[Editor's Note — In the original posting, Strom Thurmond was identified as a Republican senator when he made his record-setting filibuster in 1957. However, he was a Democrat at the time and didn't switch parties until the 88th Congress in 1963.]

Picture if you can US senator Harry Reid donning the garb of a swashbuckling buccaneer in the anticipated volley on the Senate floor between Democrats and Republicans over President Bush's judicial nominations. To a 19th century Mexican or Nicaraguan, it might make sense.

It's a stretch, but here's why.

Senate Majority Leader Frist and a fleet of Republicans are squaring off against Reid and the Democrats who are setting up ramparts in a battle over senate procedure at the least, if not the interpretation of the Constitution itself.

The Democrats’ line of defense is the "filibuster," a long-standing Senate privilege allowing virtually unlimited floor debate usually in the hopes of killing legislation, or, in this case, blocking the approval of Bush's nominees to the bench.

In the mid 1800s, according to the Senate Historical Office, “filibuster -- from a Dutch word meaning 'pirate' -- became popular in the 1850s, when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill."

There’s a little more to the definition, though.

The United States, officially only a little over 50 years old by then, had an ever-growing population and territory. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson had paid France the equivalent of $193 million in today’s dollars for over 828,000 acres of land west of the Mississippi—the Louisiana Purchase.

As often happens, expansion brings conflict, and the United States is no more immune from it than other nations. The larger the territory, the larger the national interests, and so as US governments and their presidents sought to secure these lands, the people who felt their own entitlements to it often felt differently.

Enter "filibuster."

The word filibuster comes directly from the Spanish filibustero, itself from the Dutch Vrijbuiter, or freebooter, plunderer—a pirate. “It was used,” says Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to Congress “to describe US military adventurers who in the mid-1800s fomented insurrections against various Latin American governments.”

With some irony,

The first parliamentary use of the word is said to have occurred in the House [of Representatives] in 1853, when a representative accused his opponents of “filibustering against the United States.” Ten years later, “filibuster had come to mean delaying action on the floor, but the term did not gain wide currency until the 1880s.

Again—unlike in the House—the filibuster tradition has allowed senators essentially unlimited debate. Which means talking. You can employ other techniques requiring parliamentary skills and knowhow, but, says the CQ guide, “The most important tool of the filibusterer, once control of the floor proceedings is gained, is continued talk.” Lots of it.

So who holds the record? In August of 1957, in an a failed effort to impede passage of the civil rights bill, a Republican senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, held the floor for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Non-stop.

Also . . .

House and Senate Rules of Procedure: A Comparison (Congressional Research Service, via Senate.gov)

Everything you wanted to know about the "nuclear option (Salon.com)

With a Potential Supreme Court Nomination At Stake, Questions of The Filibuster's Constitutionality Linger (FindLaw.com)

Can the Senate Bind Itself So that Only a Supermajority Can Change Its Rules? (FindLaw.com)

"Filibuster and Cloture": an interview with former Senate parliamentarian Floyd Riddick (Senate.gov)

Senate leaders to break bread on Sunday(TheHill.com)

Rove Guided Career of Judicial Nominee in Filibuster Fight (New York Times)

On Monday April 4, 2005 Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith became the 3,460th recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. Smith “distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” one year ago to the day for action in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which “saved the lives of at least 100 Soldiers, caused the failure of a deliberate enemy attack hours after 1st Brigade seized the Baghdad Airport, and resulted in an estimated 20-50 enemy soldiers killed.”

The history of the Medal of Honor goes back to December 9, 1861 when an Iowa senator introduced a bill that would distribute the “medals of honor” to “promote the efficiency of the Navy.” By the end of the month the bill was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Over half a year later, in 1862, he signed a new law that would create an equivalent award for the Army.

The medal—among scores of military service medals given since 1862—is the highest given to military service personnel in the United States, and covers conflicts which include the Civil War (1,522 awardees), the “Indian Campaigns” (426), World War II (464), and Vietnam (245). Over 600 medals have been awarded posthumously, the bulk of the awardees have been from the Army, nine have been given to unknown recipients, and as of February 7th of this year, there were 127 living recipients.

And while the Civil War figure above is the highest of all the conflicts to date, it only represents medals given to Union soldiers of the northern states and does not include those from the Confederate Army who made similar sacrifices, even if for different reasons.

It has also been awarded to only one woman in its over 140-year history. Mary Walker was a Civil War “assistant surgeon” who was awarded the medal for actions during the Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861. However, in a purge about 40 years later, her medal was revoked due to her civilian status—a distinction, until her medal was restored in 1977, she would share with five others, including Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody’s was restored in 1989.

According to the Encyclopedia Americana, The Purple Heart, probably the most widely known medal in US history, was established in 1782 by George Washington and designed by Paris-born Pierre Charles L’Enfant, also the designer of Washington, D.C. It was created for Revolutionary War service and was originally called the Badge of Military Merit. It wasn’t until nearly 250 years later that it was resurrected and has been in use ever since.

Also . . .

Medal Of Honor FAQs (Congressional Medal of Honor Society)

Medal of Honor citations (US Army)

Recommendation Process (US Army)

What are the guidelines for which the medal could be awarded? (CMHS)

Civil War Medal of Honor awards (Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, National Park Service)

Global inequity, by some measures, is diminishing. Yet it is a sobering sort of success, because sometimes it is people who live on less than one dollar per day have decreased, either that their incomes increase to, perhaps, two dollars per day, or that they are dying off.

