US scientist alleges deadly DU cover-up by the Pentagon

By Felicity Arbuthnott and Neil Mackay

Scotland, Jan. 7— The Pentagon scientist who briefed Britain and America on the lethal health risks to Western troops of using depleted-uranium (DU) shells claims he warned the allied powers as far back as 1991 that the explosives could cause cancer, mental illness and birth defects.

Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon’s Depleted-Uranium Project, says the USA and UK have covered up the hazards, despite the rising death toll among allied troops who fought in the Gulf from illnesses linked to DU exposure, including Gulf War Syndrome. The UN Environment Program has also found traces of radiation at eight sites in Kosovo hit by NATO DU shells.

The Sunday Herald has been given a restricted UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) document dated February 25, 1991 -- four days before the Gulf War ceasefire. It states that full protective clothing and respirators should be worn when close to DU shells and that human remains exposed to DU should be hosed down before disposal.

The document -- coded 25/22/40/2 -- says inhalation or ingestion of particles from shells is a health risk and exposure should be treated as “exposure to lead oxide.” DU dust on food would result in contamination.

Rokke, a former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University, was assigned by the US department of defense with organizing the DU clean-up of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after the Gulf War. A former US army colonel, Rokke also briefed the Commons Defense Select Committee on the risks of DU in 1999.

“Since 1991, numerous US department of defense reports have stated that the consequences of DU were unknown,” he said. “That is a lie. They were told. They were warned.”

Rokke gave military personnel briefings on the hazards of DU shells.

“I can confirm that medical and tactical commanders knew all the hazards,” he said. In Saudi Arabia, Rokke and his men buried vehicles and contaminated body parts and shipped other equipment back to a nuclear decontamination facility in the US.

At least 10 men died. The only man in the 50-strong team not to fall ill wore full radioactive protective clothing.

Rokke suffers reactive airway disease, neurological damage and kidney problems. “DU is the stuff of nightmares,” he said. “It is toxic, radioactive and pollutes for 4,500 million years. It causes lymphoma, neuro-psychotic disorders and short-term memory damage. In semen, it causes birth defects and trashes the immune system.

“The United States and British military personnel, as part of NATO, willfully disregarded health and safety and the environment by their use of DU, resulting in severe health effects, including death. I and my colleagues warned the US and British officials that this would occur. They disregarded our warnings because to admit any correlation between exposure and health effects would make them liable for their actions wherever these weapons have been used.”

The Sunday Herald has seen a memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, dated Mar. 1, 1991. It is from a Lieutenant-Colonel M.V. Ziehman to a Major Larson. Headed “The Effectiveness of Depleted Uranium Penetrators,” it reads: “There has been, and continues to be, a concern regarding the impact of DU on the environment. If no one makes the case for the effectiveness of DU on the battlefields, DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and be deleted from the arsenal.”

A document from the US defense nuclear agency from 1992 described DU particles as a “serious health threat.”

Rokke says field measurements of DU in Iraq were around 200 millirads an hour. The US has designated a year’s safety limit of just 100 millirads.

Shaun Rusling of the Gulf War Veterans’ and Families’ Association said 521 British servicemen have died of Gulf War Syndrome to date. Bruce George, Labor chairman of the Commons defense committee, said yesterday that an MoD investigation was a matter of urgency. The committee meets on January 10, and is expected to call on defense secretary Geoff Hoon to give evidence. However, an MoD spokesman said last night: “We are unaware of anything that shows depleted uranium has caused any ill health or death.”

Source: Sunday Herald (Scotland): www.sundayherald.com

Republicans step up campaign against global court

By Evelyn Leopold

United Nations, Jan. 3— Confident of support by the new Bush administration, Republicans in the US Congress are gearing up for legislation against the new global criminal court just endorsed by President Clinton.

Mark Thiessen, spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview on Tuesday that “strategic steps” would be figured out once President-elect George W. Bush takes office on Jan. 20.

“It is a move that is going to backfire,” he said of Clinton’s decision to sign a treaty creating the court.

Clinton authorized signature of the treaty on Sunday but recommended it not be submitted for ratification until US misgivings are addressed.

