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abolition-usa-digest   Wednesday, December 30 1998   Volume 01 : Number 054




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Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 23:47:21 -0800 (PST)
From: Timothy Bruening <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) Dan Quayle Makes Stunning Admission About Operation Desert Storm!

I found the following Dan Quayle Quote on the Feb 18 page of the 1999 "365
Stupidest Things Ever Said" page a day calendar written by Ross and Kathryn
Petras, authors of "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said":

"Desert Storm was a stirring victory for the forces of aggression and
lawlessness".

If you have any stupid quotes, I urge you to send them to Ross and Kathryn
Petras at [e-mail], or at 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said, c/o
Workman Publishing, 708 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-9555.


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 with "unsubscribe abolition-usa" in the body of the message.
 For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send
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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 08:44:04 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: (abolition-usa) A present for you

In a message dated 98-12-27 10:26:36 EST, you write:

<<

 With children home (can I blame it on them?) I have lost the address to
 request postcards. Do you still have it and if so can you forward it to me??

 Thanks,

 Colby Lowe
 member, National Board, Peace Action >>
Hi,

This is what I sent to you. Do you know how I can order the postcards??

Thanks,

Colby

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 To unsubscribe to abolition-usa, send an email to "[e-mail]"
 with "unsubscribe abolition-usa" in the body of the message.
 For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send
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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 09:23:54 -0500
From: Peace through Reason <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) NucNews-US: 12/28/98 - Reactors; Waste; Tritium; Russian Warheads in Nebraska

1. http://www.latimes.com/excite/981227/t000118098.html
Nuclear Research Reactors Dwindling in U.S.as Funding, Interest Drop

2. http://insidedenver.com/news/1227rad3.shtml
Flats workers uncover radioactive drum
Toxic container found after wall collapses

3. http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/122698/OPEDone.html
Editorial: A win for Savannah River Site

4. http://www.econet.apc.org/igc/en/hl/9812257741/hl9.html
Tennessee Reactor To Make Tritium

5. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,30003148,00.html
PFS, landowners reach agreement on N-dump
But Leavitt believes ranchers were bought off

6. http://www.nebweb.com/news/thursday/local2.htm
NPPD plugs into Russian warheads (Lincoln, Nebraska Power)

- --------------------------

1. http://www.latimes.com/excite/981227/t000118098.html

Nuclear Research Reactors Dwindling in U.S.as Funding, Interest Drop

Sunday, December 27, 1998, Los Angeles Times
By WILLIAM MCCALL, Associated Press

Technology: High-profile accidents at commercial reactors and at Chernobyl
contribute to unpopularity. Medical progress could be impeded without the
devices.

CORVALLIS, Ore.--Fans who stormed the
field after Oregon State University's
double-overtime victory over Oregon in the annual
"Civil War" game may never know they were just a
parking lot away from a relic of a far more
dangerous conflict--the Cold War.
     The university is home to one of the last
research nuclear reactors operating on a college
campus. It was built there with the belief that the
atom could be harnessed for good instead of evil.
     But that optimism has been worn away by a
generation of apocalyptic visions of nuclear war.
And with the Cold War threat a distant memory,
students these days are mostly unaware of the
power in their midst.
     "I'd say the average OSU student doesn't spend
much time thinking about nuclear power or nuclear
war," said Mike Caudle, student government
president. "A lot of them probably don't even know
where the reactor is."
     The waning support and lack of interest in
nuclear power research has been followed by
decreasing funding for programs around the
country, forcing the closure of two to three reactors
a year and cutting the number of campus reactors
from 50 three decades ago to about half that today.
     "It could be we're looking at a vanishing
technology," said Michael Glascock at the
University of Missouri, which has the nation's
largest research reactor. "Within the next 20 years,
it may be gone."
     Reactor directors say nuclear research is drying
up at universities everywhere, which may cost the
nation some of its best engineers and physicists
along with valuable improvements in technology
and advances in basic science.
     Most of the reactors were built in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, when the public was swept up in
the space program and the Disney promise of a
"great big wonderful tomorrow" at the 1964
World's Fair in New York.
     But faith in nuclear power diminished after
accidents at commercial reactors, such as Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl, along with the nation's
largest bond default after the Washington Public
Power Supply System halted construction on two of
its three nuclear plants.
     And researchers say a generation of Americans
weaned on anti-nuke sentiment during the 1960s are
unlikely to reach into their pockets for the tax
funding needed to keep university reactors
operating.
     It doesn't matter that the reactors are small, have
never caused an accident and have contributed to
scientific discoveries such as the reasons for the
extinction of dinosaurs or analyzing evidence in the
assassination of President Kennedy.
     "I don't think that people realize there are
different reactors," said John Bernard at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
     Research reactors generally are used to produce
streams of atomic particles called neutrons, which
can be used to analyze everything from moon rocks
to paint chips from freighters suspected of midsea
collisions.
     Neutrons also have shown promise for treating
rare brain tumors and advanced melanoma by
targeting cancer deep inside the body with particles
that destroy only the malignant cells.
     "The public thinks they're all producing
electricity, but these research reactors are much
like a microscope," Bernard said. "You're
producing a beam of neutrons to see the world."
     At Reed College in Portland, the reactor is
student-run.
     Students on the small, wooded campus say
they're comfortable with the reactor because they
all know the people operating it, said Jenne
Wonner, a senior biology major whose boyfriend,
Toby Boes, just got his reactor license.
     "I've seen Toby working on it," Wonner said. "I
know how careful he is."
     Most of the paranoia of the Cold War is long
gone, at least from Reed, said student Bob Foster.
     "There might be some dreadlocked people who
get totally flipped out about it at first--like, 'Wow,
man, what's a reactor doing on campus?' But it
doesn't last long," Foster said.
     At Oregon State, which has a larger reactor, the
style is equally laid-back.
     Erwin Schutfort, one of the principal OSU
researchers, admits he feels a little like Homer
Simpson--a cartoon favorite of university
scientists--when yanking on a fishing pole to pull
test samples from the glowing blue core of the OSU
reactor.
     "It's a rather low-tech solution," Schutfort says
with a grin, dangling a line over the top of a deep
pool of water lined with 82 rods of enriched
uranium.
     Unlike the animated nuclear plant in "The
Simpsons," safety has never been a problem for
university reactors, which are reliable and well
operated, even by young students, said Marvin
Mendonca, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission
spokesman in Washington, D.C.
     Funding is the real problem.
     Most universities can't afford state-of-the-art
measurement equipment and instruments needed to
run experiments. Many also must charge fees for
research time, unlike national laboratories such as
Oak Ridge in Tennessee, funded by the federal
government, Bernard said.
     Foreign governments and corporations plow
huge amounts of money into their own research
reactors.
     "Europe outspends the United States 10 to 1 on
neutron-scattering research," he said.
     University reactors may be aging, but their basic
design is sound. The NRC has been approving
relicensing requests because the operating lives of
the research reactors can extend well into the next
century.
     And building new plants would be incredibly
costly.
     Glascock said the Missouri reactor cost about
$3.5 million when it was built in the early 1960s.
To build a similar reactor today would cost at least
$200 million, he said.
     The only hope for increased funding to maintain
existing reactors may be neutron capture therapy,
the technique used to target deep brain or
melanoma tumors. A clinical trial is under way at
MIT, and research also is being done at OSU and at
Washington State.
     If the therapy proves successful, medical
funding may rescue many reactor centers.
     "If that doesn't happen, the future of nuclear
reactors is pretty grim," Bernard said.

Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved

- ---------------------------

2. http://insidedenver.com/news/1227rad3.shtml

Flats workers uncover radioactive drum

Toxic container found after wall collapses; expanded
searches for more material planned

Associated Press, Inside Denver, December 27, 1998

BOULDER -- A small radioactive drum has been found
in a trench at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons
plant where workers dumped containers of depleted
uranium 40 years ago.

Workers who were pouring clean fill dirt into the
excavated trench discovered the three- to five-gallon
drum Tuesday after part of a wall collapsed, said Jennifer
Thompson, a spokeswoman for Kaiser-Hill, which is
cleaning up the property under an Energy Department
contract.

The outside of the drum did not register as radioactive,
but its contents did, she said.

Crews plan to excavate the drum in the next few weeks
and to conduct more radar searches of the area.

"We're not sure if there might be anything else outside that
boundary as well," Thompson said.

Between June and September, Kaiser-Hill employees
removed about 30 tons of depleted uranium from the
trench after conducting ground-penetrating radar studies
and interviewing employees.

Because the main portion of the trench contained tons of
debris, Thompson said it was not surprising the radar
search missed the small drum.

The workers conducted radioactivity surveys along the
lining of the trench after it was excavated, but the drum
apparently was set far enough into the wall that the
equipment did not detect it.

LeRoy Moore of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice
Center said the discovery is "a reminder of how
unpredictable and potentially dangerous the cleanup work
is."

"Nobody really knows where everything is," he said.

The plant, about eight miles south of Boulder,
manufactured triggers for nuclear weapons before it was
closed.

- ---------------------------

3. http://www.savannahmorningnews.com/smn/stories/122698/OPEDone.html

Editorial: A win for Savannah River Site

Savannah River Morning News, December 26, 1998

AFTER SEVEN years of cutbacks prompted by the
end of the Cold War, the government's nuclear
weapons plant near Aiken, S.C., finally earned a
dividend this week: A $500 million plant to
disassemble nuclear warheads, probably including
many it helped build.

The sprawling, thousand-acre Savannah River Site,
100 miles upstream from Savannah, has laid off
thousands of workers since the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991. The new plant will create 400
permanent jobs and 500 construction jobs over the
next five years.

The United States has 7,000 nuclear warheads. The
number is slated for cutback to 3,500 when the
Russians ratify a second strategic arms limitation
treaty.

The new SRS plant will take apart the plutonium core
of nuclear warheads and convert the highly
radioactive plutonium so it can be made into fuel for
commercial reactors or be deactivated for long-term
storage.

However, the SRS lost out in bidding for a second
nuclear plant -- a $3.5 billion linear accelerator to
produce tritium, a form of hydrogen that makes
nuclear bombs more powerful.

The Energy Department awarded that massive
contract to two nuclear power plants of the Tennessee
Valley Authority -- Watts Bar, near Knoxville, and
Sequoyah, near Chattanooga. Using existing nuclear
reactors, they will become the nation's first
commercial producer of tritium.

Georgians and South Carolinians are better off
without the tritium plant at SRS. A radioactive gas
which was produced at SRS until 1988, tritium has
leaked into the Savannah River more than once --
never in sufficient quantity to pose a health risk, but a
1991 spill led to a brief shutdown in pumping river
water to treatment plants.

With a major reduction in U.S. nuclear warheads
impending, it is unfortunate that more tritium is
needed, but it deteriorates at the rate of 5.5 percent a
year and must be replenished. Without additional
tritium, the explosive power of warheads in the
American arsenal would be sharply reduced.

Cost considerations in building a new tritium
production plant tilted against SRS from the start of
the bidding. The Congressional Budget Office
estimated the cost of building and operating a tritium
plant at SRS at $9.5 billion over 40 years, $6 billion
more than at Watts Bar/Sequoya.

At Watts Bar, the tritium plant will use an existing
TVA reactor; a production test has been underway
there for the past year. At SRS, a new reactor would
have had to be built.

The two decisions of the Energy Department require
the concurrence of Congress, but they appear to be the
most sensible from the standpoint of both cost and
national security.

When, and if, the Russians ratify the Start II treaty,
less tritium will be required -- and fewer dollars will
have been invested to produce it.

In the meantime, SRS will play an important role in
deactivating the nuclear warheads that were, for a
generation, the nation's bulwark against Soviet
aggression.

- ---------------------------

4. http://www.econet.apc.org/igc/en/hl/9812257741/hl9.html

Tennessee Reactor To Make Tritium

December 23, 1998  Econet

By RACHEL ZOLL

   CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) _ For the first time in U.S. history, the
government is about to breach the long-standing wall separating civilian
uses of nuclear power from military ones.

