DefenseWatch – 9 January 2002

If Congress and the Bush administration ever get up the nerve to create the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States advocated by Sens. John McCain and Joseph I. Lieberman, it should not be difficult to identify the causes of the massive intelligence failure that preceded the 9-11 massacres in New York and at the Pentagon. The operating word is “if,” because in the two weeks since the two senators publicly proposed a nonpartisan, independent probe of the attacks, there has not been a peep from either the White House or Congress following up on this vital measure.

Americans deserve to know the cold, hard truth about what went wrong prior to Sept. 11, 2001 – not for vengeance or political scapegoating – but to ensure that the federal government takes the urgent and necessary steps to minimize the odds of similar attacks happening in the future.

One thing that is all but guaranteed: Such an inquest is going to uncover a rich vein of information that points toward a U.S. intelligence and law enforcement failure, as opposed to an al Qaeda victory against counter-terrorism defenses.

Over the past week I decided to amass what was already known or alleged about Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda terrorist network and the issue of using aircraft as suicidal guided weapons. I anticipated gleaning a number of stories or reports published in the aftermath of the terrorist strikes. What I was stunned to find were details of eight separate incidents directly pointing to the terrorists’ interest in utilizing aircraft as terrorist suicide weapons that were either reported in the news media or known to U.S. officials prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

A full chronology is enclosed as Article 06 in this issue of DefenseWatch.

By far the most damning evidence of al Qaeda’s decision to develop such a murderous strategy – and of U.S. inability to perceive a looming terrorist threat – came in the Philippines more than six years before 9-11, when police officials there uncovered a plot by terrorist Ramzi Yousef (the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured another 1,000) to plant sophisticated time bombs aboard 11 civilian airliners flying from Asia to the United States. When officials interrogated co-conspirator Abdul Hakim Murad, they learned that not only had he received aircraft pilot training in the United States in 1992, but he confessed that his ultimate mission was to obtain a small aircraft, pack it with explosives, and fly it into the CIA headquarters building in Langley, Va. And if that weren’t enough, Murad also spoke of other desired targets for suicide aircraft bombing, including the White House, Capitol, Pentagon and unspecified “high-rise” office buildings. The terrorists called their plan Operation “Bojinka,” a slang Serbo-Croatian word meaning “loud bang.”

In the six years between the thwarting of Bojinka and the successful terrorist strikes that killed over 3,000 Americans and foreign guests last Sept. 11, al Qaeda struck five times: twice in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, twice in east Africa in August 1998 (the embassy bombings) and the attack in October 2000 against the USS Cole in Aden. It was no secret to U.S. officials that al Qaeda as an organization was quick to learn from its mistakes and adept at mounting ever more sophisticated operations.

And trying repeatedly until its tactics worked.

Immediately after the 9-11 attacks, Philippines officials expressed shock and outrage at the U.S. intelligence failure. At a press conference in Manila, Gen. Avelino "Sonny" Razon, a senior investigator in the Bojinka plot, said, "We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995. Why didn't they pay attention?"

That’s an excellent opening question for the nation’s inquest into 9-11.

Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at defensewatch@aol.com.

Table of Contents

Hack’s Target For The Week: Beware of Mission Creep

By David H. Hackworth

The killing last week in Afghanistan of Special Forces Sgt. Nathan Chapman calls to mind the battle portrayed in the movie, "Black Hawk Down."

Its two-and-one-half hours of gore do capture the great heroism of the Army's 75th Rangers, Delta Force and the 160th Special Forces "Night Stalkers" air crews, as well as the dogged fanaticism of their Muslim irregular opponents. But since the film shows the relentless horror of the firefight out of context, the gross stupidity of the politicians and generals who went along with a dumb op can only be inferred.

This catastrophic fight proved that no one – from the president to the secretary of defense to a squad of top brass – had learned a thing from Vietnam, where American soldiers were also inexorably slaughtered because those on high didn't understand the enemy, the objective or the nature of the conflict – or the value in pulling out when it was so clear to even the grunts in the mud that it was a no-win war.

When George Bush the Elder sent our forces to feed the Somalis, I went over and reported from the foxholes of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, another fine outfit that fought well during the Mogadishu disaster. The longer I stayed, the more I could smell Vietnam. By the time I headed home, the stench of mission creep hung heavy in the air.

