Archive for October, 2005
October 31st, 2005 | 
Author: [ Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes ]
IAEM Discussion Group:
Homeland Security chief plans to retool FEMA
By Chris Strohm
cstrohm@govexec.com
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week unveiled what he called “initial recommendations” for changes at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying Hurricane Katrina was an “extraordinary test” that “simply overwhelmed” the agency’s capabilities.
“One of the first things we must do is retool FEMA and enhance this vital agency’s capabilities so that it can fulfill its historic and critical mission of supporting response and recovery,” Chertoff told a special House committee investigating the government’s response to the storm.
But the secretary defended a plan he had unveiled over the summer to make FEMA a stand-alone agency focusing on response and recovery efforts. Under the reorganization proposal, a separate Preparedness Directorate would be established.
Chertoff said the hurricane revealed shortcomings in FEMA’s logistics, contracting and procurement systems, communications capabilities, ability to handle disaster-assistance calls and disperse aid, and staffing levels.
FEMA must have a plan for feeding and sheltering 500,000 evacuees or more, an improved system for rapid distribution of emergency funds and other aid, and effective anti-fraud measures, Chertoff said. It also must have the ability to rapidly remove debris so that supplies are not delayed because of impassible roads and so that affected residents can quickly begin rebuilding and repopulating impacted areas, he said.
The Homeland Security Department is setting up emergency reconnaissance teams that will go into disaster zones and report back, Chertoff said. They will include officials from FEMA, the Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Secret Service.
“The DHS programs supporting these teams already possess their own communications and aerial surveillance capabilities, such as helicopters and P-3 aircraft,” Chertoff said. “Once in position, the teams will be able to relay up-to-the-minute, dependable information on which authorities could act confidently.”
He said he also is in the process of designating “principal federal officers in waiting” in cities and areas that could face catastrophes. The officers will work with state and local officials on an ongoing basis so that if a catastrophe strikes, the relationships and processes to respond are already in place.
Additionally, Chertoff said he wants FEMA to be able “to move things around in a nimble way,” similar to the “just-in-time” logistics plan used by many large, private companies. FEMA also should have mobile disaster assistance teams that can go into affected areas and find people in need, rather than waiting for people to come to them as happens now at disaster recovery centers, he said.
To improve communications, DHS is “looking at ways to adapt military and advanced private sector communication technology for emergency use,” Chertoff said. “FEMA must work to replenish its ranks at the senior level with experienced staff,” he added.
“I’ve brought in some experts from the private sector as well as from the military and inside the government to look at FEMA’s business practices, to really re-engineer them for the 21st century,” Chertoff told the lawmakers. “And, obviously as that study goes forward, that’s going to identify additional things that we may need to do.”
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., criticized Chertoff’s plan to use a “just-in-time” logistics strategy, saying he does not believe it would work during a disaster, especially when roads may not be passable.
“A hurricane is anything but an ideal world,” Taylor said. “The aftermath of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack is going to be anything but an ideal world. The roads will not be passable. There will not be electricity. There will not be communications.”
The government needs better plans to get people food, ice, water, tents and fuel, Taylor said. Chertoff said he agreed with the congressman.
This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1005/102105c1.htm
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[ Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes ]
Those darn spies!! Shades of Bush’s lil problem with missing WMD in Iraq, huh?
BURIED IN SPY AGENCY ARCHIVES, DOUBTS ON CAUSE OF VIETNAM WAR
By SCOTT SHANE
NYT Page One
10/30/2005
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that NSA officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence during the Tonkin Gulf episode that helped precipitate the Vietnam War, according to two people familiar with the historian’s work.
The historian’s conclusion represents the first serious accusation that the agency’s communications intercepts were falsified to support the belief that North Vietnamese ships attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash.
Most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack, but they have assumed the NSA intercepts were unintentionally misread, not purposely altered.
The research by Robert J. Hanyok, the NSA historian, was detailed four years ago in an in-house article that remains classified, in part because agency officials feared its release might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, according to an intelligence official familiar with some internal discussions of the matter.
Matthew M. Aid, an independent historian who has discussed Hanyok’s Tonkin Gulf research with current and former NSA and CIA officials who have read it, said he had decided to speak publicly about the findings because he believed they should have been released long ago.
“This material is relevant to debates we as Americans are having about the war in Iraq and intelligence reform,” said Aid, who is writing a history of the NSA. “To keep it classified simply because it might embarrass the agency is wrong.”
Aid’s description of Hanyok’s findings was confirmed by the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the research remains classified.
Both men said Hanyok believed the initial misinterpretation of North Vietnamese intercepts was probably an honest mistake. But after months of detective work in NSA’s archives, he concluded that midlevel agency officials discovered the error almost immediately but covered it up and doctored documents so that they appeared to provide evidence of an attack.
“Rather than come clean about their mistake, they helped launch the United States into a bloody war that would last for 10 years,” Aid said.
President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the Aug. 4 episode to persuade Congress in 1964 to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, despite doubts about the attack that arose almost immediately.
Asked about Hanyok’s research, an NSA spokesman said the agency intended to release the material late next month. The release has been “delayed,” said Don Weber, the spokesman, “in an effort to be consistent with our preferred practice of providing the public a more contextual perspective.” Weber said the agency was working to declassify not only Hanyok’s article, but also the original intercepts and intelligence reports that form the raw material for his work.
The intelligence official gave a different account. He said NSA staff historians first pushed for public release in 2002, when Hanyok included his Tonkin Gulf findings in a 400-page classified in-house history of the agency and Vietnam called “Spartans in Darkness.” High-level officials initially expressed support, but the idea lost momentum in 2003, in part because of the concerns about parallels with the Iraq intelligence, the official said. Aid said he had heard from other intelligence officials the same explanation for the delay in public release.
Robert S. McNamara, who as defense secretary played a central role in the Tonkin Gulf affair, said in an interview that he had never been told of evidence that the NSA intelligence was altered to shore up the scant evidence of a North Vietnamese attack.
“That really is surprising to me,” said McNamara, 89, who Hanyok found had unknowingly used the altered intercepts in 1964 and 1968 in testimony before Congress. “I think they ought to make all the material public, period.”
Though Johnson had doubts about the Aug. 4 attack — he later told George W. Ball, the under secretary of state, “Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!” — McNamara said he believed the intelligence reports played a decisive role in the war’s expansion.
“I think it’s wrong to believe that Johnson wanted war,” he said. “But we thought we had evidence that North Vietnam was escalating.”
Hanyok reportedly concluded that the deception was not known to or approved by top NSA officials or other high government officials, including McNamara. But the intelligence official said the evidence for deliberate falsification by mid-level NSA officers is “about as certain as it can be without a smoking gun — you can come to no other conclusion.
The supposed second North Vietnamese attack, on the American destroyers Maddox and C. Turner Joy, played an outsize role in history. Johnson responded by ordering retaliatory airstrikes on North Vietnamese targets and used the event to persuade Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin resolution on Aug. 7, 1964.
It authorized the president to “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” to defend South Vietnam and its neighbors and was used both by Johnson and President Richard M. Nixon to justify escalating the war, in which 58,226 Americans and more than 1 million Vietnamese died.
The details of Hanyok’s analysis, published in NSA’s Cryptologic Quarterly in early 2001, could not be learned. But the issues he examined included the times given for certain intercepts and the wording of translations and reports prepared on the basis of NSA eavesdropping at the time.
For example, the official said, in one Vietnamese message intercepted on Aug. 4, 1964, the phrase “we sacrificed two comrades” — a reference to casualties during the clash with American ships on Aug. 2 — was incorrectly translated in some NSA documents as “we sacrificed two ships.” That phrase was used to suggest that the North Vietnamese were reporting the loss of ships in a new battle Aug. 4.
The original Vietnamese version of that intercept, unlike many other intercepts from the same period, is missing from the agency’s archives, the intelligence official said.
Though the NSA, the eavesdropping and codebreaking agency based at Fort Meade, Md., is among the most secretive agencies in the government, in recent years it has made public dozens of studies by its Center for Cryptologic History. A study by Hanyok on signals intelligence and the Holocaust, entitled “Eavesdropping on Hell,” was published in unclassified form last year.
