February 23, 2006
The Alliance
U.S. Sees Emirates as Both Ally and, Since 9/11, a Foe
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — When the United Arab Emirates paid $6.5 billion for 80 advanced F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin in 2000, the deal was applauded by members of Congress and local American officials as a milestone that would solidify relations and help preserve thousands of American aerospace jobs.

But in the days since the Bush administration approved the purchase by a state-run company from Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, of rights to manage seaports in six American cities, lawmakers have denounced the port deal as a security threat and threatened to block it.

The episodes highlight how Persian Gulf sheikdoms and other Islamic countries in the region have come to be treated paradoxically in Washington as both strategic allies and, since the attacks of September 2001, as untrustworthy foes in combating terror groups like Al Qaeda.

Few countries encapsulate this paradox more than the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. Around 1,500 American military personnel work and live at an airbase an hour outside the capital of one of the emirates, Abu Dhabi, from which surveillance aircraft and refueling tankers fly missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in Washington, and especially on Capitol Hill, the emirates' reputation has been colored more by the blistering treatment the country was dealt by the 9/11 Commission, the congressionally mandated panel that conducted an exhaustive investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The commission's inquiry found that "the vast majority of the money funding the Sept. 11 attacks flowed through the U.A.E." Its government, the panel said, ignored American pressure to clamp down on terror financing until after the attacks.

Even now, when by all accounts the emirates have taken action in response to some American demands to enact tougher controls in its banking sector and cooperate against Al Qaeda, many lawmakers say allowing Dubai Ports World, the state-run U.A.E. company, to take over the ports remains too much of a risk.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and a member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, said it was reckless to allow a country to manage the ports that does not have a "solid" record against terrorism.

The United Arab Emirates is composed of a disparate group of sheikdoms that banded together in 1971. Dubai, which runs Dubai Ports World, has built itself into a financial and transportation hub in the region. The country is the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil, but the vast bulk of its oil reserves lie in the more conservative Abu Dhabi, the emirate that holds the country's presidency and dominates its foreign and defense policy-making.

The emirates grew closer to Washington when commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf was threatened during the "tanker war" between Iran and Iraq in the 1980's. The ties expanded in the 1990's, culminating in the F-16 sale in 2000. Revelations about the Dubai banks' role in the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, however, have introduced tensions on both sides.

Current and former American officials who have dealt with the United Arab Emirates say the portrayal of the emirates by opponents of the port deal is at best misleading and at worst could jeopardize the assistance the Pentagon, the F.B.I. and other agencies say they need in preventing terrorism.

If the port deal is overturned, few experts expect that U.A.E. would significantly reduce military cooperation with the Pentagon, which Abu Dhabi sees as vital to protect it from far larger neighbors, like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Abu Dhabi is unlikely to cut off oil and gas sales, which form a small part of American imports, experts said.

"It certainly will not mean that U.A.E. will start ending cooperation with the U.S.," said Theodore Kattouf, who was ambassador to the emirates from 1998 to 2001. "But I think it would be seen as a real rebuff to a country that is sort of leading the way in the Middle East in terms of globalization and free trade."

Pentagon officials say that part of the emirates' public relations problem stems from their unwillingness to disclose all but the most basic description of their cooperation with the American military. Worried about appearing too close to Washington, the emirates permit American troops and equipment in their country only under the condition that the United States cannot describe the scale or nature of the American mission, military officials said.

But the Pentagon in recent days has disclosed more details about American bases, apparently to counter the claims about the U.A.E.'s sympathy for terrorists. In remarks to reporters Tuesday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "In everything that we have asked and worked with them on, they have proven to be very, very solid partners."



Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 23, 2006
The Operations
Work at Terminals Untouched by Firestorm of Security Debate
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
The work of taking what the rest of the world makes and moving it to American consumers went on as usual in New York Harbor yesterday. Giant cranes lifted steel containers off the decks of some of the world's biggest ships and stacked them for transfer onto trucks and trains bound for warehouses and stores.

The busy, noisy docks were just about the only place where the escalating debate over Dubai Ports World's acquisition of a British port operator did not drown out the central questions of just what a terminal operator does and how much responsibility it bears for security.

In interviews, port officials and executives with P & O Ports North America, a subsidiary of the British company, and other terminal operators said that while the Dubai-owned company would take on some security matters, for the most part the change in ownership would have little effect on the day-to-day life of the port.

The vast majority of workers who unload the big ships and send the containers on their way will be the same, whoever runs the place. At the Port of New York and New Jersey, as at other big American ports, the heavy lifting is done by members of the International Longshoremen's Association who are not employees of P & O Ports or its competitors.

One of those workers, Pasquale Petrecca, 31, said he was not too concerned about who owns the companies that run the terminals.

"If anything this might help us, give us more work," Mr. Petrecca said. "Any new company is good. It means more money, more revenue, more overtime. To me, it's about the dollar."

For now, P & O Ports operates container terminals at Port Newark and other big ports, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New Orleans, as well as the passenger cruise-ship terminal in Manhattan. It is bound by federal laws and monitored by the Coast Guard and the Customs and Border Protection agency.

P & O's teams of managers, including 75 in the New York area, supervise the loading and unloading for their clients, the owners of the container ships. Few of the company's executives or employees, who have varied national backgrounds, ever come into contact with the containers or know what is in them, said Robert Scavone, an executive vice president of P & O Ports, who oversees security for the company.

When a 1,000-foot-long ship arrives from Shanghai, a team of longshoremen scrambles aboard to unlash containers and open hatches. Other longshoremen operate the giant cranes that lower the containers onto the dock and still others match up the cargo with trucks that have been dispatched to carry it off to market.

"Any movement of cargo from the bottom of the ship to the tailgate of the truck leaving the port is handled by I.L.A. labor," said James A. McNamara, a spokesman at the union's headquarters in Manhattan. Even the porters who carry passengers' suitcases onto cruise ships on the West Side are longshoremen, he said.

The union added its voice this week to the calls for a rigorous investigation of Dubai Ports World and how it would operate in America. But Mr. McNamara said the union's members, who routinely work for companies based overseas, had no specific objections to the sale, only concerns about the role of the Dubai government.

"We don't think it's unreasonable to just review everything again and have the Bush administration reveal to the American people the exact nature of the background check and the security check to relieve the fears that are out there," Mr. McNamara said. "Whether they are legitimate or not, they are there."

Officials of Dubai Ports World have said that they intend to keep P & O Ports's management team in place after the purchase, which is scheduled to close on March 2, and they will abide by any security rules imposed on them.

"The change in ownership in no way changes who will be dealing with the day-to-day aspects of security," said Michael J. S. Seymour, president of P & O Ports, whose headquarters are in Iselin, N.J.

But those assurances have not doused the firestorm in Washington over what has been portrayed by several Congressional leaders as a foreign government taking over America's ports.

The Dubai company would not control the entire ports, but terminals within them. Some American ports, including those in Baltimore and Savannah, are operated by local authorities. But the Port of New York and New Jersey, like others in the Northeast, leases its docks to companies like P & O Ports to operate.

In New Jersey, Dubai Ports World would provide stevedoring services and operate half of the Port Newark Container Terminal, which is the third-largest of six container terminals around New York harbor.

Only two of the other five have American operators. The rest are controlled by shipping conglomerates from Hong Kong and Denmark.

All but one of the terminal operators are tenants of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and are responsible for maintaining security on the property they rent. They are required by federal law to file their plans for controlling access to their facilities with the United States Coast Guard, which has jurisdiction over port facilities.

The ports in the New York area have an additional layer of screening that is unique, port officials said. As a vestige of the investigations into the corruption that pervaded the waterfront in the early 1950's, the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, a bistate police agency, conducts background checks on every worker who comes into contact with cargo, said Thomas De Maria, executive director of the commission.

"The major concern is will this company bring in its own workers," Mr. De Maria said. "That's not a concern in New York and New Jersey, because of the waterfront commission. We are the gatekeepers."

The job of trying to spot suspicious cargo and check it before it leaves the port lies with the customs service, port officials said. At Port Newark, customs agents regularly choose a small number of containers — about 7 percent of all those that arrive — to be separated on the dock and scanned with a portable X-ray machine. Many of these are containers they consider suspect.

If they continue to suspect something is amiss, they can order the opening and emptying of a container. All containers leaving the terminal pass through radiation detectors on their way out.

Terminal operators like P & O Ports stand near the last line of defense against terrorists intent on sneaking weapons or hazardous material into an American port, Mr. Scavone said.

"If some bad guy put some bad thing in a container far away and managed to fool a carrier into agreeing to carry it and to fool the customs authority in that remote country into allowing it to leave," he said, "the real problem is the box never should have arrived in the port in the first place."

John Holl and Eric Lipton contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

February 23, 2006
News Analysis
Big Problem, Dubai Deal or Not
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — In the political collision between the White House and Congress over the $6.8 billion deal that would give a Dubai company management of six American ports, most experts seem to agree on only one major point: The gaping holes in security at American ports have little to do with the nationality of who is running them.

The deal would transfer the leases for ports in New York, Baltimore and Miami, among others, from a British-owned company to one controlled by the government of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. But the security of the ports is still the responsibility of Coast Guard and Customs officials. Foreign management of American ports is nothing new, as the role already played by companies from China, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and trading partners in Europe attests.

While critics of the deal have raised the specter that it might open the way to the "infiltration" of American ports by terrorists from the Middle East, the Dubai company would in most cases inherit a work force that is mainly American, with hiring subject to the same regulations as under the current British management.

