.m. "had moved up to take a critical
position as a Zarqawi senior leader." Five other terrorists were captured,
the military said.

Members of Mr. Zarqawi's network are increasingly moving to the
outskirts of the city to evade American attacks on safe houses and
other hideouts and are trying to blend in with civilians, military
officials say. United States forces, they say, have eliminated meeting
sites and safe houses for the network and destroyed car bombs and
other weapons. Military officials say Iraqi civilians in Falluja have
been providing information about the whereabouts of Zarqawi
associates.

The Marines have stepped up operations on the outskirts of Falluja
during the last two weeks, trying to flush out insurgents and
members of Mr. Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad terror organization
in anticipation of what Iraqi leaders have said will be a major offensive.
The Marines have also conducted nightly bombing raids for the last
two months aimed at the Zarqawi network. Since this summer,
Falluja has been controlled by insurgents and a Taliban-style
Islamist local government that United States and Iraqi officials say
has given refuge to Mr. Zarqawi and members of his network.

The flurry of violence on Saturday underscores the challenge facing
American and Iraqi officials as national elections draw near. Violence
and attacks have been rising, and American deaths continue to
mount, though by most accounts there are fewer attacks taking
place than during the recent peak in August.

In one of the most dangerous areas, the sprawling Sadr City slum,
a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, the security situation has
been surprisingly calm of late, according to some American officers.
But in other places, especially Anbar Province, car bombings and
other attacks have continued at a steady pace.

In a statement on Saturday afternoon following the attack in Baghdadi,
the Marines said: "Insurgents have increased attacks on Iraqi Security
Forces seeking to secure a free Iraq."

Near Samarra, an insurgent flashpoint north of Baghdad that United
States forces retook early this month after a grisly three-day battle,
several Iraqi national guardsmen were killed Saturday morning by
a car bomb at a checkpoint south of town.

Reports quoting Iraqi officials said at least four guardsmen died
in the attack, but American forces that control the area say there
were two fatalities. Lt. Wayne Adkins, a spokesman for the Army's
First Infantry Division, said the attack occurred at 10:40 a.m.

"Two Iraqi National Guard soldiers were killed and one was injured
when Anti-Iraqi Forces detonated" a vehicle-borne improvised
explosive device at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint, he said.
One Iraqi guardsman died at the scene and a second died later
from his wounds, Lieutenant Adkins said.

Insurgents also struck in central Baghdad, lobbing mortars during
lunchtime near the American-controlled green zone, where the
American Embassy and the Iraqi government have headquarters.
There were no reports of deaths or injuries from the mortars,
which could be easily heard throughout central Baghdad. A rocket
also struck the building that houses an Iraqi legal association.

And six soldiers were wounded at 7:15 a.m. when their Bradley
was struck by an improvised explosive device on the road that
leads to the Baghdad airport.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

5) CORRUPTION ACCUSATIONS
Memos Warned of Billing Fraud by Firm in Iraq
By ERIK ECKHOLM
October 23, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/politics/23whistle.html

Managers of a security firm that won large contracts in Iraq warned
their bosses in February of what they called a pattern of fraudulent
billing practices, internal company memorandums suggest.

The memorandums, written primarily by two company managers,
charged that the security firm, Custer Battles, repeatedly billed the
occupation authorities for nonexistent services or at grossly
inflated prices.

The company, which quickly grew to garner security contracts worth
$100 million in little more than a year, denies the charges. It argues
that the managers confused sincere attempts to document jobs done
in a hurry, in a war zone, with deliberate deception and that the
company provided all contracted services for the agreed-upon price.

The memos and a lawsuit filed by former employees cite several
specific instances, including billing the Coalition Provisional Authority
$157,000 for a helicopter pad that in fact cost $95,000, and repainting
forklifts abandoned by Baghdad Airways and then charging the
authority thousands of dollars a month, claiming that the forklifts
were leased.