“We concur,” Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “We will review it when we come into office. But we are concerned it is a flawed treaty.”

Clinton said the US signature allowed American negotiators to have more influence on the International Criminal Court’s procedures. It also affirmed US principles of prosecuting individuals for the world’s most heinous crimes — genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

“This issue was below the radar screen for most people. Now it is at the top of the foreign policy agenda in Congress next year. If they were trying to help the court, they made a gross mistake,” Thiessen said of the outgoing administration.

Helms and other Republican leaders have drafted legislation that would forbid the United States to have anything to do with the court and would seek to punish some nations if they ratify it. Among those backing the bill was Donald Rumsfeld, who has been nominated by Bush to be defense secretary.

Thiessen contended there was no significant support among Democrats. Some, however, have voiced support for the treaty, backed by all Western democracies, even though their campaign has been relatively low-key.

About 20 House Democrats wrote a letter to Clinton in mid-December urging him to sign the treaty. And Sens. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, and Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, have advocated for years such a tribunal, based on the concept of the Nazi war crimes trials at the end of the Second World War.

Newspapers urged treaty backing

Several newspapers also recently urged Clinton to sign the treaty, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Clinton’s surprise decision to sign the treaty came after Washington had battled one of the court’s statutes that would allow US soldiers abroad to be tried — but only in the unlikely case the United States did not take action in its own courts against mass criminal acts.

David Scheffer, the US ambassador at large for war crimes, who came to New York to sign the treaty, said it contained a number of safeguards. In signing, Washington “remained in the game, negotiating and continuing to represent the interests of the US government and the US military.”

A total of 139 nations have signed the treaty, including the United States, Israel and Iran, who affixed their signatures on Sunday. Sixty countries have to ratify it before the court can be established and 27 have done so.

“I see this in the very long-term perspective,” UN legal counsel Hans Corell said. “I hope that the remaining ratifications will come fairly quickly and then gradually more and more states will join.”

Richard Dicker, associate counsel for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Gen. Colin Powell, Bush’s nominee for secretary of state, would probably evaluate the situation carefully before placing the new administration “at odds with its closest allies.” “The US interests are better served remaining engaged in this process as opposed to trying to knock the tent down from the outside, which is a recipe for a diplomatic debacle,” Dicker said. “I expect the secretary of state-designate is far too experienced and far-sighted to take instructions from the senior senator from North Carolina.”

Source: Reuters

Attorney to file federal class action suit to overturn presidential election

Layfayette Hill, Pennsylvania, Jan. 6— Attorney, political activist and former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg announced today that he will be filing a class action lawsuit in a Florida federal court to overturn the 2000 presidential election.

Berg said, “My lawsuit is based on widespread voter fraud that occurred throughout Florida. Evidence continues to be forwarded to me.”

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, “and state and county elected and appointed officials and workers who violated federal and state laws” will be named as defendants in the suit, Berg said.

According to Berg, the evidence is “overwhelming.” He cited “the unlawful striking of voters from voter rolls, claiming, erroneously, that individuals were felons and other reasons; the tainting of ballots by placing stickers and other markings on [them] to create ‘overvotes;’ [the turning of] overvotes into actual votes; the nonrecording of ‘undervotes’ when the ‘clear intent of the voter’ was discernible; the placing of faulty voting machines in Democratic and minority voting precincts; the intimidation of voters which prevented voters to vote; the printing of ballots in violation of state law [that mandates that the place voters mark or punch be to the right of a candidate’s name] by having ‘bubbles’ on the left, and having two columns for presidential candidates; and other violations of election and constitutional laws.”

Berg said, “There is precedent throughout the United States from federal court decisions, including Pennsylvania and Florida, that have overturned elections, including State Senator Stinson being forced from office in Pennsylvania in 1994 and the mayor of Miami, Florida in 1997.”

He added, “We are confident that we will be successful as there is no question that the defendants conspired to violate the rights of the citizens of Florida and, therefore, the citizens of the United States. We will submit allegations of criminal wrongdoing to the appropriate authorities as prosecutions should occur.”