When Bill Clinton dispatched a Ranger Task Force to capture a two-bit warlord and changed the mission from feeding to fighting, I asked to go back. But – according to an insider – Army Gen. Thomas Montgomery didn't like the idea of my nosing around on the ground and killed my request to go out with the Rangers.

On the day of the bloodbath, Oct. 3, 1993, I was at Fort Carson, Colo., with Special Forces Col. Dave Hunt. "Where's the tanks, where's the air cover?" Hunt roared. By the end of the day, I knew as much as the generals or the bungling bureaucrats in the Pentagon and White House, all of whom were now into max damage control.

I also knew that the most basic rules of combat had been egregiously violated, there was no go-to-hell plan, and the only thing that saved the day was extraordinarily brave soldiering. And I knew, too, that Sgt. Casey Joyce, the Ranger son of an Army pal, had been killed.

The death of Casey, whom I'd known since his birth, made this tragedy very personal. So I went to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., and interviewed the wounded, and then went to Fort Benning, Ga., where I talked to a bunch of Rangers from battalion CO Danny McKnight down to individual Ranger grunts fresh from the fight.

Long before the excellent book, Black Hawk Down, was written or the movie was made, I told the story in Newsweek, in this column, in my book Hazardous Duty and during scores of media interviews. Crushed over the needless casualties, I felt the least I could do was get out the word to prevent future such tragedies.

But today, as we burrow deeper into Afghanistan, the still-unlearned lessons of Vietnam and Somalia are blowing in the winds of that bloody land. For sure, we're already wearing out our welcome with the wild and wooly AK-47-toting locals. And as in Somalia, the longer we stay, the longer the casualty list.

An Army major tells me: "Chapman was ambushed by a terrorist hit squad. Word is Al-Qaeda paid off one of the tribal leaders who met with the soldier and got him after he left the meeting. These cats will cut our throats as fast as they'll cut each other's when cash or power are concerned. We can only trust them when we have a gun covering them."

We can't expect Hollywood or a press corps and a Congress composed mainly of non-veterans without much feeling for the profession of arms to either be the keepers of the truth or sound the alarm. Perhaps our only hope is that the vets of wars past will rise up and say: "Stop mission creep in Afghanistan. We've been there too many times before. No more unnecessary white crosses and stars. Punch 'em hard and get out while the getting's good."

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831.

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 01 – Army's Junior Soldiers – Shafted in 2002!

By J. David Galland

U.S. military pay has taken a quantum leap upward. On New Year’s Eve as the revelers in Times Square achieved their annual state of jubilation, at the same time, members of the U.S. armed forces were being given a real reason to celebrate: The largest military pay raise in twenty years became a reality.

Military personnel will see an average pay increase of 6.9 percent effective this month, with senior enlisted members receiving a higher percentage (E-5 and E-6 getting 7.5 percent increase, E-7s an average increase of 8.5 percent, and up to 10 percent for E-9s).

As I reflect back to 1968, when my soldiering lessons started, I earned less than one hundred dollars a month. So 34 years later from my corner of the foxhole, I view the latest military pay raise as a very significant event for soldiers. I believe that the results of the last presidential election had a lot to do with this long-overdue issue of military pay. President Bush said he would increase military benefits. It looks like he has held true to his promise.

So to Mr. Bush, a hearty Hooooah! What a turnaround, an elected official who did what he said he would do. This old soldier's heart is duly warmed.

But as the big pay increase becomes a reality in the Army and other services, there is a "less than commendable" action that has also taken effect as part of the overall legislative package containing the pay hike.

The Army is shafting junior soldiers on the issue of meal allowances. The new law terminates the Basic Allowance Subsistence (BAS) for junior soldiers, creating in effect a simultaneous loss in income that all but cancels out their salary hike. Here’s why:

Effective Jan. 1., in accordance with the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel (DCSPER) information paper from last July 16 the BAS allowance is no longer being provided. Instead, the memo adds, "All army soldiers, in the rank of staff sergeant (E6) and below, who live in a barracks or single government quarters, will be required to eat in a military dining facility." Additional published guidelines, equally idiotic, spell out that "any soldier who resides in the barracks or single type government quarters, which are within a 30-minute commute of the soldier's place of duty, shall not qualify for the separate rations entitlement."

On surface this does not sound unreasonable, but theory and implementation are not the same on this one.

