Arms Bazaar: The New York Times takes up the story, and finds an interesting lead

Iraq Weapons Are a Focus of Criminal Investigations

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 — Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

...

Part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.... (full story)

Also see:

CNN on Iraq contracting investigations

"It Was a Wal-Mart For Guns"

and our original Newsweek story on Iraq's Arms Bazaar

Kouchner at the Quai

Atmospherics at the Quai d'Orsay, and a brief snippet from an interview with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner about the demise of anti-Americanism. For a fuller version of the video interview segments in English, as well as print excerpts from my hour-long conversation with Kouchner, translated from the French, see:


All the Problems of the World

After his recent visit to Baghdad, French Foreign Minister warns the world that Iraq is a problem everyone must take responsibility for. And he reaffirms France's friendship with the United States.

Columnist Raghida Dergham had an intelligent analysis of Kouchner's intiative, by the way, in a recent issue of Al-Hayat:

A change must come in Iraq, after the US commander there, David Petraeus, and the US Ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, submit a key report next month on evaluating the results of the US force surge this year, and on the political and security conditions inside Iraq. This change will not be a purely American one; there are indications that it will also be domestic, regional and international. Expressions of frustration and disappointment in the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are not transitory, but a sign of the direction inside Iraq toward changing the Prime Minister, if al-Maliki doesn't produce solutions for the domestic political crises, which result from sectarian ways of thinking. The government's performance has become a dangerous obstacle, not just in the American assessment, but also according to an Iraqi evaluation, both inside and outside the government. Thus, Nouri al-Maliki will not be helped by visits to Turkey, Iran and Syria, in which he acts as if he is solving problems with the outside world, while the true crisis is domestic. Also, the timing and content of his visit to Damascus hurt him, since the visit came a few days after the random murder of hundreds of people near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in attacks using truck bombs. High-level Iraqi sources say the trucks came from Syria. These sources say that during his visit, al-Maliki only received expressions of fraternal ties and security cooperation, without guarantees, and no readiness by the Syrian regime to leave behind its basic strategy, i.e. preserving its various "cards." The more important visit was by the French Foreign Minister to Baghdad, since it marked a qualitative transformation in French policy toward Iraq, and because it expressed the new European position, which should encourage wider and deeper Arab roles in Iraq. It should also suggest to Russia to engage in another type of thinking. The door has been opened to see the issue of Iraq move from anger, objections and gloating about the negative outcomes to a new, qualitative discussion about what to do now. Certainly, the foreign minister's visit will be followed by visits to Baghdad by European ministers and officials, while leading Arab countries will enhance their diplomatic and political moves toward Iraq. This is necessary, since the autumn will see an important chapter in the future of Iraq, one that requires regional and international participation of a new, unaccustomed-to level of seriousness. The change in the French policy has implications that go beyond the Baghdad-Paris bilateral relationship. The new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, now wants a partnership with US President George W Bush in dealing with the Iraqi issue. The previous French government put a distance between itself and Washington, not just during the fundamental dispute over the soundness of the Iraq war, but also during the period of requests for rescue from its predicament. Despite the considerable improvement in Franco-American relations in the last two years, close cooperation has been nearly restricted to Lebanon, and has not improved to the point of turning over a new leaf in Iraq. What helped Sarkozy accelerate the new policy on Iraq is French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's relationship with that country; he has strong friendships with senior figures in the Iraqi government and, in fact, had a history of opposing the Saddam Hussein regime. He also has clear stances on American military action in Iraq, and is not against it. Another element assisting the qualitative transformation of France's positions is the effort by Iraqi officials, with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari prominent among them, to convince France and get it involved, to constitute a point of departure for the new European policy, and to act as an incentive for countries that opposed the war to adopt a new role in Iraq today. This is in addition to the visit by the French foreign minister to Baghdad, to encourage Arab countries that have taken steps toward re-opening embassies in Baghdad to accelerate these moves, as a form of positive "embarrassment" for these states. The issue is not merely one of exchanging ambassadors and opening embassies. It involves the orientation of countries like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt in this direction. It is an important indicator of the degree to which these states are aware of the magnitude of letting Iraq stumble, as its Arab neighbors observe this tragedy take place. The new orientation is very positive in and of itself; to it we can add opening the door to needed regional roles, so that Iraq does not remain prey to its neighbors Iran and Syria alone. The new vision, which has produced repercussions in the last few weeks, has covered the international support to see Iraq make moves toward all of its neighbors, including Syria and Iran. According to those familiar with the initiative, it also covers the "triangle," with Iraq forming its centerpiece, while the US, and France and the UN, form its appendages. Kouchner took with him to Baghdad a clear vision of France's role in both a European and an international framework. UN Security Council Resolution 1770, which was adopted two weeks ago, talks about expanding the UN's role in Iraq, with prior approval and an invitation from the Iraqi government. The objective of the resolution is to encourage the UN to take up political roles in issues involving a political reconciliation, the Constitution, and strengthening humanitarian roles through assistance and agencies. The importance of this lies in seeing the UN leave behind its restricted role, in Iraq, and in the political approval of countries like Russia and France for an effective role, even though the opposition to the war included France, Germany and Russia. ... (full article)