The Energy Department announced Tuesday that it is awarding a
billion-dollar contract to the Tennessee Valley Authority to produce
tritium at a TVA nuclear reactor near Knoxville that generates electricity
for homes and businesses in the Southeast.

Tritium is an isotope that enhances the explosive force of nuclear warheads.

The decision marks the first time in the nation's history that a civilian
nuclear plant will be used to produce weapons material.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said that awarding the contract to the
Watts Bar nuclear plant will be cost-efficient while providing needed
tritium. TVA's Sequoyah nuclear plant outside Chattanooga will serve as a
backup.

``Watts Bar-Sequoyah is our best option for our national security. It is a
proven technology. It's the best deal by far for the taxpayer,'' Richardson
said. ``It has the flexibility to meet our present and future tritium needs.''

Some congressmen and anti-nuclear groups opposed the decision, arguing that
using a commercial reactor would fuel the arms race.

``The use of a civilian nuclear reactor for the production of nuclear
weapons materials is very troubling, and I believe that Secretary
Richardson has underestimated the longterm nuclear proliferation
implications,'' said Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who is stepping down this
year as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Bruce Hall of the anti-nuclear group Peace Action in Washington said: ``I
think what we're doing is dangerous from a nonproliferation standpoint
because we're blurring the lines between civilian and military applications
of nuclear power.''

Richardson noted that the TVA _ a utility created during the New Deal _ is
a government agency whose charter includes preserving national security.

The Watts Bar decision ``gives us the maximum arms control flexibility. It
allows us to produce tritium when we need it,'' he said.

He said details about the cost would be made public in a few weeks. A
report issued in August by the Congressional Budget Office said that using
an existing reactor such as Watts Bar would cost $1.1 billion over 40 years.

Tritium, a gas inside warheads, decays over must time and must be
replenished. It has not been produced in the United States since 1988, when
the government shut down its last weapons reactor at the Savannah River
Site in Aiken, S.C.

The House approved legislation earlier this year that would have blocked
the use of a commercial nuclear reactor to product tritium, but the measure
failed in the Senate.

Among other options that had been considered by the Energy Department was
the TVA's unfinished Bellefonte nuclear plant outside Scottsboro, Ala. It
also weighed the idea of building equipment at Savannah River or using a
reactor at the government's Hanford weapons complex in Washington state.

TVA officials had pushed the Bellefonte option, hoping to obtain financial
help from the government to complete construction of the plant.

 Richardson also announced Tuesday that a $500 million plant to disassemble
the plutonium cores of nuclear bombs would be built at Savannah River.

- ---------------------------

5. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,30003148,00.html

Deseret News, December 24, 1998, Associated Press

PFS, landowners reach agreement on N-dump
But Leavitt believes ranchers were bought off

      Private Fuel Storage announced an agreement with ranch owners on
Wednesday that it says assures landowners' concerns about a proposed
high-level nuclear waste facility will be mitigated.

 Castle Rock Land and Livestock, Skull Valley Co. and Ensign Ranches of
Utah, L.C., announced an agreement with PFS, which plans to build a
temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute
Indian Reservation in Skull Valley.

The companies have withdrawn their opposition to the licensing of the
proposed facility by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because PFS said it
would address landowners' concerns during construction and operation of the
facility.

Gov. Mike Leavitt, who has long opposed the facility, told KSL television
on Wednesday that he believes the ranchers were bought off. Neither PFS nor
the companies would disclose terms of the agreement.

PFS said the withdrawal should not affect the licensing process. The Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board, which is a three-judge panel appointed by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will still hear from other opponents.

"With this agreement, we have been able to address the concerns of some of
the facility's closest neighbors," said PFS project manager Scott Northard.
"This is a step in the right direction."

Earlier this year, the Legislature attempted to impede the shipment of the
nuclear waste to Tooele County by designating the only access road to the
site as a state highway, thereby forcing PFS to comply with tough, some
would say onerous, state regulations. There has even been talk of state
tolls on the road that would make the transportation of nuclear waste
prohibitively expensive.

In November, PFS responded by proposing to bypass the state road - and any
state regulations on that road - with a new railroad spur that would be
located exclusively on federal and Indian lands on the west side of Skull
Valley.

 If it becomes fully operational, the PFS site could store 40,000 metric
tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors on a
100-acre facility on the reservation.

The economically depressed Goshute Indian Tribe views the facility as a
multimillion-dollar boon and actively courted PFS.

"We were environmentalists in the beginning and we continue to be the
environmentalists today," said Leon Bear, chairman of the Skull Valley Band
of Goshutes. "We feel that the economic development is appropriate for us
because of the facilities already around us."

But state lawmakers, including Leavitt, have opposed the facility. "They
say it is safe because it is stored at nuclear power plants in the East,
Midwest and California," Leavitt said in May. "If it is so safe, it can
stay where it is."

- ---------------------------

6. http://www.nebweb.com/news/thursday/local2.htm

NPPD plugs into Russian warheads

BY AL J. LAUKAITIS
Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star / Associated Press December 24, 1998

Uranium from Russian nuclear warheads once aimed at the United States is
heating living rooms and powering toasters in Lincoln this winter.

In a strange footnote to the Cold War, the Nebraska Public Power District
is using uranium harvested from Soviet nuclear weapons to generate
electricity at its Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville.

NPPD officials stressed that the weapons-grade uranium has been diluted and
can no longer be used for military purposes.

The Columbus-based utility purchased the uranium through the federal
Megatons to Megawatts program.

"This program has effectively eliminated the equivalent of more than 2,000
nuclear warheads to date," said Charles Yulish, a spokesman for USEC, Inc.,
a private company that is responsible for implementing the program and
supplying the uranium.

The Lincoln Electric System, which gets about 12.5 percent of its power
from Cooper under a long-term contract, is one of the utilities getting the
Russian uranium energy. So will customers of MidAmerican Energy Co. in
Iowa, which also gets power from the plant.

Officials said the special uranium fuel did not cost NPPD any additional
money.