Let's give a close look to this new policy and its unintended negative impact on the Army. The new edict promises to offer the tainted end of the stick to the junior soldiers – the lowest paid people in the military. Also, it threatens to erode overall unit mission accomplishment and sustained quality training.

Gone are the days, as I remember them in 1968, when “Mad-Dog” Mason, our company mess sergeant, would stand menacingly at the top of five steps at our company mess hall, adorned in his white T-shirt that was sullied and stained with everything imaginable. A Pall Mall cigarette, poking out of the corner of his mouth, provided smoky testimony to his closely-held recipe secrets which spiced up the culinary offerings on the chow line.

Senior army leaders, who have hatched this idiotic policy, fail to understand that most soldiers affected by this new rule do not live or work a five-minute walk from a beckoning dining facility. The Army has changed profoundly since "Mad-Dog" served up his last ladle of Chili-Mac.

In Germany – let's take the Heidelberg area for example – hundreds of soldiers have lost their rations entitlement. Why? Because there is an Army dining facility within a thirty-minute commute of their work areas. Thirty minutes in optimum driving and weather conditions, that is.

However, when the level of traffic increases, or if a German traffic jam occurs (and they can be world-class), or if ice and snow cover the roadways, then this brilliant idea starts to unravel at the expense of junior soldiers and their mission. It is not far-fetched to see this “feasible” thirty-minute commute suddenly transform into a three-hour pilgrimage, from which, if a soldier returns, he or she must immediately turn around and re-deploy for the next meal! I know a sharp first sergeant who last week calculated that he would get all of two hours and twenty-seven minutes of work per day from each junior soldier as a result of the new meals policy.

Again using Germany as an example, where thousands of junior soldiers fresh out of initial training are stationed, another complication quickly appears: Most junior soldiers simply cannot afford to own a car. So now the soldiers face the reality of having to sit on a shuttle bus three times a day for an hourlong commute to each meal, plus additional time to actually obtain and eat it. Moreover, it is likely that bus service won't run on weekends.

The issue that has been apparently overlooked by the number-crunchers in Army headquarters is not trivial: With this meal plan in effect, who is doing the work, supporting the Army mission, and taking part in critically necessary training? You know the answer: The truth is that soldiers are going to not go to the dining facility. They are going to pay for meals out of their pockets and not be reimbursed for it, which translates into one definable concept in my view: senior officers and NCOs are getting more money, and junior soldiers are getting the shaft.

On many Army posts, there are soldier, troop and barracks situations where junior soldiers will have consistent access to a dining facility three times a day. But this is not the norm in today's Army. The termination of the Basic Allowance Subsistence for junior soldiers is ill-conceived, wrongly intentioned, and clearly illustrative of the arrogant actions of non-caring senior military leaders who from their Olympian heights seem to know nothing about a soldier's life.

I urge my fellow soldiers not to let this ill-advised and foolish policy remain in effect. If the DCSPER and his straphangers and briefcase carriers won’t come down from the mountain to visit the real Army, we must somehow communicate to the service leadership just how damaging this policy will be to the junior soldiers, and therefore to the U.S. Army as a whole.

J. David Galland, Deputy Editor of DefenseWatch, is the pen name of a career U.S. Army senior Non-Commissioned Officer currently serving in Germany. He can be reached at defensewatch02@yahoo.com.

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 02 – Removing the Shackles from U.S. Intelligence

By Patrick Hayes

In the highly-politicized and rarefied atmosphere of Washington, D.C., it has long been politically expedient to blame the Central Intelligence Agency for virtually every international problem faced by the United States since the Agency's inception in 1947.

In light of what we now know and can surmise about the shortfalls of the Clinton administration, it is more than evident that cutbacks, social engineering campaigns and other politically correct activities took precedence over national security. Thus given the eight years of Clinton’s political ineptness, fear, lack of leadership, and a complete absence of decision-making skills, I argue that it is less than fair to blindly cast blame for the nation's intelligence shortfalls on the CIA or other intelligence agencies.

In most cases, the Agency's success stories – and there have been many – remain classified for years, if not decades, in order to protect assets and to keep the enemy from knowing what we know. A prime example of this was the decision to withhold for decades after World War II the fact that British and American intelligence agencies had broken both the German and Japanese cipher codes. Conversely, most intelligence issues that do become public are the problems and shortfalls, many of which are not the fault of the Agency, but of political ineptness or lack of will on the part of political leaders. The 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is an obvious case in point, where the Kennedy administration refused to provide combat air cover at the last minute as the CIA-backed Cuban rebels went ashore.