President Sarkozy makes his first major speech about foreign policy (in French).

"It was a Wal-Mart for Guns"

Glock pistol, serial number GNF 823, originally bought by the United States Government for Iraqi security forces in 2004, used to murder a Turkish supreme court justice in Ankara in 2006.

The scale of the scandal of corruption in Iraq seems almost limitless. Every week, American soldiers are killed by small arms fire, and many of the small arms in the hands of killers all over Iraq and now all over the region originally were purchased with American taxpayer dollars.

Newsweek looked at this enormous crime in the article we published a couple of weeks ago:

Newsweek: Iraq's Arms Bazaar 12 August 2007
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the hands of extremists across the region.

But the problem is so extensive and so ingrained in this conflict that it's hard to encompass with a single article. This AP dispatch published on MSNBC moves a little further along the path toward the truth, but also gives a good idea why this story is so hard to report:

Iraq fraud whistleblowers vilified

Cases show fraud exposers have been vilified, fired, or detained for weeks

The Associated Press

Updated: 7:41 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2007

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”... (full article)

Homegrown Terrorists: More Mail

Police "surge" on Central Park South, August 2007


Readers continue responding to the Shadowland column on the NYPD report about homegrown terrorism. A sampling:


Name: Alice

Hometown: Bismarck ND

Comments:

Chris, we are no stronger - or safer - than our weakest link. This study rings true - but will we listen? Even when 'one of ours' is the bomber we blame other nations/ religions/cults/aliens rather than look at ourselves and what we did or did not do. We need to start taking responsibility for our problems - we cause them.

----

Name: Jim Casey

Hometown: Chicago, IL

Comments:

Mr. Dickey, Thank you for the information about how and why the NYPD investigates potential jihadists who are becoming radicalized here at home. But why the first and last paragraph? You seem extremely careful to limit your concern about the war on terror to targets at home, as if the radicalizing of terrorists abroad is not as much of a danger to us. The Hamburg cell, for example, worked in tandem with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. There are and have been and will be more than one front in this war. We cannot pick and choose them according to our partisanship, our biases, our clique, or from our cherry picked interpretations of intelligence reports or surveys. As soon as a decisive majority of Americans face the many heads of this threat, the more likely and more thoroughly will our elected officials address them all. Again, your contribution is enlightening, but there is no need to downplay one threat while addressing another. Casey in Chicago

----

Name: Karen

Hometown: New York, NY

Comments:

Christopher: Thank you SO much for this article. It is amazing that we as a people refuse to acknowledge that bombs and occupation only affect Muslims (innocent and otherwise)living in the region. I as an American look with shame at the greedy and destructive behavior of "American interests" around the world. Add to that the frivolous invasion of a nation of innocent people to take out one ugly dictator - can you imagine how frustrated a Middle Eastern person must feel? Angry.