Since shipments began in 1995, the Russians have processed about 45 metric
tons of nuclear warhead materials for U.S. nuclear energy plants, Yulish
said. A $12 billion agreement between the U.S. and Russian governments
calls for diluting 500 metric tons over 20 years.

Forty U.S. utilities are using uranium fuel derived from the Soviet-era
warheads, according to a USEC spokeswoman.

On Sunday, Cooper Nuclear Station began generating electricity using the
Russian fuel when workers restarted the plant after a 79-day refueling
outage. The 801-megawatt plant is located south of Brownville near the
banks of the Missouri River.

"During the succeeding 18 months, approximately 30 percent of our power
will come from fuel that perhaps was once contained in nuclear missiles
pointed toward the West," said Eugene Lanning, Cooper's nuclear fuel
procurement engineer.

Lanning estimated the Russian nuclear fuel accounts for about 6 percent of
all the electricity used daily in Nebraska.

The Russian uranium was delivered to Paducah, Ky., where it was diluted and
blended with other uranium owned by NPPD. It was then shipped to
Wilmington, N.C., for further processing before arriving at Cooper Nuclear
Station.

Lanning said the uranium arrived via truck in about 100 fuel bundles and
was loaded into the reactor core during Cooper's 1996 refueling outage.

Without going into a complex scientific explanation, Lanning said it takes
at least 18 months for the energy in the uranium fuel rods to build up to
their maximum output. During the next 18 months, the plant will expend the
energy until it is slowly depleted.

However, some energy will remain and it will be another 18 months before
the fuel bundles containing the Russian uranium will be removed from the
reactor core. Cooper officials refuel the plant about every 18 months.

No former weapons material was available for manufacturing into the 160
fuel assemblies loaded during Cooper's most recent refueling outage.

_______________________________________________________________________

   * NucNews - to subscribe: [e-mail] - http://prop1.org *

                   Please forward -- help educate!
_______________________________________________________________________

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 with "unsubscribe abolition-usa" in the body of the message.
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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 20:01:51 -0500
From: Peace through Reason <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) NucNews-US: 12/30/98 - Radioactive Tumbleweeds; etc.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Radioactive-Tumbleweeds.html
Radioactive Tumbleweeds on Rise

2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/30/081l-123098-idx.html
Secret Deals, Awkward Bargain
U.S. Probes Firm's Covert Acquisition of Arms for CIA, DIA

3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/23/028l-122398-idx.html
Cities Plan Legal Assault On Makers Of Handguns
Tobacco Lawsuits Viewed as Model

4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/24/088l-122498-idx.html
Preparing for the Millennium (Letter to Editor; web links)

- ----------------

1. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Radioactive-Tumbleweeds.html

Radioactive Tumbleweeds on Rise

By The Associated Press, December 30, 1998

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- First, radioactive ants, flies
and gnats were found at the Hanford nuclear complex,
which for years churned out plutonium for nuclear
weapons.

Now a government report says there has been a dramatic
increase in the number of radioactive tumbleweeds found
blowing around the place.

The Department of Energy found 20 contaminated
tumbleweeds in the first six months of 1998, compared
with 11 during all of 1995, an increase likely due to
stepped-up efforts to search the area.

With roots that can stretch 15 feet into the soil looking for
water, the weeds suck up contaminated groundwater and
spread radioactivity when the top of the plant is blown
away by the wind.

The plants sprout across the 560-square-mile government
reservation, which is one of the nation's most heavily
contaminated nuclear sites. When they tumble, so does
radioactivity.

The Department of Energy found that Fluor Daniel, the
company that manages Hanford for the government, and
other contractors spent $1.68 million last year to control
vegetation like tumbleweeds, as well as various mice and
insects that also spread radioactivity.

Hanford stopped producing plutonium in the 1980s, but
some areas remain highly radioactive. Billions of dollars
are being spent to clean up the site along the Columbia
River.

- ----------------

2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/30/081l-123098-idx.html

Secret Deals, Awkward Bargain U.S. Probes Firm's Covert Acquisition of Arms
for CIA, DIA

By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 30, 1998;
Page A01

The federal agents who burst into the Alexandria office of Vector Microwave
Research Corp. one morning late last year got right to the point. "This is
a court-authorized search," an agent announced. "Stand up, don't turn off
your computers. We'll take care of that."

The raid, which netted U.S. Customs Service and Navy investigators boxes of
records and computer disks, came as a shock to a firm that made a business
of eluding attention. For years, Vector had performed secret tasks for the
CIA and the U.S. military, using guile, experience and connections,
including those of its president, retired Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, a
former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Vector was a leading entrepreneur in a classified or "black" specialty with
high stakes and few rules: covertly acquiring foreign missiles, radar,
artillery and other weapons for U.S. intelligence agencies. Its work was
seen as crucial by some U.S. officials who study innovations in foreign
weaponry as part of efforts to protect Americans from the global spread of
ballistic missiles and other arms.

But the rise and fall of Vector illustrates the awkward bargain that can
result when agencies such as the CIA and the DIA privatize covert
operations. When Vector went out of business earlier this year, it left a
trail of mysterious dealings, some that may have run counter to U.S.
policy, according to government officials, former Vector employees and the
firm's competitors.

Today, investigators are trying to determine at whose behest the firm bid
for a batch of North Korean missiles. Also unresolved is whether the firm,
trying to sweeten a deal for the purchase of Chinese missiles, provided
China sensitive technical specifications on the U.S. Stinger antiaircraft
missile.

So complex was the web of connections surrounding Vector that its founder,
Donald Mayes, became a business partner with China's state-owned missile
manufacturer while secretly buying Chinese weapons for the U.S. government.

Government officials admit they may never know the scope of Vector's
activities. "Where's the reality?" said a U.S. official who has pursued
Vector for years. "We'll never untangle some of this."

No charges have been brought in the federal inquiry, and attorneys for
Vector and its executives deny wrongdoing. The agents who led the Nov. 20,
1997, raid are looking into a number of Vector projects, as well as a
private side deal in which Mayes sold Russian helicopters to the Mexican navy.

