Douglas Caddy

Phone hacking: Mobile companies challenge John Yates's evidence Four phone companies dispute that police 'ensured' they warn potential News of the World phone-hacking victims by Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 April 2011 19.48 BST John Yates, the senior police officer at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal, faces a new set of allegations that he has misled parliament. A Guardian investigation has found that all four leading mobile phone companies dispute evidence that Yates has given to a select committee about police efforts to warn public figures whose voicemails were intercepted by the News of the World. During the original police inquiry in 2006 phone companies identified a total of at least 120 politicians, police officers, members of the royal household and others whose voicemail had been accessed by Glenn Mulcaire, the NoW's private investigator. Yates told the home affairs select committee last September that police had "ensured" the phone companies warned all of their suspected victims. But all four companies have told the Guardian police made no such move and that most of the victims were never warned by them. Two of the companies, Orange and Vodafone, wrote to Scotland Yard last autumn, spelling out the fact that they had told none of their customers that they had been hacked and that police had never asked them to. The home affairs committee on Thursday said that more than four months after those letters were sent to the Yard, it was unaware of Yates having made any attempt to tell it that there might be a problem with the evidence he gave. The committee chairman, Keith Vaz, said he would write to Yates and to the phone companies to clarify the position. The latest allegations come after a public dispute in which Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has challenged Yates's account to parliament of the advice that police were given by prosecutors and the impact this had on the original investigation of the affair and the number of victims who were identified. At a session of the committee on Tuesday, Vaz said the DPP's evidence clearly contradicted the account which Yates had given to the committee the previous week and that he would be writing to Yates to ask for an explanation. Yates is currently acting deputy commissioner of the Met. In relation to the phone companies, the key evidence from Yates was given to the committee in September last year when Vaz asked him whether police had warned all the public figures whose pin codes had been found in Glenn Mulcaire's paperwork. Yates said: "We have taken what I consider to be all reasonable steps in conjunction with the major service providers – the Oranges, Vodafones – to ensure where we had even the minutest possibility they may have been the subject of an attempt to hack or hacking, we have taken all reasonable steps." MP Mary Macleod asked what he meant by "reasonable steps", and Yates replied: "Speaking to them or ensuring the phone company has spoken to them." The four leading mobile phone companies all say that this is not correct and that the police did not ask them to warn any victims among their customers. All of them searched their call data as part of the police inquiry in 2006 and all initially followed the standard procedure, which is to keep such inquiries confidential. Vodafone found about 40 customers whose voicemail had been intercepted. They told none of them that they had been victims but warned a small number in particularly sensitive positions to check their security. A spokesman said: "We were not asked by the Met police to contact any customers but believed it was important that we inform as many as we could. As it was a live investigation, however, we were very limited in the information we could pass on to customers. We were only able to remind customers, where we believed it was appropriate, of the importance of voicemail security." Orange identified about 45 customers whose voicemail had been dialled from Mulcaire's phone numbers. It said it warned none of them but passed the customers' details to Scotland Yard. A spokesman for Orange said: "At no point during the investigations were we asked, nor did we feel it right, to take further action in relation to these customers. The Metropolitan police are fully aware of our position on this." T-Mobile gave police information from its call records but says it never finally identified customers who were victims and therefore warned none. A spokesman said: "We have never been supplied with a list of names or telephone numbers by the police of customers who may have been compromised, nor were we asked by the police to contact any of them." O2 identified about 40 customers whose voicemail had been successfully accessed. It is the only company to have taken a corporate decision to approach and warn all of them. Asked about Yates's evidence, a spokesman for O2 said: "We weren't contacted by the police and asked proactively to get in touch with customers to warn them if they had been victims." It is now clear that police failed to inform not only those victims who were identified by the phone companies but a large number of others whose details were found in notebooks, computer records and audiotapes seized from Mulcaire in August 2006 but never properly investigated until the Yard began its third investigation into the affair in January. The failure means that police broke an agreement with the DPP that they would contact "all potential victims". It also means many of the victims were deprived of the chance to check the call data, which is kept by the phone companies for only 12 months, and that they had no opportunity to change their pin codes or to assess the damage done by the interception of their messages. The immediate problem for Scotland Yard is that the phone companies, like the DPP, are now challenging the evidence given to the public and parliament by the most senior officer in the affair, John Yates. In July 2009, he made a public statement: "Where there was clear evidence that people had potentially been the subject of tapping, they were all contacted by police." In February 2010 he wrote to the culture, media and sport committee: "Where information exists to suggest some form of interception of an individual's phone was or may have been attempted by Goodman and Mulcaire, the Metropolitan police has been diligent and taken all proper steps to ensure those individuals have been informed." Yates's evidence about the phone companies last September prompted an exchange of letters. According to one senior police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, Detective Chief Superintendent Philip Williams, who works directly under John Yates, wrote to mobile phone companies in October, claiming that he believed that the companies had contacted "all of the people potentially identified as being victims." On November 2, Orange wrote back to DCS Williams. The company is understood to have told him that police had never asked them to contact victims and that they had not done so. On November 22 Vodafone also wrote to DCS Williams. It is understood that the company expressed surprise that he was claiming to believe that it had contacted victims in 2006; it pointed out that it was for the police, not for the phone companies, to establish who had been victims of crime; and indicated it had no record of the police ever asking it to contact customers. Last month – more than four months after that exchange of letters – Yates gave evidence on phone-hacking to the home affairs committee and to the culture, media and sport committee. He made no reference to the letters. Nor did he tell the committee that the two companies had challenged his previous account. However, in evidence to the media committe, he did indicate some awareness of a problem. He said: "I think there is some confusion with some of the mobile phone companies as to who was doing what, and we need to get some clarity around that … I am not sure that the follow-up was as thorough as it could have been." In a statement on Thursday night, Scotland Yard said Yates had told the home affairs select committee in September 2010: "We think we have done all that is reasonable but we will continue to review it as we go along." A spokesman said the correspondence with the phone companies was part of that review and Yates had acknowledged in recent evidence to both select committees that more should have been done for victims. A spokesman said the current inquiry was reviewing the victim strategy