----

Name: Seth

Hometown: Lovetssville, VA

Comments:

Your analysis of the NYPD report rasises several questions. I assume that you are paraphrasing when you state that "Communities that feel like Muslim ghettoes, isolated from the Western society and values around them, are especially vulnerable to extremism, says the report." I am sure that this is an obvious truth in Europe but I do not know of any such ghettoes in the U.S. This clashes somewhat with the report's conclusion that the terrorists are by and large middle class. I suppose a case can be made that economic integretion does not necessarily lead to cultural integration. So far successful or at least somewhat successful attacks, (World Trade Center I and II) in the U.S. have all been staged by foreign nationals. We have our share of resident crazies but they seem to be somewhat inept. The Lackawanna, Fort Dix, Portland, JFK and the Sears Tower boys have all been pretty stupid. Let's no forget Jose whatever he did Padilla and the Brooklyn Bridge. This is not to say that someone won't get lucky and kill some people. It should be pointed out that with the exception of the Sears Tower Plot recent immigrants both legal and illegal were involved. I do think that the report overgeneralizes from the European experience. We should keep tabs on recent arrivals and avoid demonizing the U.S. muslim population by stoking with fires of irrational fear.

----

Name: Jim Moser

Hometown: Crofton MD

Comments:

This does not strike me as surprising. During the 60s & 70s SDS, especially its Weather Underground contingent, and Black Panthers were also partly motivated to violence by a war half a world away. I think all these events say is that we live in a country holding diverse views, some of which are in agreement with what are nominally our enemies.

----

Name: Edward Kendall

Hometown: Hagerstown, MD

Comments:

Very disturbing! And I am extremely put out by our politicians. TV shows are portraying Muslims as terrorists & I'm beginning to think we need to do more profiling. They can not be loyal to any country because of their Theocratic beliefs. In my mind they need to be isolated in every country & marked as extremists who are trying to overthrow their government. They have one agenda, that is to kill or convert everyone to the faith.

----


Comments:

I was threatened by a jihadist cabbie in DC on my way to a White House briefing on Darfur of all things! Because I do humanitarian aid in Sudan, I was able to refute his claims.We have a LARGE problem in the US. It is a great concern.

----

Name: Abubaker Kekia

Comments:

Dear Sir, The fact of the matter is that people see the world not the way it is, but the way they are.

Princess Diana's Death, Ten Years On

Ten years ago on my birthday, August 31, the death of Princess Diana became, for several weeks, my life. I arrived at the scene of the crash in Paris shortly after it happened, and reported live over my cell phone from just outside the tunnel beneath the Place de l'Alma and then from the hospital. As luck would have it, I was the first to report official word of Diana's death, broadcast live by CNN on 17 satellites around the world.

Since then, I've been called on to report about the conspiracy theories surrounding her death, and, at least once a year, to revisit what happened that night as I saw it. The video and other links below will give you an idea.



The most recent articles:

Tina Brown on the Private Di

Audio: Tina Brown Interview

Book Excerpt: 'The Diana Chronicles'

Princess Diana: 10th Anniversary of Her Death

Some earlier coverage:

• Dec. 13, 2006: Five Fatal Decisions
  Forget the conspiratorial fog. The only real mystery about Diana's death is the workings of fate. By Christopher Dickey.
• Oct. 24, 2003: Death of a Princess
  Conspiracy theories tell us more about the people who believe in them than about the conspiracies themselves. By Christopher Dickey

Walls Within Walls

It's been a year since Dan Seidemann and I explored security barrier that winds its way around Jerusalem and through Palestinian lands of the occupied West Bank. Little has changed since then:

An American Reporter in Paris

“Mort Rosenblum has spent his entire working life in the wider world, and "Escaping Plato's Cave" is the fruit of that vast fieldwork — passionate, timely, and original, it is a book every American should read.”
—Paul Theroux

“A great foreign correspondent draws on forty years of travels and experiences to paint a vivid picture of how America is falling short of its highest values and crippling its global leadership.”
—James F. Hoge, Jr., editor, Foreign Affairs



Mort Rosenblum is one of the best journalists I know because he's one of the best at getting to the place where news is happening, digging it out and then thinking about it long and hard enough to make some sense of it.

He also has a way of living and working that just about anyone would envy: a boat on the Seine in the heart of Paris, a house among olive groves in the south of France.

The little film above was made as an experiment with a pocket camera (a Canon SD1000) this afternoon over a delightful lunch prepared in the tiny galley of his boat by Mort's partner Jeannette. The video is crude, but does capture something of the man, his life and opinions. Of course, it also gives him a chance to plug his upcoming book, "Escaping Plato's Cave," about which more later. It will be published the beginning of October by Saint Martin's Press. - C.D.