Two historians who have written extensively on the Tonkin Gulf episode, Edwin E. Moise of Clemson University and John Prados of the National Security Archive in Washington, said they were unaware of Hanyok’s work but found his reported findings intriguing.
“I’m surprised at the notion of deliberate deception at NSA,” Moise said. “But I get surprised a lot.”
If Hanyok’s conclusion is correct, Prados said, “it adds to the tragic aspect of the Vietnam War.” In addition, he said, “it’s new evidence that intelligence, so often treated as the Holy Grail, turns out to be not that at all, just as in Iraq.”
[ Reading time: 8 - 14 minutes ]
Source From MotherJones.com / Commentary / Columns
Hard Questions About the Big Easy
The New Orleans disaster could yet change American politics—but only if we keep talking about it.
Paul Rogat Loeb
October 31 , 2005
As the New Orleans disaster recedes from the headlines, citizen activists face a choice. We can focus exclusively on other newer issues. Or we can work to make the disaster one of those key turning points with the potential to transform American politics. For this to happen, we need to consciously create new dialogue, reaching well beyond the core converted.
If we think back to the 9/11 attacks, which have shaped American politics ever since, a brief window of critical reflection opened up in their immediate wake. Middle East experts critical of U.S. policies had op-eds in our largest newspapers and appeared on network TV. Ordinary citizens mourned the victims, while asking what would make the attackers so embittered they’d be willing to murder 3,000 innocent people. The next day, when I spoke about possible root causes, with even more frankness than usual, at a community college in the overwhelmingly Republican suburbs just north of Dallas, the response was amazingly receptive.
But by a few weeks later visible public questioning had largely ceased. Most Americans accepted the Bush administration’s definition of a war of absolute good versus absolute evil. John Ashcroft warned that anyone who disagreed was an “ally of terrorism.” The space for reflection had closed.
New Orleans has revealed far too much about the cost of this administration’s priorities to similarly strengthen Bush’s current standing. Republican cheerleaders are trying their best to spin its lessons as a mandate for even greater mistrust of all government, as if our sole hope lies in a survivalist individualism. But no matter what they do, the legacy of this disaster creates a political liability for this administration, highlighting their lack of sound environmental policies, support for critical infrastructure, and the valuing of experience over political cronyism, not to mention their heedlessness of America’s growing economic and racial divides. The danger is that the disaster’s most far-reaching lessons will be quickly forgotten, as the voices of the city’s exiles grow quiet and fresh crises and issues dominate the news.
We can change that by helping our fellow citizens wrestle with the legacy of the disaster while it remains strong in common memory-to give it its due as one of those iconic moments with the power to transform political life and individual hearts and souls. For now America is still wrestling with what happened and why, with what it will mean for those now exiled, with how the disaster affects our common future. From my own recent talks in the heart of red state America, the disaster has led many to begin to rethink core assumptions about this country’s priorities. Through the lens of New Orleans, I’ve been able to raise all sorts of challenging issues to audiences that would have been far more resistant just a few months before. But like the post-9/11 reflection, this newfound concern won’t continue automatically. It needs a context in which to bloom.
Some of this is already being created, as we weave lessons from the disaster into arguments we’re already making on issues from global warming to the war in Iraq, to the dangers of selling America’s every institution to the highest bidder. But the tragedy also calls for specific responses. Suppose progressive citizen activists worked to convene conversations in every community about Katrina’s lessons and legacy. These conversations could include MoveOn and The Sierra Club and local social justice groups, but also mainline and conservative churches, synagogues and mosques, civic groups like Rotary and Kiwanis, maybe even Chambers of Commerce-as many institutions of civil society as would be willing to participate. Suppose every college or high school made New Orleans a focus over the coming year, working, from the perspective of every possible discipline, to explore the interconnected roots and lessons of the disaster.
After 9/11, author Vicki Robin and some colleagues created what they called “conversation cafes” (www.conversationcafe.org), which brought together people of differing beliefs to reflect on how to move forward from the tragedy. Though their outreach was relatively limited, the cafes offered a powerful experience for those who participated, and a model to build on. Imagine if we extended these conversations on a broader scale, mixing brainstorming, exchange of perspectives and emotional sustenance. In a time when it’s easy to feel overloaded, paralyzed with “compassion fatigue,” Robin sees a chance to create “containers where people can grieve, process, see deeper truths, have new creative ideas.”
Another model comes from community discussions that transformed Nebraska’s tax codes forty years ago. In the early 1960s, a group of University of Nebraska economists used the University’s statewide network of adult education extension offices to organize workshops, county by county, where people could discuss different ways to make a highly regressive state tax system more fair. The existing system had long weighed disproportionately on family farmers and low-income residents. Now, involving local organizations such as the Farmer’s Union, Farm Bureau, and the Grange, the economists invited people to see for themselves how a range of approaches would affect them and their neighbors. “If people just really had a chance to look at the numbers,” one of the faculty members recalls, “we felt they could come to an intelligent decision. But they had to have a context to analyze the system, and this seemed a perfect use of educational networks that were already in place.”
The workshop leaders pursued their task without laptops, computerized spreadsheets, interactive Websites, or any of the other tools that would now make a comparable process far easier. But participants examined who was getting a free ride, how to make the system more equitable, and the likely results of specific policy changes. Local and statewide media amplified the debates. It took a half-dozen years of follow-up education and debate, but Nebraska finally passed a far more progressive graduated income tax, which a Republican governor signed into law.
The issues embodied in Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans are more difficult than a single state’s tax codes, but could be addressed through a similar process of discussion exploring a series of interconnected questions: What are the costs of neglecting America’s core infrastructure, like the Bush administration’s $71 million cuts in the budgets for maintaining and repairing the levees? How do we challenge a pervasive cronyism, where being the friend of a top Republican fundraiser places the former head of the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of America’s national disaster responses? What are the hidden costs of choices of destroying swamps that traditionally acted as buffers to tropical storms? How do we address America’s widening economic and racial divides, embodied by those left behind in the rising floodwaters? How do we rebuild a devastated New Orleans in a way that it won’t just get flooded again, while honoring the right of return for those outside the sleek tourist zones? At what level of disaster do we take seriously the costs of global warming, and begin joining other nations in acting on it? Can we do any of this while giving $120 billion a year in tax cuts to the wealthy and fighting a $100 billion-a-year Iraqi war? And how can we keep our hope for change alive in a time of so much disaster and human pain?
The US has never faced the comparable destruction of one of our major cities, so we’re all in new territory. We need to resist Bush administration proposals to lift wage and environmental protections, give no-bid contracts to companies like Halliburton, and pay for rebuilding by slashing other social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, child welfare programs, and student financial aid. But if we’re going to have a chance of succeeding in offering more proactive alternatives, we’ll need to involve some of those ordinary and often apolitical Americans who watched in horror as the floodwaters rose.
We could complement the more intimate discussions with visible public forums. During the height of the nuclear arms race, Physicians for Social Responsibility scheduled multi-day forums throughout the country to focus public attention on the nuclear threat. They involved a variety of high profile speakers, including Nobel laureates, talking about the impact of the nuclear arms race attack from every perspective they could muster–the likely immediate death toll in the wake of a nuclear attack, technological escalations that were reducing the margin for human error, the arms race’s economic cost, and alternatives for de-escalation. The events mobilized large numbers of citizens and got major media coverage wherever they were held. They played a significant role in challenging the arms race.
We could adopt a similar model around New Orleans. Create a tour with high-profile experts on global warming, the politics of infrastructure, America’s economic and radical divides. Include voices from the city and those now exiled. Challenge Americans to think again about why the disaster happened, and what how we can best proceed in its wake.
We could also use the wake up call of the disaster to take a similar approach with one of the most difficult challenges it raises-the impact of global warming. Focusing just on that one overarching issue, we could hold high-profile local forums about the increase in extreme climate events like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and forest fires; about impacts on public health through the migration of disease-carrying insects like the mosquitos that carry West Nile virus; about the impact on agriculture of changing weather patterns. These could feature scientists, journalists, religious leaders, businesspeople like alternative energy experts or representatives of insurance companies increasingly hit by climate-related property casualty losses. The goal would be to use the window of concern opened by Katrina to foster serious discussion in communities that aren’t normally exposed to it.