Guidelines for Bribes

The ongoing investigation had not been made public previously, and, besides
scant references in the business press, Vector itself has hardly been
mentioned in print. The firm quietly went out of business recently after
spinning off parts of the company to competitors. Perroots, 65, did not
respond to messages left at his Virginia home. Mayes, 60, who is living in
Mexico, responded through his Washington attorney, Thomas Green.

"It's hard for me to get into Mr. Mayes' activities, but they were
appropriate and didn't violate any laws," Green said. Green also read a
statement issued by Mayes, which said: "Anything we've done for the U.S.
government was completely approved." Vector's allies said any prosecution
would fail because of Vector's intelligence ties.

Executives of Vector and its competitors in the "foreign materiel
acquisition" business, such as BDM International of McLean and Electronic
Warfare Associates of Dulles, stride the marble halls of defense ministries
from Moscow to Minsk to Beijing competing for weaponry on secret CIA and
DIA wish lists. Because they can deny any direct tie to the U.S.
government, they can buy from people who wouldn't deal with Washington, or
require deniability to do so. The contractors, in turn, are held to secrecy
by the U.S. government.

Operating largely on their own in this shadowy world, people who scour the
globe for arms on the government's behalf acknowledge that they could face
legal trouble if U.S. investigators questioned them about their methods.
U.S. officials say people who bribe foreign officials while on authorized
U.S. government assignment won't be prosecuted under statutes that prohibit
such corrupt practices. But people who bribe seeking foreign arms "on
speculation" -- in the hopes of finding a government buyer -- may be in
legal jeopardy, officials said.

"If you say what you do, you can go to jail" because of U.S. anti-bribery
laws, said a Vector competitor, who acknowledged that people in his
industry commonly retain middlemen to bribe foreign officials. "The U.S. is
paying us to go to a foreign country and find somebody to do an illegal
thing for us. . . . Do you want a Boy Scout doing it, or somebody who can
get the job done to save U.S. lives?"

'Name and Access'

Mayes, who was described by an employee as "one of the most cunning
individuals I've ever met," learned the arms acquisition trade at a cluster
of firms in Virginia's Tidewater area in the 1970s. He founded Vector in
1984, and it was soon acquiring missiles, electronics and ships from China,
France and elsewhere. Many of Vector's 150 employees tested the materiel at
a California Navy base, or designed classified computer networks for the
government. Other employees worked on purely commercial projects, such as a
plan to bury waste from South Korean nuclear reactors in the Mongolian
desert, and a plan to build a Russian casino -- until Moscow mobsters
seized their slot machines.

In 1989 Mayes hired retiring Air Force Lt. Gen. Perroots, who had spent
three years as DIA director. A favorite of former CIA director William J.
Casey, Perroots had superb intelligence connections. "Mayes told people,
'We got Len for his name and access,' " a former Vector executive said.
"Len did what he was told" by Mayes, who often left Perroots in the dark,
former employees said.

Several people who worked at Vector's headquarters on South Washington
Street in Alexandria said freewheeling foreign missions brought out a
swagger in Mayes, who cultivated a disdain for law enforcement officials
who wanted to question him about his activities. They said the hulking
6-foot-4 Oklahoman boasted that federal agents were too stupid to nail him.

"He bragged about how his phone was tapped, and he was outsmarting them,
and they'd never get him," a Vector consultant said of Mayes. Green, Mayes'
lawyer, denied Mayes ever said that.

"Mayes compartmented everything from his own employees," a firm official
said. "We called him 'prince of darkness.' He'd go overseas on a trip, and
no one would know what he was doing." His wife, a former CIA employee,
"would call and say, 'Where's Don?' "

Former Vector associates said the firm performed a variety of "little
tasks" for the government, nearly all of them secret. The company
maintained contact with people the government wanted to keep tabs on,
including a businessman from Bahrain with ties in Iran, a former company
executive said. U.S. officials unsuccessfully used Mayes to try to lure the
man to this country in connection with a Customs investigation, the former
executive said.

Government officials also used Vector to pry information from an Iraqi
official with whom it had grown close: the flamboyant, Rolls Royce-driving
Iraqi Brig. Gen. Nabil Said, military attache at Baghdad's embassy here in
the years before the Persian Gulf War.

Vector also informed intelligence officials about its dealings with Moscow.
In 1990, while trying to buy a supersonic Soviet antiship missile,
officials of the firm met a Soviet general who was defense attache at the
embassy in Washington. The attache, Grigoriy Yakovlev, ended up working
with Vector on numerous deals. "The relationship was prejudged [by U.S.
officials] and guidance was provided" by U.S. agencies, said Patrick Sweet,
who worked with Vector. What guidance did U.S. officials give? "Our policy
is not to get into that," Sweet replied. Yakovlev later became a paid
Vector deal-spotter in Moscow.

In addition, U.S. officials asked traveling Vector executives to make
specific inquiries of Russian space officials about production methods on
new electronic and optical technologies, a former company executive said.

Vector's practices have earned some enemies within the U.S. government. In
the late 1980s, naval intelligence officials accused the firm of
overcharging for Chinese missiles and delivering Chinese missile
electronics that were different from what the firm had promised. The Navy
refused to pay the firm's $390,000 fee, but after Vector's sustained
lobbying, Navy officials ultimately paid in full, industry executives said.

In 1993 Navy officials launched a criminal probe of the firm for alleged
fraud, which was later dropped. Mayes wrote an eight-page, single-spaced
letter to Congress complaining that Navy intelligence was out to destroy
Vector by leaking its proprietary proposals to competitors in "a war of
innuendo, investigations and outright abuse."

The resentment flared again last year, when Perroots persuaded the Pentagon
inspector general to investigate Perroots's old agency, the DIA, for
allegedly giving a competitor details of Vector's plan to acquire Russian
missiles. Vector's allies say the current probe of Vector was engineered by
enemies of the firm in DIA and Customs, which has simmered at the
unregulated importing of arms into this country by firms such as Vector.
DIA and Customs declined comment.