Mort's own site, "Mort Unplugged," can be found at www.mortrosenblum.net

The Surge, the Sun and the Sand

These stunning pictures wer taken by John Moore for AP Photo during the March 2003 drive into Iraq. They're a reminder of how important weather is, not only to the fighting, but when it comes to the dying in Iraq, a subject I'll be writing about shortly on the new Newsweek International Blog, "Why It Matters." The bottom line: the death count almost always goes down at the height of the summer heat from July to September, and again during the rain and dust storms of March. - C.D.

From the "Why It Matters" blog entry:

It was 111 degrees Fahrenheit for Americans in Baghdad today (43 Celsius for the Iraqis), and it's supposed to be hotter - 117 F or 47C - for the rest of the week. That's in the shade, of course, for those who can find it. Such infernal temperatures are pretty much the same every year. Nothing is quite as predictable in Iraq as the summer heat.

But another simple fact is just as evident: the death toll among fighters tends to decline in the dog days, because nobody wants to have to do battle in that stifling air, and those who have to go into combat tend to move more slowly and cautiously.

On the other hand, to the extent public records are available on non-governmental Web sites like iraqbodycount.org and icasualties.org (the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, with which Newsweek did a major presentation on the Internet in December of last year), it seems that the civilian death toll, mainly from terrorist attacks, actually may remain high or rise in the heat of summer. Security forces are thinner on the ground. Roadside bombs can be put out at night and suicide drivers don't usually have to brave the hellish heat for very long before they punch their ticket to Paradise....

Condi, Karen and Cal

The Bush administration has never been much for public diplomacy. Its audience is always the American public, and if the rest of the world doesn't respond, then there must be something fundamentally wrong with the rest of the world. But the most recent effort to win the hearts and minds of young Muslims is so surreal that even The Daily Show failed to capture its willful weirdness.

Consider this AP dispatch from Rabat:

U.S. goes online to reach Muslim youth

By JOHN THORNE, Associated Press WriterThu Aug 16, 6:48 PM ET

The U.S. State Department chose a novel way to publicize baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr.'s appointment this week as its special sports envoy. It went on YouTube.

Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, who appears in the video, said Thursday it was part of her campaign to bring a positive image of the United States to a skeptical global audience — particularly in the Muslim world. Children are a chief target.

"It's important that we reach out to Muslim populations around the world," Hughes said in an interview with The Associated Press. She was in Morocco this week to visit a U.S.-funded summer camp for poor Moroccan children.

The best way to counter widespread Muslim distrust of the U.S. is to expose young people to American values, Hughes said. For that, she is turning to online media like the popular video-posting web site YouTube.com, which attracts the tech-savvy youths she is targeting.

"I know as a mother that by the time kids get to high school, their opinions are pretty hardened," Hughes said. "Children tend to be a lot more open-minded."

As part of the campaign, Arabic speakers on Hughes' staff also log on to the chat forums of Arabic-language blogs to challenge "representations of America that are inaccurate," she said. She said they identify themselves as members of the State Department's outreach team....

Now just take a look at the YouTube offering. For some reason best known to the NSA, I suppose, I couldn't blog it directly, but this link is good, I believe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LfZ5QHblBE

As Hughes and Condoleeza Rice gush over Ripken, Rice ventures her opinion that he'll appeal to "people who want to be Cal Ripken in Pakistan."

Excuse me. Does anybody know who Cal Ripken is in Pakistan? Does anyone at all play baseball in Pakistan? Or anywhere else in the Muslim world? Is Ripken, perhaps, inclined to take up cricket? What on earth are these people thinking?

Clearly they're not thinking at all. But that shouldn't suprise us. As Rice says in the State Department clip, public diplomacy "isn't really the work of the government," it's the work, in her view, of, well, the public.

Another home run for American policy. - C.D.

"The Devil-Worshippers"

After the ghastly bombings targeting Yazidi communities in Iraq yesterday, I pulled my well-thumbed copy of Freya Stark's "Baghdad Sketches" off the shelf. Written in the 1930s, her essays about the life and land of Iraq are almost as valuable today as they were then. Perhaps more so. (As Aldous Huxley once wrote, "old guide-books, so out of date as to be historical documents, make excellent traveling-companions." And Stark is much, much better than that.)