This is the subject of a Monitor article Thursday. The story is accompanied by a photograph of a beaming child in Malawi, eating an ear of corn grown by her father, with the help of an aid program.  Corn is not native to Africa, and crops get decimated when weather is bad.  Aid, too, is subject to changes in political and economic climates.   

This past week, a United Nations report suggested ways industrialized countries could halve world poverty by 2015, with the ultimate goal of eliminating it completely by 2025. The report recommends a multi-pronged approach that includes rich nations stepping up their financial support of of nations that show development promise. The report also says poor countries should do their part to meet these goals, while wealthy nations should open their markets.  Agricultural markets especially matter to struggling, pre-industrial economies, but laws protecting European Union and United States farmers often serve to push these countries out of markets.

Market demands and new customers might bring about change faster than policy shifts, however. This past November, it was reported that the US's agricultural trade balance for the first time in 50 years would be zero.   More countries are producing wheat, produce and other commodities.  In addition, trends toward fresh and exotic products, and new demands for these products created by cultural diversity in this country, are cited as factors.

The more products that rich nations buy from poor countries, this improves the standard of living in the developing world. In turn, emergent countries often want more of what the developing world has to sell - like electronics, cars, and education.  That could be good for everyone.

Iran, in a bold move earlier this week, declared that it would not conform to guidelines laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Instead, reported the Monitor’s Scott Peterson Friday, it said it plans to resume uranium enrichment activities which are part of a larger nuclear program that was started in 1974.

It’s also the latest episode in an ongoing saga of nuclear rivalry and politics in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1979, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made the following statement:

We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change.

Following the Iranian statements, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that while there’s “a clear understanding now that Iran must satisfy the concerns that have been expressed by the international community,” and that the U.S. was “talking about diplomacy and political efforts to stop this movement on the part of the Iranians toward nuclear weapons,” adding, “we’re not talking about strikes.”

The punch line came next. “But every option…of course, remains on the table.”

However, the idea of striking a country in possession of nuclear capabilities is not new. The Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies notes that Iraq attacked Iran’s Bushehr plant six times throughout the Iran-Iraq War (or Iraq-Iran war, depending).

The Israeli attack on the Osirak, or Tammuz I, nuclear facilities in Iraq in June of 1981 is undoubtedly the most famous, and it has been lately invoked by the press in the wake of statements coming out of Iran and Israel.

Some commentators have turned the tables and drawn renewed attention towards Israel’s nuclear program. And while, downplaying a nuclear preemptive move, Israel has recently announced acquisition from the United States of 5000 "smart bombs" worth $319 million, including 500 so-called "bunker busters," or BLU-109s, capable of penetrating 7ft of concrete.

Herbert Krosney and Steven Weissman, in their book, The Islamic Bomb, set up an earlier strike against Tammuz that occurred the year before and set off a wave of confusion and misinformation.

It was September 30, 1980, the ninth day of the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. Iranian Phantom jets had just bombed a power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad, when low on the horizon, two Phantoms came streaking in over the desert sands, rushing headlong at a new target.

[ . . . ]

Early announcements said that the rockets had missed the big new Tammuz I reactor and had scored only “minor damage” to some buildings nearby. A later report in the French magazine l’Express claimed that the rockets had hit the base of the reactor dome, badly damaging the entire structure. It would set the Iraqi nuclear program back at least a year, l’Express suggested.

At the time of the attack, French technicians were still completing construction of Tammuz I, which was not scheduled to go “critical” for at least three months. But a smaller research reactor from France and possibly an older one from the Soviet Union were very much in operation when the rockets struck.

Never before had a nuclear reactor site become a military target in time of war, and perhaps it was the novelty of it al, or the apparent brilliance of the attack, that led l’Express to drop a bombshell of its own. The Phantoms hadn’t come from Iran at all, the magazine had insisted. They were Israeli, and they had taken advantage of the war with Iran to knock out the Iraqi nuclear complex.

But it was not Israel. Not this time.

The truth, it seems, was more prosaic. The later-to-be-deposed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was also the military commander-in-chief, admitted the Phantoms were his. And according to eyewitnesses, it is likely that the place called Tuwaitah was not even a primary objective, but simply a target of opportunity for those two Phantoms on the way home after the bombing of the power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad.

[ . . . ]

The September bombing of Tuwaitah was not the first of the violence in the trouble-plagued history of the Iraqi nuclear program, and it would not be the last. Back in April 1979, unidentified saboteurs broke into a storage hangar at a small engineering firm near Toulon on the French Riviera and dynamited the Osirak, or Tammuz, core only hours before it was due to be shipped to Iraq. In June 1980, in a hotel room in Paris, an unknown intruder bludgeoned to death an Egyptian nuclear engineer who was playing a leading role on the Osirak project. In August, a series of bombings and letter and telephone threats against French and Italian engineering firms sparked a continuing campaign of terror.

The details of the Israeli attack on Osirak are fully exploded in a new book by Roger Claire, but here’s the rough outline of the Israeli attack from Krosney and Weissmann:

But the big attack came on Sunday, June 7, 1981, the eve of the Jewish religious holiday of Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses in Sinai. The thoughts of most Israelis were far from the battlefield…

… The attack itself went strictly according to plan. Late in the afternoon, about four o’clock Israeli time, eight of Israel’s new fleet of American-built F-16 jet fighters took off from Etzion air base in the Sinai. Originally designed for high-speed dogfights, the planes had been equipped with extra fuel tanks, to increase their range, and special bomb racks which carried two 2,000-pound MK-84 iron bombs.