Customs is investigating Mayes for a private deal that apparently had no
links to the government. Mayes allegedly lacked a State Department license
when his employees repaired Russian helicopters for the Mexican navy and
trained its pilots to fly them. Mayes sold the Mi-8 copters to the Mexicans
for search-and-rescue work. While the copters lacked military equipment,
Mayes' associates allegedly advised Mexico on how to outfit them with guns,
an industry executive said. Maintaining or upgrading aircraft without a
license could violate U.S. arms exports law.

"What the Mexican government does with the copters is its business," said
Green, Mayes' lawyer.

North Korean Missiles

Another investigation by Customs agents has examined Vector's efforts to
acquire a North Korean missile. Vector officials said they had U.S.
approval for a deal, according to industry executives and the National
Security News Service, an independent investigative group that conducted
research on Vector. U.S. officials asked The Washington Post not to
identify the type of missile to avoid jeopardizing future covert operations.

Industry executives familiar with Vector's work said Perroots arranged for
a South Korean consultant to approach a Seoul company to broker a $33
million deal to buy four missiles and a launcher from Pyongyang. They said
Vector also had a U.S. consultant pay a Venezuelan military official
$50,000 for a phony "end-user certificate," a document used in
import-export work to indicate an item's destination. In this case, the
North Koreans were meant to think the missiles were headed to Pakistan and
then Venezuela.

Vector never got the missiles. Customs has reviewed the indirect dealings
between Vector and North Korean officials, which took place in Beijing,
since any financial transactions with North Korea would be a violation of
U.S. laws banning commercial ties to the country. Agents are also looking
into whether Vector had approval to seek the missiles, since some U.S.
agencies had said such a mission could be illegal, in part because it would
threaten weapons agreements to which the United States is a signatory. A
U.S. government official said that Vector's efforts were "amateurish," and
that it stumbled into the deal without U.S. authorization.

"I thought we were doing everything by the book," said a former Vector
executive. "DIA said they needed it."

Perhaps the most baffling and sensitive area of Vector's enterprise has
been in China, which also has sparked the Customs Service's interest.
Chiefly, investigators are exploring whether, in efforts to secure Chinese
missiles in about 1991, Mayes gave Chinese engineers technical advice that
could help them pirate the design of the U.S. Stinger antiaircraft missile.

Through his attorney, Mayes denied giving China any data; the lawyer,
Green, said "it's a canard circulating for several years." Former Vector
officials said that when Beijing's officials tried to barter sensitive U.S.
data from Mayes as a condition for deals, he play-acted, disclosing
material that already was public. Industry officials said the government at
times allows contractors to give away such "trading material."

Whatever his tactics, sources said, Mayes scored many acquisition successes
in China, at times by telling the Chinese that the weapons were destined
not for this country but for Peru. He obtained the C-801 antiship missile
for the CIA around 1987, when Iran was threatening to fire those weapons at
U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. He also landed the similar C-601
missile in 1991 for $9.9 million, according to industry executives and an
internal company report.

Over the same period, Mayes had developed close ties to China Precision
Machinery Import & Export Corp. (CPMIEC), Beijing's missile builder. A
Vector affiliate, Mayes & Co., became CPMIEC's official, global marketer of
a number of its missiles, including the HN-5A, a crude forerunner of the
shoulder-fired Stinger.

For the Chinese, Mayes' traceable ties to U.S. intelligence made him an odd
choice of a partner. In any case, piles of CPMIEC promotional materials
were stacked inside Vector's offices, and Mayes tried to sell CPMIEC arms
to Saudi Arabia and other nations. At the same time, Mayes was informing
U.S. intelligence about China's missile sales, industry officials said.

But now investigators are asking whether Mayes, to ingratiate himself with
the Chinese, helped them figure out how to place the Stinger's electronics
in the nose cone of China's primitive shoulder-fired missile. An industry
executive said that around 1991 Mayes boasted that, with the CIA's
approval, he gave the Chinese some of the Stinger's technical
specifications to deepen his relationship with them. The agency declined
comment, but U.S. officials expressed doubt that Mayes had CIA approval to
do so.

A joint promotional brochure of CPMIEC and Mayes & Co., aimed at marketing
China's HN-5As, said the Chinese agency "utilizes the research, design,
marketing and tactical capabilities of Mayes & Co. to evaluate and improve"
Chinese missile designs. "Mayes & Co. is a small group of highly
specialized engineers and technicians that have a unique understanding of
the problems associated with electronic and missile systems."

The Chinese appear to have incorporated Stinger technology in a new missile
that entered Chinese military service in 1996, called the QW-1 Vanguard,
the CIA told a Senate committee two years ago. But it is impossible to know
where the Chinese got the technology because China is thought to have
secured some of the 1,000 or so Stingers the CIA gave Afghan rebels to
repel Soviet troops in the 1980s.

The Pentagon is now concerned the Vanguard could be fired at U.S. aircraft.
CPMIEC, which is notorious for violating global agreements by distributing
Chinese missiles around the world, has sold Vanguards to Iran and Pakistan.

The Chinese Agent

U.S. aviation officials are "increasingly concerned" for the traveling
public's safety because of the proliferation of such mobile antiaircraft
missiles, said a 1994 State Department report. It noted that rebel militias
around the world have shot down 25 commercial airliners using these
missiles, killing 536 people.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this story, though, is the role played
by a Chinese military intelligence agent stationed at Beijing's embassy
here in the 1980s. The FBI spotted Hou Desheng early on as a bumbler; there
was his odd talkativeness, for example. He complained of his difficulty
surviving on the $75 a month he was paid as assistant military attache,
said a reporter who used to take him to lunch.

Hou showed up weekly at Vector's offices mounting clumsy efforts to learn
classified secrets about a Navy electronics program it worked on, a Vector
official said. U.S. agents urged Vector to play along, and the firm once
left a sensitive-looking file for him, so he would become even more
reckless and blunder into a trap, the official said.

In 1987 Hou was arrested for espionage in a Washington restaurant after he
received what he thought were classified National Security Agency documents
from an FBI agent posing as a U.S. traitor. Days later the U.S. government
expelled Hou as a spy.