Years ago I had underlined several passages in the chapter "The Devil-Worshippers" about the Yazidis. "They are a peaceful agricultural people used to persecution," wrote Stark after visiting their villages and one of their shrines. "They by no means deny the orthodox saints, nor the existence of a beneficent Omnipotence above them: but they hold that the Spirit of Evil has been given a free hand in the world for the time being -- a theory which one must admit may be heard on the lips of quite respectable people of every persuasion at the present day without the necessity of a pilgrimage to Shaikh 'Adi. The Devil-Worshippers, however, introduce an Oriental touch into this blameless conservative attitude by maintaining the advisability of making up to whoever is in power."

Then, as now. But who is in power? The Yazidis could not placate such random and varied evils as exist in Iraq today. -- C.D.

Homegrown Terrorism, Homegrown Reactions

Yesterday's Shadowland column, "The Making of Homegrown Terrorists," drew rapid-fire responses from all over the United States.

A more-or-less random sampling of e-mails:

Name: Kathryn Wilcken

Hometown: Sheboygan, WI

Comments: Why are we only talking about Muslims here? How about the angry 'Christian' white males who bomb women's clinics and send death threats to doctors who provide theraputic abortions that are LEGAL under Roe vs. Wade? They're terrorists, too, and yet nobody talks about them! Timothy McVeigh was NOT a Muslim; he was an angry white male who murdered a lot of people. If you want to write an article about homegrown terrorists, then do one that includes ALL Americans, not just Muslim Americans! This piece is nothing but a racist screed against Muslims!

Name: Robert Schneider

Hometown: DeKalb, IL 60115

Comments:This a very informativ, brief summary.

Name: jimmy flaherty

Hometown: louisville, ky

Comments: Typical American racism and classism. Why am I not surprised?

Name: Timothy W. Brown

Hometown: Vine Grove, KY

Comments:"The making of the home grown terrorist" is a very exemplary paradigm of how certain groups of people can become suspectible to radicalization. But, the real danger is that hostile foreign intelligence/security services would be able to take advantage of this radicalization process in order to inflict damage upon countries in the West. The 'unremarkable' civilians would be perfect targets for foreign intelligence.

Name: Peter Olsson

Comments:In addition to 'human intelligence' we need to engage in respectful discussion, dialogue and confrontation with Muslim and Arab youths. The false theology, exegesis and misapplication of Sharia law should be vigorously challenged in ecumenical town hall and community meetings. Our communities should provide English classes and civics discussions that explore social justice and legal structures that deal with handling the irrational phenomena that tends to occur as an ordinary part of individual and group behavior among human beings. Equality of woman, respect for other religions than one's own need to be insisted upon. Active reaching out prevents enclave formation.

Name: o

Hometown: d

Comments: biggest propaganda I have ever seen

Name: D.L. Williamson

Hometown: Indianapolis, IN

Comments: People in this country seem to forget that terrorism in this country can also come in the color of WHITE and have last names like "McVeigh". They are in groups like the KKK, the "White Aryan Resistance" and all the other in-bred neo-Nazi groups in this country. Funny, how the FBI, local law enforcement amd the Department of Homeland Security have forgotten these THUGS...but I guess it is easier to do that when the TERRORISTS in question have lighter color of skin. By the way, for what it is worth , I am white.

"People" may forget, but I certainly do not. See, for instance:

Shadowland: Untrue Believers, 21 July 2005

The real global war is not between different faiths. It's against the madness of those like Atlanta bomber Eric Rudolph, who believe that their violence is noble.

"Innocent Blood" in Russian

It seems about time to crank up The Shadowland Journal again, now that the French elections are long over, and the Iraqi and terrorism stories are getting ever more complicated, requiring ever more background. What better way to begin than with the announcement that my 1997 novel, "Innocent Blood," is now available in Russian?

Le Blog Présidentiel

As the French elections heat up, I'm putting a good deal of time into organizing and editing Newsweek's new feature, Le Blog Présidentiel.

I will begin posting again on this site more regularly after the French have chosen their new leader in May.

Homeland Security: Drug-Running Recruiters

"The Tucson recruiters, trained to sell people on the military, often used those skills to recruit for the drug ring, helping the sting to mushroom, court records show."
-- Carol Ann Alaimo in The Arizona Daily Star.