Arguments have also been made against the CIA for other perceived intelligence shortfalls, such as failing to anticipate the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (In recent years it has since become evident that the Soviets themselves probably didn't know the end was near until it happened amid coups, vodka and counter-coups.)

Now, the CIA has taken a major hit following the Islamic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Why didn't they know, the media and the Left (often the same) have screamed. A more prudent question is to ask why the FBI and INS didn't detect the murderous, cowardly vermin who entered the country without setting off any alarms and for months refined and practiced their murderous attacks before striking the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Charges that the CIA was unprepared for the 9-11 attacks are the most undeserved. The argument may well be made that the political constraints placed on the Agency since the Church Committee hearings in 1975 have continued to effectively erode our intelligence-gathering capabilities. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, critics of the CIA pressed hard to curtail the CIA's ability to carry out effective covert activities, and this certainly became a primary objective of the Clinton administration, which at the same time eviscerated the U.S. military with reckless abandon – at least two reasons why the United States was weak on 9-11.

In a recent interview on Fox News, Mansoor Ijaz, a Democratic contributor and self-styled counter-terrorism expert, said he had approached the Clinton White House and had met with Clinton 30 to 35 times, advising Clinton and his cohorts that direct action should be taken against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network. There was no response, Ijaz said: "My judgment is that they did not have ever any intention to engage anyone in the Islamic world in a significant way."

In an article for NewsMax.com written the day of the 9-11 attacks, Christopher Ruddy wrote that he had received an e-mail from an unidentified, recently retired high-ranking CIA officer, who said of the Clinton administration, “It is now pretty self-evident that claims of reform and adjustment [at the intelligence agencies] to new realities that we've heard over the past eight years or so are hollow.”

In addition to his assault on the military, Clinton also reduced the country's security by cutting research and development on new weapons and safeguard systems and came dangerously close to destroying the stockpile of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, all while Saddam Hussein and other enemies continued to plan and produce weapons of mass destruction.

“Little, systematic changes were undertaken to destroy America's intelligence agencies. Clinton and company knew they could not just tell the CIA to stop recruiting spies,” Ruddy wrote. “That would look stupid and embarrassing. So they just changed the rules of how spies are recruited, raising the bar on requirements to such a high degree that the most valuable spies could never meet CIA standards and couldn't work for us.”

As part of this anti-intelligence policy, Clinton appointed John Deutch as DCI, who, together with his assistant, Nora Slatkin, instituted the Clinton "human rights scrub" policy. Ruddy again quoted his CIA source as stating, “Deutch and Nora, Clinton's anti-intelligence plants, implemented a universal 'human rights scrub' of all assets, virtually shutting down operations for six months to a year …. After that, each asset had to be certified as being 'clean for human rights violations’. What this did was to put off limits, in effect, terrorists, criminals, and anyone else who would have info on these kinds of people.”

There are hopeful signs that the excessive restrictions on intelligence operations are finally being lifted.

More recently, on Meet the Press, when asked by Tim Russert if the previous restrictions on intelligence gathering would be lifted, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Well, I think so. I think one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we'll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. If you're going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you're not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you're going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities.” Cheney added that the Bush administration would, “make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities.”

Intelligence gathering goes back to the days of Rome and Greece, and probably back to Stone Age combatants. It is a basic tenet of survival in a world ripe with potential enemies that we need to know what our enemies, even our allies, are doing.

All the while Clinton was playing social engineer with the country, the Chinese, the Russians, the French, even our close British allies, have not been sitting on their hands. Viable intelligence gathering means survival and the possibility of saving lives, as it would have done on 9-11.

We have a long way to go back to where we were during the Cold War. One of the few heartening developments is that dynamic leadership has again come to Washington, and the U.S. intelligence community has been allowed to take the road back to protecting the United States.

Patrick Hayes is a contributing editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at Gyrene65@netscape.net.

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 03 – National Missile Defense and the Warrior Spirit

By Gary R. Stalhut

The warrior spirit – the mindset to fight and to win, the will to endure great adversities, the readiness to bayonet an enemy – is as important to warfare as are advances in weaponry. History is replete with great civilizations and nations that were defeated because they lost the most important ingredient to winning a war: the warrior spirit.