Among the many problems at American ports, said Stephen E. Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander who is an expert on port security at the Council on Foreign Relations, "who owns the management contract ranks near the very bottom."

It is clear that the questions involving the Dubai company, Dubai Ports World, have become a proxy for long simmering debates about security and a battleground for resurgent tensions between the White House and Congress. In the end, as Mr. Bush has discovered, the politics of globalization are local and emotional.

The unstated assumption behind the Democratic and Republican critique of the deal is that transferring corporate responsibility for the port terminal leases to a conservative Muslim country that bred two of the Sept. 11 hijackers increases the likelihood of another act of terror.

Some independent experts, like Dr. Irwin Redlener of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, warn of the risk that "a lot of critical information about the movement of cargo is now accessible to new owners."

Mr. Bush, however, has suggested that the criticism of Arab ownership may have racial overtones. And in interviews Wednesday, officials of Peninsular & Oriental Ports North America, the British company that now manages the six terminals, dismissed the criticism as the imaginings of politicians who have little familiarity with American ports.

"We will still exist, with the same workers, and the same facility security plan, regulated by the same Coast Guard and Customs officials," Michael Seymour, who runs the operation, said in sketching what would happen if the Dubai company took over the management role. "And we'll be audited just as often — maybe more often."

Such arguments are not likely to quell the debate, which is already turning to the question of whether the Bush administration cut some corners in speeding the review through the approval process to avoid the scrutiny that could touch off a political firestorm.

Among other battles playing out are whether the Bush administration is spending enough money on port security and whether it is focusing its energies on the right problems.

Another is whether the White House's case on port security is harmed by the fact that the major player is the Department of Homeland Security, whose failures after Hurricane Katrina will be the centerpiece on Thursday of a White House-directed report on "lessons learned" from the multiple failures in the devastation of New Orleans.

"The management of these ports is the door which you walk through to get to all of these other questions," said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who, like Mr. Bush, used cargo ports as the backdrop for speeches about the post-Sept. 11 world in 2004. "It raises a lot of questions about the lobbying, the connections and the terms of the deal, and the security problems the administration has left unaddressed."

It is also convenient for the Democrats, who are able to sound more hawkish on domestic security than President Bush. Mr. Bush finds himself burdened with the more nuanced argument that turning down this deal would send a message to the entire Arab world that it is not to be trusted, no matter how friendly individual countries may have been.

The administration's core problem at the ports, most experts agree, is how long it has taken for the federal government to set and enforce new security standards — and to provide the technology to look inside millions of containers that flow through them.

Only 4 percent or 5 percent of those containers are inspected. There is virtually no standard for how containers are sealed, or for certifying the identities of thousands of drivers who enter and leave the ports to pick them up. If a nuclear weapon is put inside a container — the real fear here — "it will probably happen when some truck driver is paid off to take a long lunch, before he even gets near a terminal," said Mr. Flynn, the ports security expert.

That is where concerns about Dubai come in. While the company in question has not been a focus of investigations, Dubai has been a way station for contraband, some of it nuclear. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer, made Dubai his transshipment point for the equipment he sent to Libya and Iran because he could operate there without worrying about investigators.

"I'm not worried about who is running the New York port," a senior inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency said, insisting he could not be named because the agency's work is considered confidential. "I'm worried about what arrives at the New York port."

That port, along with the five others Dubai Ports hopes to manage, are the last line of defense to stop a weapon from entering this country. But Mr. Seymour, head of the subsidiary now running the operations, says only one of the six ports whose fate is being debated so fiercely is equipped with a working radiation-detection system that every cargo container must pass through.

Closing that gaping hole is the federal government's responsibility, he noted, and is not affected by whether the United Arab Emirates or anyone else takes over the terminals.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

February 23, 2006
The Arab City
Dubai Sees Bias Behind Storm
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
The debate over whether a state-owned company, Dubai Ports World, should take over management of port terminals in several major American cities is seen as a mixed blessing in Dubai, a city that has been trying to raise its profile on the world stage.

"Indirectly, this is a sign of success,' said Sulaiman Hatlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent analyst in the city. "It means Dubai is now on the international stage. I was shocked that such a strong reaction occurred. But it's also a test of what the Americans have been teaching, preaching and promoting since 1992, globalization"

In rapidly growing, cosmopolitan Dubai, there is no getting past the sense that the heart of the issue is that it is an Arab city.

"The whole thing is racist," said an official of the United Arab Emirates who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. "Just look at the words they used. 'They're giving it to an Arab.' "

People in Dubai have regarded the issue as an American dispute that in retrospect might have been expected in an election year.

"It would be abnormal if such a big deal did not meet any criticism, but Dubai Ports can do a better job than anyone," said Farid Dawood, a market strategist and financial analyst based in Dubai. "Like most companies in Dubai, the company is owned by Arabs but is run by British or foreigners."

Perhaps the most resonant sense, some Dubaians said, was of the hypocrisy over terrorism and responsibility for terrorism.

"The Americans have to have one standard," Mohammed al-Roken, vice chairman of the Emirates Human Rights Society, said. "They say that the things that happened in Abu Ghraib were isolated incidents. So in the same way, an entire nation cannot be held responsible for Marwan al-Shehhi," a Sept. 11 hijacker.

Hassan M. Fattah reported from Sanaa, Yemen, for this article, and Mohammed Fahmy contributed reporting from Dubai.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

February 23, 2006
White House Report Advises Revamping Disaster Response
By ERIC LIPTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The nation must revamp the way it responds to major disasters or terrorist attacks, according to a new White House report that calls for more stockpiling of emergency supplies, a better-defined role for the military and a more concerted push to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes.

The report, prepared by Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's domestic security adviser, and scheduled to be officially released Thursday, does not advocate removing the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Department of Homeland Security, which some members of Congress have urged, officials said Wednesday.

But it does call for many other changes in how federal agencies respond to disasters, including asking the Department of Housing and Urban Development to play a more central role in finding temporary housing for victims, according to a preview provided by Ms. Townsend in a speech last week that two senior administration officials said on Wednesday still stands as accurate summary of the recommendations.

The review by the White House is focused more on what changes must be made to prepare for the next catastrophe, rather than on the flawed reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

According to Ms. Townsend's speech and interviews with the two officials, the report will include these recommendations:

¶The disabled, the sick and the elderly must be included in evacuation plans, and drills must take place to ensure that the plans will work.

¶FEMA and other government agencies needed larger stockpiles of emergency supplies and the ability to track them.

¶Active-duty military forces may play a more prominent role in the response to major catastrophes, but the details of this enhanced role must be worked out.

¶The Department of Health and Human Services must play a more prominent role in provide medical assistance in response to disasters, because the current system, which divides responsibility between the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services Departments, left medical rescue workers confused over who was in charge of the response to Hurricane Katrina.

A second report, by a House committee, was released last week, and the third report, by a Senate committee, is expected in the next month.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 23, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Kicking Arabs in the Teeth
By DAVID BROOKS
It's come to my attention that many of the foreign goods we import into our country are made by foreigners who speak foreign languages and are foreign. It's come to my attention that many varieties of hummus and other vital bread schmears are made by Arabs, the group responsible for 9/11. Furthermore, it's come to my attention that the Chinese have a menacing death grip on America's pacifier, blankie, bunny and rattle supplies, and have thus established crushing domination of the entire non-pharmaceutical child sedative industry.

It's therefore time for Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Bill Frist and Peter King to work together to write the National Security Ethnic Profiling Save Our Children Act, which would prevent Muslims from buying port management firms, the Chinese from buying oil and mouth-toy companies, and the Norwegians from using their secret control of U.S fluoridation levels to sap our precious bodily fluids at the Winter Olympics.

In other words, what we need to protect our security and way of life is a broad-based, xenophobic Know Nothing campaign of dressed-up photo-op nativism to show foreigners we will no longer submit to their wily ways.

Never mind — the nativist, isolationist mass hysteria is already here.

This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven't seen in decades. First seized by the radio hatemonger Michael Savage, it's been embraced by reactionaries of left and right, exploited by Empire State panderers, and enabled by a bipartisan horde of politicians who don't have the guts to stand in front of a xenophobic tsunami.

But let's be clear: the opposition to the acquisition by Dubai Ports World is completely bogus.

The deal would have no significant effect on port security. Regardless of who operates the ports, the Coast Guard still controls their physical security. The Customs Service still controls container security. The harbor patrols, the port authorities and the harbor police still do their jobs. Nearly every expert who actually knows something about port security says the ownership of the operating companies is the least of our concerns. "This kind of reaction is totally illogical," Philip Damas, research director of Drewry Shipping Consultants, told The Times. "The location of the headquarters of a company in the age of globalism is irrelevant."

Nor would the deal radically alter the workplace. If the Dubai holding company does acquire the operating firm, the American longshoremen would stay on the job, the American unions would still be there to organize them, and most or all of the management would probably stay, too.

Nor would the deal be particularly new in the world of global shipping. Dick Meyer of CBS News reports that Dubai Ports World already operates facilities in Australia, China, Korea and Germany. It's seeking to acquire facilities in 18 other countries — none of them caught up in an isolationist fever like the one we see here. Eighty percent of the facilities at the port of Los Angeles are run by foreign firms — somehow without national collapse — including one owned by the government of Singapore.