Finally, we can complement local conversations with coordinated national discussions. As David Dyssegaard Kallick writes in The Nation, New York City citizen groups came together in the wake of 9/11 to create the Labor Community Advocacy Network to Rebuild New York (LCAN). Their members met among themselves to determine their joint priorities, then pushed, with some success, for more equitable directions for post-9/11 reconstruction. (Their suggestions for the displaced Gulf Coast communities are available at www.goodjobsny.org) Major labor, environmental and social justice groups could similarly meet and talk out issues like where to generate the funding for reconstruction, how to balance protection against future floods with rebuilding the devastated communities, how give displaced residents the maximum possible voice. The more we can clarify our own priorities, the more effectively we can articulate them to others.
We tend to think of crises as highly visible calls to action, but real crises build up in the shadows. They’re revealed when clear disaster strikes or when citizens succeed in sufficiently dramatizing their impact on the public stage. Legal segregation was a daily crisis if you were African American, but not if you were white-until activists made it visible. The poisoning of our environment was unnoticed until ordinary citizens raised hard questions. Few talked about the destruction of America’s infrastructure until the water from Lake Pontchartrain spilled over the levees. What we do from this point forward will determine whether the underlying crises that created and compounded the New Orleans disaster get addressed.
If we reach out broadly enough, progressive activists wouldn’t control the direction of the resulting conversations, but we’d have a chance to talk to others of differing views and reflect on our own. From my experience, the disaster has opened up a space where citizens ordinarily resistant to key questions about our nation’s direction are suddenly far more receptive. Whether that opening leads to a new wave of citizen engagement or closes with distraction and time depends on the opportunities for reflection and participation we can create.
Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of fall 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association, and of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org.
[ Reading time: 20 - 32 minutes ]
Source from the WSJ
Baggage Claim – The myth of “suitcase nukes.”
BY RICHARD MINITER
Monday, October 31, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
“It is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.”
–Osama bin Laden, May 1998
“Bin Laden’s final act could be a nuclear attack on America.”
–Graham Allison, Washington Post
“One hundred suitcase-size nuclear bombs were lost by Russia.”
–Gerald Celente, “professional futurist,” Boston Globe
Like everyone else rushing off the Washington subway one rush-hour morning, Ibrahim carried a small leather briefcase. No one paid him or his case much mind, except for the intern in the new Brooks Brothers suit who pushed past him on the escalator and banged his shin. “What do you have in there? Rocks?”
Ibrahim’s training had taught him to ignore all provocations. You will see, he thought.
The escalator carried him up and out into the strong September sunlight. It was, as countless commentators would later say, a perfect day. As he walked from the Capitol South metro stop, he saw the Republican National Committee headquarters to his right. Two congressional office buildings loomed in front of him. Between the five-story structures, the U.S. Capitol dome winked in the sun. It was walled off in a mini-Green Zone of jersey barriers and armed police. He wouldn’t trouble them. He was close enough.
He put the heavy case down on the sidewalk and pressed a sequence of buttons on what looked like standard attaché-case locks. It would be just a matter of seconds. When he thought he had waited long enough, he shouted in Arabic: “God is great!” He was too soon. Some passersby stared at him. Two-tenths of a second later, a nuclear explosion erased the entire scene. Birds were incinerated midflight. Nearly 100,000 people–lawmakers, judges, tourists–became superheated dust. Only raindrop-sized dollops of metal–their dental fillings–remained as proof of their existence. In tenths of a second–less time than the blink of a human eye–the 10-kiloton blast wave pushed down the Capitol (toppling the Indian statute known as “Freedom” at the dome’s top), punched through the pillars of the U.S. Supreme Court, smashed down the three palatial Library of Congress buildings, and flattened the House and Senate office buildings.
The blast wave raced outward, decapitating the Washington Monument, incinerating the Smithsonian and its treasures, and reducing to rubble the White House and every office tower north to Dupont Circle and south to the Anacostia River. The secondary, or overpressure, wave jumped over the Potomac, spreading unstoppable fires to the Pentagon and Arlington, Va. Planes bound for Reagan and Dulles airports tumbled from the sky.
Tens of thousands were killed instantly. By nightfall, another 250,000 people were dying in overcrowded hospitals and impromptu emergency rooms set up in high school gymnasiums. Radiation poisoning would kill tens of thousands more in the decades to come. America’s political, diplomatic and military leadership was simply wiped away. As the highest-ranking survivor, the agriculture secretary took charge. He moved the capital to Cheyenne, Wyo.
That is the nightmare–or one version, anyway–of the nuclear suitcase. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, this nuclear nightmare did not seem so fanciful.
A month after September 11, senior Bush administration officials were told that an al Qaeda terrorist cell had control of a 10-kiloton atomic bomb from Russia and was plotting to detonate it in New York City. CIA director George Tenet told President Bush that the source, code-named “Dragonfire,” had said the nuclear device was already on American soil. After anxious weeks of investigation, including surreptitious tests for radioactive material in New York and other major cities, Dragonfire’s report was found to be false. New York’s mayor and police chief would not learn of the threat for another year.
The specter of the nuclear suitcase bomb is particularly potent because it fuses two kinds of terror: the horrible images of Hiroshima and the suicide bomber, the unseen shark amid the swimmers. The fear of a suitcase nuke, like the bomb itself, packs a powerful punch in a small package. It also has a sense of inevitability. A December 2001 article in the Boston Globe speculated that terrorists would explode suitcase nukes in Chicago, Sydney and Jerusalem . . . in 2004.
Every version of the nuclear suitcase bomb scare relies on one or more strands of evidence, two from different Russians and one from a former assistant secretary of defense. The scare started, in its current form, with Russian general Alexander Lebed, who told a U.S. congressional delegation visiting Moscow in 1997–and, later that year, CBS’s series “60 Minutes”–that a number of Soviet-era nuclear suitcase bombs were missing.
It was amplified when Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking Soviet military intelligence officer ever to defect to the United States, told a congressional panel that same year that Soviet special forces might have smuggled a number of portable nuclear bombs onto the U.S. mainland to be detonated if the Cold War ever got hot. The scare grew when Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Clinton, wrote a book called “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.” In that slim volume, Mr. Allison worries about stolen warheads, self-made bombs and suitcase nukes. Published in 2004, the work has been widely cited by the press and across the blogosphere.
Let’s walk back the cat, as they say in intelligence circles. The foundation of all main nuclear suitcase stories is a string of interviews given by Gen. Lebed in 1997. Lebed told a visiting congressional delegation in June 1997 that the Kremlin was concerned that its arsenal of 100 suitcase-size nuclear bombs would find their way to Chechen rebels or other Islamic terrorists. He said that he had tried to account for all 100 but could find only 48. That meant 52 were missing. He said the bombs would fit “in a 60-by-40-by-20 centimeter case”–in inches, roughly 24-by-16-by-8–and would be “an ideal weapon for nuclear terror. The warhead is activated by one person and easy to transport.” It would later emerge that none of these statements were true.
Later that year, the Russian general sat down with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes.” The exchange could hardly have been more alarming.
Kroft: Are you confident that all of these weapons are secure and accounted for?
Lebed: (through a translator) Not at all. Not at all.
Kroft: How easy would it be to steal one?
Lebed: It’s suitcase-sized.
Kroft: You could put it in a suitcase and carry it off?
Lebed: It is made in the form of a suitcase. It is a suitcase, actually. You can carry it. You can put it into another suitcase if you want to.
Kroft: But it’s already in a suitcase.
Lebed: Yes.
Kroft: I could walk down the streets of Moscow or Washington or New York, and people would think I’m carrying a suitcase?
Lebed: Yes, indeed.
Kroft: How easy is it to detonate?
Lebed: It would take twenty, thirty minutes to prepare.
Kroft: But you don’t need secret codes from the Kremlin or anything like that.
Lebed: No.
Kroft: You are saying that there are a significant number that are missing and unaccounted for?
Lebed: Yes, there is. More than one hundred.
Kroft: Where are they?