One of the managers was later fired by the company and is part of
a lawsuit charging Custer Battles with defrauding the federal government
of tens of millions of dollars. The other manager, who has since been
appointed to a high-level position with the company, recently declared
that after further research, he believed that any questionable practices
were the fault of a few individuals and had not been condoned by
the owners.

On Sept. 30, the Pentagon, concerned by the allegations raised by
the employees, barred Custer Battles from receiving further military
contracts, and it has withheld at least $10 million in payments to the
company. The company is appealing the ban.

The charges swirling around Custer Battles in part reflect a problem
that American government auditors have acknowledged: the inability
of the Iraq occupation authority, particularly in its first year, to monitor
properly the performance of hundreds of companies, large and small,
that flocked to Baghdad seeking contracts for everything from building
materials to armed guards.

The memorandums, provided by a lawyer for the managers who filed
the lawsuit against Custer Battles, charge that the company submitted
invoices from supposed subcontractors or suppliers that - unbeknownst
to the American officials who paid the final tab - were virtual shells,
newly created by Custer Battles executives and their partners.

Custer Battles, founded in 2001 by Scott Custer and Michael Battles,
both in their 30's, says it has about 700 employees.

Pete Baldwin, then the Iraq facilities manager, wrote in a Feb. 2
memorandum that in one typical invoice, Custer Battles claimed that
one of its shell companies had installed a helicopter pad for $157,000.
In fact, Custer Battles had hired a different company to build the pad
for $95,000, he asserted. He wrote that "every line item on that invoice,"
which was submitted for a total of $250,000, was just as "false,
fabricated, inflated."

Mr. Baldwin wrote that he had repeatedly informed Mr. Custer, the
company co-owner, of similar practices, but to no avail. A lawyer for
Custer Battles, Richard Sauber, said that Mr. Custer had subsequently
brought accountants to Iraq to clear up incomplete books but that they
had not found fraud.

Mr. Baldwin said in the memorandum that after he began raising alarms,
an executive with the company tried to fire him. Mr. Baldwin was given
notice on Feb. 20 - he has said because of his charges of fraud. Larry
Robbins, a lawyer for Custer Battles, says he was fired for "incompetence.''

Last week, documents unsealed by the Justice Department disclosed
that two former managers of Custer Battles, including Mr. Baldwin,
had brought a civil suit under the federal whistle-blower act charging
the company with fraud.

The company called those charges baseless and the work of
"a competitor and a disgruntled employee." The two former managers
could win million of dollars in rewards if the charges hold up.

In a memorandum dated Feb. 28, 2004, Peter Miskovich, who was
manager of the company's $21 million contract to safeguard Iraq's
new currency as it was being distributed, gave a scathing review of
the project, which he took over in midstream. Mr. Miskovich - who
is not part of the whistle-blower lawsuit - wrote to his superior,
Charles Baumann, then the country manager, that the records provided
"prima facie evidence of a course of conduct consistent with criminal
activity and intent."

Mr. Miskovich was later named director of the company's new Office
of Corporate Integrity. In an Oct. 13 affidavit, he said that after further
review, he had concluded that financial improprieties were more
isolated than he had declared in February. He said that "I do not
believe, based on what I learned during my tenure" as a project
manager, "that Scott Custer or Mike Battles was involved in the
questionable conduct."

Reached by telephone this week, Mr. Miskovich refused to speak to
a reporter. Mr. Baldwin could not be reached for comment.

The Air Force, which suspended the Custer Battles contract, wrote
a memorandum citing suspicion of repeated fraud. The Air Force
quotes Mr. Miskovich's Feb. 28 memorandum, and calls the evidence
of company misconduct "of so serious or compelling a nature that
it affects their present responsibility to be government contractors
or subcontractors."