Nor is Dubai a bastion of Taliban radicalism. All Arabs may look alike to certain blowhard senators, but the United Arab Emirates is a modernizing, globalizing place. It was the first country in the region to sign the U.S. Container Security Initiative. It's signed agreements to bar the passage of nuclear material and to suppress terror financing. U.A.E. ports service U.S. military ships, and U.A.E. firms have made major investments in Chrysler and Time Warner, somehow without turning them into fundamentalist bastions.

In short, there is no evidence this deal will do any harm. But it is certain that the xenophobic hysteria will come back to harm the U.S.

The oil-rich nations of the Middle East have plenty of places to invest their money and don't need to do favors for nations that kick them in the teeth. Moreover, this is a region in the midst of traumatic democratic change. The strongest argument the fundamentalists have is that they are engaged in a holy war against the racist West, which imposes one set of harsh rules on Arabs and another set of rules on everybody else. Now comes a group of politicians to prove them gloriously right.

God must love Hamas and Moktada al-Sadr. He has given them the America First brigades of Capitol Hill. God must love the folks at Al Jazeera. They won't have to work to stoke resentments this week. All the garbage they need will be spewing forth from press conferences and photo ops on C-Span and CNN.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 23, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
No Justice, No Peace
By BOB HERBERT
If you talk to Maher Arar long enough, even on the telephone, you'll get the disturbing sense that you are speaking with someone whose life has been shattered like a pane of glass.

"Sometimes I have the feeling that I want to go and live on another planet," he told me. "A completely different planet than planet Earth. You know?"

Mr. Arar, thanks to the United States government, went through the almost incomprehensible agony of being tortured. Now he is trying to live with the aftermath of torture, which is its own form of agony.

On Sept. 26, 2002, Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was taken into custody by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York. He was locked in chains and shackles and accused of being "a member of a known terrorist organization."

There was no evidence to support the accusation, and no evidence has ever come to light. Nevertheless, as part of the hideous U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, Mr. Arar was shipped off to Syria, where he was kept in an underground rat-infested, grave-like cell, and tortured. (When I visited him in Ottawa last year, he told me how he had screamed and wept and begged both God and his captors for mercy.)

After 10 months, he was released. No charges against him were ever filed.

I called Mr. Arar last week after a federal judge in Brooklyn threw out a lawsuit in which Mr. Arar had sought damages from the U.S. government for his ordeal.

"I don't feel like I am the same person," he said. "I feel that my brain or my inner soul does not want to think about what's going on. My soul is trying to distract itself from reality."

The reality, he said, is that his life has been all but completely destroyed. He is fearful. He has become psychologically and emotionally distant from his wife and two young children. He has nightmares. He can't find a job. He spins dizzily from one bout with depression to another. And some former friends who are Muslim will no longer associate with him because "they're afraid to be the next target."

"I mean, you can tell, no one wants to hear about me," he said. "After 9/11, everyone branded with the terrorism label — they're doomed."

Mr. Arar, now 35, made a comfortable living as a software engineer before he fell into the demonic embrace of the rendition program. Now no one will hire him. "They put it in a nice way," he said. "They've said to people: 'Listen, we believe he's innocent. But, you know, we don't want to hire him.' "

Mr. Arar's own psychological difficulties have compounded the external challenges he faces. "I was invited to go and speak in Vancouver, which is west of here," he said. "But I can't take the plane anymore. Psychologically I am so scared to fly. So I couldn't go."

He said he frequently lacks the confidence or motivation to perform even minor tasks, and often feels overwhelmed by the thought of something as ordinary as a scheduled meeting with the principal at his 9-year-old daughter's school.

He said his 4-year-old son, Houd, panics whenever he thinks his father is about to go out. "He always wants to come with me," said Mr. Arar. "He insists, and he cries if I can't take him. He's afraid that if I go, I won't ever come back."

So the nightmare that began with rendition continues with no end in sight. Mr. Arar is grateful that his wife was able to land a job last year with a political party. "It's not much money," he said, "but had she not found a job we would be in a very, very miserable situation. We're just barely surviving."

Unexpected emotional support has come from ordinary Canadians; strangers frequently come up to Mr. Arar on the street and shake his hand. "They might say, "We're behind you,' or, 'We support you,' " he said. "It means a lot to me."

The rendition program is one more example of the way the United States, using the threat of terror as an excuse, has locked its ideals away in a drawer somewhere. We don't even give them lip service anymore. A person like Mr. Arar is not seen as having any rights. He's not even seen as human. He was carted away in accordance with official U.S. policy, and treated like an animal.

"They are doing this to people and it is wrong, wrong, wrong," said Mr. Arar. "This is an evil practice, and I want them to acknowledge it. I want them to acknowledge that what they did to me was wrong."



Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 23, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Strangers at the Door
By CLARK KENT ERVIN
Washington

WHO could have imagined that, in the post-9/11 world, the United States government would approve a deal giving control over six major American ports to a country with ties to terrorism? But this is exactly what the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has done.

Since 1999, the ports of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities have been operated by a British concern, P & O Ports, which has now been bought by Dubai Ports World, a company controlled by the government of the United Arab Emirates. Defenders of the deal are claiming that critics, including the Republican and Democratic leaderships in Congress, are acting reflexively out of some bias against Arabs.

This is simply not true. While the United Arab Emirates is deemed by the Bush administration to be an ally in the war on terrorism, we should all have deep concerns about its links to terrorists. Two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the emirates, and some of the money for the attacks came from there. It was one of only three countries in the world that recognized the Taliban regime. And Dubai was an important transshipment point for the smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with equipment for making nuclear weapons.

Most terrorism experts agree that the likeliest way for a weapon of mass destruction to be smuggled into our country would be through a port. After all, some 95 percent of all goods from abroad arrive in the United States by sea, and yet only about 6 percent of incoming cargo containers are inspected for security threats.

It is true that at the ports run by the Dubai company, Customs officers would continue to do any inspection of cargo containers and the Coast Guard would remain "in charge" of port security. But, again, very few cargo inspections are conducted. And the Coast Guard merely sets standards that ports are to follow and reviews their security plans. Meeting those standards each day is the job of the port operators: they are responsible for hiring security officers, guarding the cargo and overseeing its unloading.

Probably few Americans knew until this week that major ports were operated by a foreign company. Now several members of Congress are introducing bills that would prohibit such ownership. While President Bush has threatened a veto, certainly it is reasonable to reconsider whether such strategic assets should be controlled by any foreign entity.

The debate over the sale should also shed light on the mysterious workings of the Committee on Foreign Investment, an interagency body led by the secretary of the Treasury. Under current rules, the committee can approve deals in which foreign companies take over American properties with national security importance after just a 30-day review, and without the approval of the president.

If the committee does not approve a sale within this period it can — or if the acquirer is a foreign government it must — take an additional 45 days to conduct an "investigation," after which it has to make a recommendation to the president, who then has 15 days to approve or reject the deal. While the president must inform Congress of his decision, it has no review power. In this instance, even though the acquirer was a foreign government, no investigation was conducted and the president was not informed.

Obviously, the committee has a worrisome amount of power and the process is too rapid. At a minimum, the law should be changed to take away its power to decide matters with such a major bearing on national security on its own. And where a foreign power would be in control, the committee should thoroughly investigate and make a recommendation to the White House. Then, if the president approves the deal, Congress should have the ability to review and reverse it.

If our nation's treaties and trade agreements are important enough to require Congressional approval, then surely ceding control of our most important strategic assets to a foreign power should as well — especially in the new age of terrorism.

Clark Kent Ervin, the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department from 2003 to 2004, is the author of the forthcoming "Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack."



Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 23, 2006
The Reaction
Panel Saw No Security Issue in Port Contract, Officials Say
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — The Bush administration decided last month that a deal to hand over operations at major American ports to a government-owned company in Dubai did not involve national security and so did not require a more lengthy review, administration officials said Wednesday.

The decision was made by an interagency committee led by Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt. The group included officials from 12 departments and agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Justice, State and Homeland Security, as well as the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Kimmitt said that the company, Dubai Ports World, had been thoroughly investigated by the administration, including by intelligence agencies, and that on Jan. 17 the panel members unanimously approved the transfer.

"None of them objected to the deal proceeding on national security grounds," he said.

Mr. Kimmitt made his comments as the political furor over the ports dominated Washington, where Republicans in Congress remained in open rebellion against President Bush and the White House spent the day trying to tamp down the uprising.

An objection from any member of the interagency committee would have started, as required by law, an additional 45-day review. Such a review is being urged by governors and members of Congress.

Mr. Bush and his top aides are strongly resisting that. Even before the transfer became known, the administration's review of foreign business deals had come under criticism for not being sufficiently sensitive to national security.

In September, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the Treasury Department, as head of the interagency committee that reviews such deals, had used an overly narrow definition of national security threats because it wanted to encourage foreign investment.

The department disputed those findings, saying that the committee had used an adequate definition and that decisions had been reached by consensuses of agencies with differing interests.

The review began in mid-October. The chief operating officer of Dubai Ports World, Edward H. Bilkey, said he and other executives met in December with Mr. Kimmitt's committee and then had numerous additional meetings before the final decision.

"There is no big deal about it," Mr. Bilkey said in an interview. "We complied with what the requirements were, and there was no problem."

Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, said Mr. Bush became aware over the weekend of the deal, for some of the facilities in several major ports, including New York, Baltimore and Miami.

"One thing the president did, and even after all this press coverage of this transaction, was go back to every cabinet member whose department is involved in this process and ask them, 'Are you comfortable with this deal going forward?' " Mr. McClellan said. "And each and every one expressed that they were comfortable with this transaction going forward."