Lebed: Somewhere in Georgia, somewhere in Ukraine, somewhere in the Baltic countries. Perhaps some of them are even outside those countries. One person is capable of actuating this nuclear weapon–one person.
Kroft: So you’re saying these weapons are no longer under the control of the Russian military.
Lebed: I’m saying that more than one hundred weapons out of the supposed number of 250 are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia. I don’t know their location. I don’t know whether they have been destroyed or whether they are stored or whether they’ve been sold or stolen. I don’t know.
Nearly everything Lebed told visiting congressmen and “60 Minutes” was later contradicted, sometimes by Lebed himself. In subsequent news accounts, he said 41 bombs were missing, at other times he pegged the number at 52 or 62, 84 or even 100. When asked about this disparity, he told the Washington Post that he “did not have time to find out how many such weapons there were.” If this sounds breezy or cavalier, that is because it is.
Indeed, Lebed never seemed to have made a serious investigation at all. A Russian official later pointed out that Lebed never visited the facility that houses all of Russia’s nuclear weapons or met with its staff. And Lebed–who died in a plane crash in 2002–had a history of telling tall tales.
As for the small size of the weapons and the notion that they can be detonated by one person, those claims also been authoritatively dismissed. The only U.S. government official to publicly admit seeing a suitcase-sized nuclear device is Rose Gottemoeller. As a Defense Department official, she visited Russia and Ukraine to monitor compliance with disarmament treaties in the early 1990s. The Soviet-era weapon “actually required three footlockers and a team of several people to detonate,” she said. “It was not something you could toss in your shoulder bag and carry on a plane or bus”
Lebed’s onetime deputy, Vladimir Denisov, said he headed a special investigation in July 1996–almost a year before Lebed made his charges–and found that no army field units had portable nuclear weapons of any kind. All portable nuclear devices–which are much bigger than a suitcase–were stored at a central facility under heavy guard. Lt. Gen. Igor Valynkin, chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s 12th Main Directorate, which oversees all nuclear weapons, denied that any weapons were missing. “Nuclear suitcases . . . were never produced and are not produced,” he said. While he acknowledged that they were technically possible to make, he said the weapon would have “a lifespan of only several months” and would therefore be too costly to maintain.
Gen. Valynkin is referring to the fact that radioactive weapons require a lot of shielding. To fit the radioactive material and the appropriate shielding into a suitcase would mean that a very small amount of material would have to be used. Radioactive material decays at a steady, certain rate, expressed as “half-life,” or the length of time it takes for half of the material to decay into harmless elements. The half-life of the most likely materials in the infinitesimal weights necessary to fit in a suitcase is a few months. So as a matter of physics and engineering, the nuclear suitcase is an impractical weapon. It would have to be rebuilt with new radioactive elements every few months.
Gen. Valynkin’s answer was later expanded by Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces. Mr. Yesin was asked by Alexander Golts, a reporter at the Russian newspaper Ezhenedelny Zhurnal: “The nuclear suitcases–are they myth or reality?”
Let’s start by noting that “nuclear suitcase” is a term coined by journalists. Journalistic parlance, if you wish. The matter concerns special compact nuclear devices of knapsack type. Igor Valynkin, commander of the 12th Main Directorate of the Defense Ministry responsible for nuclear ordnance storage, was absolutely honest when he was saying in an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 1997 that “there have never been any nuclear suitcases, grips, handbags or other carryalls.”
As for special compact nuclear devices, the Americans were the first to assemble them. They were called Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADM). As of 1964, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps had two models of SADM at their disposal–M-129 and M-159. Each SADM measured 87 x 65 x 67 centimeters [34 by 26 by 26 inches]. A container with the backpack weighed 70 kilograms [154 pounds]. There were about 300 SADMs in all. The foreign media reported that all these devices were dismantled and disposed of within the framework of the unilateral disarmament initiatives declared by the first President Bush in late 1991 and early 1992.
The Soviet Union initiated production of special compact nuclear devices in 1967. These munitions were called special mines. There were fewer models of them in the Soviet Union than in the United States. All of these munitions were to be dismantled before 2000 in accordance with the Russian and American commitments concerning reduction of tactical nuclear weapons dated 1991. [When the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris Yeltsin reiterated the commitment in January 1992.] Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said at the conference on the Nuclear Weapons Nonproliferation Treaty in April 2000 that Russia had practically completed dismantling “nuclear mines.” It means that Russia kept the promise Yeltsin once made to the international community.
Mr. Yesin added that all “portable” nuclear weapons were strictly controlled by the KGB in the Soviet era and were held in a single facility on Russian soil, where they were regularly counted before they were dismantled. The special mines that the press calls “nuclear suitcases” are no more. American officials, including Ms. Gottemoeller, insist that there is no evidence that any are missing, stolen or sold. American experts charged with monitoring the destruction of these weapons have repeatedly testified to Congress that no special mines are unaccounted for.
What about the Russian army units trained to use the special mines? Is it possible that a few such weapons remain in their hands? According to Mr. Yesin, “they always used simulators and dummy weapons. Needless to say, the latter looked like the real thing–the same size and weight, the same control panel. Instead of nuclear materials, however, they contained sand.”
Despite Lebed’s many changing accounts, his reputation for exaggeration, and the denial of nearly every Russian official with knowledge of Russian nuclear weapons, his tale lives on in breathless newspaper articles and Web posts. Perhaps the most amusing was an article in London’s Sunday Express claiming that al Qaeda bought twenty “nuclear suitcases for 25 million pounds” (roughly $45 million) from “Boris” and “Alexy.” What, not Natasha?
Still, Graham Allison puts his faith in Lebed’s story. How does Mr. Allison account for the high-level rebuttals? He makes two brief arguments. “Moscow’s assurance that ‘all nuclear weapons are accounted for’ is wishful thinking, since at least four nuclear submarines with nuclear warheads sank and were never recovered by the Soviet Union.” (One was recovered by the U.S. in 1974.) This is true, but beside the point; the subs were carrying nuclear missiles, not nuclear suitcases.
Mr. Allison’s more pointed rebuttal is this:
The Russian government reacted to Lebed’s claim in classic Soviet style, combing wholesale denial with efforts to discredit the messenger. In the days and months that followed, official government spokesmen claimed that (1) no such weapons ever existed; (2) any weapons of this sort had been destroyed; (3) all Russian weapons were secure and properly accounted for; and (4) it was inconceivable that the Russian government could lose a nuclear weapon. Assertions to the contrary, or even questions about the matter, were dismissed as anti-Russian propaganda or efforts at personal aggrandizement.
Mr. Allison is unfairly summarizing the official Russian view. There is no contradiction between points (1) and (2) because (1) refers to suitcase nukes, a journalist term for a weapon that never existed. The portable nuclear devices–the special mines that filled three footlockers and weighed hundreds of pounds–were destroyed as required by U.S.–Russia treaties.
We don’t have to take Russia’s word for this; the disposal and destruction of these weapons were supervised by expert American officials like Ms. Gottemoeller. So point (2) checks out. As for points (3) and (4), Russia’s claims have been independently verified by U.S. officials. If Mr. Allison has specific evidence of misplaced nuclear suitcases, he doesn’t provide it in either the hardcover or paperback edition of his book or in his speeches to the Council on Foreign Relations or elsewhere.
What about the testimony of Soviet defector Stanislav Lunev? Certainly his tale is cloaked in high drama. Mr. Lunev entered the congressional hearing room in a black ski mask and testified behind a tall screen. He described a portable nuclear device that was “the size of a golf-club bag” and testified that “one of my main directives was to find drop sites for mass destruction weapons” that would be smuggled into the U.S. using drug routes and detonated by special teams. Mr. Lunev did not testify that he saw those weapons, only that, as a TASS reporter working in Washington (his cover as a military intelligence officer), his job was to scout for “drop sites.”
I tracked Mr. Lunev down in suburban Maryland, where he is battling lymphatic cancer. Over the phone, he sounds like a bear of a man, with a charming Russian accent. He calls me “Riche,” as in “Riche, you must switch off all recording devices.” When I say I have no such devices, only a bad line, he agrees to call back. When he does, I ask him if he has ever seen a portable nuclear device. “No,” he says.