After the end of the Second World War, the phrase, "Maginot Spirit," was coined. Simply put, the "Maginot Spirit" was the belief by the post-World War I French military leadership that modern weapons technology made it possible to defeat an enemy using huge, modern defenses. During 1929-39, the French government built a line of fortifications from the Swiss Border on the east to the Ardennes Forest on the far west to stop any future invasion of France along its northern frontier.

Named after the French Minister of War Andre Maginot, the line of defenses was the most massive and technologically advanced series of forts the world had ever seen. The Maginot Line was state of the art: it employed the most powerful land weapons of the time and was considered by contemporary military strategists to be impregnable. The French government almost bankrupted its defense budget building it, training the very best French soldiers as elite "Fortress Troops" and relegating the balance of the French Army to a secondary role. Even more dangerous, the French military elevated the technical ability of soldiers to operate the Maginot Line above the basic warrior spirit of French soldiers to bayonet and kill the enemy.

During the 1930's, French Army doctrine was re-written with the Maginot Line as the center of gravity for the Army, further exacerbating the "Maginot Spirit" into the French military. This “Maginot Spirit” came to fruition when France declared war on Germany in 1939. French strategy based itself on fighting a methodical defensive war, or in the words of the commander-in-chief of allied forces General Maurice Gamelin, "preferring to await events." The French became so enamored by the defensive technology of the Maginot Line that they lost the stomach to attack – they had lost their warrior spirit.

Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, "If you entrench yourself behind strong fortifications, you compel the enemy to seek a solution elsewhere." The United States also has a history of building forts for our defense. It is a very basic human instinct to want to build static defenses and defend our land, homes and families. This is not a bad thing, but relying on a strategy of building forts does not win a war gives the defender time to react when surprised. Also, there has always been a constant risk that technology will make fortifications obsolete before they are completed, or the enemy will find a way to circumvent them.

Fort Pulaski, Ga., took over 16 years to build and only two days in 1862 to breach by the use of the "new" rifled cannon. The Endicott Era concrete forts guarding Manila Harbor from attack by battleships were formidable in the 1920s, but were hopelessly obsolete when destroyed by Japanese aircraft in 1942. More recently, the extensive Nike Missile System built in the 1950s (designed to knock out high-altitude Soviet bombers) became obsolete after the first Soviet ICBMs were introduced.

In short, fixed fortifications are very expensive and have a relatively short operational life. While there is a very credible threat to North America from intercontinental ballistic missiles, currently only Russia and China possess these weapons. Both these countries understand an attack on the United States would result in their committing national suicide. Iran, North Korea, and Iraq can threaten their immediate neighbors, but even by the best estimates, are years away from being able to deliver a warhead to North America. It is more likely an enemy will find another least expensive and more expedient means to deliver a weapon of mass destruction against the United States. The most likely scenario for an attack using a WMD is a terrorist group obtaining a nuclear warhead and shipping it to our shores in a sea-land container.

Is the United States about to foster a “Maginot Spirit” too? The greater danger of structuring our National Defense Strategy around a National Missile Defense System is the type of spirit it will cultivate in our military.

For a Missile Defense Shield to work, we will have to build a modern Maginot Line in the sky. The nature of manning such a huge technologically advanced system will naturally cause the military to gravitate more away from recruiting the best Grunt for the job, and more towards recruiting the best Techie for the job.

The warrior spirit in our armed forces – and not the technological knowledge of the U.S. soldier – remains essential to winning a war. Wars of the future will be increasingly fought in urbanized areas and call for more Grunts, not fewer. The more our military comes to believe in a false sense of security centered around our advanced technology, the more our troops will lose their warrior spirit.

The spirit of the bayonet is not just part of being a warrior, it is the core of the soldier. As with any defensive weapon, Missile Defense included, our enemies will eventually find a way to pierce it or circumvent it. We will most certainly still need the spirit of the bayonet when they do.