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Ian Burrell: A disturbing day for News International's heavyweights The Independent Wednesday, 6 April 2011 Rupert Murdoch's News International, publisher of the News of the World, yesterday issued a statement about its pro-activity in the current police investigation. "News International has consistently reiterated that it will not tolerate wrongdoing and is committed to acting on evidence," it said. But although the publisher has already sacked one of the two men arrested yesterday – Ian Edmondson, the NOTW head of news, who was dismissed in January – the other, the NOTW's chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, has remained a key and active member of its newsroom. The Met's new investigation team will now seek to ascertain whether the two men were part of, or knew of, a culture of phone hacking at the Sunday paper that went beyond Goodman. Related articles •Hacking: senior News of the World pair arrested •Prosecutor questions evidence of Met's Yates Detectives already have access to a treasure trove of information seized during the original police investigation after a raid in 2006 on the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator on the NOTW's payroll who was jailed for six months for hacking into voicemails. These detailed notes, along with thousands of emails recently uncovered by News International, are to be made available to lawyers acting for a long queue of celebrities, including Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan, who believe their phones were hacked by the NOTW and are taking legal action against Murdoch's company. The biggest question is how far up the chain of command at News International the phone hacking goes – and whether the questioning of Edmondson and Thurlbeck will lead to further arrests. Last week Rupert Murdoch announced that his son James, who has been in charge of his British operation since the hacking scandal re-emerged two years ago, would relocate to New York. It means that the media empire's most senior full-time executive in London will be Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of the News of the World. Ms Brooks has some explaining to do herself as the deadline approaches for her to reply to the Home Affairs Select Committee about how her paper paid police officers for information

Phone hacking: NoW journalists arrested Former news editor and current chief reporter arrested after presenting themselves at separate London police stations by Amelia Hill guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 April 2011 12.36 BST The former news editor and current chief reporter from the News of the World are in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting mobile phone voicemail messages. Ian Edmondson and Neville Thurlbeck had voluntarily presented themselves at different London police stations this morning and were arrested. It was expected their homes would be searched by officers at midday. Scotland Yard has confirmed that two men, aged 50 and 42, "were arrested this morning after attending separate police stations in south-west London by appointment". "They remain in custody for questioning after being arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977, and unlawful interception of voicemail messages, contrary to Section 1 Ripa [Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act] 2000," the briefing added. "The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking. It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding this case at this time." The Guardian understands that Edmondson, NoW's former head of news, is being questioned by officers at Wimbledon police station. Thurlbeck, the paper's chief reporter, is at Kingston police station. The arrests are the first salvo in Operation Weeting, whose tasks include establishing whether there are grounds for bringing further prosecutions in the phone-hacking scandal. Edmondson and Thurlbeck will probably be released later this afternoon after the search of their homes is complete. The two men have been implicated in the long-running scandal through documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator employed by the newspaper. Edmondson, who was sacked from NoW in January, denies any wrongdoing. Thurlbeck was interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against either man, both of whom have denied all involvement in criminal activity. The arrests come on the day that Keir Starmer QC, director of public prosecutions, gives evidence at a home affairs committee from witnesses into the unauthorised intercepting of communications. Only one reporter, the former royal editor Clive Goodman, has been convicted of a crime as part of the scandal. He and Mulcaire were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation. It was only after a series of high court cases brought by the actor Sienna Miller, the football pundit Andy Gray and others that the Metropolitan police were forced to reveal material found on Mulcaire's computer, during a 2006 raid of his home. Last Friday, a high court judge ordered NoW to make available Mulcaire's notes to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, who is in charge of the hacking cases, ordered "rolling disclosure" to all claimants. Hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims.

Hacking MPs' phones 'could amount to contempt of parliament' Select committee also says MPs who believe they are victims of phone hacking should pursue the matter in court By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Thursday 31 March 2011 14.46 BST A powerful committee of MPs said on Thursday that hacking mobile phones belonging to members of the House of Commons could amount to contempt of parliament. A report on phone hacking published by the select committee on standards and privileges concluded hacking could be in contempt, "if it can be shown to have interfered with the work of the house or to have impeded or obstructed an MP from taking part in such work". That might result in fines being levied in exceptional circumstances, MPs said. The committee added that in the vast majority of cases MPs who believe they have been victims of phone hacking should pursue the matter through the courts. Former culture secretary Tessa Jowell is one of more than half a dozen public figures who are suing either the Metropolitan police or the News of the World for breach of privacy, alleging journalists on the paper worked with a private investigator to illegally access their mobile phone messages. Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, has said "at least eight" MPs had their mobile phone voicemails hacked by the paper. MPs passed a motion tabled by Bryant in September asking the cross-party committee to urgently consider whether hacking could be considered to be in contempt of parliament. In their report, MPs said it was not within the committee's remit to consider the law surrounding hacking, which is currently the subject of a separate inquiry being carried out by the home affairs select committee. But it said that if it was proved that hacking "impede[d] a member in the performance of his or her duty ... there would be little if any room for doubt that hacking could be a contempt". It added that the house did not have the power or resources to investigate hacking and that this was a matter for the police. Members should notify the police if they suspected an offence had taken place, it said. MPs recommended that a privileges bill due to go through parliament later this year should include a description of what constitutes contempt, which is currently not clearly defined. The committee also said parliament's power of imprisonment should be removed in the bill but it should retain the right to reprimand offenders in person and levy fines. "The imposition of a fine, where justified by the facts and by the circumstances, is more consistent with modern practice and would be more likely to be proportionate to an offence such as hacking".

March 30, 2011 Low Levels of Radiation Found in American Milk The New York Times By MATTHEW L. WALD Tests of milk samples taken last week in Spokane, Wash., indicate the presence of radioactive iodine from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, but at levels far below those at which action would have to be taken, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday. Radioactive materials in liquids are measured in pico-curies per liter, and the sample, taken March 25, showed a reading of 0.8 pico-curies, the agency said. Those numbers, it said, would have to be 5,000 times higher to reach the intervention level set by the Food and Drug Administration. These types of findings are to be expected in the coming days and are far below levels of public health concern, including for infants and children, the environmental agency said. Levels of iodine 131 entering the air can be very diluted, but if the iodine is deposited on grass eaten by cows, the cows will reconcentrate it in their milk by a factor of 1,000. This is mainly a concern with fresh milk, not for dairy products that are stored before consumption. Iodine 131 has a half-life of eight days, meaning that every eight days it loses half its strength. Since production of iodine 131 stopped when the Fukushima reactors shut down on March 11, it has already been through two half-lives and could easily be halved once or twice more again before the milk is consumed as cheese or yogurt. Iodine 131 emits beta particles, which resemble electrons. They are not considered a major hazard outside the human body, although in large doses, they can damage the cornea of the eye. The problem arises when materials that emit beta particles are ingested or inhaled. Iodine 131 is chemically identical to normal, nonradioactive iodine and thus is absorbed into the body just as normal iodine is, mainly in the thyroid gland, where it delivers a concentrated dose to that small organ and can cause cancer. In the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986, the biggest health effect was cases of thyroid cancer, especially in children living near the nuclear plant in Ukraine.