Berg said the way to prevent the lawsuit is “for the US Congress to stand tall and challenge” both the Florida electors, because the election there was “stolen,” and the Texas electors, because of questions about Cheney’s residency and the fact that the 12th Amendment prohibits a state’s elector from voting for a president and vice president who both are residents of that state.

Sierra Club mounts campaign to defeat Norton, Ashcroft

Washington, DC, Jan. 5, (ENS)— The Sierra Club today launched campaigns to oppose President elect George W. Bush’s nominations of Gale Norton as the Secretary of the Interior and John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Both nominees have “dismal” environmental records, the group said.

“Gale Norton would be a natural disaster as Interior Secretary. Norton is the oil, mining and timber industry’s choice. She favors increasing the commercial and environmentally destructive development of our national parks, forests and wild lands,” said Carl Pope, executive director for the Sierra Club.

During the Ronald Reagan administration, Norton served as associate solicitor at the Interior Department, authoring legal opinions to support oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Norton has also labeled government protections of endangered species an example of excessive regulation.

Bush’s nomination of John Ashcroft, former senator from Missouri, is also disappointing, Pope said.

“In light of his poor environmental record and his open hostility to most environmental laws, how can we expect Senator Ashcroft, as Attorney General, to enforce environmental laws?” said Pope.

While in the Senate, Ashcroft voted against additional funding for environmental programs including the Clean Water Action Plan and toxic waste cleanups at Superfund sites. He voted in favor of bills to roll back clean water protections, and to allow mining companies to dump cyanide and other mining waste on large areas of public lands next to mining sites.

To block their appointments, the Sierra Club will be mobilizing its more than 630,000 members, working in coalition with other environmental and progressive groups and using radio, television and newspaper advertisements to educate the public about the environmental records of Norton and Ashcroft.

ELF torches lumber company in Oregon

Glendale, Oregon, Jan. 8-- The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has officially claimed responsibility for burning down the Superior Lumber Company offices in Glendale, Oregon on January 1, 2001. This latest action by the ELF caused at least $400,000 in damages.

A communique sent by the ELF stated, “Superior Lumber is a typical earth raper contributing to the ecological destruction of the Northwest. What happened to them should shock no one.”

The ELF is an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop what they see as being a systematic exploitation and destruction of the natural environment.

The communique continued, “This year, 2001, we hope to see an escalation in tactics against capitalism and industry.”

Since 1997, in the United States alone, the ELF have caused well over $36 million in damages to entities profiting off the destruction of the environment.

The communique finished by stating, “While Superior Lumber says, ‘Make a few items, and do it better than anyone else,’ we say, ‘choose an earth raper, and destroy them’.”

Other Northwest actions committed by the ELF include; the burning of a Bureau of Land Management Horse Corral in Burns, OR on November 29, 1997, the burning of a USDA Animal Damage Control building in Olympia, WA on June 21, 1998, the burning of U.S. Forest Industries in Medford, OR on December 27, 1998, the burning of Boise Cascade in Monmouth, OR on December 25, 1999, and more.

Source: Frontline News Service: www.animalliberation.net

Clinton orders counterintelligence escalation

Washington, DC, Jan. 5-- President Clinton, in his waning days in office, has ordered a retooling of the country’s counterintelligence efforts to take account of new espionage threats and protect the private sector, the White House said on Friday.

The order will establish a new top government position — a national counterintelligence executive charged with overseeing activities between the FBI, CIA and other agencies, and making sure they have enough money.

White House National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton signed the order in late December 2000 with a view toward addressing a changing espionage environment in which computer hackers can steal government and corporate secrets.

Source: Reuters

Jimmy Carter condemns elections

United States, Jan. 9— Today, former US President Jimmy Carter said it was atrocious that election officials seemed to be “content” with disregarding 3 to 4 percent of the ballots turned in by voters. He also said that if one of the foreign countries his organization sometimes “observes” had acted as the authorities in Florida acted concerning the Presidential vote count, their group would have left the country, and refused to “certify” the result.

Source: National Public Radio