…The first bombs to hit the lead and concrete walls had delayed-action fuses. This allowed them to penetrate the dome before exploding, opening holes with pinpoint accuracy and destroying the reactor inside.

The U.S. role in the lead up to the attack is intriguing, according to the biography by Joseph Persico of former CIA director William J. Casey. In it Persico paints a picture of a quid pro quo between Casey and parties in Israel who want something in return for a muted reaction to the shipment of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

First on his agenda was helping to get the AWACS deal through the Congress. The government of Saudi Arabia wanted to spend $8.5 billion for these “airborne warning and control systems” surveillance aircraft. The Reagan administration was eager to make the sale to cement its friendship with the Saudis. Israel was understandably unnerved by the prospect of an Arab state getting supersophisticated planes. …

Casey went to the Middle East and met in Tel Aviv with the Israeli intelligence chief, Major General Yitzhak Hoffi, known as Haka. How could he be helpful? Casey wanted to know. Haka told him that any information the Israelis could acquire from the CIA on certain installations in the Arab world could be most useful. Any in particular? Casey asked. Yes, the Israeli told him. Ten miles outside of Baghdad in Iraq was the Osirak nuclear reactor. The reactor’s core contained 26.4 pounds of weapons-grade uranium 235. The Israelis estimated that their Iraqi antagonists were within five years of producing nuclear weapons.

Casey understood Israel’s concern. Of course he could help—but did Israel really need to be so worried about the AWACS sale to the Saudis? Couldn’t the Jewish lobby in the States be called off? The heads of the intelligence service of the United States and of Israel managed, before Casey left, to arrive at a mutually helpful arrangement.

On Sunday, June 8 Israeli aircraft bombed the Osirak reactor. Casey was notified at home at four-fifty that afternoon. Within two hours, and American KH-11 Big Bird photo reconnaissance satellite was diverted from its customary orbit over the Soviet Union and China; and within six hours, Israeli intelligence was getting KH-11 photos direct by satellite revealing the destruction wrought on the Iraqi plant.

…During the administration’s push to win approval of the AWACS deal, Casey had watched with admiration the energy of two military officers on the project.”

Oliver North and Richard Secord.

For further reference

Iran (Nuclearfiles.org)

Iraq Nuclear Weapons Program—Import Table

Osirak and Beyond

Nuclear Rights and Wrongs

Ikonos Imagery of Dimona, Negev Nuclear Research Center

Iran boasts Dimona now 'within range'

Israel and the Bomb

2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

A Monitor article Wednesday discusses the importance of presidential debates
as the electorate's opportunity to see the candidate's character, which is evident despite much coaching, grooming and scripting.

While the declining audience in presidential debates is well documented, a recent Pew poll indicates that there is high interest in the debates this year, with six in ten voters, or (61%) saying it is "very likely" they will watch the debates between Bush and Kerry, a higher percentage than in past presidential elections.

The debates' locations, dates and formats have been confirmed and agreed upon by the candidates. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which proposes these terms, also encourages viewers to watch them in groups with friends or members of their community.

Third party candidates cannot debate unless they are on the ballot according to criteria of this commission. Supporters of third party candidates object to the requirement that third party candidates have a level of national support of at least 15%.

All three major networks will air the debates. The web site HowStuffWorks.com has an entry by its editor on what it is like to attend a presidential debate.

Quoting FCC chairman Michael Powell, a Monitor article from Thursday states, “It’s probably the most significant paradigm shift in the entire history of modern communications, since the invention of the telephone.”

What is it?

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. To Jane and John Doe, it’s doing on a computer what one would normally do on a phone, and for a number of privacy advocates, it could be the latest hot button issue surrounding the FCC since that body approved new rules governing media ownership. It’s also the latest wrinkle in the blanket of measures to come out of the USA Patriot Act, the monolithic anti-terror law promptly passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr. Powell’s statement coming out of last week's FCC vote to extend wiretapping to the Internet adds, “Our support for law enforcement is unwavering; it is our goal in this proceeding to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all of the electronic surveillance capabilities that CALEA authorizes to combat crime and terrorism and support Homeland Security.”

CALEA is a 1994 law designed “to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes,” and Internet, broadband, and “push-to-talk” technology now fall under its jurisdiction.

As CNET News has reported, “The vote comes five months after the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department formally asked for guaranteed wiretapping access to broadband networks. If the FCC had done nothing, wiretaps would be possible but could be more difficult and time-consuming for police to carry out.”

The battlefield where opponents inevitably will be crossing swords with the federal ruling is the US Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment.

The text of this amendment reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The CALEA legislation is incorporated into Title 47 of the US Code (the formal and up-to-date version of all US federal laws) with the chapter called “INTERCEPTION OF DIGITAL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS”. According to this item from TechLaw Journal,

Nothing in this NPRM & DR, or the CALEA, expands the authority of law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance. Wiretap authority, and pen register and trap and trace authority (including Internet addressing and routing information), are addressed in Title 18 (criminal code) and Title 50 (foreign intelligence surveillance). The CALEA, which is codified in Title 47 (communications), imposes requirements upon telecommunications carriers to design and modify their networks to facilitate lawfully obtained surveillance orders.