Phone hacking: Yates defiant over claims he misled parliament Scotland Yard acting deputy commissioner defends himself after criticism from MPs By Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 March 2011 20.54 BST Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, has continued to fight his corner in the face of further allegations that he misled parliament over the phone-hacking scandal. In written evidence to the home affairs select committee, Chris Bryant MP, who first laid the charge against Yates in the House of Commons earlier this month, claimed that: • Yates had always maintained there were very few victims in the affair, yet a briefing paper produced by Scotland Yard during the original inquiry had recorded that "a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high-profile individuals have been identified as being accessed without authority." • Yates had told the home affairs committee last September that there was no evidence that MPs' phones had been tapped, yet "at least eight MPs that I am aware of, have now been shown evidence that has been in police possession since 2006 that shows precisely that." • Yates claimed that police had approached all known and suspected victims, yet they had failed to inform a number of people who had now been confirmed as victims including, Bryant said, the former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller and her friends and family and interior designer Kelly Hoppen. • Yates had failed to tell select committees that police never fully searched the material which they seized in 2006 from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the affair, and since this had later proved to include 2,978 mobile phone numbers, "it is difficult to see how his assertion that there were very few victims can possibly have been based on fact." Yates emphatically denied he had ever misled parliament. He defended his position on the central point of law which has become the subject of a public dispute between him and the director of public prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer QC. Yates has consistently said that it is an offence to intercept voicemail only if it has not already been heard by its intended recipient. On this narrow interpretation, the hacking affair involved few victims and few offenders. However, the DPP has told the committee in writing that prosecuting counsel in the original inquiry in 2006 never adopted this interpretation and that it played no part in the charges brought against Mulcaire and the News of the World's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, or in the legal proceedings generally. Yates stood his ground. He said Bryant had been wrong to claim in the House of Commons on 10 March that the CPS had never advised police to adopt this narrow interpretation. He provided the committee with a written summary of evidence which he gave last week to the media, culture and sport committee listing a series of occasions on which the CPS had specifically told police that they had to prove not only that voicemail had been intercepted but this had happened before their intended recipients had heard them. "That advice permeated the entire inquiry," he said. Yates told the committee that the advice had remained unchanged until October 2010, when Scotland Yard started a new inquiry and the CPS advised them to take a broader approach, simply regarding all interception of voicemail as illegal. He said Bryant had been wrong to suggest that in October 2010 the CPS had formally warned police that the previous advice had been wrong. "A different QC had provided some differing advice. It signalled an intention to take the broader view for the future." He said Bryant had now "absolutely conceded" that he had been wrong on the point. However, in his written evidence, Bryant conceded only that "it is true that during the very early days, a lawyer at the CPS may have advised" adopting the narrow version of the law. He quoted the DPP's claim that this advice "had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally." He suggested that that the original CPS advice had been set aside during the original inquiry, in August 2006, when David Perry QC was brought in as prosecuting counsel. "Perry expressly wrote to the CPS on October 3 2006 that all that they had to prove was that the message had been listened to by Mulcaire, not that the message was virgin." Bryant went on to accuse Yates of misleading the culture, media and sport committee last week: "Even in his evidence to the DCMS committee last week, he disingenuously only referred to advice prior to August 9th 2006, before the first meeting at which David Perry gave the advice that secured the conviction of Goodman and Mulcaire." The committee chairman, Keith Vaz, said the DPP would be giving evidence on the matter. The committee also asked Yates whether police had ever questioned Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the News of the World and the Sun, over her 2003 evidence to a select committee that her journalists had paid the police for information. Yates said she had not been questioned but that Scotland Yard was currently 'researching' the matter to see what had been done about it. Yates was challenged by Mark Reckless MP to explain why he was willing to use public money to pay for lawyers to threaten newspapers whose reports he found objectionable, while victims of the hacking affair had had to spend large amounts of their own money to take civil actions to uncover the truth about crimes committed against them. Yates said the two points were completely separate and that, while he had asked for authority to use public funds for his legal advice, he had no intention of suing. Bryant referred to recent disclosures about a series of dinners where Yates and other senior officers met News of the World editors: "The Met have not helped themselves by having regular meetings with the News of the World at the same time as they are supposed to be investigating them." There was, he said, "a serious risk that they might be perceived to be in collusion with the newspaper." Yates said police were "duty bound to engage at various levels with politicians, businessmen and media" and suggested that he had probably had more lunches with the Guardian than with the News of the World. Bryant told the committee that he commended the current Yard inquiry under Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers. But he added: "The Met not only failed to do a full investigation in 2006; they have consistently and repeatedly failed to interrogate the evidence they seized in 2006; they have misled individual victims and potential victims; they have opened themselves to charges of collusion by frequently socialising with journalists and executives at the very organisation they were supposedly investigating; and they have consistently failed to give the full picture to this committee. Most worryingly, they have, for whatever reason, failed to expose the full degree of criminality involved, leaving victims to fend for themselves by dragging information out of the Met in civil