In the case of the currency exchange project, said Mr. Sauber, the
lawyer for Custer Battles, the occupation authority agreed on
a final fee of $21 million, but the Pentagon has held up the final
$10 million in payments while it investigates the contract.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department declined to prosecute
Custer Battles, though the civil suit continues under the whistle-
blower law. The department gave no public explanation, but officials
had previously told lawyers in the lawsuit that because the alleged
fraud was against the Coalition Provisional Authority, federal
prosecutors did not have jurisdiction. Some experts have
questioned that reasoning.

The company founders, Scott Custer and Michael Battles, are both
Army veterans. Mr. Battles unsuccessfully ran for Congress in
Rhode Island as a Republican two years ago.

The two started out by offering security services to nongovernmental
organizations in Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul in late 2001.

But their business really took hold in June 2003, soon after the fall
of Baghdad. The men obtained a $16.5 million contract from the
occupation authorities to provide security for the Baghdad airport.

That one-year contract was not renewed, but the company had
already begun pulling in others, directly with the Coalition Provisional
Authority or as a subcontractor to other companies.

As it cut a quick and profitable swath, Custer Battles sometimes
angered more experienced security companies with its aggressive
recruitment of scarce security experts and claims to industry
leadership. The company describes itself as "the premier security
company in Iraq" on its corporate Web site.

The two founders have received praise for their entrepreneurship.
The internal memorandums charge that part of that success, at least,
was built on questionable practices.

One example captures some of the fog of post-invasion Iraq. With
forged invoices, Mr. Miskovich wrote, Custer Battles billed for providing
a security detail for the road delivery from Baghdad to Mosul of
prefabricated cabins. The housing was urgently required by teams
carrying out the currency exchange.

Not only did the company provide no guards for the trip, Mr. Miskovich
said in his Feb. 28 memo, but the convoy was also somehow lost for
a week, officials in Mosul had to sleep in tents, and the company
had to offer a reward to locate the cabins.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) Wife of Soldier Sentenced in Prison Abuse Scandal Speaks Out
By Brian Witte
The Associated Press
Baltimore
Friday 22 October 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102304V.shtml

Baltimore - The wife of an Army reservist sentenced to prison
for abusing prisoners in Iraq said she knows her husband was wrong,
but she also blames higher-ranking officials who "sit behind the
curtains" for the abuse.

Martha Frederick, wife of Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, said the
eight-year sentence he received Thursday for his role in the Abu
Ghraib prison scandal will force her family to "endure hardships
and many sacrifices."

"The pain sets deeper yet in knowing that he serves these years
not only for his actions or actions of a few reservists, but those
included in the chain of command," she wrote in an e-mail to
The Associated Press.

Her 38-year-old husband, of Buckingham, Va., received the
stiffest punishment given so far in the scandal. But she questioned
why her husband's superiors weren't being punished for what she
said was their complicity on the abuse.

"I feel outrage that he and a few others will bear the weight for
the actions of many," she wrote.

Since finding out her husband faced charges, Frederick wrote
that her family has felt as if they were "facing a life-threatening
situation when you relive your life's most memorable moments
as well as contemplating all the things that you wish you could
change or have done differently."

Martha Frederick said she will always see her husband as a
"good soldier."

"I will see my husband as a far greater man than those who
have abandoned him, left him to be convicted for his acts and
the failures of their own," she wrote.

Throughout the e-mail, she claims "misguided" leadership led
to the abuse of Iraqi detainees. She wrote that the photographs
and videos showing abuse "do not represent the people of this
country, nor do they represent Chip as a person."

"I do not see Chip as a good soldier gone bad but as a good
soldier thrust into a no-win situation," she wrote.

She writes of the pain and isolation her family has felt, especially
her husband, who was sentenced in Iraq, far from his family.

"It is not just how my husband will endure incarceration but how
he will endure being left behind, used and discarded," she wrote.

Frederick joined the Army National Guard at 17, after convincing
his mother to sign the papers authorizing his enlistment.

Seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown,
Md., have been charged in the scandal. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits of
Hyndman, Pa., is already serving a one-year sentence after pleading
guilty in May to three counts.


(c) Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org

---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

7) Stand in Solidarity with the People of Haiti

The crisis situation in Haiti continues to deepen. The A.N.S.W.E.R.
Coalition -
along with the Haiti Support Network and progressives in the Haitian
community - initiated the Emergency Campaign to Support the Haitian
People. Many people are joining as volunteers to help support an
effective political response in Haiti and here in the United States in
solidarity with those resisting a wave of repression. We are also sending
humanitarian assistance in the form of much-needed medicines.

In the past two weeks, the de facto Haitian government has demonstrated its
complete bankruptcy by doing nothing for the flood victims and instead
launching a brutal crackdown on people in the neighborhoods of Belair
and Cité Soleil. On October 13, Haitian police, backed by UN occupation
troops, beat and arrested well-known activist priest Gérard Jean-Juste
as he was distributing food to hungry children. He is accused of being
"a threat to public order." The de facto prime minister called the
warrantless arrest "pre-emptive."

Meanwhile, the police and occupation troops have arrested and killed
dozens of other anti-coup activists. The former soldiers of the banned
Haitian Army now openly patrol the streets and have openly announced
their plan to "wipe out" resistance to the coup and occupation.

These developments make the indoor rally planned for Dec. 5 in
Brooklyn at New York Technical College all the more important.
Speakers from the Lavalas Family Party and the National Popular Party
will outline their respective visions of how the Haitian people's struggle
can advance. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others
will also take part.

Thanks to your responses, we have been able to begin sending medicine
to help stave off and treat the diseases stemming from waters polluted
by sewage and cadavers. But more help is needed given the dramatic
medical and political situations in Haiti.

The Haitian people need our further support. At this time of great crisis,
generated by the U.S. government and its financial and political
dictates, the independent response of the people in the U.S. to help
stop the suffering of the Haitian people is urgently needed. Stand
with the Haitian people in their fight for democracy and
self-determination, and in their hour of medical and
humanitarian need.

You can make an urgently needed contribution immediately to the
Emergency Campaign to Support the Haitian People by clicking here
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8) Safeguarding Colombia's Oil
By JUAN FORERO
PUERTO VEGA, Colombia
October 22, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/business/worldbusiness/22colombia.html?ore
f=login&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position

PUERTO VEGA, Colombia - In the biggest, most ambitious army
offensive in Colombia's 40-year rebel war, 18,000 counterinsurgency
troops have since January fanned out across four isolated southern
states, a lawless swath that for years functioned as a de facto republic
for Marxist rebels.

Aided by American helicopters, planning and surveillance, Colombian
forces have the stated goal of penetrating the historic heart of
Colombia's largest rebel group to "strike a decisive blow to narco-
terrorists," as Gen. James Hill, the commander of United States
forces in Latin America, put it earlier this year.

But the Washington-backed offensive has another motive, oil and
military authorities say, one that Colombian and American officials
only gingerly discuss: to make potentially oil-rich regions safe for
exploration by private companies and the government-run
oil company.

With Colombian oil production falling and the Bush administration
eagerly seeking to diversify American oil imports, Colombia's
government has made securing potentially lucrative oil basins
and other energy infrastructure a cornerstone of its efforts to
pacify this vast country.

"For the military, the priority is to protect and provide confidence
for investors, in particular in the petroleum sector," said Mauricio
Salgar, operations director for Ecopetrol, the state oil firm. "For
the investor, it's important that he know that in Colombia he has
an ally."

The policy's twin emphasis of protecting oil production and
challenging Colombia's most formidable rebel group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is most apparent
here in Putumayo province, where coca once grew like weeds
and rebels freely controlled roads and towns.

One of the newcomers is Petrotesting Colombia, a small, spirited
homegrown company that has made the production of crude in
dangerous corners of Colombia something of a specialty. But it
does not operate here alone.