In a rare admission of error and in an indication that the White House might be seeking a deal with Capitol Hill to halt the furor, Mr. McClellan also said, "We probably should have briefed Congress about it sooner."

Republicans said an agreement by the White House to delay the transfer would help.

"If the president announces between now and next Monday or Tuesday that he is going to hold it for 45 days, have an investigation and consult with Congress, I think that would at least buy time," said Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who is a leading opponent of the new port management.

He said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois had assured him that they "were on the same page" on halting the sale.

The White House dispatched aides to brief advisers to the Republican leadership on the rationale for the deal, and the port company retained high-powered help to deal with Capitol Hill, including former Senator Bob Dole and the lobbying firm of former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.

Mr. Bush threatened on Tuesday to veto any bills to block a deal for the company to run the ports.

Lawmakers and aides said the nearly united Republican resistance in Congress was a new atmosphere for a White House accustomed to strong public support for its policies and the willingness to settle any disagreements privately. But it was not seen as a permanent break.

"Over the past five years, the president has made the right call over and over again," said Eric Ueland, chief of staff for Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. "This is one time. Nobody wants to come to a giant battle over this. We want homeland security. He wants homeland security."

Democrats who joined in the call to scuttle the port transfer said they considered Congressional Republicans newcomers on port security. They began circulating voting records to show that Republicans had rejected increases in spending on port safety.

"All of the sudden, they want to act really tough," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "But when it came to strengthening port security and implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations, they were nowhere to be found."

Before the administration approved the transfer from a British company, P&O Ports, Dubai Ports World had to agree to cooperate with future United States investigations, said an administration official who spoke only if granted anonymity because of the confidentiality of the agreement.

The official, confirming details first reported by the Associated Press, said the company agreed to disclose on demand records about "foreign operational direction" of its United States ports, including details on equipment, design and operations. The company does not have to keep copies of business records on American soil, where they would be subject to court orders, the official said. The report by the General Accountability Office in September included sharp criticism of the review process carried out by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the committee created in 1975 to review foreign investments that could affect national security. The report said the committee, under the Clinton and Bush administrations, had often construed national security too narrowly, looking only at such factors as the control over technology exports, classified contracts and specific derogatory information about a company.

For that reason, the report said, the committee had too rarely subjected investments to intensive scrutiny. In addition, the report said Treasury officials believed that "being the subject of an investigation may have negative connotations for a company." Since 1997, the government has investigated 8 out of 470 notifications of pending contracts.

Stephen Labaton and Eric Lipton contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
Published on 18 Jan 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 18 Jan 2006.

The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse
by Krassimir Petrov


How to deceive friends and influence people: Oil crisis lies...

I. Economics of Empires

A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes.

Historically, taxing the subject state has been in various forms—usually gold and silver, where those were considered money, but also slaves, soldiers, crops, cattle, or other agricultural and natural resources, whatever economic goods the empire demanded and the subject-state could deliver. Historically, imperial taxation has always been direct: the subject state handed over the economic goods directly to the empire.

For the first time in history, in the twentieth century, America was able to tax the world indirectly, through inflation. It did not enforce the direct payment of taxes like all of its predecessor empires did, but distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods—the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Here is how this happened.

Early in the 20th century, the U.S. economy began to dominate the world economy. The U.S. dollar was tied to gold, so that the value of the dollar neither increased, nor decreased, but remained the same amount of gold. The Great Depression, with its preceding inflation from 1921 to 1929 and its subsequent ballooning government deficits, had substantially increased the amount of currency in circulation, and thus rendered the backing of U.S. dollars by gold impossible. This led Roosevelt to decouple the dollar from gold in 1932. Up to this point, the U.S. may have well dominated the world economy, but from an economic point of view, it was not an empire. The fixed value of the dollar did not allow the Americans to extract economic benefits from other countries by supplying them with dollars convertible to gold.

Economically, the American Empire was born with Bretton Woods in 1945. The U.S. dollar was not fully convertible to gold, but was made convertible to gold only to foreign governments. This established the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was possible, because during WWII, the United States had supplied its allies with provisions, demanding gold as payment, thus accumulating significant portion of the world’s gold. An Empire would not have been possible if, following the Bretton Woods arrangement, the dollar supply was kept limited and within the availability of gold, so as to fully exchange back dollars for gold. However, the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960’s was an imperial one: the dollar supply was relentlessly increased to finance Vietnam and LBJ’s Great Society. Most of those dollars were handed over to foreigners in exchange for economic goods, without the prospect of buying them back at the same value. The increase in dollar holdings of foreigners via persistent U.S. trade deficits was tantamount to a tax—the classical inflation tax that a country imposes on its own citizens, this time around an inflation tax that U.S. imposed on rest of the world.

When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold, The U.S. Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of “severing the link between the dollar and gold”, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. Essentially, the U.S. declared itself an Empire. It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond— the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it.

From that point on, to sustain the American Empire and to continue to tax the rest of the world, the United States had to force the world to continue to accept ever-depreciating dollars in exchange for economic goods and to have the world hold more and more of those depreciating dollars. It had to give the world an economic reason to hold them, and that reason was oil.

In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the U.S Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the world’s demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil.

The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil. As long as that was the case, the world had to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars, because they needed those dollars to buy oil. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. It also dictated that oil reserves were spread around various sovereign states that weren’t strong enough, politically or militarily, to demand payment for oil in something else. If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind.

The man that actually did demand Euro for his oil was Saddam Hussein in 2000. At first, his demand was met with ridicule, later with neglect, but as it became clearer that he meant business, political pressure was exerted to change his mind. When other countries, like Iran, wanted payment in other currencies, most notably Euro and Yen, the danger to the dollar was clear and present, and a punitive action was in order. Bush’s Shock-and-Awe in Iraq was not about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy, or even about seizing oil fields; it was about defending the dollar, ergo the American Empire. It was about setting an example that anyone who demanded payment in currencies other than U.S. Dollars would be likewise punished.

Many have criticized Bush for staging the war in Iraq in order to seize Iraqi oil fields. However, those critics can’t explain why Bush would want to seize those fields—he could simply print dollars for nothing and use them to get all the oil in the world that he needs. He must have had some other reason to invade Iraq.

History teaches that an empire should go to war for one of two reasons: (1) to defend itself or (2) benefit from war; if not, as Paul Kennedy illustrates in his magisterial The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a military overstretch will drain its economic resources and precipitate its collapse. Economically speaking, in order for an empire to initiate and conduct a war, its benefits must outweigh its military and social costs. Benefits from Iraqi oil fields are hardly worth the long-term, multi-year military cost. Instead, Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was terminated, the Iraqi Euro accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with Euro. Global dollar supremacy was once again restored. Bush descended victoriously from a fighter jet and declared the mission accomplished—he had successfully defended the U.S. dollar, and thus the American Empire.


II. Iranian Oil Bourse

The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate “nuclear” weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in Euro. In economic terms, this represents a much greater threat to the hegemony of the dollar than Saddam’s, because it will allow anyone willing either to buy or to sell oil for Euro to transact on the exchange, thus circumventing the U.S. dollar altogether. If so, then it is likely that almost everyone will eagerly adopt this euro oil system:

· The Europeans will not have to buy and hold dollars in order to secure their payment for oil, but would instead pay with their own currencies. The adoption of the euro for oil transactions will provide the European currency with a reserve status that will benefit the European at the expense of the Americans.

· The Chinese and the Japanese will be especially eager to adopt the new exchange, because it will allow them to drastically lower their enormous dollar reserves and diversify with Euros, thus protecting themselves against the depreciation of the dollar. One portion of their dollars they will still want to hold onto; a second portion of their dollar holdings they may decide to dump outright; a third portion of their dollars they will decide to use up for future payments without replenishing those dollar holdings, but building up instead their euro reserves.

· The Russians have inherent economic interest in adopting the Euro – the bulk of their trade is with European countries, with oil-exporting countries, with China, and with Japan. Adoption of the Euro will immediately take care of the first two blocs, and will over time facilitate trade with China and Japan. Also, the Russians seemingly detest holding depreciating dollars, for they have recently found a new religion with gold. Russians have also revived their nationalism, and if embracing the Euro will stab the Americans, they will gladly do it and smugly watch the Americans bleed.

· The Arab oil-exporting countries will eagerly adopt the Euro as a means of diversifying against rising mountains of depreciating dollars. Just like the Russians, their trade is mostly with European countries, and therefore will prefer the European currency both for its stability and for avoiding currency risk, not to mention their jihad against the Infidel Enemy.

Only the British will find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They have had a strategic partnership with the U.S. forever, but have also had their natural pull from Europe. So far, they have had many reasons to stick with the winner. However, when they see their century-old partner falling, will they firmly stand behind him or will they deliver the coup de grace? Still, we should not forget that currently the two leading oil exchanges are the New York’s NYMEX and the London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), even though both of them are effectively owned by the Americans. It seems more likely that the British will have to go down with the sinking ship, for otherwise they will be shooting themselves in the foot by hurting their own London IPE interests. It is here noteworthy that for all the rhetoric about the reasons for the surviving British Pound, the British most likely did not adopt the Euro namely because the Americans must have pressured them not to: otherwise the London IPE would have had to switch to Euros, thus mortally wounding the dollar and their strategic partner.