Then he asks if I have ever heard of Albuquerque, N.M. There is a museum there, he explains, that displays America’s portable nuclear device, the SADM. “The Soviet model probably looks similar,” he says, adding that he is not an expert in such things.
Finally, there is Graham Allison’s book. It is a serious and valuable work, with many practical suggestions for arresting the spread of nuclear technology. Still, Mr. Allison’s concerns about a nuclear suitcase-sized device rest on three shaky pillars: that Lebed was right about the missing suitcase nukes, that Stanislev Lunev’s account is persuasive, and that Russian nuclear security is lax.
As we have seen, Lebed’s changing story is highly questionable, and the nuclear mines have long since been dismantled. Mr. Allison himself concedes that nuclear suitcases might not be operative. Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations conference in September 2004, Mr. Allison said that the weapons Lebed referred to are now at least seven years old and that “many of these would be beyond warranty,” requiring extensive refurbishing to function at full power.
Allison does not refer to Mr. Lunev by name, possibly because he does not know it. Mr. Lunev is not named in his congressional testimony and discovering his identity requires a bit of sleuthing. Mr. Allison does not cite Mr. Lunev’s book or even acknowledge talking to him. (Mr. Lunev, a friendly and direct fellow, has never heard of Mr. Allison.)
As for Mr. Allison’s contention that the Russians do not keep their nuclear weapons as secure as we do, he is quite right. But the Russians probably do well enough. Allison cites a number of cases in which nuclear material–though not bombs–was stolen from Russian reactors. Yet in each of the cases he cites, the thieves were caught before they could transfer the material. And the small amounts stolen could not have been, even if combined, converted into a single bomb. And there is no evidence that any of the Soviet Union’s “special mines” have gone missing.
No one seriously doubts Osama bin Laden’s intense desire for nuclear weapons, suitcase-size or otherwise. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden station (and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror), said that the CIA was aware of “the careful, professional manner in which al Qaeda was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons” since 1996. There is a plethora of human and documentary intelligence to support Mr. Scheuer’s conclusion. Perhaps the most chilling is a fatwa that bin Laden asked for and received from Shaykh Nasir bin Hamid al-Fahd in May 2003. It was called “A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels.” The Saudi cleric concludes: “If a bomb that killed 10 million of them and burned as much of their land as they have burned Muslims’ land were dropped on them, it would be permissible.”
Fatwas are not enough. There are only three ways for al Qaeda to realize its atomic dreams: buy nuclear weapons, steal them or make them. Each approach is virtually impossible. Buying the bomb has not worked out well for al Qaeda. The terror organization has tried and, according to detainees, been scammed repeatedly. In Sudan’s decrepit capital of Khartoum, an al Qaeda operative paid $1.5 million for a three-foot-long metal canister with South African markings. Allegedly it was uranium from South Africa’s recently decommissioned nuclear program. According to Jamal al-Fadl, an al Qaeda leader later detained by U.S. forces, bin Laden ordered that it be tested in a safe house in Cyprus. It was indeed radioactive, but not of sufficient quality to be weapons-grade. One American intelligence analyst said that he believed the material was taken from the innards of an X-ray machine. It is not clear what it actually was, but the canister was ultimately discarded by al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda’s next attempt to buy bomb-making material involved Mamduh Mahmud Salim, a nuclear engineer. He was captured in Germany in 1998, before he could obtain any nuclear material. In a third case, al Qaeda paid the Islamic Army of Uzbekistan for some radioactive material. It turned out that the uranium al Qaeda received was not sufficiently enriched to create an atomic blast, though it could be used in a “dirty bomb.”
For what it is worth, there are actually no documented cases of the Russian Mafia or Russian officials selling nuclear weapons or material. Given that Russian gangsters have sold everything from small arms to aircraft carriers, this might seem surprising. Michael Crowley and Eric Adams, writing in Popular Science magazine, theorize that Russian security forces may be less tempted by money than is commonly assumed or that Russian mobsters find other illicit material more profitable than nuclear material. Whatever the reason, there is simply no known case of the Russian mob selling nuclear devices or parts to anyone, let alone to al Qaeda.
What about theft? Stealing a bomb–or its component parts–is far more difficult than it sounds. The International Atomic Energy Agency maintains a detailed database of thefts of highly enriched uranium, the kind needed to make an atomic bomb. There have been 10 known cases of highly enriched uranium theft between 1994 and 2004. Each amounted to “a few grams or less.” The total loss is less than eight grams, and even these eight grams, which have differing levels of purity, could not be productively combined. To put these quantities in perspective, it takes some 15,900 grams–roughly 35 pounds–to make a highly enriched uranium bomb.
Stealing highly enriched uranium is extremely difficult. Every nation with an active nuclear weapons program guards access to its breeder reactors and enrichment plants. Employee backgrounds are scrutinized and workers are under near-constant surveillance. Transporting radioactive material invites detection and is a constant danger to those moving it without shielding. If it were shielded, the immense weight of the small container would be a giveaway to authorities. Could terrorists storm a reactor and steal the radioactive material? Not likely. An investigation by Forbes magazine reveals the difficulties:
Assuming attackers could shoot their way past the beefed-up phalanx of armed guards, traffic barriers and guard towers that now surround every nuclear plant, they’d still have to fight their way into the reactor building through multiple levels of remote-activated blast doors–where access requires the right key card and palm print–to get to the spent-fuel pond, says Michael Wallace, president of Constellation Energy’s generation group, which operates five nuclear reactors. The pond where highly radioactive used fuel rods sit in 14-foot-long stainless steel assemblies cooling under 40 feet of water. Terrorists couldn’t just grab this stuff and run because, unshielded, it gives off a lethal dose of radiation in less than a minute. To avoid exposure, terrorists would have to force workers to use a giant crane inside the reactor to load the assemblies into huge transfer casks, then open the mammoth doors of the reactor building and use another crane to lift the cask onto a waiting truck–all the while being shot at by the National Guard. It may be easier to steal radioactive material outside the U.S.–but not much.
What about hijacking a plane and crash-diving it into a nuclear reactor? It would make a spectacular movie scene, but as Forbes explains, it would not cause much harm to those outside the plane:
Assume that terrorists could get past tightened airport security and fight off passengers to get through new, improved cockpit doors and take control of a plane. Even then they’d have to crash the jet directly into a reactor to have any chance of breaking containment. In 2002 the Electric Power Research Institute performed a $1 million computer simulation to assess such a risk. Conclusion: A direct hit from a 450,000-pound Boeing 767 flying low to the ground at 350 mph would ruin a plant’s ability to make electricity but not break the reactor’s cement shield. Reason: A reactor, smaller in profile than the Pentagon or World Trade Center, would not absorb the full force of the plane’s impact. And, for all the force behind it, a plane, built of aluminum and titanium, has far less mass than the 20-foot-thick steel-and-concrete sarcophagus enclosing a nuclear reactor. It would be like dropping a watermelon on a fire hydrant from 100 feet.
Another problem with theft is fencing the goods. Most uranium thieves have been caught when they tried to sell the small amounts of radioactive material they have stolen. And the difficulties of theft do not end once al Qaeda gets its prize. Even if al Qaeda terrorists managed to steal a nuclear device or bought one from those standby villains of choice, Russian mobsters, they would still have to figure out how to break the codes and overturn the fail-safes. All Russian and American devices have temperature and pressure sensors to defeat unauthorized use. Since intercontinental missiles are designed to pass through the upper atmosphere before descending to their targets, the terrorists would have to find a laboratory facility that could mimic the environment of the outer stratosphere. Good luck. Council on Foreign Relations fellow Charles Ferguson told the Washington Post that “you don’t just get it [a nuclear weapon] off the shelf, enter a code, and have it go off.”
So could al Qaeda make its own bomb? It appears that the terror network has tried and failed.
In August 2001, bin Laden was envisioning attacks bigger than what happened on September 11. Almost a month before the attacks on New York and Washington, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met with Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, two officials once part of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Mr. Mahmood had supervised the plant that enriched uranium for Pakistan’s first bomb and later managed efforts to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Both scientists were arrested on Oct. 23, 2001. They remain under house arrest in Pakistan. At their meeting with bin Laden, they discussed plans to mine uranium from plentiful deposits in Afghanistan and talked about the technology needed to turn the uranium into bomb fuel. It was these scientists who informed bin Laden that the uranium from Uzbekistan was too impure to be useful for bomb making.