Living and Dying Downwind Radiation, Japan and the Marshall Islands By GLENN ALCALAY www. counterpunch.org March 29, 2011 When the dangerous dust and gases settle and we discover just how much radiation escaped the damaged Fukushima reactors and spent fuel rods, we may never know how many people are being exposed to radiation from the burning fuel rods and reactor cores, and how much exposure they will receive over time. Minute and above-background traces of Iodine-131 are already showing up in Tokyo's water supply - 150 miles southwest of the leaking reactors - and in milk and spinach [with a dash of Cesium-137] from 75 miles away. The Japanese government has recently warned pregnant women and children to avoid drinking Tokyo tap water, and I-131 levels 1,200 times above background levels were recorded in seawater near the reactors. Aside from sharing the dubious distinction of both nations having been at the receiving end of America's nuclear weapons, Japan and the Marshall Islands now share another dubious distinction. The unleashed isotopes of concern from the damaged Japanese reactors - Iodine-131, Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239 - are well known to the Marshall Islanders living downwind of the testing sites at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the central Pacific, following sixty-seven A- and H-bombs exploded between 1946-58. In fact, it is precisely these isotopes that continue to haunt the 80,000 Marshallese fifty-three years after the last thermonuclear test in the megaton range shook their pristine coral atolls and contaminated their fragile marine ecosystems. In fact, it was the irradiated downwind Marshallese on Rongelap and Utrik in 1954 caught in the Bravo fallout - and I-131 - that taught the world about the thyroid effect from the uptake of radioactive iodine. The U.S.' largest [fusion] hydrogen bomb - Bravo - was 1,000 times the Hiroshima atomic [fission] bomb, and deposited a liberal sprinkling of these and a potent potpourri of 300 other radionuclides over a wide swath of the Central Pacific and the inhabited atolls in the Marshalls archipelago in March 1954 during "Operation Castle." The Rongelap islanders 120 miles downwind from Bikini received 190 rems [1.9 Sv] of whole-body gamma dose before being evacuated. The Utrik people 320 miles downwind received 15 rems [150 mSv] before their evacuation. Many of the on-site nuclear workers at Fukushima have already exceeded the Utrik dose in multiples. Also entrapped within the thermonuclear maelstrom from Bravo was the not-so-Lucky Dragon [Fukuryu Maru] Japanese fishing trawler with its crew of twenty-three fishing for tuna near Bikini [see The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon by Ralph Lapp]. As the heavily exposed fishermen's health quickly deteriorated after Bravo, the radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama died of a liver illness six months after his exposure; his is now a household name in Japan and is associated with the "Bikini bomb." Meanwhile, the Japanese fishing industry was rocked when Geiger counters registered "talking fish" [what the Japanese called the clicking sound of the contaminated fish being monitored] from the 800 pounds of tuna catch of the Lucky Dragon in Yaizu and in local fish markets. Much of the Japanese tuna at the time was caught by a fleet of 1,000 fishing boats operating in the fertile tuna waters near the U.S.' Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshalls. In response to the plight and symbolism of the Lucky Dragon, Japanese women collected 34 million signatures on petitions advocating the immediate abolition of both atomic and hydrogen bombs in 1955. Pugwash, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-nuclear organization was founded in 1955 by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in response to Bravo. The dangers of radioactive fallout from Bravo inspired Nevil Shute's classic nuclear dystopia On the Beach, as well as Godzilla. To quell the diplomatic furor - whereby the Japanese representative to the U.N. accused the U.S. in March 1954 of "once again using nuclear weapons against the Japanese people" - the U.S. paid two million dollars to the fishing company which owned the Lucky Dragon; each of the 23 fishermen ended up with the princely sum of $5,000 in 1956 and the tuna company kept the rest. AEC chair Lewis Strauss (who originally proposed nuclear energy "too cheap to meter" in the post-War Atoms for Peace program) told President Eisenhower's press secretary James Hagerty in April 1954 that the Lucky Dragon was not a fishing boat at all - it was a "Red spy outfit" snooping on the American nuclear tests. The legacy of latent radiogenic diseases from hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands provides some clues about what ill-health mysteries await the affected Japanese in the decades ahead. Also, the Marshall Islands provide insight about ecosystem contamination of these dangerous radioactive isotopes, and what this means for the affected Japanese. Profiles of the four isotopes o Iodine-131 [radioactive iodine] has a half life of eight days, and concentrates in the thyroid gland about 5,000 times more efficiently than other parts of the body. Traces of I-131 have been discovered in Tokyo drinking water and in seawater offshore from the reactors. It took nine years for the first thyroid tumor to appear among the exposed Marshallese and hypothyroidism and cancer continued to appear decades later. o Cesium-137 has a half life of thirty years and is a chemical analog of potassium; Cs-137 concentrates in muscle and other parts of the body. Rongelap Island has a new layer of topsoil containing potassium to help neutralize the Cs-137 left over from the H-bomb tests, but the Marshallese residents remain unconvinced and suspicious about the habitability of their long abandoned home atoll. Meanwhile, the U.S. is pressuring hard for their repatriation despite the fact that most islands at Rongelap will remain off limits for many decades with strict dietary restrictions of local foods. o Strontium-90 has a half life of twenty-eight years, is a chemical analog of calcium and is known as a "bone seeker." Rongelap and the other downwind atolls have residual Sr-90 in their soils, groundwater and marine ecosystems. o Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,000 years, is considered one of the most toxic substances on Earth, and if absorbed is a potent alpha emitter that can induce cancer. This isotope too is found in the soils and groundwater of the downwind atolls from the Bikini and Enewetak H-bomb tests. Lessons from the Marshall Islands * It took nine years after exposure to the 1954 Bravo fallout for the first thyroid tumor and hypothyroidism to occur in an exposed Utrik woman from the I-131. Several more tumors [and other radiogenic disorders] among the exposed people appeared the following year and every year thereafter. The latency period for thyroid abnormalities and other radiogenic disorders [see below] endures for several decades. * Because a child's thyroid gland is much smaller than an adult's thyroid, it receives a higher concentration of I-131 than an adult dose. Also, because a child's thyroid gland is growing more quickly than an adult's, it requires and absorbs more iodine [and I-131] than an adult thyroid gland. That is, the thyroid effect is age-related. * Radioactive Iodine-129 with a half-life of 15 million years and a well-documented capacity to bioaccumulate in the foodchain, will also remain as a persistent problem for the affected Japanese. * The Majuro-based Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established in 1988 to settle all past and future claims against the U.S. for health injury and property loss damages from the nuclear tests. As of 2006, the NCT had paid out $73 million [of the $91 million awarded] for 1,999 Marshallese claimants. There are thirty-six medical conditions that are presumed to be caused by the nuclear tests [http://www.nuclearclaimstribunal.com]. Eligibility for Marshallese citizens consists of having been in the Marshall Islands during the testing period [1946-58] and having at least one of the presumptive medical disorders. * The sociocultural and psychological effects [e.g., PTSD] of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will be long-lasting, given the uncertainty surrounding the contamination of their prefecture and beyond. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton eloquently detailed this uncertain future and fears about "invisible contamination" concerning the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "hibakusha" ["A-bomb survivors"] in his award-winning 1968 magnum opus Death in Life. * Noted radiation experts John Gofman [co-discoverer of U-232 and U-233 and author of Radiation and Human Health], Karl Z. Morgan [a founder of health physics] and Edward Radford [Chair of the National Academy of Sciences' BEIR III committee and advisor to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal] stated that there is no threshold dose for low level ionizing radiation: Any amount of ionizing radiation - which is cumulative - can pose a health threat for certain individuals, and especially those with compromised immune systems. Glenn Alcalay is an adjunct professor of anthropology at Wm Paterson Univ. and Montclair State Univ. in New Jersey. Alcalay was a Peace Corps volunteer on Utrik Atoll in the Marshalls, speaks fluent Marshallese, and has conducted anthropological research re: reproductive abnormalities among the downwind islanders. He can be reached at: alcalayg@wpunj.edu