At any rate, no matter what the British decide, should the Iranian Oil Bourse accelerate, the interests that matter—those of Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, and Arabs—will eagerly adopt the Euro, thus sealing the fate of the dollar. Americans cannot allow this to happen, and if necessary, will use a vast array of strategies to halt or hobble the operation’s exchange:

· Sabotaging the Exchange—this could be a computer virus, network, communications, or server attack, various server security breaches, or a 9-11-type attack on main and backup facilities.

· Coup d’état—this is by far the best long-term strategy available to the Americans.

· Negotiating Acceptable Terms & Limitations—this is another excellent solution to the Americans. Of course, a government coup is clearly the preferred strategy, for it will ensure that the exchange does not operate at all and does not threaten American interests. However, if an attempted sabotage or coup d’etat fails, then negotiation is clearly the second-best available option.

· Joint U.N. War Resolution—this will be, no doubt, hard to secure given the interests of all other member-states of the Security Council. Feverish rhetoric about Iranians developing nuclear weapons undoubtedly serves to prepare this course of action.

· Unilateral Nuclear Strike—this is a terrible strategic choice for all the reasons associated with the next strategy, the Unilateral Total War. The Americans will likely use Israel to do their dirty nuclear job.

· Unilateral Total War—this is obviously the worst strategic choice. First, the U.S. military resources have been already depleted with two wars. Secondly, the Americans will further alienate other powerful nations. Third, major dollar-holding countries may decide to quietly retaliate by dumping their own mountains of dollars, thus preventing the U.S. from further financing its militant ambitions. Finally, Iran has strategic alliances with other powerful nations that may trigger their involvement in war; Iran reputedly has such alliance with China, India, and Russia, known as the Shanghai Cooperative Group, a.k.a. Shanghai Coop and a separate pact with Syria.

Whatever the strategic choice, from a purely economic point of view, should the Iranian Oil Bourse gain momentum, it will be eagerly embraced by major economic powers and will precipitate the demise of the dollar. The collapsing dollar will dramatically accelerate U.S. inflation and will pressure upward U.S. long-term interest rates. At this point, the Fed will find itself between Scylla and Charybdis—between deflation and hyperinflation—it will be forced fast either to take its “classical medicine” by deflating, whereby it raises interest rates, thus inducing a major economic depression, a collapse in real estate, and an implosion in bond, stock, and derivative markets, with a total financial collapse, or alternatively, to take the Weimar way out by inflating, whereby it pegs the long-bond yield, raises the Helicopters and drowns the financial system in liquidity, bailing out numerous LTCMs and hyperinflating the economy.

The Austrian theory of money, credit, and business cycles teaches us that there is no in-between Scylla and Charybdis. Sooner or later, the monetary system must swing one way or the other, forcing the Fed to make its choice. No doubt, Commander-in-Chief Ben Bernanke, a renowned scholar of the Great Depression and an adept Black Hawk pilot, will choose inflation. Helicopter Ben, oblivious to Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, has nonetheless mastered the lessons of the Great Depression and the annihilating power of deflations. The Maestro has taught him the panacea of every single financial problem—to inflate, come hell or high water. He has even taught the Japanese his own ingenious unconventional ways to battle the deflationary liquidity trap. Like his mentor, he has dreamed of battling a Kondratieff Winter. To avoid deflation, he will resort to the printing presses; he will recall all helicopters from the 800 overseas U.S. military bases; and, if necessary, he will monetize everything in sight. His ultimate accomplishment will be the hyperinflationary destruction of the American currency and from its ashes will rise the next reserve currency of the world—that barbarous relic called gold.


--


Recommended Reading
William Clark “The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War in Iraq”
William Clark “The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target”

About the Author
Krassimir Petrov (Krassimir_Petrov@hotmail.com) has received his Ph. D. in economics from the Ohio State University and currently teaches Macroeconomics, International Finance, and Econometrics at the American University in Bulgaria. He is looking for a career in Dubai or the U. A. E.

Also by this author
“China’s Great Depression”
“Masters of Austrian Investment Analysis”
“Austrian Analysis of U.S. Inflation”
“Oil Performance in a Worldwide Depression”
See: www.financialsense.com/editorials/petrov/main.html

Bush vows to answer Congress concerns on port deal 5 minutes ago

President George W. Bush said on Thursday his administration would try to overcome congressional doubts over a deal for a Dubai company to manage six U.S. ports, which has provoked a bipartisan outcry.

"We will continue to talk to people in Congress and explain clearly why the decision was made," Bush told reporters during a Cabinet meeting.

Bush insisted that the sale of British-based P&O to Dubai Ports World based in the United Arab Emirates would not pose a security risk. He has threatened to veto any legislative attempts to intervene.

"This wouldn't be going forward if we were not certain that our ports would be secure," he said. "The more people learn about the transaction that has been scrutinized and approved by my government the more they will be comforted that our ports will be secure."

Bush has been defending his administration's decision ever since congressional Republicans and Democrats raised concerns about possible security problems at American ports. Administration officials planned to appear at a Senate committee later in the day to try to answer some of those concerns.




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Katrina report recommends clearer Pentagon role 35 minutes ago

The Pentagon should have a clearer role in responding to future disasters like hurricane Katrina, the White House said on Thursday in a review offering 125 recommendations for improving emergency management.

The recommendation was among 125 the review made for President George W. Bush, who has been widely criticized for his administration's response. The review identified 11 changes it said should be implemented before June 1, the start of the next hurricane season.

Recommendations included making sure federal, state and local officials were working together and in close proximity in the event of another disaster.

In cases where there are advance warnings, ensuring that an interagency Federal Joint Field Office is in place to coordinate and direct federal support.

The review also called for embedding a Defense Department contact at the Joint Field Office and Federal Emergency Management Agency regional offices to improve coordination of military resources.

"The 2006 hurricane season is just over three months away. Even while the process to implement the lessons learned from Katrina is underway, there are specific steps the federal government can and should take now to be better prepared for future emergencies," the White House said.

The White House review, led by Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser to Bush, comes after a congressional report harshly criticized the federal response to the disaster that left New Orleans and other areas along the Gulf Coast flooded and thousands of residents homeless.

A report by congressional Republicans last week said federal emergency agencies were unprepared for last year's hurricane and quicker White House involvement might have improved their response.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has acknowledged that his department was overwhelmed by the August 29 storm but has rejected the suggestion he and Bush were unresponsive.




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Bush's Stance on Ports Deal Fuels Anger
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

President Bush's marquee issue, the war on terror, is being turned against him by Democrats and rebelling members of his own party in an election-year dustup over a deal that allows an Arab company to manage major U.S. ports.

People in both parties are suggesting it's another case of Bush seeming to be tone deaf to controversy — on top of government eavesdropping, Katrina recovery and Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

The storm is forcing the president to choose between losing face with the Arab world and embarking on what would be his first veto battle with the GOP-led Congress. And it has enabled Democrats to seemingly outflank him on a key GOP issue: national security.

Has Bush lost his way politically — or at least his touch?

"In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO — but HELL NO," conservative Rep. Sue Myrick (news, bio, voting record), R-N.C., wrote Bush in a terse letter on Wednesday that she also posted on her Web site.

No matter that no American port is actually being sold, Bush faces a spreading rebellion among Republicans, Democrats and port-state governors.

"I think somebody dropped the ball. Information should have flowed more freely and more quickly up into the White House. I think it has been mishandled in terms of coming forward with adequate information," said Rep. Vito Fossella (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y.

At issue: Bush's strong defense of an arrangement that would put a government-owned United Arab Emirates company in charge of major shipping operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

The deal transferring port management from a British firm to Dubai Ports World has already been approved by both companies and an administration review panel.

Despite Bush's assertion that UAE has been one of the most helpful Arab countries in the war on terror, both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois threatened legislation to put the deal on hold. Bush, in turn, vowed to cast his first veto — if necessary — to stop any such attempt.

"It's a strange thing for Bush to have slipped into, given the savvy you expected from this administration, with a vice president who spent over a decade on Capitol Hill," said Princeton University political scientist Fred Greenstein. "It seems as if his people would have seen that there was potential for trouble, and at least done their homework on the Hill."

Although a veto showdown could still be avoided, port-deal opponents were optimistic they could muster the two-thirds majorities needed to override one. "This deal doesn't pass the national security test. I think it is a mistake," said Rep. Jim Saxton (news, bio, voting record), R-N.J., chairman of a House subcommittee on terrorism threats.

Bush learned about the arrangement himself only in recent days amid increasing news coverage, said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

While Bush had struck a defiant tone on Tuesday in back-to-back sessions with reporters on Air Force One and outside the White House, McClellan on Wednesday acknowledged Congress should have been briefed earlier "given all the attention that has been focused on this and given the fact that it has been mischaracterized."

The phrase "tone deaf" to describe Bush's interaction with Congress was uttered by lawmakers as politically different as Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joseph Biden, D-Del.

The Dubai Ports deal "is not a national security issue," suggested GOP consultant Rich Galen. "It is an issue of this administration having a continuing problem with understanding how these things will play in the public's mind and not taking steps to set the stage so these things don't come as a shock and are presented in their worst possible light."

With Bush's ratings stuck at about 40 percent, the incident is one more major distraction to his efforts to focus on his second-term domestic agenda.

Syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham was among the conservatives criticizing the deal, asking on her Wednesday program, "How do we know people they're hiring are passing background checks?"