Al Qaeda will keep trying, no doubt. But there is no evidence that they are near succeeding. A wide array of documents and computer hard drives found in al Qaeda safe houses reveals a serious effort to build weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military also obtained a document with the sinister title of “Superbomb.”
In addition, CNN discovered a cache of documents at an al Qaeda safe house that outlined the terror network’s WMD plans. David Albright, a physicist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, was retained by CNN to evaluate the al Qaeda documents.
In “Al Qaeda’s Nuclear Program: Through the Window of Seized Documents,” a research paper for a think tank linked to the University of California at Berkeley, Albright concluded: “Whatever al Qaeda had accomplished towards nuclear weapon capabilities, its effort in Afghanistan was ‘nipped in the bud’ with the fall of the Taliban government. The international community is fortunate that the war in Afghanistan set back al Qaeda’s effort to obtain nuclear weapons.”
For now, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs remain in the realm of James Bond movies. Given the limitations of physics and engineering, no nation seems to have invested the time and money to make them. Both U.S. and the USSR built nuclear mines (as well as artillery shells), which were small but hardly portable–and all were dismantled by treaty by 2000. Alexander Lebed’s claims and those of defector Stanislev Lunev were not based on direct observation. The one U.S. official who saw a small nuclear device said it was the size of three footlockers–hardly a suitcase. The desire to obliterate cities is portable–inside the heads of believers–while, thankfully, the nuclear devices to bring that about are not.
Mr. Miniter is author of “Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War
[ Reading time: 14 - 22 minutes ]
This story came out today on the web, and the link came to me via a ‘Google Alert’ email that I occasionally receive when Google finds a new webpage that has the word ’survivalist’ in it. I have many Google Alerts running, and rarely does something come that I don’t already know about. This one caught my eye because of its long term implications by a very minor part of the vast quilt of humanity that makes up the American Way.
To put my point before you…anarchists are the leading edge of domestic terrorists. Nothing good comes from their work. They are socialist and communist in nature, and would prefer YOU not to have that which you have…security, safe homes, plenty of food, good jobs, and long term prospects for success. Anarchists live to bring down governments, corporations, and anything that is organized in a way THEY don’t like. They claim to be on the left…liberal…democratic at times. But don’t buy into their claims. They aren’t in it for YOU…only themselves.
However, this particular story is quite disturbing. On first read, it looks like the ‘anarchists’ having plans to ‘take over’ the small pockets of government, “when the opportunity arrives”. This sounds exactly like the classic Loner Survivalist…the kind of person who has a huge stash of weapons, food, and comm gear…waiting for civilation to fall, in whatever degree large or small…that will allow them to profit off the weaker survivors. They refer to the Loner as something they can learn from, but not what they themselves want to be. They want to convert entire communities to socialist agendas.
Take that in any way you can, these anarchists will loudly, or silently, destroy what the rest of us work for…it means the Bad Guys will rule the Weak Folks…and anarchy reigns supreme…meaning those who have the firepower…the lightning (electricity)…the passes (roads and transportation systems)..and the means…will take over and destroy whatever civilization may be left…a more selfish and manipulative group of useless mouthbreathers you’ll never find.
It means Bad Things.
I don’t post this story below to convert anyone to anarchists (Lord knows I’ve never made claim to be one, and never will) …I post it to make you aware of the threats we have in our OWN population, from people that live on the dark side…hidden in the shadows…waiting for the chance to hurt, injure, maim, or kill people THEY want to…without judges, juries, or law. Nothing more than scum and vermin…a lawless society. They claim to be “for the people” …helping the oppressed…freeing the slaves from the capitalist pigs. Right…have they been watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail again?
I’ll make the more disturbing phrases more visible in this mishmash below…it’s not well written by this “anonymous” a-hole. But, the ideas conveyed are worthy of your attention since they are a threat to you, and America, as these evil Americans will hurt every innocent that gets in their way, and never look back. It’s the kind of thing you expect to see in big epic movies about survival of a nation…our nation.
Pass the word…don’t let them get away with hurting others.
Radical Readiness
Saturday, October 29 2005 @ 05:06 PM PDT
Contributed by: Anonymous
WeiJi: Crisis= Danger + Opportunity
A call for Radical Preparedness
WeiJi is the Chinese ideogram representing the concept of “Crisis” which is made up of two characters Wei [Wei (representing “danger”) and Ji (representing “opportunity”). This symbology seems to perfectly represent the importance of crises for those seeking radical change, and why radicals must be prepared to respond to them.
Crises have been with humans since the beginning. Natural disasters, epidemics, wars, famine, social unrest, ecological disruptions and depressions are not new in this century and there seems no reason they shall not continue. In fact, many scientists and thinkers believe we are heading for many more and new types of disasters that due to globalization can spread quickly and widely. Only the most Pollyannish person could possibly believe that there shall be no more emergencies in the near future. Though it seems obvious that radicals (like anyone else for that matter) would put some energy and forethought into preparing for natural or human-made disasters this is often not the case.
There seems to be a natural knee-jerk resistance to emergency preparedness in even the most radical of the Left because of its association with military and government responses and terminology. The extreme right and religious fundamentalists of all stripes currently have a near monopoly on preparing for crises and thus have at least theoretically the best chance to capitalize politically on the opportunities available in our increasingly dangerous world.
This article will examine why radicals should care about being ready for crises and what are the dangers and opportunities that may come from responding (or failing to respond) to emergencies of all kinds. In addition, we hope to show why radicals are in a better position, than traditional survivalists to provide early and sustainable mutual aid during times of crisis.
Emergency preparedness should be approached like all of our political projects. Radicals, if prepared, have an opportunity to make deep social and political relationships with others during the crisis and create allies for future change.
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We should be prepared for crises for a number of reasons both social and political. The social reasons should be obvious. Crises present great danger for our lives and the lives of those we care about, work with and those we seek to help by making a world a better place. Often crises can bring out the worse in folks. The combination of stress, unfamiliar choices and a dramatic jarring of ones social constructs all work in tandem to make people react less than ideally during times of immediate danger. Ironically, it is at such difficult times that people need to draw most heavily upon their strengths, skills, compassion and good judgment. The strains of crisis can tear at the social ties with those we are most close to. Preparedness allows us to enhance our ability to act positively during times of flux and take time to concentrate on more than mere survival. By preparing ahead of time we are inoculating ourselves to much of the stress that accompanies disasters and emergencies. We know from research of emergency first responders and the military that practice and preparedness substantially reduce stress during actual disasters and assure better judgment and more decisive action. Often crises require immediate actions otherwise disruptions can actually multiply. The old adage “an ounce of prevention is a worth a pound of cure”, is not just good medical sense but also relates to emergency readiness.
No matter how prepared an individual is, they will undoubtedly need (or at least benefit from) the skills, thoughts and support of others. Crises can often disrupt our relationships with those we normally work with and trust. Communications may be so overtaxed as to be not available; travel may be seriously hampered or dangerous; normal gathering spaces maybe be vacant or inaccessible and normal routine encounters may be so disrupted that one can quickly find themselves isolated. Isolation during a crisis (despite what the right-wing survivalists say) is dangerous, unnecessary and possibly fatal. Our greatest security during any period of turmoil is to have a strong and prepared social network. Most people rely on a social network under current circumstances and would feel lost if it were suddenly removed in an instant. Part of preparedness is ensuring, as much as possible, that your social networks remain strong even during an emergency so collectively you can draw upon each other for support, mutual aid and decision making.