Shortly after 9/11, the FBI investigated complaints that an Arizona Army National Guard recruiter at a strip mall in Tucson was taking bribes for fixing test results. The undercover officer who went to question the suspect recruiter was offered not only the chance to pay for the grades needed to join the service -- but to buy cocaine from the back of the recruiter's car.

So began the sting operation named "Operation Lively Green" -- as in uniforms, as in dollars, as in "the color of their authority," according to a Justice Department press release last year which named "16 current and former U.S. soldiers and law enforcement officers" who copped pleas for "participating in a widespread bribery and extortion conspiracy."

This is the way the DOJ laid out the case:

In documents filed today in federal court in Tucson, Arizona, each defendant agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to enrich themselves by obtaining cash bribes from persons they believed to be narcotics traffickers. Those individuals were actually Special Agents from the FBI, and the defendants used their official positions to assist, protect and participate in the activities of what they believed was an illegal narcotics trafficking organization engaged in the business of transporting and distributing cocaine from Arizona to other locations in the southwestern United States.

In order to protect the shipments of cocaine, the defendants wore their official uniforms and carried their official forms of identification, used official vehicles, and used their color of authority, where necessary, to prevent police stops, searches, and seizures of the narcotics as they drove the cocaine shipments on highways that passed through checkpoints manned by the U.S. Border Patrol, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and Nevada law enforcement officers. Many of the defendants also accepted additional cash bribes in return for recruiting other public officials they believed to be corrupt to further facilitate the activities of the fictitious narcotics trafficking organization.

According to court documents, all of the defendants escorted at least two shipments of cocaine from locations such as Nogales, Arizona and Tucson, Arizona to destinations which included Phoenix and Las Vegas, Nevada. The defendants pleading guilty today transported a total of over 560 kilograms of cocaine and accepted over $222,000 in cash bribes as payment for their illegal activities.

In one instance, on Aug. 22, 2002, several of the defendants drove three official government vehicles, including two military Humvees assigned to the Arizona Army National Guard (AANG), to a clandestine desert airstrip near Benson, Arizona, where they met with a twin-engine King Air aircraft flown by undercover agents of the FBI. Those defendants, while in full uniform, supervised the unloading of approximately 60 kilograms of cocaine from the King Air into their vehicles. They then drove the cocaine to a resort hotel in Phoenix where they were met by another undercover agent of the FBI, posing as a high-echelon narcotics trafficker, who immediately paid them off in cash.

In another instance, on April 12, 2002, defendant John M. Castillo, 30, while on duty as an inspector for the INS at the Mariposa Port of Entry located on the U.S. border at Nogales, Arizona, twice waved a truck he believed to be carrying at least 40 kilograms of cocaine through the border without being inspected. On or about Aug. 1, 2002, Castillo also sold an undercover FBI agent INS documents which fraudulently provided for the entry of undocumented aliens into the United States.

The article in the Arizona Daily Star looks at the fact that the recruiters involved made frequent visits to local high schools to persuade the kids they had a future in the military. So far as the paper was able to determine, they did not recruit any students into the ranks of abusers, dealers or traffickers. - C.D.

Taliban Rule Book in Pashto

Sami Yousufzai and Ron Moreau brought to light the Taliban Rule Book earlier this month, and a full translation is now available on the Newsweek site. For those who read Pashto, these photographs show the original pages. Click to enlarge.

Policing: "Guns Gone Wild"

The most informative article I've read on the Sean Bell killing outside the Kalua Nightclub in New York City is Sean Gardiner's piece in The Village Voice. The bottom line: cops appear to have more firepower than they know how to manage these days. Commissioner Ray Kelly, during his first tour, had tried to limit them to six-shooters. Then he brought in semi-automatics but limited them to ten shots. His successors upped the fatal ante to 15. In the Sean Bell killing, one cop, who'd never fired his gun in the streets before, went through two clips and one round in the chamber -- 31 bullets -- in less than 20 seconds. Obviously this wouldn't have been possible with a Smith & Wesson. But, that said, a lot of policing has to do with the psychological environment. One part of that is creating a sense of security for the public -- the approach laid out by Wilson and Kelling years ago in "Broken Windows." But another part is creating a sense of security for the cops. Now that they're used to their Glocks, it's all but impossible, and could be deeply demoralizing, if they had to give them up. - C.D.