The dispute brought to mind a 1999 flap when conservatives admonished the Clinton administration for acquiescing on Panama's awarding of a contract to a China company, Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., to run ports at both ends of the Panama Canal.

But then, almost all the criticism was from Republicans. Now, it's bipartisan.

"I think there are certain things you have to be really worried about. And one of them is port safety," said Robert O. Boorstein, a senior national security aide in the Clinton White House.

"You have to call it an incredible tin ear that this administration could do that, with nobody stopping and saying, `excuse me?' said Boorstein, now with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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Bush Says Ports Deal Not a Security Threat
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

President Bush on Thursday sought to calm an uproar over an Arab company taking over operations at six major American ports, saying "people don't need to worry about security."

Under a secretive agreement with the administration, a company in the United Arab Emirates promised to cooperate with U.S. investigations as a condition of its takeover of operations at six major American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.S. government chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.

"The more people learn about the transaction," Bush said, "the more they'll be comforted that the ports will be secure." He spoke to reporters at the end of a Cabinet meeting.

In approving the $6.8 billion purchase, the administration chose not to require state-owned Dubai Ports World to keep copies of its business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to orders by American courts. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate requests by the government.

Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

Bush said he was struck by the fact that people were not concerned about port security when a British company was running the port operation, but they felt differently about an Arab company at the helm. He said the United Arab Emirates was a valuable partner in the war in terror and cautioned against sending "mixed messages" as the U.S. works with countries in fighting terrorism.

He said his administration would continue talks with members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — who have rebelled against the takeover. He said the briefings were "bringing a sense of calm to this issue."

"This wouldn't be going forwad if we weren't certain our ports would be secure," the president said.

Dubai Ports agreed to give up records on demand about "foreign operational direction" of its business at the U.S. ports, according to the documents. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment. It also pledged to continue participating in programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

"They're not lax but they're not draconian," said James Lewis, a former U.S. official who worked on such agreements. If White House officials negotiating the deal had predicted the firestorm of criticism over it, "they might have made them sound harder."

The conditions over the sale of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. were detailed in U.S. documents marked "confidential." Such records are regularly guarded as trade secrets, and it is highly unusual for them to be made public.

The Republican head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia, planned an oversight hearing Thursday. Warner has expressed support for the agreement, describing the UAE as an important ally against terrorism.

Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record) of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the conditions are evidence the Bush administration was concerned about security. "There is a very serious question as to why the records are not going to be maintained on American soil subject to American jurisdiction," King said.

Another critic, Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., added: "These new revelations ask more questions than they answer."

The disclosure of the negotiated conditions came as the White House acknowledged Bush was unaware of the pending sale until the deal had been already approved by his administration.

Bush has pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement, but some lawmakers said they still were determined to capsize it.

Dubai Port's top American executive, chief operating officer Edward H. Bilkey, said he will work in Washington to persuade skeptical lawmakers they should endorse the deal; several Senate oversight hearings already are scheduled.

"We're disappointed," Bilkey told the AP in an interview. "We're going to do our best to persuade them that they jumped the gun. The UAE is a very solid friend, as President Bush has said."

Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers "to the extent possible." The company promised to take "all reasonable steps" to assist the Homeland Security Department.

The administration required Dubai Ports to designate an executive to handle requests from the U.S. government, but it did not specify this person's citizenship.

It said Dubai Ports must retain paperwork "in the normal course of business" but did not specify a time period or require corporate records to be housed in the United States. Outside experts said stricter provisions are routine in other industries.

Foreign communications companies with American customers are commonly required to store business records in the United States. A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration considers shipping manifests less sensitive. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the agreement.

Bush faces a potential rebellion over the sale from leaders of his own party, as well as a fight from Democrats. It puts Dubai Ports in charge of major terminal operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

In Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that the agreement was thoroughly vetted in a review process that took approximately three months. "This is supposed to be a process that raises security concerns, if they are there, but does not presume that a country in the Middle East should not be capable of doing a deal like this." She described the United Arab Emirates as "a very good ally" and said "if more details need to be made available then I'm sure they will be."

The White House said President Bush did not know about the agreement until recently. The AP first reported U.S. approval of the sale to Dubai Ports on Feb. 11, and many members of Congress have said they learned about it from the AP.

"I think somebody dropped the ball," said Rep. Vito Fossella (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y. "Information should have flowed more freely and more quickly up into the White House. I think it has been mishandled in terms of coming forward with adequate information."

___

Associated Press Writer Anne Gearan in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.



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Poll: Most Think Clinton Will Run in '08
By MARC HUMBERT, Associated Press Writer

Two-thirds of Americans believe Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will run for president, but only one-third believe she can win, according to a national poll released Wednesday.

Almost 80 percent said they don't think Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Republican, could win the White House either.

Gender is a factor, pollster Lee Miringoff said.

"It looks like whether you treat them together or separately, it would certainly be an uphill fight for either of them, and clearly part of that has to do with a continuing reluctance on the part of a large number of American voters to think in terms of a woman in the White House," said Miringoff, the head of Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion.

Twenty-seven percent of voters said they were not likely to vote for a woman candidate in 2008 no matter which party ticket she headed, according to the poll sponsored by WNBC-TV in New York City. Of that 27 percent, almost one-third said they wouldn't back a female candidate because "women are not up to the job" while 10 percent said it was because the presidency is "a man's job."

Clinton has not said if she will run for president in 2008, maintaining that her focus is on re-election this year. Rice has said she has no interest in running for president.

As with other national polls, Clinton led the list of potential contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. She had the support of 33 percent of potential primary voters in the WNBC/Marist poll to 17 percent for former Vice President Al Gore, 16 percent for John Edwards and 11 percent for John Kerry. No other Democrat broke into double digits.

On the Republican side, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was favored by 28 percent of possible GOP primary voters while Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) of Arizona had the support of 24 percent. Other potential Republican contenders were in single digits.

The poll had McCain beating Clinton, 52 percent to 42 percent, while the former first lady and Giuliani were running about even.

Thirty-six percent of voters said they liked Clinton more than they did two years ago, but 33 percent said they liked her less.

Marist's telephone poll of 931 registered voters was conducted Feb. 13 and Feb. 15 and had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

DeLay Says Bush Making Mistake on Port Wed Feb 22, 9:44 PM ET

U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay said Wednesday that President Bush is making a big mistake backing a sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

The former Republican majority leader said the administration's approval of the deal is "pretty outrageous." DeLay made the remarks during a campaign event with Houston real estate executives.

Separately, U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, said he is concerned about Texas ports where military cargo is handled by London-based Peninsular and Oriental, the company to be purchased by the UAE's Dubai Ports World.

Poe said ports in Beaumont and Corpus Christi move military goods, materials and records of which he would not want UAE employees to have access.

Concerned lawmakers from both parties have noted that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers used the United Arab Emirates as an operational and financial base.

"We would be bringing trouble upon ourselves," Poe said. "I've heard the UAE is our friend on the war on terror, despite the past, but they may not be our friend tomorrow.

"They would have access to every manifest regarding shipping, all cargo going out, what's on it, where it's going and all incoming shipping coming back to the port."

John LaRue, director for the Port of Corpus Christi, said he appreciates Poe's concern, but says ports such as his have experience in working with foreign companies.

"I understand that he wants to review the process that went on. I think most people need that sort of interpretation," he said. "At the same time, ports all over the U.S. are run by companies like Dubai."

Rep. Solomon Ortiz (news, bio, voting record), D-Corpus Christi, said he too is concerned about military shipments handled by a UAE government-owned company.

"I think in the world we are living in today, we need to take all the precautions necessary, and I think there is a lack of oversight," he said.

"So many of us in Congress are disappointed there was insufficient oversight on this."

At the Port of Houston, one of the nation's largest ports, Peninsular and Oriental handle freight and have longshoremen load and unload ships, but there is no military cargo moved, port officials said.

The port's Executive Director Thomas Kornegay said any deal with the UAE company won't change security operations or efficiency.

"They load and unload the ships, but we have the cargo checked by the customs and border protection," Kornegay said.

"And the U.S. Coast Guard does all the terminal security and checking the vessels before the come into the port. That is not going to change."

Still, DeLay said the deal would be overturned by Congress.

"When it's a matter of national security, the president will be overturned," DeLay said in an account that appeared on the Web site of the Austin American-Statesman. "We will overturn it within the next few weeks."

The White House said Wednesday that President Bush was unaware of the pending sale until it already had been approved by his administration.

The administration also said that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction, which has triggered a major political backlash among Republicans and Democrats.

In the Houston area, DeLay faces Tom Campbell, Michael Fjetland and Pat Baig in his Republican primary. Democrat Nick Lampson, a former congressman, is unopposed and will face the GOP winner in November.

DeLay resigned his House leadership post amid Republicans' concern about a corruption scandal tied to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He's also awaiting a Texas trial on money-laundering charges connected with the transfer of $190,000 in corporate contributions donated to candidates through a Texas political action committee he founded.



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 26
February 23, 2006

Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp


** NATIONAL ARCHIVES RESPONDS TO RECLASSIFICATION
** RECLASSIFICATION AND THE ESPIONAGE ACT
** JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DECLASSIFICATION PLAN
** SELECTED CRS REPORTS ON NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY


NATIONAL ARCHIVES RESPONDS TO RECLASSIFICATION

Responding to a February 21 New York Times story indicating that
thousands of declassified documents had been reclassified by
executive branch agencies and removed from public access in
questionable circumstances, the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) announced yesterday that an official
investigation into the matter was underway.