Radioactive particles from Japan have reached England, today's Daily Mail reports. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370682/Japan-nuclear-crisis-Mothers-flee-Fukushima-leak-radiation-alert.html

Phone hacking: News of the World locates 'lost' archive of emails Millions of emails from 2005 and 2006 are likely to include those by Andy Coulson and three former editors implicated in affair By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 March 2011 21.17 BST The News of the World has revealed that its computers have retained an archive of potentially damning emails, which hitherto it had claimed had been lost. The millions of emails, amounting to half a terabyte of data, could expose executives and reporters involved in hacking the voicemail of public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller, and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell. The archived data is likely to include email exchanges between the most senior executives, including former editor Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's media adviser in January, as well as three former news editors – Ian Edmondson, Greg Miskiw, and Neville Thurlbeck – implicated in the affair by paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was on the News of the World's books. Edmondson was sacked in January. Miskiw and Thurlbeck were interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against any of them. Coulson and the three former news editors have all denied all involvement in criminal activity. MPs on the home affairs select committee are likely on Tuesday to ask about the emails to John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, when they question him over allegations he misled parliament in evidence he gave about the number of hacking victims originally identified by Scotland Yard. Yates told the committee six months ago the Met had only identified "10 to 12" individuals in a 2006 inquiry because the Crown Prosecution Service advised it to adopt a narrow legal definition of what constituted an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has said that prosecuting counsel never adopted this narrow definition. Several News of the World journalists have since been linked with phone hacking after victims began legal battles, raising questions about why Scotland Yard failed to conduct a more comprehensive inquiry. Only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted of a crime along with Mulcaire. Both men were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation and only Goodman's computer was seized. Only a series of high court cases brought by Sienna Miller and others have forced the Met to make available the material seized in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home, including his handwritten notes. But the disclosure of internal emails from 2005 and 2006, when Mulcaire was at his most active, could reveal the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper and the identities of those involved. In a ruling on Friday, a high court judge ordered the News of the World to make them available to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, in charge of the hacking cases, ordered "rolling disclosure" to all claimants on Friday; hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims. Parts of the first tranche, which contains up to 8,000 emails, will be passed to Sienna Miller's legal team in April. Lawyers acting for Sky Andrew, the football agent who is also suing the paper, will then receive all the News of the World emails in which Andrew is mentioned days later. News Group told the high court it is close to completing a search through archived emails it claimed had been lost when transferred to India by its IT provider; its lawyers formally apologised to the court for previous claims the archive was not available. David Sherborne, for Sienna Miller, added that it remained 'mysterious' that the editor of the Scottish edition of the News of the World, Bob Bird, had given evidence on oath at the trial of Tommy Sheridan last year that the email archive had been lost on the way to India. News Group also admitted a work computer used by Edmondson had been destroyed before Christmas. They agreed to provide detailed information about its destruction to computer specialists advising Sienna Miller. Computers used by other News of the World journalists have also been replaced or disposed of, but News Group's lawyer, Anthony Hudson QC, said the data they contained had been copied and retained. Sherborne told the high court on Friday that evidence of "a scheme" between News Group and Mulcaire to hack into Miller's mobile phone had been recovered by the Met during the raid on his home. It included an agreement to provide "daily transcripts" to the paper and monitor the activities of the actor's friends and associates, Sherborne said. Further disclosures have been ordered by Vos. They include a copy of an email sent to Mulcaire asking him to target a "wish list" of 17 footballers. News International maintains it will take tough action against any employee who is found guilty of wrongdoing.

http://whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-jacqueline-kennedy-lbj-and-jacqueline-kennedy This website offers recordings made by a number of U.S. presidents.

Joseph Farrell comments on the Japanese earthquake.

Phone hacking: Met and DPP clash over legal advice on stolen voicemails John Yates and Keir Starmer each imply the other has misled parliament in evidence about phone hacking By Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 March 2011 14.40 GMT The phone-hacking scandal has spilled over into an extraordinary public clash between the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions, with each side implying the other has misled parliament. The immediate focus of the dispute is a point of law. Its underlying significance is the light it may shed on whether the police have tried to hide the truth about the number of people whose phones were hacked by journalists and private investigators working for the News of the World. In evidence to the House of Commons' culture, media and sport committee, Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, listed a series of occasions on which prosecutors had advised police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) made it an offence to intercept voicemail only if the voicemail had not already been heard by its intended recipient. He said this advice had been given repeatedly during the original inquiry in 2006 that led to the jailing of the News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman. "It permeated every aspect of the investigative strategy." It was on this basis, Yates said, that he had previously told parliament police had found only 10 or 12 victims of the hacking even though the emerging evidence suggests there were many more. Yates's evidence directly clashes with a written submission from the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, last October. Starmer said the question of how to interpret Ripa had not arisen during the original inquiry. The prosecution had attached no significance to the point in preparing charges or presenting the facts. "It is evident that the prosecution's approach to Ripa had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally," he wrote. Yates's new evidence on Thursday follows a claim in the House of Commons by Chris Bryant that Yates misled parliament over this point. Yates responded in a letter to the Guardian, quoting an earlier written submission from the DPP to the culture, media and sport committee. Starmer then replied with a further letter to the Guardian saying that it was "regrettable" Yates had quoted a single sentence from him out of context. This afternoon the DPP's office declined to comment on the new evidence produced by Yates. The committee has heard that the family of one of the Soham murder victims was phone-hacked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ4u-v-PJbs&feature=player_embedded Key section starts around 3:30 into the video

Doug there was no need to post the whole speech. Cohen was (is) a smart guy but his background was in classics, law and public administration. He had only been SoD for 4 month at that point, there is no evidence his remarks were based inside knowledge rather than his own beliefs. You will search in vain for a scientist with relevant credentials saying such things. http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/09/24/the-devils-haarp-weather-weapons/