Four hundred troops patrol a narrow dirt road used by tankers
to transport crude. At one Petrotesting well, soldiers with Galil
assault rifles stand guard from a heavily fortified base circled
by a dozen sandbag bunkers.

"We went in with the support of the armed forces," Frank C. Kanayet,
the company's president, said in an interview in at the company's
new offices in Bogotá. "Without government support, we would
not have been able to come in."

Much of the coca, used to produce cocaine, has been destroyed
here in an American-funded eradication drive. The soldiers who
now stand guard in the wilting heat say they have been told their
job is vital - ensuring that the oil and government revenues flow.
Lately, they have been in an upbeat mood.

"All of this belonged to the guerrillas," said Lt. Luis Villalba, the
young commander of a group of soldiers standing sentry. "Now
it belongs to the army."

Such boasts may be premature. Across four provinces, the guerrillas
have melted into the jungle, avoiding direct confrontations. But they
have left behind snipers and land mines that have bogged down
army forces, killed about 50 soldiers and wounded hundreds. Here
in the cattle pastures and jungles south of the Putumayo River, the
rebels also recently burned nine tankers carrying Petrotesting's oil
and killed one driver.

"They've told us, 'This is our crude, and you are only helping the
multinationals,' " said José Ney, 44, whose tanker was set on fire
by rebels in September. "If they stop me again, they'll kill me."

Still, for the first time in years, soldiers and police have arrived in
isolated pockets of this province, as well as forgotten regions of
three others, Caquetá, Meta and Guaviare. And while bombings
against infrastructure like oil pipelines and wells continue in
Putumayo, the attacks have fallen from 149 in 2003 to 58 this
year through mid-October.

The military and oil company representatives credit two battalions
created just to guard oil infrastructure. They and other units protect
such companies as Argosy Energy International of Houston, which
has 15 wells in Putumayo, and Petrobank Energy and Resources,
a Canadian oil producer that has banked much of its future in
Colombia on tapping into an oil deposit in the Orito region that
may contain a billion barrels.

"There's a feeling of safety, that we're keeping the peace," said
Major Pedro Sánchez, an 18-year counterinsurgency specialist
who is the second in command of the battalion that protects oil
installations in Orito. "We've provided confidence so companies
can explore here."

Employing Colombia's 200,000-member army to further oil
interests is seen as critical to President Álvaro Uribe's ambitious
plans to boost oil production. Oil is Colombia's No. 1 export,
providing nearly a third of the state's revenues. Latin America's
third-largest exporter of oil, Colombia has long been among the
top 10 suppliers of crude to the United States.

But a worsening conflict, coupled with contract terms that
prospective investors found unpalatable, prompted oil companies
to abandon the country and caused exploration to stagnate. From
production of 830,000 barrels a day in 1999, Colombia now pumps
535,000 daily.

With many of the country's major fields fast declining, like
Occidental Petroleum's Caño Limón and BP's Cusiana and Cupiagua,
energy planners here say Colombia will become a net importer by
2009 unless new discoveries are made.

That means luring oil companies, large and small, even to regions
like Putumayo, where energy planners say production of just
10,000 barrels a day could easily quadruple with more exploration.

"Whatever barrel of oil that's out there, we're going to go after
aggressively," said Mr. Salgar, the Ecopetrol director of operations.
"Some of these fields are very small, but we think they are all
important. One barrel of oil is better than no barrels."

Though unproven, Colombian energy officials believe the country
may contain 47 billion barrels of oil, an estimate based on
Colombia's proximity to its oil-rich neighbor, Venezuela, with
which it shares much of the same oil-producing geology.

Colombia, however, is vastly underexplored, with exploration
and production going on in only 7 of the nation's 18 sedimentary
basins, Ecopetrol officials said.