Gary R. Stalhut is an Army Reserve officer and combat veteran with 26 years of active and reserve duty. He can be reached at Gary.R.Stahlhut@eudoramail.com

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 04 – A New Look at the Nuclear Energy Option

First of Three Parts

By Robert G. Williscroft

The United States is faced with a serious dilemma as it wrestles with a war against terrorism sparked in large part by our long-term involvement with Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations. We are gravely energy dependent, and the source of a significant part of our energy comes from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The current energy situation has critical national security and economic implications for the future of the United States. In light of the recent terrorist events it is time to reexamine the nuclear option for U.S. domestic energy needs. In this article, I will examine the basics of nuclear power in the perspective of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania – a mishap that led to a political over-reaction that all but killed off nuclear power as an energy source for the United States. In subsequent weeks, I will examine other facets of nuclear energy.

First, we need to review some basics of nuclear reactors.

Uranium occurs naturally in nature as a pitchblende ore. Pitchblende is mildly radioactive, which means that it spontaneously emits alpha particles. The level of radioactivity is very low, however, so there is no threat from mining and transporting the ore, and in any case, alpha particles, which are nothing more than Helium atoms stripped of their two electrons, pose no threat outside the body.

The Uranium normally extracted from pitchblende typically takes two different forms, called isotopes: Uranium-235 and Uranium-238. About 99.3 percent of Uranium in the Earth's crust is Uranium-238; only about 0.7 percent is Uranium-235, along with a vanishingly small percentage of four other isotopes. The 235 isotope of Uranium is the basis of most current nuclear power generation.

Uranium-235 is fissile, meaning that it can fission thermally by absorbing a slow neutron and splitting into two pieces plus two or three neutrons plus energy. About eighty-five percent of the energy released in a nuclear reactor is carried in the motion of these fission byproducts. About seven percent is generated by their radioactive decay.

Uranium-238 is not fissile but it can capture a thermal neutron, becoming—after a complicated process—Americium-241, which forms the heart of the modern household smoke detector.

So when you fuel a nuclear reactor with a mix of Uranium-235 and Uranium-238, you get a lot of energy in the form of heat, and some radioactivity in the form of beta particles and gamma rays. In current American reactors, the final products are a mixture of various isotopes of Barium, Krypton, Strontium, Cesium, Iodine, Xenon, Plutonium, Neptunium, and Americium. The latter three emit alpha particles for thousands of years.

In the final analysis this complicated process just produces a lot of heat, that in turn is used to create steam to drive a turbine to generate electricity.

Nuclear reactor fuel consists of Uranium mix formed into small pellets loaded into Zirconium tubes. These tubes are then bundled into an assembly called a fuel rod. Fuel rods are placed inside the reactor core where the fissile Uranium-235 atoms begin to fission, producing increasing numbers of neutrons until the core goes critical – the reaction becomes self-sustaining. In order to control the reaction process so that the number of neutrons produced equals the number absorbed, control rods made of Boron or Cadmium are distributed among the fuel rods. These control rods can be adjusted so that the amount of rod material inside the reactor exactly controls the level of neutron production – like a burner knob on a gas stove.

The primary coolant filling the core absorbs the energy released by the fissioning Uranium-235 atoms and carries this heat to a heat exchanger where it is transferred to the secondary coolant. The secondary coolant flashes to steam which then drives the turbine. The steam is condensed back to water in the cooling towers that are characteristic of nuclear power plants.

If something goes wrong at any point, the worst that can happen is the reactor shuts itself off, and it then sits there stewing in its own heat. This can damage internal components of the reactor, but that's it. A nuclear reactor really is nothing more than a device to boil water into steam to drive a turbine. As with any boiler, the steam it creates is under a lot of pressure.

Can a nuclear reactor explode?

Not like a nuclear bomb – that's impossible, completely, utterly impossible. A nuclear bomb is a runaway chain reaction in fissile material that is tightly contained for several microseconds until the internal pressure builds up sufficiently to cause a gigantic explosion. In a nuclear reactor, the fissile material is not tightly contained. If a runaway chain reaction were somehow to happen, the very worst possible result would be for the material to get so hot that it would melt and flow around inside the reactor, or perhaps melt out the bottom of a badly-designed reactor vessel. That's it.

Once it starts flowing around on the floor, it cannot maintain its criticality: no more fission, no more heat, and it all stops. The so-called China Syndrome – the idea that a run-away nuclear reactor could somehow melt through the Earth's crust and sink right through the Earth to China – is a myth. The physical laws of the universe prevent it.