A Rosenberg Co-Conspirator Reveals More About His Role The New York Times March 20, 2011 By SAM ROBERTS Morton Sobell, who was convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951 in an espionage conspiracy case and finally admitted nearly six decades later that he had been a Soviet spy, now says he helped copy hundreds of pages of secret Air Force documents stolen from a Columbia University professor’s safe in 1948. According to an article by two cold war historians, Ronald Radosh and Steven T. Usdin, in The Weekly Standard, Mr. Sobell, who is 93, said in an interview last December that he, Julius Rosenberg, William Perl and an unidentified fourth man spent a weekend, probably Independence Day, frantically copying the classified documents in a Greenwich Village apartment before they were missed. That Monday, Mr. Sobell is quoted as saying, he and Mr. Rosenberg filled a box with canisters of 35-millimeter film and delivered it to Soviet agents on a Long Island Rail Road platform. In addition to elaborating on Mr. Sobell’s admission in a 2008 interview with The New York Times that he had stolen military radar and artillery secrets, the December interview appears to stoke the smoldering embers of the case on several other counts. Mr. Sobell’s comments, according to the authors, identify Mr. Perl not as an innocent aeronautical engineer who was entitled to inspect the secret papers and was implicated in the espionage conspiracy only by circumstantial evidence, but as a conspirator against his mentor, Theodore von Karman. Mr. Perl, a fellow student with Mr. Sobell and Mr. Rosenberg at City College, worked with Professor von Karman for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics at Langley Army Air Base in Virginia during World War II. Testifying before the Rosenberg grand jury, Mr. Perl denied any relationship with Mr. Rosenberg or Mr. Sobell. He was convicted of perjury in 1953. Mr. Sobell’s latest comments also validate an account of the photocopying of the secret papers conveyed to federal investigators by Jerome Tartakow, a jailhouse informer often discredited by supporters of the Rosenbergs, who said he learned of the photocopying from Julius Rosenberg himself. Finally, Mr. Sobell’s comments, as quoted by the authors, shed more light on his motive. “I did it for the Soviet Union,” he said, leading Mr. Radosh and Mr. Usdin to conclude that Mr. Rosenberg and his fellow American Communists “were motivated by loyalty to the Soviet Union, not opposition to fascism as their defenders claim.” The Rosenbergs, who were accused of conspiracy to steal atomic bomb secrets from the United States, were sentenced to death and executed in 1953. Mr. Sobell served 18 years for nonatomic spying. He was released in 1969 and, until the Times interview, maintained his innocence and insisted that he had been framed by the government.

Doug, I've read several articles on this book, and have looked through the book a number of times at bookstores over the years, and Sheeran does not claim he killed JFK. I'm not sure where you got this from, but it's not in the article. Apparently, he said things to Brandt that suggested JFK was killed by the mob. A number of other mobsters--including Joe and Bill Bonanno, said the same. So, it's definitely something they whispered about--whether or not it was true. From the above article "The Irishman starts filming later this year and will also cover Sheeran's alleged role in the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy."