Paths to War - and Out of It

These last two paragraphs from the cover story of Newsweek's U.S. edition this week are worth reading closely:

It is not out of the question that Bush 43 will be brought around by the so-called Realists. Fantasies of a liberal democracy in Iraq are long gone. The most Bush can reasonably hope for in Iraq is some measure of stability, which is what the Realists want, too. Bush's situation—and petulant tone—are not unlike Lyndon Johnson's in 1968, when the Vietnam War was getting no better, despite troop levels' reaching a half-million men and a heavy bombing campaign. Johnson's new secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford, was a clever fixer/statesman, just like Baker. Johnson ranted to his advisers, "Let's get one thing clear! I'm telling you now that I'm not going to stop the bombing!" (Bush last week: "There's one thing I'm not going to do: I'm not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.") But Clifford and the other Wise Men he brought into the White House did persuade LBJ to halt the bombing and open peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Baker & Co. might still nudge Bush onto a track that involves more diplomacy and less force.

There is, however, a cautionary coda to the Vietnam comparison. The revolt of the Wise Men in 1968 did change administration policy—but it did not end the war. The peace talks dragged on until Richard Nixon became president in 1969; he then re-escalated the war, which didn't end until another five years had passed and 25,000 more American soldiers had been lost. Iraq has not cost nearly as many American lives. But Vietnam fundamentally shaped America in ways that reverberate even today, and no matter what happens between George Bush and Jim Baker in the coming days and weeks, it is likely that Iraq will be with us for as long as Vietnam has been—or longer.

Evan Thomas, who wrote the story, was also the c0-author of a fascinating book called "The Wise Men," in which Clifford played a major role. I'm happy to see it's still in print.

The lessons of Vietnam are complicated, but they're certainly worth studying today. If you want a quick short course, I'd suggest watching the HBO movie "Path to War," which came out in 2002 and is now available on DVD. It was John "The Manchurian Candidate" Frankenheimer's last film. Donald Sutherland plays Clifford. Alec Baldwin is McNamara, and Michael Gambon is a convincing LBJ. It presents a vivid picture of Johnson Agonistes, and gives a disturbingly accurate sense of how good intentions and bad advice can suck the United States into a quagmire.

One final note: all "ground combat troops" had been pulled out of Vietnam by 1972, on the eve of that year's presidential elections. The war went on for three more years, and ended in disaster after the U.S. Congress finally decided to pull the plug. But the outcome was inevitable in any case. - C.D.

More on the KGB, UFOs, Po-210 Coffee Mugs

Articles suggesting that the isotope used to kill former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London last month can be had on the Internet for $69 are, to say the least, misleading. A piece by Jessica Bennett on Newsweek's Web site goes some way toward clearing up the confusion about Polonium 210 and its availability. The stuff -- or what purports to be the stuff -- is being marketed by Bob Lazar, who formerly claimed he worked at Area 51 where UFOs are stored. Nobody we've found has actually tested the product he's selling to see if it amounts to more than the trace elements that can be discovered, for instance, in cigarette smoke. Or if the isotope is present in his samples at all. According to the Newsweek article, you pay $69 for one microcurie, which is one millionth of a curie, which is already a very, very, very small amount.

According to the nuclear experts I talked to for my column earlier this week, the assumption based on animal experiments is that 525 microcuries of Polonium-210 would be enough to kill you if ingested, and a gram would represent, roughly, 10,000 times the lethal dose.

But the fact is that there's not much known research on the ingestion of this rare isotope -- who would you feed it to? who would have been eating it or breathing it by accident? -- so some scientists suggest it would take hundreds of micrograms to kill someone.

Presumably an assassin would come to the same conclusion. That's yet another reason to suppose the stuff that killed Litvinenko came from an operation capable of bombarding highly pure bismuth, and which did so in the last few months -- ie., the kind of facility that exists in a nuclear weapons state and, as far as I know, nowhere else.

I also got e-mails asking about the "signature" or the "fingerprint" of this isotope. As I understand it the problem here is that no investigators, not those at the IAEA, much less those from Scotland Yard, have access to the facilities of the nuclear weapons states, and therfore cannot compare the Po-210 that killed Litvinenko with everything that might be available. Nor is it likely that the Russians, Israelis, or for that matter the Americans and the British, are going to open their labs and production facilities for police examination.