An audit is being conducted by the Information Security Oversight
Office, a NARA component, to determine the number of documents that
have been withdrawn, the authorization and justification for the
withdrawal, and the appropriateness of the reclassification action.

(Agencies dispute that any documents have been "reclassified."
Instead, they contend, the withdrawn records were never properly
declassified and so have remained classified all along.)

"The audit will result in a public report designed to provide the
greatest feasible degree of transparency to this classification
activity," NARA said. "It is anticipated that the report will be
available within the next 60 days."

See "The National Archives Responds to Reclassification of
Documents," NARA news release, February 22:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/02/nara022206.html

The reclassification issue is more than a minor bureaucratic glitch.
It has become a threat to the integrity of the entire national
security classification and declassification program.

It would not be surprising if there were isolated cases of mistaken
declassification. But because many of the now-withdrawn documents
are widely available in the public domain, on the National Security
Archive web site and elsewhere, anyone can see that the authority to
reclassify and remove them has been improperly exercised in many
cases. Government officials have admitted as much.

"If those sample records [reviewed by the Information Security
Oversight Office] were removed because somebody thought they were
classified, I'm shocked and disappointed," ISOO Director Bill Leonard
told the New York Times. "It just boggles the mind."

But if records were mistakenly withdrawn in this case, what confidence
can anyone have that classification authority is being properly
invoked, for example, in the ongoing review of declassified
historical records conducted by the Department of Energy? That
review, conducted under the 1999 Kyl/Lott amendment, has also led to
the removal of many thousands of DOE and other agency records that
supposedly contain classified nuclear weapons information.

And what about Bush Administration classification of present-day
records, which has accelerated to a record high level? How credible
are those classification actions?

Finally, what is the role of the National Archives? Is NARA the
guardian of public access to historical records? Or has it become a
passive accomplice to the classification abuses of other agencies?

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) announced that his House Government
Reform subcommittee on National Security will hold a third hearing on
classification policy on March 14.


RECLASSIFICATION AND THE ESPIONAGE ACT

Could the National Security Archive be prosecuted under the Espionage
Act for publishing historical documents that U.S. intelligence
agencies now say are classified?

Could Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice be detained for continuing
to publish historical intelligence records on the State Department
web site that the CIA has flagged as classified?

Could thousands of historians and librarians around the country be
arrested for retaining and circulating volumes of the State
Department's Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series
that are now considered to contain classified documents?

These seem to be silly questions.

And yet the theory of the Espionage Act that has been adopted by the
government in its prosecution of two former officials of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (who are not charged with espionage)
may extend even to silly cases such as these.

The Espionage Act's prohibitions on the unauthorized retention and
transmission of national defense information apply to "whoever" may
violate them, the government insisted in a January 30 motion.

"Whoever means, 'no matter who'," the government contended. "The
statute covers 'anyone'."

Until now, the Espionage Act has never been interpreted this broadly,
and for good reason. Using the Act to penalize the public receipt
and distribution of government information leads to absurd
conclusions.


JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DECLASSIFICATION PLAN

The Department of Justice described its progress towards meeting the
December 31, 2006 deadline for automatic declassification of 25 year
old historical records in an updated Declassification Plan submitted
to the Information Security Oversight Office last year.

Significant exemptions to the automatic declassification program have
been sought by the FBI and the DoJ Office of Intelligence Policy and
Review. Otherwise some 30 million pages of DoJ records have been
subjected to declassification review in recent years.

A copy of the Plan was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
by Michael Ravnitzky.

See "2003 Declassification Plan (Revised October 27, 2005)," U.S.
Department of Justice:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doj-declass.pdf


SELECTED CRS REPORTS ON NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

Some notable, newly updated reports of the Congressional Research
Service, obtained by Secrecy News and published on the Federation of
American Scientists web site, include the following:

"Conventional Warheads For Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background
and Issues for Congress," updated February 13, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL33067.pdf

"U.S. Nuclear Weapons: Changes in Policy and Force Structure," updated
January 27, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL31623.pdf

"U.S. Armed Forces Abroad: Selected Congressional Roll Call Votes
Since 1982," updated January 27, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL31693.pdf

"Interrogation of Detainees: Overview of the McCain Amendment,"
updated January 24, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RS22312.pdf




_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists

Delay possible on ports, Dems want probe San Jose Mercury News
Bush administration officials opened the door Thursday to a delay in allowing a state-owned United Arab Emirates company to assume significant operations at six US ports as lawmakers pushed for a new 45-day investigation of the deal. The company, Dubai Ports World, signaled to Congress that it, too, would be willing to accept a short delay while lawmakers review the deal. "People don't need to worry about security," President Bush said shortly before administration officials who approved the transaction told a Senate committee their 90-day review did not turn up a single national security concern to justify blocking it. Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, said Bush was willing to accept a slight delay in Dubai Ports World's purchase of terminal leases and other operations at six U.S. ports from a British company. "There's no requirement that it close, you know, immediately after" a British government review of the $6.8 billion purchase is completed next week, Rove said on Fox Radio's "Tony Snow Show." "What is important is that members of Congress have the time to get fully briefed on this." Lobbyists for Dubai Ports World indicated that while the company is eager to close the deal, it is willing to agree to a delay to satisfy demands by members of Congress, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Nonetheless, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada sought quick action on legislation relating to the deal when Congress returns to Washington next week. In a letter to Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Reid said the administration's handling of the deal "could not be more flawed." Reid said he was alarmed at the failure of the administration to "exercise the full statutory authority to conduct a complete investigation into the potential national security implications of this deal." Also Thursday, administration officials said that weeks before Dubai Ports World sought U.S. approval for the deal, the UAE contributed $100 million to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.
US Senators Urge Delay in Sale of Ports to Dubai Bloomberg
Senator Challenges Ports Deal Procedure Forbes
Christian Science Monitor - BBC News - San Francisco Chronicle - FOX News - all 2,017 related »

Online home-hunting gets more sophisticated Yahoo NEWS
When 32-year-old lawyer Elaine Lippmann and her husband were planning to buy a new home, they used the Web to find a wealth of information that would have been almost inaccessible just a few years ago. The Silver Spring, Maryland, couple is part of the fast-growing ranks of U.S. home buyers who are turning to the Internet. Online research tools helped them find key information about the area and the best ways to commute to Washington. Through the Internet, Lippmann also chose a real estate agent with a helpful Web site of its own. But consumers like her might soon be using an even more comprehensive Web site called Zillow, whose founder hopes to revolutionize the way people research their home buying and selling. According toN ielsen/NetRatings, about 15 percent of the active Internet population visited a real estate or apartment site last April, up 26 percent from a year earlier. This helped convinced Rich Barton, who founded travel site Expedia and sold it to IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2003, to return to the dot-com fray this month with Zillow, backed by $32 million of venture capital. The free service, which is funded through advertisements from local suppliers, is completely independent from real estate agents. It doesn't feature any property listings. But in the same way that Expedia took the mystery out of ticket pricing, Zillow allows consumers to find out key data on neighborhoods and calculate the value of their homes. And unlike Web sites like Housevalues.com?, which require users to fill in contact information so that a real estate agent or mortgage broker can call with a detailed estimate, Zillow allows them to do it all online. To put its valuations in context, Zillow provides aerial photos of neighborhoods, showing prices of other homes along with charts and graphs with historical data and price movements of the property in question. A quick search in a wealthy neighborhood in Marlborough, Connecticut, for example, showed home values, or "Zestimates," that start at $451,000. But that was only the beginning. Besides the usual details such as number of bedrooms and baths, square footage, etc., Zillow tells you when the property was built, what kind of heating and cooling system it has, the type of roofing and even the construction quality. For instance, the site says the most expensive home in the Marlborough neighborhood was built in 1984 on 1.15 acres (0.46 hectares), with three bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. Property taxes were $6,310 in 2004. This one-story house, which sold for $470,000 in June 2004, ranks in the top 10 percentile for its zip code. Exactly how much is the home worth now? Zillow lists it at nearly $630,000, but acknowledges the value could range from $553,000 to $754,500. The accuracy of the Zestimates depend on historical data such as tax records and sales history -- and access to that data can vary from county to county. The site is also still in its test stages, said Barton, who said the estimates currently have a 7.2 percent margin of error. He expects accuracy to improve as more up-to-date information becomes readily available. Meanwhile, homeowners who feel some the details about their house are out of date can simply update the information and see how that affects the Zestimate. With Zillow, Barton is now competing with IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns such leading real estate sites as RealEstate.com, LendingTree and Domania. Kim Gorsuch-Bradbury, senior vice president of networks at RealEstate.com, said research showed that as many as 80 percent of consumers begin their search for property online. Does this mean the traditional Realtor role is becoming redundant or just evolving? Corus Home Realty Chief Executive Michael Gorman said trends at his own company, which covers Washington and its suburbs, illustrate how the business is changing.Corus also buys search engine advertising links on Google and Yahoo to lead to its own site Corushome.com. Still, Gorman doesn't think that traditional real estate agents are headed for extinction. Despite the growing popularity of do-it-yourself Web sites such as forsalebyowner.com, most listings -- even on the Internet -- are through real estate agents. Most people need a dedicated professional to help them through the buying and selling process. Even Internet-savvy Elaine Lippmann relied on Corus to close the deals for her home and for her parents' new house six months later. The National Association of Realtors says sites like Zillow and its own Realtor.com add value by offering more than just property listings such as interactive maps and integrated mortgage calculators.