My father was the mafia hitman who killed Jimmy Hoffa By Annette Witheridge Last updated at 3:38 PM on 20th March 2011 Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368039/Frank-Sheeran-Mafia-hitman-killed-Jimmy-Hoffa-father.html# Robert De Niro is about to bring the extraordinary story of Frank Sheeran - The Irishman - to the big screen. But his daughter reveals how the man who killed his mentor Jimmy Hoffa was a loving father who kept his gruesome past from his family... When Frank Sheeran, the mafia contract killer known as 'The Irishman', got the order to assassinate his mentor Jimmy Hoffa, he knew he had no choice. It was a case of kill on command or die for disobedience. The disappearance of Teamsters union leader Hoffa 36 years ago remains one of America's most enduring mysteries. Contract killing: Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran (right) with union boss - and future victim - Jimmy Hoffa To this day, no one knows where his body ended up - except for those who buried him. And if not for Sheeran's Catholic guilt at the end of his life and a tenacious former prosecutor turned crime writer, the story of how Hoffa died would never have been known either. Now Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are set to bring Sheeran's extraordinary life to the big screen. The Irishman starts filming later this year and will also cover Sheeran's alleged role in the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. For Sheeran's daughter Dolores Miller, the interest in her father is bittersweet. 'I suspected my father was behind Jimmy's death but I never asked him directly,' says Dolores. 'My mother disagreed. She said he and Jimmy were as thick as thieves but my gut instinct told me otherwise. 'The year before, when I was 19, there was a big benefit party for my father. There must have been 1,000 people there, including Jimmy. 'One of my father's most cherished possessions was a gaudy gold and diamond watch Jimmy gave him. He wore it to the day he died. 'I remember my father phoning to say Jimmy had disappeared from outside a restaurant in Detroit. 'I asked him where he [sheeran] had been and he said a wedding in the same area. I made a comment about the coincidence but he brushed it off. 'He was among the top suspects and the FBI put him in prison time and again, hoping he'd crack. But he never did. 'Then towards the end of his life he told me he wanted absolution. I remember saying he had to be truly sorry for the things he'd done in the past, that if he had his time again he wouldn't do the things he'd done. 'He said he was sorry and I drove him to the church to confess. He seemed much happier after that.' In the final five years of his life, Sheeran poured his heart out to writer Charles Brandt. He died in 2003, aged 83, six weeks after reading the finished manuscript, and without revealing to his family what he'd done. 'We never discussed it before he died and Charles didn't tell me the truth until the book came out,' says Dolores, a 55-year-old medical secretary. 'Charles told me to read the story to the end and as I turned every page it got worse. It was awful. I didn't want it to be true that my father killed Jimmy.' Despite her shock, Dolores knew her father wasn't a saint - in the 1980s then-US attorney Rudy Giuliani named Sheeran as one of only two non-Italians on the list of 26 top mobsters. Sheeran grew up in the Great Depression in the tough Philadelphia suburb of Darby, with devoutly religious Irish-American parents. 'We could never tell him our problems for fear of what he'd do to bullies' At 17, Sheeran lied about his age to serve in the war and joined General George S. Patton's 'killer division' - a band of men who showed no remorse as they moved through Europe slaughtering the enemy. He returned to Pennsylvania, drove a lorry and married Mary, an Irish immigrant. Daughters Mary Anne, Peggy and Dolores were born in the years that followed. 'My first big memory of [my dad] was when I was five,' Dolores says. 'My mother told him to take me to see Mary Poppins but instead he took me to The Valentine's Day Massacre. 'I was six when my parents first separated. That's when he met mafia boss Russell Bufalino and my mother said everything changed. 'Bufalino was a nasty, mean man but my father started doing odd jobs for him. It's only now that we know what some of those jobs were.' Sheeran and Mary divorced when Dolores was 12. He would go on to marry his second wife, Irene, and have another daughter, Connie. 'We saw him at weekends and he was always loving. But we could never tell him about our problems because of what he would do. My sister once knocked something over in a store and was bawled at by the owner. 'My father went round and broke the owner's hands. I was being bullied and my father dragged me out to find the bully. 'I begged to go home and was so grateful we couldn't find the boy for fear of what my father would do to his father. 'It was the same with the local flasher - God only knows what he would have done to him if I'd told him. My father wanted to protect us because his world was unsafe .' She adds: 'I was nine when it came on the TV news that my father had been sent to prison. 'No one in the house said a word until I blurted out, "Why's Daddy gone to prison?" I think that's when I got my first inkling that what he did for a living wasn't kosher.' Years later, Sheeran - who was 6ft 4in, with a fair Irish complexion -- would tell Brandt how he completed hits. 'I look like a broken down truck driver with a cap on, coming to use the bathroom. 'I don't look like a mafia shooter,' he said, explaining how he murdered Joseph 'Crazy Joe' Gallo at Umberto's Clam House in New York's Little Italy. Gallo's death - in front of his wife and young daughter - remained a mystery until Sheeran confessed to Brandt. 'I know now Dad had no choice but to kill his friend Jimmy Hoffa' He also told how IRA man John 'The Redhead' Francis drove the getaway car, explaining how mobsters were given different tasks during a hit so that no one knew the entire details. 'If one person did everything, they'd be shot afterwards to keep them quiet. So everyone had a role without anyone else knowing. It meant there wouldn't be a massacre afterwards,' Sheeran told Brandt, a former Delaware prosecutor. Brandt called his book I Heard You Paint Houses - the first words Hoffa uttered to Sheeran. The phrase was mob slang for a killer - as in splattering blood over floors and walls. Sheeran replied that he was also a carpenter - mafia-speak for someone who disposes of bodies. Hoffa was a working-class icon who turned the Teamster union into a nationwide movement before falling from grace and going to jail for racketeering. He was pardoned by President Richard Nixon and was making his comeback when he was summoned to a meeting with two mafia dons on July 30, 1975. His abandoned car was found outside the Detroit restaurant and no trace of him has been found since. There are many theories about why the mob wanted Hoffa dead. One suggests that the Teamsters' pension fund had been supporting mafia projects such as building in Las Vegas and the mob was afraid Hoffa's bid to take over the union would lead to funds drying up. It is thought JFK's assassination was a way to placate Hoffa - as Bobby Kennedy was closing in on him with racketeering charges. Some within the mafia believed Hoffa wasn't grateful enough for the intervention It is also thought that JFK's assassination was a way to placate Hoffa - as the president's brother, attorney general Bobby Kennedy, was closing in on him with further racketeering charges. Some within the mafia believed Hoffa wasn't grateful enough for the intervention. Sheeran told Brandt how he lured Hoffa into an empty house and shot him twice in the back of the head. A second mafia hit squad disposed of the body. 'The Irish FBI guy Bob Garrity wrote a memo about the chief suspects - Sheeran's name was always there,' Brandt, 68, says. 'But no one could prove it. I met Sheeran when the mafia hired me to get him out of jail. He was 74 and in poor health. I got him out on medical grounds and we sat down for a chat. 'He invited me to a mob trial - this wasn't in the book and De Niro and Scorsese were fascinated by it when we met to discuss the script. 'Two mobsters owed Sheeran money and there was a mafia civil court. Sheeran let me listen in, then we went back to my house and started talking. It was 1991 and he had a lot to get off his chest. 'He wanted me to write his book then but backed out because many of the characters were still alive. Then eight years later he approached me again. 'We spent five years going through everything. I used to be a prosecutor and I kept cross-examining him. I checked and double-checked everything he told me. 'My mother told him to take me to see Mary Poppins but instead he took me to The Valentine's Day Massacre' 'He was actually a very likeable man. My wife said she used to have to pinch herself to remind herself he was a hitman. He was full of Irish charm, very intelligent and witty.' But he adds: 'Sometimes I'd get chills as I checked out his stories.' Brandt goes on: 'Hoffa was Sheeran's friend but you didn't defy orders. If he hadn't killed him he'd have been shot himself. He said the mafia was upset because Hoffa hadn't shown enough gratitude over Dallas. 'I realised he was talking about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. It was always rumoured that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, wasn't working alone and that the mob was behind it. 'So I asked Sheeran and his face turned to stone, he raised his right hand at me and just brushed me off, saying "I'm not going anywhere near Dallas". 'I was sure he had something to do with it and kept asking. It was a classic mob hit - Oswald thought he would get away, but Jack Ruby then killed him. 'Eventually Sheeran admitted to taking three rifles to Baltimore - he understood these had then gone to Dallas. I didn't get anything more juicy than that but when I told De Niro and Scorsese they were fascinated. 'We met with the scriptwriter around 5pm and we were still talking at 9.30pm. It was a real thrill that they wanted to know all the background, all the stuff that wasn't in the book.' One of Sheeran's final acts was to read the manuscript of Brandt's book. By now wheelchair-bound and a widower, Brandt recalls: 'He held the pages up in front of a video recorder, said everything in the book was true, then stopped eating. Six weeks later he was dead.' Sheeran gave daughter Dolores power of attorney, explaining he didn't want to be force-fed - he had no intention of living once his mind started to falter. After his death, Dolores and her husband Michael cleared out Sheeran's apartment and discovered the extent of his passion for clothes. 'He was always dressed like something out of Gentlemen's Quarterly,' Dolores says. 'He had 200 designer suits, 100 pairs of shoes. Then there was his jewellery...' 'I know now that he killed his friend Jimmy,' Dolores says. 'He had no choice, he was acting on orders. If he hadn't done it, he would have been killed. 'My father lived to a great age. Most of his associates died horrible early deaths. I am eternally grateful he didn't die like that. 'He chose his own time to go after confessing to his sins.'