For further reference:

Small players want their share of air waves (The Christian Science Monitor)

Wiretapping legislation (EPIC)

Voice On the Net (VON) Coalition

The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System

A Monitor article Thursday describes a few of the advanced security measures in place for the 2004 Athens Games, which start tomorrow. One such measure is the use of AWACS to patrol the skies over Athens – an example of increasing use of military technology for non-military situations.

A considerable portion of the $1.5 billion spent on security is for 'digital security guards' – cameras equipped with speech-recognition software that will be looking for patterns of words and actions.

And remember the expression that something had 'gone the way of the zeppelin'? People used it to say that when popular pastimes or fads were no longer au courant. Well it seems that the zeppelin may be courant again, as a high-tech version of the airship has been revived and rented by Greece, complete with cameras and 'anti-chemical detectors' to circle Athens.

But apparently security has always been an issue at the Games. In the first modern Olympics in 1896 police, cavalry units and other guards were mobilized to form a 400-strong force at Athens to combat robbery, kidnapping and pickpocketing.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has put a plug in the whistle of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Ms. Edmonds, a naturalized US citizen born in Turkey, is at the center of one of the most interesting government secrecy debates in US history.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the FBI was under pressure to hire more linguists. Edmonds joined the ranks only to find herself fired less than half a year after blowing the whistle on what she felt were incompetent and corrupt procedures within her department. She claims that she brought to the attention of her superiors some serious conflicts in the translation staff — including those related to a colleague and a group being monitored.

According to a 2002 article in the Washington Post,

Edmonds said that on several occasions, the translator tried to recruit her to join the targeted foreign group. "This person told us she worked for our target organization," Edmonds said in an interview. "These are the people we are targeting, monitoring."

Edmonds would not identify the other translator, but The Post has learned from other sources that she is a 33-year-old US citizen whose native country is home to the target group. Both Edmonds and the other translator are US citizens who trace their ethnicity to the same Middle Eastern country [Turkey]. Reached by telephone last week, the woman, who works under contract for the FBI's Washington field office, declined to comment.

Edmonds allegedly went to her superiors.

"Investigations are being compromised," Edmonds wrote to the inspector general's office in March. "Incorrect or misleading translations are being sent to agents in the field. Translations are being blocked and circumvented."

The axe fell, as they say, when she was accused of having “breached security,” partly due, she says, “to specific instruction by a supervisor to prepare a report on the other translator on her home computer.”

Afterwards she found herself censured by Mr. Ashcroft, “at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller,” from testifying in court under the rare, but absolute, "state secrets privilege." (Edmonds has actually brought suit against the Department of Justice). She did, however, testify in camera before the 9/11 Commission, but the specifics of that testimony are unknown to the public.

And in a move that has confused Senators from both parties, Ashcroft retroactively classified material in the Edmonds case. This material included letters from Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who expressed concern over the classification measures.

Earlier this month, the FBI and Justice Department indicated they might release an “unclassified version” of the reports investigating the claims by Edmonds. And The New York Times, quoting FBI director Robert Mueller, reported Thursday that the OIG at the Justice Department concluded that Edmonds' whistle-blowing actions were "a contributing factor" to her dismissal.

The inspector general "also criticized the FBI's failure to adequately pursue Ms. Edmonds's allegations of espionage as they related to one of her colleagues," Mr. Mueller said in his letter. The Times noted that the FBI is "considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result" of this finding.

For further reference:

Statement of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys
August 13, 2002 (Washington Post)

STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE GETS A WORKOUT (Federaton of American Scientists)

Federal Rules of Evidence (2004) (Legal Information Institute, Cornell)

Ex-CIA analyst and Edmonds dissect final 9/11 commission report (Democracy Now)

What's covered in the 9-11 report? What's covered up?(Village Voice)

National Whistleblowers Center

Driving a car, in American society, is celebrated as freedom. Particularly so in rural areas, where alternative transportation may not be available. It is largely seen as an individual right, until the issue of drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants arises, when it becomes a privilege.

This has been a particularly contentious debate in immigration; seemingly more so than medical care, educational opportunities, or housing issues.

This is the subject of a Monitor article Monday, which describes a bill in California to grant licenses to illegal immigrants that was rescinded, and a 'certificate of driving' that has just been launched in Tennessee for undocumented immigrants.

A few bills have been introduced in Congress to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining licenses or ID cards, such as the Drivers License Integrity Act and the State Accountability and Identity Fraud Elimination Act.

In the states, bills reflect a divide on the issue, with most laws favorable to immigrants. And despite this push, there is evidence that states are not exactly rushing to license immigrants, in fact, quite the opposite. For further research on the issue of immigrants and drivers' licenses, the National Immigration Law Center has a roundup of state laws, requirements, and other news.

In Scott Peterson’s piece from last week on the growth in Asian nuclear power, he writes, “Since the atom was first harnessed for peaceful purposes – at the reactor at Obninsk ... half a century ago this weekend – the history of nuclear power has proven to be a double-edged sword.”

The emphasis of Mr. Peterson’s article is on security and the steps that led to a system of sharing nuclear technology that has had mixed results according to various proponents and critics who have commented on the "duality" of this system.