Soon after, working out of an office in a Beijing hotel, Hou became Mayes &
Co.'s representative in Beijing. He helped Mayes line up the missile deals
he swung with China's military, industry executives said.

Hou "was a conduit to other people" and remained a Chinese government
employee while working for Mayes, a former Vector executive said. Did Mayes
and Vector employ a Chinese spy as part of a U.S. intelligence operation?
"I can't get into that," he replied.

Green, Mayes' lawyer, declined comment on Hou. "It's too sensitive," he said.

- ---------------------------------

3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/23/028l-122398-idx.html

Cities Plan Legal Assault On Makers Of Handguns Tobacco Lawsuits Viewed as
Model

By Roberto Suro Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 23, 1998;
Page A01

In a sudden wave of litigation that could rival the recent legal assault on
the tobacco industry, city governments across the country are preparing
lawsuits seeking to hold handgun manufacturers responsible for the
multibillion-dollar costs of violent crimes.

New Orleans and Chicago led the way with suits filed this fall. Boston, San
Francisco, Bridgeport, Conn., and Miami-Dade have announced they are
putting together legal teams to develop complaints. And Philadelphia Mayor
Edward G. Rendell (D) has proposed a simultaneous filing by as many as 100
cities on the same day sometime next year.

"This is just the beginning," Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said this
month after hosting officials from 15 cities and the U.S. Conference of
Mayors to discuss litigation plans.

Inspired by the success of anti-tobacco lawsuits, elected officials and gun
control advocates see a chance to hit handgun manufacturers with so many
suits in so many places that the industry will be forced not only to pay
huge dollar settlements but to accept tough new regulations on the sale of
their products.

"The tobacco suits prompted some new strategic thinking," said Kristen
Rand, director of federal policy at the Violence Policy Center, a
Washington-based research and advocacy group. "Both tobacco and gun
manufacturing have largely escaped regulation in the past, and now the
justice system has emerged as the best way to ensure that they are held
accountable for their products."

Gun manufacturers, like cigarette makers, have successfully defended
themselves against numerous lawsuits brought by individuals. But gun
control advocates hope to end that streak by bringing the public sector's
vast resources and powerful new legal arguments into the battle.

That strategy has worked, at least to a degree, with tobacco. So far,
cigarette manufacturers have agreed to payments of $246 billion to settle
lawsuits brought by state governments and have accepted restrictions on
advertising and the sponsorship of sporting events. The settlements are
narrower than an unsuccessful deal proposed last year, but gun control
advocates and city officials still see great potential in pursuing similar
litigation against gun manufacturers. And many believe they have an easier
target.

"The gun manufacturers are not nearly as big, as rich, or as unified as the
tobacco people, and so they may well buckle when they have to fight
lawsuits in every major city in America simultaneously," said a top aide to
a big-city mayor who asked not to be named.

Acknowledging their vulnerability to big-time legal warfare fought on many
fronts, gun company executives have expressed concern that they might
simply be driven out of business by the costs of fighting the suits.

"The survival of a domestic gun manufacturing industry is at stake," said
Bob Ricker, director of government affairs at the American Shooting Sports
Council, a trade association and lobbying organization for gun
manufacturers, which is a defendant in the New Orleans suit.

The litigation campaign against the gun industry is still in its opening
phase and no central leadership or common strategy has emerged on either
side. The National Rifle Association, for example, is not playing as
prominent a role as it has on other occasions when the gun industry felt
under assault, and the industry itself is fragmented among big
international firms such as Beretta and Glock that have large military and
law enforcement contracts and a great many downscale manufacturers of
Saturday night specials.

Meanwhile, gun control advocacy groups are divided over legal tactics and
have not played a dominant role. For example, the Center to Prevent Handgun
Violence, an influential Washington-based organization, advised New Orleans
on developing a complaint that relies on product liability law, while the
Violence Policy Center that is recommending the approach behind the Chicago
suit has spent a decade fighting lawsuits against gun manufacturers and has
developed a theory that seeks to declare gun manufacturers and distributors
a public nuisance. In the meantime, attorneys such as Wendell H. Gauthier
who were prominent in the tobacco litigation are helping guide some of the
gun suits.

For the moment there is no drive to agree on a unified strategy. "Every
city is going to have to tailor a legal theory to its local circumstances
and its state laws," said Tom Cochran, executive director of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, which has a long record of promoting gun control
measures and is acting as a clearinghouse of information for cities that
are undertaking lawsuits.

Indeed, some attorneys involved in the lawsuits see an advantage in
starting out with a variety of approaches, because if many different
assaults are launched, there is a better chance that a few at least will
make it through the uncharted legal territory ahead.

Anti-gun advocates also hope to get an unprecedented glimpse into the inner
workings of the gun industry by smoking out whistleblowers and forcing
them, through litigation, to turn over corporate documents.

"We are going to get into a phase of discovery, just as with tobacco, that
will open the gun industry to a kind of scrutiny that it has never
experienced," said David Kairys, a professor of law at Temple University,
who helped Chicago develop its lawsuit and is now working with other cities.

The attorneys, for example, hope to find evidence that manufacturers of
Saturday night specials exploit the guns' extensive use by criminals or
that industry marketing strategies are based on large numbers of illegal,
or at least questionable, sales. Even if only one proceeding generates
damaging revelations, the entire effort will benefit, the lawyers said.

Several different battle plans are already developing. The Chicago lawsuit
argues, in effect, that handgun manufacturers have knowingly profited from
crime and fear of crime, while the New Orleans suit contends more narrowly
that the industry has violated state gun safety laws by failing to install
devices, such as high-tech gun locks, that would prevent accidental
shootings, especially by children.

Regardless of the allegation, the goal is to make handgun manufacturers
collectively liable for the municipal costs of handgun violence, expenses
that can range from law enforcement salaries to the purchase of emergency
medical equipment.

Individual gun manufacturers and industry groups insist they should not be
made to answer for the acts of criminals. "The idea that guns in and of
themselves are responsible for crime is ridiculous," said Ricker, of the
shooting sports council.

The key development, first in the tobacco litigation and now in the gun
lawsuits, is a change in the nature of the plaintiff -- the party that
brings the legal action.