To read Kris Millegan's daily installments on this Watergate topic, go to: http://watergateexposed.com/

Met must hand over News of the World phone-hacking evidence Police must pass documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire to lawyers representing growing number of people suing paper By James Robinson guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 March 2011 19.44 GMT The growing number of public figures suing the News of the World won a major high court victory when a judge said Scotland Yard must hand over a mass of phone-hacking evidence that has never before been disclosed. The ruling by Justice Geoffrey Vos, who was appointed this week to handle the 14 phone-hacking cases currently going through the courts, means the Metropolitan police will be forced to pass reams of documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, to lawyers acting for the politicians, celebrities and football figures who are suing the paper. They include Sienna Miller, Paul Gascoigne, Steve Coogan and the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell. Vos ruled on Friday that the Met must give unredacted documents – including Mulcaire's emails, address and contacts books, and phone bills – to another hacking victim, the football agent Sky Andrew. The decision sets a precedent for the other hacking cases and has far-reaching implications for the NoW, police and other litigants. It will lead to a flood of hacking documents being released to other claimants, all of whom are seeking copies of papers seized by police in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home. That could lead to more NoW journalists being named in connection with phone hacking. So far six reporters and executives have been publicly linked to the practice. One, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted and jailed. A second, assistant editor (news) Ian Edmondson, has been sacked by the paper. Scotland Yard has been slow to hand over the paperwork, arguing in court that to do so would undermine a fresh investigation into hacking it began at the start of the year. It also claimed a potential suspect would be tipped off if unredacted evidence were made public. Vos rejected that argument, giving the Met 28 days to comply with his order and 21 days to appeal.

Key remarks in Sec. Cohen's speech below: "Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves." COHEN ADDRESS 4/28 AT CONFERENCE ON TERRORISM Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and U.S. Strategy Sam Nunn Policy Forum April 28, 1997 University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia. SECRETARY COHEN: Senator Nunn, thank you very much. As Senator Nunn has indicated, he and I have worked for many years together, along with Senator Lugar. The two of these gentlemen I feel are perhaps the most courageous and visionary to have served in the Senate. They were largely responsible, of course, for adopting the so-called Nunn/Lugar legislation. I'll comment on that later during the course of the morning, but I've had occasion to meet with a number of Russian counterparts, and as we go through various translations of the communications that we're having, the two words they are able to articulate very clearly, they say "Nunn/Lugar, Nunn/Lugar." So they know exactly what that means, and that means the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act that these two gentlemen were indispensable in shepherding through the United States Congress. It was Nunn/Lugar I that dealt with the reduction of nuclear weapons between the United States and the Soviet Union in terms of trying to come to grips with how we helped the Russians dismantle hundreds of their nuclear weapons, and also helped them with their destruction of chemical weapons. But they, of course, have looked beyond simply that particular relationship, which is very important, but also looking to the future that we face as far as the rise of terrorism -- both international and domestic -- and finding ways in which the Department of Defense can become involved in helping local states and local agencies to deal with the threat of terrorism which is quite likely to increase in the coming years. It's a pleasure for me to be here. Both Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar are close friends, and I look forward to, I think, a very productive seminar. Once again demonstrating that although Senator Nunn has left public service in the Senate, he has not left public service as far as the nation is concerned. It's a pleasure for me to be here, Sam. SENATOR NUNN: Thank you very much, Bill. ...Let me ask if there are any questions for Secretary of Defense Cohen. Q: The dual containment policy in Iran and Iraq, do you think that's conducive to regional stability in that region? And do you think (it) can cause further terrorism in the United States? That type of containment policy in the Middle East. A: I think Secretary Albright articulated our policy as far as dealing with Iraq, that it's clear that we have been unable to strike any kind of a productive relationship with Saddam Hussein, and as soon as Saddam Hussein is no longer the head of that government, that there's (a) new regime that follows him, that we will look forward to finding ways in which we could engage them in a much more productive fashion, particularly after they comply with all of the UN sanctions. There's an eagerness on our part to do that. But I think as long as he remains in office as the head of that state, it's unlikely that we could have anything but the current policy in place, with very little prospects for relief. With respect to Iran, I think Iran continues to present a long-term threat to the region. They are acquiring and have acquired weapons of mass destruction, substantial levels of chemicals and we believe biological weapons as well. They have made an effort to acquire nuclear capability. So I think that our policy of dual containment is the right one, and we are going to encourage our allies to support that one. Q: What does it mean that Clinton (inaudible) proliferation? A: To the extent that we see the level of communication available today, the Internet and other types of interwoven communicative skills and abilities, we're going to see information continue to spread as to how these weapons can be, in fact, manufactured in a home-grown laboratory, as such. So it's a serious problem as far as living in the Information Age that people who are acquiring this kind of information will not act responsibly, but rather act in a terrorist type of fashion. We've seen by way of example of the World Trade Center the international aspects of international terrorism coming to our home territory. We've also seen domestic terrorism with the Oklahoma bombing. So it's a real threat that's here today. It's likely to intensify in the years to come as more and more groups have access to this kind of information and the ability to produce them. Q: How prepared is the U.S. Government to deal with (inaudible)? A: I think we have to really intensify our efforts. That's the reason for the Nunn/Lugar II program. That's the reason why it's a local responsibility, as such, but the Department of Defense is going to be taking the lead as far as supervising the interagency working groups, and to make the assessments as to what needs to be done. So we're going to identify those 120 cities and work with them very closely to make sure that they can prepare themselves for what is likely to be a threat well into the future. Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week's scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B'nai Brith. A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we've learned in the intelligence community, we had something called -- and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic-specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important. Q: What is response to (inaudible)? A: We hope we will have access to the defector. In fact I was recently in South Korea and talked with various officials in South Korea. As soon as they complete their own interrogation of this defector, we will have access to that individual. But much of what he has said to date is reflected in the writings that he prepared last year. This is prior to his defection. One would not expect a potential defector to be writing about anything other than what the official doctrine or dogma is of the North Korean government at that time. He is saying essentially what we have known for a long, long time. Namely, that North Korea poses a very serious threat against South Korea, and potentially even Japan, by virtue of having the fourth largest army in the world, by having 600,000 or more troops poised within 100 kilometers of Seoul, of possessing many SCUD missiles, also the potential of chemically armed warheads, the attempt to acquire nuclear weapons. So we know they have this potential, and the question really is going to be what's in their hearts and minds at this point? Do they intend to try to launch such an attack in the immediate, foreseeable future? That, we can only speculate about, but that's the reason why we are so well prepared to defend against such an attack to deter it and to send a message that it would be absolutely an act of suicide for the North Koreans to launch an attack. They could do great damage in the short run, but they would be devastated in response. So we're hoping we can find ways to bring them to the bargaining table -- the Party of Four Talks -- and see if we can't put them on a path toward peace instead of threatening any kind of devastating attack upon the South. Q: ...a little bit about the situation in (inaudible)? A: I really don't have much more information than has been in the press at this point. The Department has not been called upon to act in this regard just yet, so I'm not at liberty to give you any more information than you already have.

Thank you, Duncan,for posting this revealing video. I concur with Martin's conclusion.