Although the first plant for nuclear power was created at Obninsk, Russia in 1954, the construction of the world’s first "full-scale nuclear reactor" was begun by the Soviets in 1946, and the first electricity-generating reactor was built in 1951, in the Idaho desert.

Dubbed the EBR-1 (i.e, the first experimental breeder reactor), construction of the project had begun in 1949 and had lured scientists from the Manhattan Project, known for its work which led to the use of the first atomic bombs.

The EBR-1, now maintained for the US Department of Energy by Bechtel, was a working reactor from the early 1950s until 1963 and helped to create the first atomic-powered city, Arco, Idaho.

Peterson draws attention to the December 1953 speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, referred to as the "Atoms for Peace" speech. The speech was considered the catalyst for the program, which would originally envision a "uranium bank" that would ostensibly be a depository for surplus uranium but would eventually lead to the trade of nuclear material – for "peaceful technologies" or otherwise – and end up with the present-day arrangement between the US and Russia to repatriate research reactor fuel from other countries. The underlying aim of Eisenhower's message might best be summed up by these passages taken from the speech:

The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes.

It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.

The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.

Adapting nuclear technology "to the arts of peace" has been the proverbial fly in the ointment, however. The Nuclear Energy Information Service has posted an article citing a 1981 Los Alamos National Laboratory document which says, "There is no technical demarcation between the military and civilian reactor and there never was one. What has persisted over the decades is just the misconception that such a linkage does not exist."

In practical terms the recently enacted Global Threat Reduction Initiative is the latest marker in the sequence of steps taken after Eisenhower's speech, steps which include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (itself an amendment to the "McMahon Act" of 1946) and the "Megatons to Megawatts" design roughly 40 years later.

Eisenhower’s speech and the Atomic Energy Act set the stage for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, created in 1957, and the Energy Act of the early 90s produced the controversial USEC, the US Enrichment Corporation, now a privatized facility with shareholders, and the only entity that regulates the purchase and sales of uranium acquired as part of the original uranium acquisition arrangement with Russia.

For further reference:

US Outlines Plan for Securing Nuclear Materials

Nuclear power timeline from Nuclearfiles.org

Reactors around the world: Maps of Nuclear Power Reactors: Menu Page

Nuclear Power Plants Operating in the United States as of April 15, 2003

Citizen Kurchatov

Nuclear Power Plant Security (Project on Government Oversight)

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, designed to protect rights of black Americans, is half-a-century old this week. Measuring black achievement over 50 years, with a focus on the southern United States, is the subject of a Monitor article today. By a number of measures compiled by the Census bureau that compare 1964 to today, there has been significant progress.

Educational attainment and college degree persistence is higher and widespread. The poverty rate among black households is half of what it was in 1964. The number of black elected officials had increased to over 9000 in 2001. nine times what it had been in 1970. The gap between voter registration ratesof black people and white people in the South had almost closed by the 1980s.

But it appears that there is still important work to do. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a source in the story, says that there is a persistent economic gap. While the black middle class has quadrupled since the 1960s, there are still the same number of black children living at the poverty line, according to Henry Louis Gates, professor of Afro-American studies, Harvard University.

Gates recently produced a documentary and companion book, 'America Beyond the Color Line' in which he studied the state of black America. He observed that black families are moving back to the Southern states, the very place where the battle for civil rights was fought. This time, they are moving to neighborhoods of their own choice, where there are other black families. The south is where the most forward progress is taking place.

“We assume no responsibility for the professional ability or the integrity of the firms listed here.” (from the private security firms section of the “Doing Business In Iraq”online pamphlet, CPA)

In a Monitor article last week, Ann Tyson wrote, “The close involvement of civilians is problematic" and "creates a lot of stress." One reason this happens is that while "military personnel are subject to the code of military justice, it's unclear what [legal] responsibilities the civilians have," says Deborah Avant, a political scientist at George Washington University here who specializes in private security firms.”

Avant, who’s written before on the subject was addressing the issue of civilian contractors in the wake of the prisoner abuse photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

But private security firms, like most contractors seeking jobs in Iraq, need someone who can open the door to Congress and administration officials. That’s where the lobbyists and “pressure groups” (euphemistically known as “K Street”) come in.

Of CACI and Titan, the two private contractors given attention in the Abu Ghraib interrogation-abuse scandal, Robert Schlesinger of Salon.com wrote,

For more than four years, CACI has employed the Livingston Group and its “strategic partner,” Louisiana law firm Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere and Denegre.”

CACI, on whose board once sat Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, has most recently hired the New York-based Robert Marston and Associates for damage control. Its current board includes the president and executive vice president of another well-known PMC (private military company), MPRI (Military Professional Resources, Inc.), which has conducted “Senior Leader Seminars” in Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and Bosnia.

“Titan’s lineup of lobbyists,” Schlesinger adds, “is even broader.” It includes “a former top Air Force official ... a former White House lobbyist under President Reagan ... a Clinton administration Air Force undersecretary ... a former Republican mayor of San Diego,” and two representatives from “American Defense International” which had working ties to Richard Cheney when Cheney was Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration.

What’s more, Titan has engaged the services of NorthPoint Strategies, composed mainly of former top staffers to Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham” . . . a former member of Armed Services Committee” who now sits on the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees.