Autonomy and liberty almost always become the first casualties during an emergency.. Radicals have long critiqued various government agencies for being oppressive, irrational, exploitive, mismanaged, out-dated, inhumane etc. All of these faults are instantly multiplied during a serious crisis. It is naïve to believe that a government that daily exploits and oppresses large segments of the population without wealth and political capital will all of a sudden during an emergency care about those same people. All one needs to do is look at local and federal preparedness manuals of organizations like FEMA and one can see the first order on their agenda-- the priority is not to provide aid but to re-assert its control during a crisis. This has been the true since the dustbowl of the 1930’s to this year’s Katrina disaster. It should come as no surprise that government preparedness manuals for local and state governments spend as much time outlining plans to secure “commercial interests” as they do providing medical aid to those injured and in need. In fact, FEMA has a policy of not sending in first responders, like firefighters and paramedics , until police or military units “have established order”. The government’s concept of order, from reading the manuals, seems more akin to business as usual than doing anything to alleviate suffering. is the greatest government incursions in our lives occur during emergencies. Just when government should be promoting mutual aid and self-organizing among its citizens it does everything to marginalize these ideas and strip civil authority of all decision making. In one recent FEMA memo, during the Louisiana crisis, it suggests “Non-local Units [National Guardsmen from other states] should be used when possible…[because] local units may have too many connections to the local population”. In fact the entire concept of FEMA is to de-localize the problem, to bring in outside government authority that is not democratically elected in order to re-establish the status quo and to protect interests of capitalists and the politically connected. This type of callous and counterproductive coercion needs to be actively resisted during times of crisis. The government spends millions and prepares constantly to take control and assert exploitive and divisive powers over already weakened localities and populations during disasters; radicals must be ready to resist and bring control and decision-making back to the people most affected by the emergency.
Radicals that invest in emergency preparedness are in a unique position to aid local populations and actively resist the detrimental effects of non-localized government occupation. Leftists in this country have a long history of working with community groups, who are seeking to improve their neighborhoods and provide for each other what the capitalists and government will not. We have spent many years developing strong relationships and networks among a variety of people who have skills to organize. We have also taken time to improve and constantly re-evaluate our roles as organizers, seeking non-authoritarian ways of aiding self-organization among those exploited by capitalists and governments. We have not always been successful in our attempts to integrate with various oppressed communities but we continue to put a premium on organizing and activism, which puts us way ahead of most right-wing survivalists and makes our project of preparedness quite different from theirs.
Fortunately most people naturally seek to self-organize during a crises. However, often after an initial outburst of localized mutual aid and self-organization at some point the government and capitalists react. They always institute things like forced evacuations, curfews, frozen zones, etc. and then take control over all civil communications channels and seek to centralize people (often in refugee camps)which makes decentralized localized organizing very difficult if not impossible. Centralizing people breaks up normal affinity bonds like neighborhoods, religious affiliation, friends, co-workers, etc. treating all people as undifferentiated refugees. With these important affinity bonds destroyed people are forced to turn to the authorities who control all organizing efforts immune to criticism or advice from those most effected by the emergency.
Mutual aid is quite common during the earliest moments of a disaster, with neighbors helping neighbors and even helpful strangers lending a hand. Officials and “specialists” working for the powers that be usually interfere to stop such behavior under the pretenses that their help is “better”, more expert, and more appropriate. From daily experience we know that peoples’ needs are at odds with the powerful elites’ agenda. It would be foolishness to think if organizing was centralized by the elites that our best interests would be served.
For the radical interested in emergency readiness the crucial questions are: how to prepare in such a way as to promote spontaneous self-organizing and extend it; and how to resist government’s attempt to centralize all help activity. From experiences elsewhere (e.g. Argentina), it seems once people start organizing for themselves to take care of each other during a crisis they often are less willing to return to business as usual and defer power to the State. It is not surprising that most major radical social, political and economic revolutions have a occurred after some sort of disaster or crisis. Real life experiences in mutual aid and egalitarianism are worth a library-full of propaganda for creating lasting changes in society.
There are almost no models in the survivalist sub-cultures to draw upon for radical emergency preparedness. Right-wing and fundamentalist circles interested in survivalism do not have the same goals as us and thus their methods are quite different. While it is true most of these “survivalist” groups seek extreme changes to society (ranging from libertarianism to fascism to metaphysical theocracies) their models do not allow for radical social change.
Despite the popularity of such books like the Turner Diaries among right-wing extremists , there has been very little organizing among such groups. Even during their hey-day of the mid-1980’s and early 1990’s they could offer no organized response or message to such watershed events as Ruby Ridge or Waco. They lack both the communications infrastructure and the desire for group organizing. Instead they are taking a course of extreme individualist survival. They seek to provide bunker-like supplies, skills and support for only them and their family. In fact, they spend a great deal of time worrying about the spontaneous self-organizing of others. This leads to their nearly absurd preoccupation with weapons and self-defense. They have a deeply cynical view of others and hold many of the preconceived notions the elites have about poor or marginalized people (the most likely victims of any crisis in this country). The right-wing survivalists have failed to exstend mutual aid during times of crisis in this country. Instead they redouble their own personal efforts to prepare while offering nothing to those effected. Where the Left has been much quicker (though we must do more) to reach out and provide help to those suffering.
We need to reject the “bunker mentality” not only as right-wing fanaticism but as inherently not a good bet for actually creating sustainable communities after a major disaster. While it is acceptable for radicals to use the substantial infrastructural resources created by the right-wing for emergency preparedness their on-line supply stores; read their articles about storage; and even attend skill specific trainings however we must create our own models based on the work we already do every day, which is a much more complex task than what they are doing. We have a much better history and experience with organizing coordinated actions (albeit it’s often only temporarily) such as mass-mobilizations and extended campaigns that are regional, national or international in scope. We have developed fairly sophisticated processes for decision-making among varied groups that are both supportive and egalitarian. We promote decentralization but unlike the right, we want to coordinate decentralized groups into sustainable resistance networks based on concepts like solidarity and mutual support. In addition over the past few decades, we have been slowly been building relationships with various community groups engaged in projects different from our own, though these relationships have developed more slowly than most of us had anticipated.
We often complain about how the extreme right is out-organizing us, and how during a crisis “they have all the guns”. The reasoning seems to suggest that the right is better-prepared to take advantage of a crisis. This reasoning is not founded on any truth. The right has , perhaps, a better ability to “survive” as isolated individuals and families and protect what they have from outsiders but they are inherently unable to extend their influence to other communities or society at large. It must also be said that is not their goal. The few attempts over the past two decades for the right to resist the State has met with utter failure and little public notice or sympathy. In the end the right maybe able to survive a temporary localized emergency but never resist the State’s imposition of power.
We have natural advantages over the right, but there is still a lot of work to do. During any crisis we will not be competing for influence on the course of events that will effect millions of folks with small groups in their bunkers but with the government and private security forces.
There is so much to do and none of us know how much time there is before the next major crisis/opportunity. First we must continue with the projects we are already doing. Continue to network among ourselves and make in-roads with other community groups. We should keep building and strengthening our relationships based on mutual aid and solidarity and continue building infrastructure throughout North America. We must keep resisting, while analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of our resistance. But we must also do much more than that.
We live in an excellent time to start learning skills, sharing information and collecting valuable resources that may be in short supply during a crisis. The time to do it is now, because during a crisis time will be in short supply and the added stress will make learning new skills and techniques very difficult. Besides when people’s lives are on the line, it is no time to be honing your skills or dumpster diving for the tool you need to set up an alternative energy generator.
Now is the time to be talking, writing and scheming about being ready in a crisis. There is precious little discussion about emergency preparedness in radical circles, it is not yet even a blip on the Left’s radar. We should start with our friends, affinity groups, collectives and organizations. We need to start figuring out ways in which you and your comrades could provide mutual aid during a crisis. Decide what you would need to be effective and what skills, resources and knowledge you already have. Start developing alternative communication systems (e.g. short-wave radio)and get use to using them and making a presence known on them. Start collecting the resources now that you could provide to others who may need them.
Next time there is a hurricane, flood, blackout or any other crisis follow it closely and if possible go there to provide aid. You will find that experience is a great teacher for what is necessary. Provide report-backs to various communities and analysis. Build networks between various groups that are also involved in this type of preparedness project.
Post information, ideas and schemes to this web-site. We are trying to create a presence on the web for radical emergency preparedness. We are not experts, we are like you. As a community we can create a useful resource for others to start preparing for emergencies while also increasing our own skills and knowledge. The time is now to start. Please look at this web-site and get some ideas on where to begin and then add to this site to help others in the process. We can do it, but it must be together.