To spur exploration, the state in 2001 reduced Ecopetrol's
mandatory share in joint ventures from 50 percent to 30 percent.
Then, in 2002, the government replaced its flat 20 percent royalty
with a sliding scale that enhances the financial viability of small
projects.

In April, the state went further, eliminating Ecopetrol's required
participation in projects. Taxes were also reduced, the lifespan
of contracts extended and the awarding of concessions made
more flexible. Ecopetrol itself was split into two units, one
devoted to developing business.

The scope of the changes prompted the regional president of one
major oil company, who asked that his name not be used, to remark:
"The government is literally desperate."

Armando Zamora, director of the National Hydrocarbon Agency,
which administers concessions, agreed. "We were anguished and
that's what permitted us to undertake these reforms."

The measures have attracted attention and business. The biggest
catch this year has been Exxon Mobil , which along with Petrobras,
a long-time oil producer here, took advantage of beneficial terms
to undertake an ambitious offshore exploration project.

Other big companies like ChevronTexaco and Occidental Petroleum
have extended natural gas and oil contracts. The Harken Energy
Corporation , Repsol-YPF of Spain, Hocol and several smaller
companies have in recent months signed either exploration
contracts or viability agreements that will likely lead to exploration.

In all, 20 exploration contracts have been signed this year, continuing
a trend from 2003, when 21 companies signed contracts. In 2002,
when the conflict was raging and before new terms were introduced,
14 contracts were signed.

But the state realized that it needed to address security if it wanted
oil companies to explore in regions like the foothills of the Andes in
Meta and Casanare provinces or in the war-torn Catatumbo region
in northeastern Colombia. These areas may have oil, but they are
lawless and violent.

Upon taking office in August of 2002, Mr. Uribe's government
stepped up its protection of power lines and reduced the theft of
gasoline by right-wing paramilitary groups that had a long-
standing practice of tapping into government-owned pipelines.

The government also established a new office in the presidency,
the Presidential Councilor for Infrastructure Protection, which meets
frequently with military officials, Ecopetrol and oil officials to
discuss security measures.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, reversed American policy and
dispatched Special Forces trainers from Fort Bragg, N.C., to train
Colombian soldiers to protect a 500-mile pipeline used by Occidental
Petroleum, which is based in Los Angeles, to pump crude from its
northeastern oil fields.

State oil officials say the idea now is to simply get prospective
companies to travel to Colombia to discuss the safety issues.
"Those companies that are afraid, we tell them, 'First send your
security people,' " said Mr. Zamora of the National Hydrocarbons
Agency. "They come down, and we take them to the Defense
Ministry, the Mines and Energy Ministry, to other companies,
so they can see for themselves."

Such measures have raised concerns among some policy analysts
who question using public funds, both American and Colombian,
to benefit mostly private companies.

Many of the companies are American and, like Occidental, have
long lobbied Washington to back Colombia's government more
strongly. American military planners have also played an important
role in devising military efforts to both protect infrastructure and
hit the guerrillas.

"Even if the Uribe government has launched offensives in other
places, the U.S. assistance has been in places that do have oil
reserves," said Adam Isacson, a senior policy analyst who tracks
Colombia for the Center for International Policy, an organization
in Washington that promotes demilitarization and human rights.
"Coincidence?"

The policies, though, have in many cases benefited ordinary
Colombians long forgotten by the state.

There are now security forces in all 1,100 Colombian municipalities
nationwide; two years ago, nearly 200 towns had no police or soldiers.
Soldiers and light tanks line vital roads near big cities where
Colombians were often kidnapped.

For Petrobank's Colombian subsidiary, Petrominerales, the presence
of troops has been reassuring. Steven J. Benedetti, Petrominerales'
general manager in Colombia, notes that the company has not gone
unscathed: rebels have been attacking its wells since production
began in January of 2003.

Still, Mr. Benedetti remains optimistic. "It's a situation where we
have to weigh the risks with the benefits," he said. "Putumayo is
going to be important for a long time to come."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

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