Another notable figure connected to Titan is R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence during the Clinton administration. Woolsey, a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Vice President of “Top 100" defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and advisor to The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has been allied with a group of hawkish Pentagon and White House officials collectively referred to as “neocons.” He is also a partner at Shea & Gardner, which has represented the controversial partner in the occupation of Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi's home—along with INC offices—was today raided amid reports that he was planning a retributive political move against the UN and incoming Iraqi government. Chalabi and the INC were only recently removed from U.S. government rolls.

Steven Stefanowicz, the CACI interrogator named in the "Taguba Report," took the $100,000 salary job one month after leaving the Navy, according to the New York Times. Neither he nor CACI have been charged with any wrongdoing as of this writing.

But perhaps the greatest mystery of the hour is interrogator John Israel. Named as a contracted interrogator for both Titan and CACI, Israel (reportedly an acquaintance of Woolsey and not a United States soldier) is still at large with no spokesperson.

We'll let you know if he shows up on "K Street."

Part II next week

This week marriage licenses were legally issued to same-sex couples in Massachusetts, the first state to do so.

Most states have passed laws that that do not recognize unions other than one man and one woman, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization. Several states are gathering signatures to put similar amendments on their ballots this year. Stateline.org has a comprehensive and frequently updated state-by-state roundup of the laws.

The American public remains evenly divided over support for civil unions with the rights of marriage, as well as a constitutional amendment to ban them, according to a Gallup poll released yesterday, though support appears to have increased to its highest point since Gallup first began asking the question in 1996.

An article in Wednesday's Monitor, 'Who were the Fallen?', tries to give a snapshot of some of the US soldiers that have died in Iraq.

There are several databases that we used to provide different types of information for the article. The AP Casualty Database has been released by military officials. Searches can be conducted by name, state, or other fields.

The Department of Defense provides some numbers as well on current and on past wars, including breakdown by gender, race/ethnicity, but please note that the DoD divides the information into two time periods: those up to April 30, 2003 and those after May 1, 2003.

Lunaville.org provides a number of tools to view casualty metrics and ways to arrange the data. They also claim to have the most up to date numbers, which they compile directly from Centcom. Information on soldiers' hometowns can be found at the Census bureau page.

For historical comparisons of female casualties in past conflicts, the Women in Military Service to America Memorial Foundation has very good information.

In Monday’s Monitor story on Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Danna Harman quotes Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

"If you don't talk to him [Woodward], you get slammed," he says. "If you talk, you get your perspective in." Mr. Luttwak recalls consulting to the CIA during the tenure of director William Casey, a key source for Woodward's book ["Veil"] on the Iran-contra scandal of the Reagan years.

Luttwak continues,

"Woodward did a whitewash in that book - everyone was guilty except Casey," Luttwak says. "In fact, Casey was guilty.... But because he talked to Woodward, he got his point of view in." 

Joseph Persico writes in his biography of Casey that after a September 28, 1983, meeting between Woodward and Casey to discuss Debategate, "Casey continued to give Woodward time over the next several months, at formal interviews, in phone calls, and during casual encounters at social events." 

Obviously this kind of access doesn’t come easily.

"How does Woodward do it?" asks Harman.  "By long hours working his way up the information chain, just like any other journalist, insists Woodward."

But a look at Mr. Woodward’s background reveals more than just pluck.

Persico isn't the only author to address Woodward's facility within the beltway.  Adrian Havill and Jim Hougan are two other authors who’ve written about Woodward, whose resumé is unique among most journalists.

Robert Upshur Woodward, grew up the son of a Republican judge in Illinois, and later attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.  While there he joined Phi Gamma Delta and one of the "top" second tier secret societies, Book and Snake. 

Three days after leaving Yale, he entered the Navy and was assigned to the recently recommissioned  U.S.S. Wright, a National Emergency Command Post Afloat (NECPA).  In his book, "Secret Agenda," Hougan quotes Rear Admiral Francis J. Fitzpatrick who said the Wright was designed to "stand in readiness to embark the President and take him to sanctuary at sea in the event of national emergency."  But according to a "highly placed U.S. government official" who spoke to Havill, the ship was an "at sea Pentagon."

In "Deep Truth," Havill writes that Woodward’s clearance was "top secret 'crypto'" giving him "access to nearly any classified document as well as codes. He also ran the ship’s newspaper, which gave him an excuse to speak to anyone aboard."  After leaving the Wright, he boarded the U.S.S. Fox, which was based along the California coast and also outfitted for communications intelligence.  The Fox got as close as twenty miles from the Vietnamese coast.  After his four-year obligation in the Navy, he stayed on one more year. 

He was assigned to the Chief of Naval Operations where, Hougan writes, his duties at the Pentagon included presiding over "top-secret communiqués from the White House, the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA), the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the NSC ... That is, during his year at the Pentagon, he was one of a handful of officers chosen by the Navy to brief the government’s most important intelligence officials on events and operations around the world."

These briefers, Hougan tells us, "were the best that the Navy could find,"  and they've included, Richard Lugar, currently the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (ret.), who served as the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence and the NSA, as well as the Deputy Director of the CIA.  Inman recently retired from Science Applications International Corporation, which is one of the prime contractors currently in Iraq.

Havill writes, "While Bob certainly worked hard, he also had a network of contacts that began at Yale and continued at the Pentagon, a powerful combination that would serve him well over the next two decades ... When Robert Woodward left the Pentagon, he was completely plugged in, or, to use one of his book titles, Bob was 'wired'."