That traces of radiation were found on BA planes which flew from Moscow to London and back in the week before Litvinenko showed symptoms of poisoning would seem to point the finger even more clearly at Russians, although not necessarily at Putin. The current illness of former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar would seem to be another plot twist.

But I confess it's Lazar that interests -- and darkly amuses -- me. On his Web site he notes that the polonium-210 he sells, such as it is, would be almost impossible to use as a poison. But another isotope found in smoke detectors ... would work just great. I haven't tested that claim, and don't intend to.

This article about Lazar which appeared in the Albuquerque Journal earlier this year gives a pretty good picture of the "UFO guy":
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/463826nm05-28-06.htm

And this one in Wired probably tells you more than you ever wanted to know:
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.html

For a statement from the man himself, see: http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm

If you like, you can also order a Polonium coffee mug:
http://www.unitednuclear.com/mugs.htm

NYPD: Perspective

Clyde Haberman's essay in today's New York Times is the best single piece I've seen on the Sean Bell killing in New York. There are certainly a lot of questions to be asked about those 50 shots the police pumped into Bell, his friends and his car the day he was due to get married. But very little coverage looks at the crimes that precipitated the intensified undercover work at many bars and dives around NYC, even though the savage killings of 24-year-old Imette St. Guillen after clubbing in SoHo in February and 18-year-old Jennifer Moore in July dominated the tabloid headlines at the time. Even less attention has been paid to the dangers faced by the undercover officers on the ground. That's where Haberman focused his attention:

"... meanwhile, in Brooklyn, some attention turned to cops who lost life, not cops who took life.

This is happening in a federal courtroom where a Staten Island man with an expressionless face is on trial for his life, charged with shooting two undercover police detectives in the back of the head. He in effect executed them, it is charged, for the effrontery of trying to rid the streets of illegal guns.

These two events would seem unrelated. But they are two faces of the same New York story. Both involve police undercover work that went disastrously wrong, although in different ways.

The very nature of this work can lead to nightmarish situations because, by definition, undercover officers are supposed to melt into their surroundings. Snap decisions — when to back off, when to make arrests, certainly when to shoot — are rarely uncomplicated or without peril.

In the case before the Brooklyn jury, the murdered detectives pretended one night in March 2003 that they were interested in buying a gun. As part of this pretense, according to the charges, they sat up front in a car, acting as if they had a bond with two men in the back seat.

This was a mistake. It allowed one of the men in the back to fire at them, point-blank.

They paid with their lives, Detectives James V. Nemorin, 36, and Rodney J. Andrews, 34 — they with five children between them..."

James Bond's Particular Poison

I still haven't seen the latest film version of "Casino Royale," but I gather from recent news stories that it includes the original Ian Fleming recipe for a devastating martini. (Charles Bremner's piece in the Times of London about the sudden global demand for Lillet was particularly amusing.) But while reading through my old copy of the novel (the same as the one pictured, pages 40 and 41) I was struck by the conversation that surrounded the recipe, reminiscent as it is of a cosmopolitan hedonism that seems long lost. It is the quintessence of classic Bond:

'My name's Felix Leiter,' said the American [CIA agent]. 'Glad to meet you.'

'Mine's Bond - James Bond.'

'Oh, yes,' said his companion, 'and now let's see. What shall we have to celebrate?'

Bond insisted on ordering Leiter's Haing-and-Haig 'on the rocks,' and then he looked carefully at the barman.

'A dry Martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'

'Oui, monsieur.'

'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?'

'Certainly, monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.

Bond laughed. 'When I'm - er - concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name.'

He watched carefully as the deep glass became frosted with the pale golden drink, slightly aerated by the bruising of the shaker. He reached for it and took a long sip.

'Excellent,' he said to the barman, 'but if you can get a vodka made with grain instead of potatoes, you will find it still better.'

'Mais n'enculons pas des mouches,' he added in an aside to the barman. The barman grinned.
'That's a vulgar way of saying "we won't split hairs," ' explained Bond.

But Leiter was interested in Bond's drink. 'You certainly think things out,' he said with amusement as they carried their glasses to a corner of the room. He lowered his voice:
'You'd better call it the "Molotov Cocktail" after the one you tasted this afternoon.' ...