"When one person has sued, whether it's on tobacco or guns, the industries
have scored points by attacking that person and claiming the harm was all
their fault," said Dennis Henigan, director of the legal action project at
the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.

For example, judges and juries routinely concluded that smokers had freely
chosen to light up and so tobacco companies could not be held liable for
the health consequences of that choice. Similarly, gun manufacturers
successfully argued that it was not their fault when someone chose to
commit a crime and fired a gun at someone else illegally.

"The states' lawsuits to recover health care costs from tobacco companies
showed that a public plaintiff can overcome these obstacles and focus
attention on the broad costs to society," said Henigan.

Still, the analogy to tobacco is by no means perfect.

In tobacco cases, plaintiffs could argue that even when cigarettes were
used properly, as the manufacturers had intended, a defect -- the
carcinogenic effect of smoke, for example -- inflicted harm on the smoker
and the manufacturer should be held liable for it. Moreover, the tobacco
suits also argued that manufacturers misled smokers both about those
dangers and about the addictive powers of nicotine, which furthered the
harm and diminished the consumer's ability to avoid it.

There is no chemical addiction when it comes to guns. And there is no
secret they are dangerous. And courts have repeatedly rejected claims that
guns are somehow defective when they fire bullets.

"No one has been injured when using a gun properly," said Ricker,
expressing the industry view that it can not be held liable for injuries
that result from crimes or accidents.

So far, two legal theories have been developed to try to get around these
roadblocks and others are under consideration.

The New Orleans suit argues that under Louisiana's unusually strict product
liability law, guns are "unreasonably dangerous" because manufacturers
failed to take steps that would prevent the guns' use by children and other
unauthorized users. For example, the suit alleges that manufacturers failed
to include adequate warnings of the risks that minors could gain access to
weapons or instructions on how to store a gun to avoid that risk.

The suit also claims that a number of devices have been available for more
than 20 years that would prevent an unauthorized person from firing the
weapons. These include simple combination locks built into the handgun and
more technologically complex "personalized" guns that will only fire when
the shooter is wearing a ring equipped with an encoded chip.

"The taxpayers of my city should not bear the continuing increase in
hospital costs and police costs and ambulance costs associated with this
spate of violence," said New Orleans Mayor Marc M. Morial.

The New Orleans suit names 15 major handgun manufacturers, three industry
trade associations and several local gun dealers as defendants. Without
specifying an amount, the suit seeks damages to cover the city's costs for
"police protection, emergency services, medical care, facilities and
services, as well as lost tax revenues due to defendants products and
actions."

In response, the gun manufacturers will argue that "the single most
important gun safety device is the brain of the owner, and if the owner
does not use the gun responsibly then there is no device that can make it
absolutely safe," Ricker said.

The Chicago lawsuit, by contrast, argues that gun manufacturers have become
a "public nuisance" by using marketing and distribution methods designed to
circumvent the city's highly restrictive gun laws, which forbid handgun
sales. The gun makers "knowingly oversupply" gun shops just outside the
city's boundaries with the intention that many of those weapons will be
sold to city residents, according to the suit.

The suit seeks $433 million in city costs related to gun violence over the
past five years and names 16 gun stores and 22 manufacturers as defendants.

"Handgun manufacturers knowingly participate in an illegal market that
supplies criminals, and then they turn around and feed off the fear of
crime by convincing people they can protect themselves by buying these
products," Kairys said. "They profit from crime and so they should pay the
public costs of crime."

Ricker responds: "How can a city claim that guns cause crime when it gives
guns out to police officers, in order to stop crime? It is not the guns
that are at fault when a criminal commits a crime."

In the Line of Fire

Firearm deaths, 1996

AgeDeaths

0-4 88

5-9 95

10-14 510

15-19 3,950

20-24 4,816

25-29 3,989

30-34 3,414

35-39 3,318

40-44 2,746

45-49 2,289

50-54 1,693

55-59 1,317

60-64 1,077

65-69 1,191

70-74 1,161

75-79 1,027

80-84 785

85+ 546

Unknown 28

Total 34,040

SOURCE: National Center for Health Statistics

- -------------------

4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/24/088l-122498-idx.html

Preparing for the Millennium

Thursday, December 24, 1998; Page A16

While I was happy to see a front-page article on preparedness for the Year
2000 (Y2K) computer problem [Dec. 7], it may do a net disservice to the
movement toward community preparedness because it leaves the impression
that people trying to prepare their communities for Y2K-related disruptions
are nuts. This is what FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has
to say on its Y2K website (http://www.fema.gov/y2k/):

"The efforts of FEMA and all emergency management and fire service
organizations cannot be viewed as a substitute for personal responsibility
and personal preparedness. Every organization and every individual, in
public and private life, has an obligation to learn more about this problem
[Y2K] and their vulnerability, so that they may take appropriate action to
prevent a problem before it occurs. FEMA is working with the emergency
management and fire service communities to raise awareness, to increase
preparedness, and to stand ready to provide federal response assistance to
state and local governments, if that is required."

Many of the "yuppies" who are worried about Y2K are far better informed
than the average citizen about the pervasiveness of the Y2K bug and the
difficulty of fixing the problem. Further, no one I know through the
Northern Virginia Y2K Community Action Group believes that corporate
announcements of progress toward Y2K compliance are "a ruse to keep stock
prices from falling."

The problem is that progress is too slow, and many companies and government
agencies have done too little, too late. Historically, software projects
almost never have been finished on time, and Y2K remediation can be seen as
the largest software project ever undertaken.

Joel Achenbach's article would have been a lot more effective if he had
played it straight, instead of linking Y2K community preparedness groups to
fringe subcultures. During the coming months, I expect to see government
organizations calling for an increasing focus on personal preparedness. The
grass-roots community-preparedness movement is ahead of the curve.

Readers who would like to learn more about the likelihood of Y2K-related
threats to their personal lives can visit the Northern Virginia Y2K
Community Action Group's website at http://www.novay2k.org or come to one
of our free seminars.

INGRID SCHULZE

Falls Church


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