Robert Gates, who was on President Carter's NSC staff before moving to the Reagan administration, served under Casey before succeeding him as Director of Central Intelligence. He may have summed up the lure of Woodward best.  Persico talked to him about interviewing with Woodward.

"I gave Woodward over an hour and a half... He had no hard-edged agenda.  We just roamed.  He would have made a great case officer." (By Alan Messmer)

Also of interest:

Europe and the United States look at terrorism in different ways, writes Howard LaFranchi in an article this week. Europe views it as more of a crime to be contained, a law-enforcement issue. The US views it as a threat to freedom. The article concludes with a partial quote from President Bush, who has been implying that certain presidential candidates look at terrorism as the Europeans do. Here is the full quote, at a fundraiser last month:

"Some of our opponents are skeptical that the war on terror is really a war at all. They view terrorism more as a crime, a problem to be solved with law enforcement and indictments. Our nation followed that approach after the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. The matter was handled in the courts, and thought by some to be settled. Terrorists were still training in Afghanistan, still plotting in other nations, and drawing up more ambitious plans. After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. With those attacks, the terrorists and supporters declared war on the United States of America, and war is what they got. (Applause.)"

To find such quotes by the president and other elected officials, the web site Project Vote-Smart allows users to Search Public Statements.

Another website featuring public statements of the president as well as others in his administration is Iraq on the Record presented by US Rep. Henry Waxman. It specifically includes statements about Iraq's unconventional weapons prior to and after the military campaign began in Iraq. (By Leigh Montgomery)

The adoption of an interim Iraqi constitution by the Iraqi Governing Council has been reached.

According to the BBC, "The draft charter will recognise Islam as one source of legislation rather than the only source, and gives autonomy to the Kurdish minority for now." It will also include an "unprecedented" bill of rights and see to it that 25% of the assembled government is comprised of women.

Despite the agreement having been reached after press time, Nicholas Blanford's piece for today's print issue still reverberates. He writes, "Some argue that the heated debate, taking place under intense pressure from US administrator Paul Bremer, is nothing more than the birth pains of a fledgling democracy. Others suggest that it is emblematic of the council's sectarian composition and represents an ominous portent of the future clash between religion and secularism in Iraq."

So just what are the common—or disparate—features among the various constitutions that nations promise to obey? How did they get there? Would you know a constitution if you saw one?

Dr. Axel Tschentscher, from the University of Bern in Switzerland, has provided access to a number of international country constitutions along with a primer on the elements of the different constitutional forms. For a look at the now-obsolete 1990 Iraq constitution see Tschentscher's Iraq page.

You can also see constitutional background on countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Russia, China, and the United States. (by Alan Messmer)

Wednesday marked the 25th anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the subject of a Monitor story .

A chart at the end of the article makes some comparisons between 1979 and 2004. There are curtailments on political actiivities and women's freedoms, though it does mention that literacy has improved. A page from Professor Thayer Watkins at San Jose State University also has an overview of Iran's recent history, and its economy, as well as another good then-and-now comparison, reflecting mixed success.

Iran's economy is still not very diverse; relying heavily on natural resources and primarily oil for export. A page at the Energy Information Administration's Department of Energy provides background on Iran's main commodity as well as other recent economic and energy-related facts about the country. (By Leigh Montgomery)

Reports of the fallout from the claims of the Bush and Blair administrations are now prolific. One of the most useful items available online is a publication by a group called BASIC, the British American Security Information Council. Referring to a comment by Donald Rumsfeld in a June 2002 press conference, their analysis of the events is called "Unravelling the Known Unknowns: Why no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found in Iraq."

BASIC's final assessment? "The conclusion is inescapable: there is nothing to be found." They go further by adding that it appears the "UN weapons inspectors succeeded in their mandate, and that the Iraqi government complied with its obligations." In fact, they provide a link to a database of UNMOVIC inspections compiled by UK-based VERTIC (Verification Research, Training and Information Centre). VERTIC's mission "is to promote effective and efficient verification as a means of ensuring confidence in the implementation of international agreements and intra-national agreements with international involvement."

Campaign advertising is generally evaluated in two broad categories: how much is spent on ads and what claims are made in them, as explored in a recent Monitor article .

For further research, consult the website of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin. The UW project is dedicated to studying campaign advertising. In the current campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, the project's researchers have found that ad spending was far higher in Iowa than New Hampshire.

And for claims made in the ads, Factcheck.org, an initiative funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has short, well-sourced summaries about claims made in campaign ads and speeches.

This week's Iowa caucus has infused excitement and uncertainty into the race for the Democratic nomination; though candidates do need to do well in these early races to be a contender for the nomination. In the past, winners of the Iowa caucus generally have won the nomination, according to a page of caucus results from the Iowa Secretary of State.

For information on New Hampshire results, there is an impressive political library and archive of New Hampshire primary and other political history, complete with results back to 1952.

Another page with very detailed historic caucus/primary, delegate and convention vote information is an independently-run site called The Green Papers. In fact, it was the only site we could find that had delegate vote data from recent conventions. A true public service begun during the 2000 campaign year, and it's nice that site owner Richard E. Berg-Andersson is continuing this web page for campaign 2004.