–Written by WeiJi NYC Collective (October 2005)
[ Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes ]
This story is a tough one. On the one hand, most of the officers were probably looking after their families, who were just as threatened as the other thousands of families in New Orleans. These cops are human, too. But, on the other hand, they were sworn to uphold the law and stay on post.
Problem is…the city of New Orleans should have had plans to deal with EXACTLY the kind of disaster that happened…sufficient levees, large and powerful (and working) pumps, a city that is NOT 7 feet below sea level, and a large enough fleet of transportation buses to move mass volumes of citizens out of harms way.
You have to uphold the law above all else…otherwise, you have anarchy…uhm…er…like New Orleans had for a bit.
Go figure.
45 New Orleans cops fired for desertion
Friday, October 28, 2005; Posted: 7:23 p.m. EDT (23:23 GMT)
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — Fifty-one members of the New Orleans Police Department — 45 officers and six civilian employees — were fired Friday for allegedly abandoning their posts before or after Hurricane Katrina.
“They were terminated due to them abandoning the department prior to the storm,” acting superintendent Warren Riley said. “They either left before the hurricane or 10 to 12 days after the storm and we have never heard from them.”
Police were unable to account for 240 officers on the 1,450-member force following Katrina. The force has been investigating them to see if they left their posts during the storm.
The mass firing was the first action taken against the missing officers. Another 15 officers resigned when placed under investigation for abandonment.
“This isn’t representative of our department,” Riley said. “We had a lot of heroes that stepped up after the storm.”
Another 45 officers resigned from the force after the August 29 storm. The resignations were for personal reasons ranging from relocation to new employment, Riley said.
The fired officers do not have the right to appeal, Riley said.
“The regulation says that if you leave the job for a period of 14 days without communication you can be terminated,” Riley said. “I don’t think they have the right to a civil service appeal.”
Lt. David Benelli, president of the New Orleans police union, said he had no sympathy for those who abandoned their post.
“The worst thing you can call a police officer is a deserter,” Benelli said.
None of the officers had contacted the union about fighting the dismissals, he said.
Two former New Orleans police officers and a New Orleans firefighter were rejected for jobs in the Dallas Police Department because of allegations they deserted their jobs during Hurricane Katrina.
“When you are ready and take an oath of office and you do not fulfill that office, that’s an issue for us and it should be an issue for law enforcement in general,” Dallas Deputy Chief Floyd Simpson said Thursday.
Hearings for the New Orleans officers that remain under investigation for abandonment will begin November 8 and last four to six months, Riley said.
The department is also investigating the beating of a man during his arrest and the alleged assault of an Associated Press television producer.
“It’s still ongoing, but we hope to have a conclusion within a few weeks,” Riley said.
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He knew the job was dangerous when it took it… Let’s hope he lasts…
A SHIFTING SPOTLIGHT IN A BLAZE OF CRITICISM
By TODD S. PURDUM
NYT Page One
10/27/2005
WASHINGTON — George W. Bush has been in the White House for 248 weeks, through a terrorist attack, two wars and a bruising re-election. But it seems safe to say that he has never had a worse political week than this one — and it is not over yet.
“I think all bets are off,” said former Sen. Warren B. Rudman, R-N.H. “Who knows what’s next?”
The biggest question for Bush now is what he can make of the 39 months remaining in his presidency. This singular week has been months — even years — in the making. The 2,000th American fatality in Iraq was just the latest daunting milestone in a war that will soon be three years old. The CIA leak investigation that threatens to indict a top White House aide or two on Friday grew out of the fierce debates over the flawed intelligence that led to that war.
And Harriet E. Miers’ withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme Court is the bitter fruit of Bush’s own frailty in the wake of all those storms — and Hurricane Katrina — and of his miscalculations about how her appointment would be received.
Bush’s effort to avoid a fight by choosing a nominee with a scant public record (whose conservative fidelity only he could vouch for) instead prompted a ferocious backlash from the conservative activists he has courted for years.
“There’s all this talk about the Republican base and the conservative base of the Republican Party, and the conservative base of the president and how it’s important to play to the base and please the base and fawn over the base,” said former Sen. John C. Danforth, the Missouri Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.
“And look what it gets President Bush,” Danforth continued. “It just gets him a kick in the rear. That’s what they’ve done to him, and they’ve done it to him at a time when he’s vulnerable, and they’ve done it at the expense of a perfectly fine human being.”
Some scholars and Republican elders say it is now time for Bush to do what Ronald Reagan did when the Iran-Contra scandal threatened to derail his second term: Shake up the White House staff, retool his domestic and foreign policy agenda and move on. But most say they see few signs that Bush intends to do so.
“Assume there are several indictments,” said Richard Norton Smith, the head of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., and a biographer of several prominent Republicans.
“Then,” Smith said, referring to the former Tennessee senator whom Reagan tapped as chief of staff to clean house, “the question becomes is there a Howard Baker moment? And if there’s a Howard Baker moment, who’s Howard Baker? There aren’t as many ‘wise men’ around Washington as there were 20 years ago.”
Miers’ withdrawal is all the more remarkable because Bush so seldom backs down. Again and again, he has racked up legislative victories that once seemed improbable, or at least managed to save face. His instinct, abetted by Vice President Dick Cheney, will once again be to grind out advances where he can find them.
In that sense, the abandonment of Miers seemed deliberate, an effort to shift the spotlight, however briefly, from the expected actions of the special prosecutor investigating the leak of a CIA agent’s identity, and reposition the president for a new confirmation battle with conservatives by his side.
But the president’s second term legislative agenda is at a standstill on matters large and small. His hopes for overhauling Social Security are dead for this year; the goal of reshaping the estate tax stalled with Katrina; and his administration was even forced to backtrack this week on its post-Katrina suspension of a law that requires paying locally prevailing wages for constructions projects financed by federal money.
The White House had argued that suspending the law, the Davis-Bacon Act, could speed hurricane repairs. But critics, including some congressional Republicans, complained that the administration was taking advantage of the disaster to upend a law important to unions.
Bush blamed Miers’ withdrawal on Senate demands for information about her views on important constitutional and legal questions during her service as White House counsel and in other top staff jobs.
“It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House, disclosures that would undermine a president’s ability to receive candid counsel,” Bush said in a statement.
That seemed more a rationale than a reason, but Bush’s articulation of it now effectively precludes his naming Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Miers’ predecessor as White House counsel, to the court, as some aides have long suggested he might like to do.
“They’re not reaching out; they’re in a bunker mentality,” said one veteran Republican familiar with the thinking in the White House, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of offending the president. “The idea that they’re going to blame the Senate process for her going down says to me there’s no introspection going on.”
Second term presidents are notoriously insulated from second-guessing, and Bush has never been one to invite private criticism, or confess public error. His high premium on staff loyalty may well have led him to misjudge how his nomination of Miers — by all accounts the ultimate loyalist — would play.
“In the end, I always thought the thing that would bring her down was that she was his lawyer,” said Smith, the historian. “That makes people uncomfortable. It’s just too inside.”
Lyndon B. Johnson’s nomination of his longtime confidant Abe Fortas to be chief justice collapsed in 1968 partly for the same reason.
Richard D. Friedman, an expert on Supreme Court history at the University of Michigan Law School, said Miers’ withdrawal reflected the reality that modern confirmations had become “so contentious that the president has an incentive to pick somebody whose ideology he believes is compatible with his but about whom little is known,” while the Senate “then feels duty-bound to find out what it can about the nominee’s ideology.”
He added, “The nominee and the administration put up a wall, but in this case, it crumbled,” in part because of doubts in both parties about Miers’ stature.
The conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in Human Events Online that, by withdrawing, Miers “may just have helped” Bush “save his presidency.” In the same journal, Ann Coulter allowed, “Bush has us back on the team, ready to cheer for him unreservedly.”
But former Sen. John B. Breaux, D-La., who is pressing for the nomination of his home-state candidate, Judge Edith Brown Clement of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, had a much different view of what Miers’ withdrawal portends for Bush’s power to influence his own party, much less the opposition, for the rest of his term.
“It means,” Breaux said, “that the fear factor is gone.”