Abortion ban rests on Rounds Sioux Falls Argus Leader
The legislation process is over. Now it's up to Gov. Mike Rounds to decide whether he'll sign or veto a bill that would make almost all abortions illegal in South Dakota. The state House of Representatives voted 50-18 on Friday to approve a minor amendment to HB1215, a bill aimed at creating a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The 50-18 vote came two days after the Senate passed the measure by a 23-12 margin. The bill now goes to Rounds, who vetoed a similar bill two years ago because he feared it would wipe out existing state restrictions on abortion and leave the state with no law while a court battle raged. This time, the Republican governor said he is inclined to sign the bill if he determines that it can save lives. "I've indicated I'm pro-life, and I do believe abortion is wrong, and that we should do everything we can to save lives," Rounds said Friday at a news conference. "If this bill accomplishes that, then I am inclined to sign the bill into law." But Rounds said he doesn't necessarily agree with the "frontal assault" tactic the bill uses in an effort to overturn the decision that legalized abortion. "Personally, I think we will save more lives by continuing to chip away at Roe v. Wade," he said. "Long-term, I think this court is probably more amenable to restricting the impact of Roe v. Wade on a case-by-case basis and an exception-by-exception basis. "But in the meantime, this may satisfy a lot of individuals out there who would like to see if there is one slim chance the court may entertain three years from now a direct assault on Roe v. Wade." A Sioux Falls anti-abortion activist is hopeful that the governor will sign the bill this time, but listening to Rounds' latest statements, she fears a veto could be possible. "Those were all words he used last time," said Leslee Unruh, director of the Alpha Center crisis pregnancy center and president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse.
Background on Roe v. Wade Chicago Tribune
SD Gov. 'Inclined' to Sign Abortion Ban Houston Chronicle
Los Angeles Times - ABC News - New York Times - USA Today - all 1,167 related »

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 27
February 27, 2006

Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

Support Secrecy News:
http://www.fas.org/static/contrib_sec.jsp


** FUROR OVER RECLASSIFICATION GROWS
** RESISTANCE TO ONLINE SECRECY BUILDS
** CDC POLICY ON "SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED"


FUROR OVER RECLASSIFICATION GROWS

Anyone can purchase a copy of the 1958 Department of Defense
"Emergency Plans Book," an early cold war description of response
planning for a nuclear attack on the United States. It is
available for sale through Amazon.com and elsewhere under the
somewhat lurid title "The Doomsday Scenario" (Motorbooks
International, 2002).

But don't look for it at the National Archives, where author L.
Douglas Keeney originally obtained it in 1997, because it is no
longer there. It is among the thousands of government documents
that have been reclassified and withdrawn from public access.

"When I returned in 2005 for another round of research in the
Secretary of the Air Force Files, RG [record group] 340, the
boxes were decimated," Mr. Keeney told Secrecy News. "100% of
the documents I retrieved 9 years ago were gone."

In their place, he found a "withdrawal notice" of the sort that
has been quietly proliferating at the National Archives. An
official stamp ironically certifies that the withdrawal notice
itself is declassified and may be safely disclosed. See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2006/02/reclassified.pdf

The documents in this case were removed from public access in
1997, near the beginning of the ongoing reclassification process
that has undermined the integrity of the National Archives.

If it cannot be halted and reversed, bureaucratically-driven
reclassification threatens to reduce the Archives to a mere
repository of officially-sanctioned history.

"Those who control the past control the future, Orwell famously
wrote in '1984'," recalled Fred Kaplan in an article in Slate
that supplied some of the back story of the reclassification
initiative.

See "Secret Again: The absurd scheme to reclassify documents" by
Fred Kaplan, Slate, February 23:

http://www.slate.com/id/2136480/

The continuing assault on history was also reported in "U.S.
reclassifies government memos" by Andrea Mitchell, NBC News,
February 24:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11546531/

"This effort to stuff this harmless toothpaste back into the tube
would be funny if it weren't so emblematic of a disturbing new
culture of government secrecy," a Washington Post editorial
opined. See "Classifying Toothpaste," February 27:

http://tinyurl.com/hykqx


RESISTANCE TO ONLINE SECRECY BUILDS

Confronted by a government that seems intent on erecting
unnecessary new barriers to public access, members of the public
are not entirely without resources to oppose such barriers, and
even to overcome them.

"Decrying secrecy, citizen groups fight back" is the thrilling
headline of a story by reporter Aliya Sternstein in Federal
Computer Week today (2/27/06) which explores the withdrawal of
government information from the world wide web, and the public
response.

"More federal agencies are taking data off the Web, while
citizens seek ways to restore public access," as described in
the article. See:

http://www.fcw.com/article92400-02-27-06-Print

"The concerted use of the Freedom of Information Act by public
interest groups and their constituents" offers one way of
recovering public access to official information that has been
removed from government websites, advises law professor and
librarian Susan Nevelow Mart in a new paper.

See "Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information
Removed from the Internet Be Reclaimed?", Law Library Journal,
Volume 98, No. 1 (2006):

http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_llj_v98n01/2006-01.pdf


CDC POLICY ON "SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated
and revised its policy on "sensitive but unclassified" (SBU)
information, the increasingly common twilight category of
information that is neither classified nor publicly released.

"Marking information SBU does not automatically qualify it for a
public release exemption," the CDC policy observes. (There is
no "SBU exemption" to the Freedom of Information Act.)

On the other hand, "the absence of the SBU or other related
marking does not necessarily mean the information should be
publicly released."

"Therefore, all information should be reviewed and approved prior
to its public release," the CDC instructs.

A copy of the revised SBU policy was posted on the CDC intranet
and obtained by Secrecy News. See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/cdc-sbu-2006.html

The Government Accountability Office will publish a major report
on the use of Sensitive But Unclassified control markings next
month.



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists

What Bush wants in India
The president's trip this week has strategic and economic import. By
Howard LaFranchi
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/p01s01-usfp.html?s=hns

A Colorado town prospects for glory in its mining past
Leadville residents await the results of a study which could greenlight
the reopening of its Climax Molybdenum Mine. By Amanda Paulson
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/p01s02-ussc.html?s=hns

State rethinks three-strikes law
Proposed initiatives in California would give judges more leeway in
sentencing. By Daniel B. Wood
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/p01s03-usju.html?s=hns

One town doubts Hamas
In Qalqilya, some locals say a Hamas backlash could spread in the
Palestinian territories. By Joshua Mitnick
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/p01s04-wome.html?s=hns

February 28, 2006
Supreme Court Set to Weigh Central Election-Law Issues
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — The most pressing and unsettled questions in election law are those that concern the role of money, the role of race and the role of partisanship. The Supreme Court will take up all three this week.

Hearing arguments in a campaign finance case from Vermont on Tuesday and a Congressional redistricting case from Texas on Wednesday, the justices will venture onto a shifting landscape where the controlling legal precedents are either unclear or unstable and the prospect for fundamental change looms on the horizon.

On many of the questions, the new Roberts court will almost certainly be as closely divided as was the Rehnquist court. Two years ago, for example, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was succeeded last month by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., cast the decisive fifth vote to uphold major provisions of a new federal campaign finance law. The justices were unable during that same term to agree on a majority opinion in a case from Pennsylvania on whether the Constitution prohibits a partisan gerrymander.

While decisions in the new cases are not likely until June, the arguments this week could offer a hint of the court's direction and appetite for forging a new consensus.

Of the issues before the court, the one with the most visibility involves the Texas Democrats' challenge to the redrawn Congressional district lines that the new Republican majority in the State Legislature pushed through in 2003 at the direction of Representative Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who was then the House majority leader.

Five incumbent Democrats whose districts were carved up were defeated for re-election. The state's 32-member Congressional delegation, which had a 17-to-15 Democratic majority from districts that a court had drawn for the 2002 election, became lopsidedly Republican: 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats.

To the Democrats, the unusual middecade redistricting was "one of the most notorious partisan power grabs in our history," as one of their briefs tells the justices. To the Republicans, it was simply payback for "an egregious Democratic gerrymander from the 1990's," according to the Texas Republican Party's brief.

"This case is fundamentally about democracy," R. Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor general, asserts in his brief defending the redistricting. The Bush administration, which approved the redistricting despite objections by career lawyers in the Justice Department that the new lines violated the Voting Rights Act, will also argue on the state's behalf.

A decision upholding the new district lines, issued last June by a special three-judge Federal District Court in Austin, generated seven appeals, of which the Supreme Court agreed to hear four. While each appeal has a separate name, the eventual ruling will be known by the name of the one that was docketed first, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, No. 05-204.

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court narrowly upheld a Congressional districting plan in Pennsylvania that Democrats had attacked as a partisan gerrymander, the justices could not even agree on whether such a charge was properly the business of the courts. Four said it was not, and four said it was but could not agree on a test. In the middle was Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who voted to uphold the districts but said he might join the dissenters the next time if he was persuaded that there was a test that judges could apply to distinguish permissible from impermissible partisanship.

To satisfy Justice Kennedy, the Texas Democrats have come up with a test, proposing that "an unnecessary redrawing of district lines designed solely to replace representatives from one party with representatives from another" should be seen as serving "no legitimate governmental purpose" and therefore as unconstitutional.

While this aspect of the Texas case has received the most attention, the case also presents questions of minority voting rights, raised by lawyers for black and Mexican-American voters, that have important implications for applying the 40-year-old Voting Rights Act in an era when multiethnic coalitions