The practice of beaming radio propaganda into foreign lands is nothing new. In the 20th century, this became the standard operating procedure of many nations during the Cold War and its aftermath. That the same thing is happening in post-war Iraq should not be surprising. For the best look at Iraq's media melange go to Radio Netherlands' excellent Iraq Media Dossier. Using a good portion of material from BBC Monitoring and Clandestine Radio Watch, this site covers just about every aspect of the state of Iraq's media climate both prior to and currently under the Coalition Provisionial Authority, which runs the Voice of New Iraq (alternatively Voice of Free Iraq) under the Iraqi Media Network .

United States broadcasting abroad, of course, must be done with a knowing glance, if not under the watchful eye of, the Broadcasting Board of Governors . The BBG is the "independent, autonomous entity responsible for all U.S. government and government sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting." These broadcasting ventures include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (which started with funding from the CIA), Radio Sawa (Arabic-language programming), Radio Martí (into Cuba), and Radio Free Iraq (run by RFE/RL).

The rebuilding of the Iraqi media infrastructure was one of seven contracts given to Science Applications International Corporation by the Bush administration. The employee-owned (and therefore unaccountable to the Securities and Exchange Commission) SAIC has been a prime contractor for the US Defense Department and US intelligence agencies for many years. SAIC was also set up as the prime employer for those working for the beleagured Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, a group which reports to Douglas Feith, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

The IRDC was set up under the Future of Iraq project working group two months before Operation Iraqi Freedom and was, as recently as December, sponsoring pro-Coalition Provisional Authority demonstrations in Iraq. Intelligence Online has produced a very helpful chart on "How SAIC Extends its Influence in Iraq." To learn a little more about SAIC's Iraq contract to set up the "free and independent indigenous media network," go to the Center for Public Integrity's "Anatomy of a Contract", part of its Windfalls of War special investigative report. For more on the San Diego-based defense contractor, see these stories from Asia Times and Corpwatch.com .

This week, the color-coded 'terror alert' level was raised to orange, or high, the focus of today's lead story by Peter Grier in The Christian Science Monitor. Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Director, stated that intelligence detected terrorists' threats of use of aircraft, and intent to "find gaps in our security posture that could be exploited."

Where are the gaps? There are several. For example, TSA reported in October that there are 5 airports that are not going to meet the deadline of Dec 31 2003 to have 100 percent of all luggage screened electronically. There simply is not enough time to produce, install and integrate the screening procedures and technology.

Testimony from Cathleen Berrick, Directory, Homeland Security and Justice, in a GAO report further outlines some of these security gaps.

Impediments to closing these gaps can be grouped into three categories: funding, accountability and implementation of enhanced screening.

Securing funding and ensuring these costs are controlled is paramount. The funding issues are formidable: the testimony reflects that the Dept of Homeland Security has appropriated $3.7 billion for aviation security in 2004. $1.8 billion is for passenger screening and $1.4 is for baggage screening. ATSA created a 'passenger security fee' to help offset these costs but it is not enough: this will only generate about $1.7 billion in 04.

Another problem is that the focus has of course been on passengers and their baggage but not nearly enough of the cargo is being screened.

Under the accountability umbrella: recertification and performance tests for the screeners are recommended.

Lastly, that these screening systems are quite large, and take up a lot of space. They also have to be configured so they will work with the baggage handling systems, integrating equipment w/the preexisting baggage handling requires major facility modifications.

In a December 12 Monitor article, Alexandra Marks writes about the Alliance for the New Humanity, a group recently formed by celebrities and politicians as an umbrella organization to help human rights and peace organizations fund their projects.

The task is formidable. According to Project Ploughshares' Armed Conflict Report 2003, by the end of 2002 there were 37 conflicts underway worldwide. These conflicts were all civil wars taking place in 29 countries, and the regions most affected were Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. (For more on global conflicts and risks, go to Federation of American Scientists' website, The World at War and Country Indicators for Foreign Policy, run by Carleton University in Canada.)

Progress

There is hope, of course. Project Ploughshares reports that in the 15-year period from 1988 to 2002, 35 conflicts died out.

To reach out to others around the world talking about solutions try the Dialogue Webpage for Conflicts Worldwide, sponsored by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. Its goal, it says, is to "contribute to the improvement of mutual understanding between opposing sides of conflict throughout the world."

There has been speculation in recent days that those committing terrorist acts on larger and more violent scales may have been timing them for Sundays, and the subsequent media coverage. For more background on international terrorism, the Liblog recommends the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, an Israel-based think tank. A click on the International Terrorism tab will bring visitors to a series of databases on terrorist incidents, where a custom search can be conducted by organization, method used, date range, or number of casualties. While there is a concentration of organizations in the Middle East, there are also profiles of other groups based in Europe, Latin America, and other parts of the world. It also offers statistics on the Arab-Israeli conflict that are updated monthly.

A more extensive and recently updated resource is the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. In conjuction with the RAND corporation, there are a series of databases where you can download statistics or generate graphs about terror incidents by country, region, or date range.

With the mutual fund industry the latest target of scrutiny in the financial sector, it remains to be seen how this might affect individual investors, if at all. Two things are certain: a majority of US investors have their investments in mutual fund products, and according to a Monitor article about financial habits, 2 out of 3 investors could not name a company that these funds are invested in. So a positive aspect to this most recent controversy is that people might get a little more interested in investigating their money is working. Two good sites for education and performance on mutual funds come from Brill's Mutual Fund Interactive and the Mutual Fund Education Association. Also, watch for the Monitor's quarterly mutual fund roundup in the Work and Money section in January, and next time you recei