A reactor is as likely to explode in a non-nuclear way as any other pressurized steam device. If you build it correctly, it won't happen. But if something you didn't plan for goes wrong and it does explode, you get a bunch of hot steam and pieces of pipe and boiler, and – unfortunately – unwanted high-energy emissions, and scrap that emits alpha and beta particles. This is why reactors operate inside containment buildings, which are reinforced concrete structures specifically designed to remain intact should there be an explosion of the pressurized reactor core. When properly designed, they contain the products of the explosion – hence the term, "containment."

The 1979 Three Mile Island accident was caused by a sequence of errors – mechanical and human. Nevertheless, everything remained inside the containment building. There was essentially no release of harmful emissions. Had people reacted properly to the initial problem, the plant could be in production today. More importantly, should a similar sequence of events happen in a nuclear power plant today, the outcome would be a minor local problem, and the plant would be back on line in a few days.

The Three Mile Island incident commenced with a mechanical or possibly an electrical failure of the secondary coolant pumps. One of the routine safety precautions used in nuclear power plants is to maintain a strict separation between the water used to cool the core directly (the primary coolant), and the water used to drive the generating turbine (the secondary coolant). Heat collected by the primary coolant is transferred to the secondary coolant in a heat exchanger, which essentially is a boiler wherein the secondary coolant is circulated around metal tubes containing the primary coolant. The two coolants never directly contact each other.

The result of failure of the secondary coolant pumps at Three Mile Island was that both the turbine and the reactor automatically shut down, just as they were designed to do.

The normal consequence of such a shutdown is that pressure inside the reactor increases, because the heat is no longer being removed. A reactor vessel contains a pressure relief valve that functions similar to the pressure relief valve on a household pressure cooker. At Three Mile Island, this valve opened to decrease internal reactor pressure. Unfortunately, the valve failed in the open position – it was stuck open; and to complicate matters, when it failed, it also broke the transmitter that indicated the valve's position to the operator. Consequently, the valve remained open, so that the internal reactor pressure continued to drop.

Unrelated to this problem, two days earlier reactor operators had tested the emergency feedwater system. This is a routine test to verify that the backup cooling system functions correctly. This backup system is designed to supply emergency cooling of the reactor in the event of failure of the secondary cooling system. In effect, this system supplies a secondary source of water to extract heat from the primary coolant. Part of this routine test requires that a valve be shut at the beginning of the test, and reopened at the end of the test. Somebody goofed and this valve was not reopened. Consequently, when the secondary pumps failed, emergency feedwater was not available to take up the slack. Eight minutes into the incident, someone discovered the shut valve and opened it.

In the meantime, however, under-pressure in the primary coolant system caused by the stuck open pressure relief valve created steam bubbles throughout the primary coolant system. These bubbles caused the reactor vessel to fill with water, giving a false reading that the primary system was filled to capacity, and the operator stopped adding additional water to the primary coolant system, even though such additional water was critically necessary – another big mistake. The end result of all this was that a gas bubble formed at the top of the reactor vessel, and the fuel rods sustained significant heat damage because they were not cooled adequately.

Furthermore, some of the radioactive gas was released into the containment building, carrying with it alpha and beta particle-emitting nuclear byproducts, contaminating the air in the building.

To complicate matters further, some primary coolant carrying radioactive debris from the damaged fuel rods leaked from the system and found its way into the basement of the reactor containment building. There it evaporated and condensed on the walls of the building, adding additional alpha and beta emitters to the already contaminated interior.

After it was all said and done, the actual release of radioactive material into the environment from Three Mile Island was miniscule, about the amount produced by nine thousand luminous exit signs.

The average radiation dose received by residents near Three Mile Island was only 1.4 millirems, compared to a typical annual background dose of 360 millirems that each individual receives from the natural environment. This is about the same amount you would receive from cosmic radiation on a flight from New York to Los Angeles.

Clearly the Three Mile Island incident did not hazard anybody. It took the court system ten years to validate this conclusion, but it stands now as nearly absolute as anything can be. The worst nuclear accident in United States history caused absolutely no harm.

Generating power using nuclear reactors is safe and efficient, despite what we have been led to believe by some environmentalists with private agendas. Next week we will examine the reactor accident at Chernobyl in 1986 to see what really happened, and what impact this has had on our ability to generate our power using nuclear reactors.

Robert G. Williscroft is DefenseWatch Navy Editor. He can be reached at dwnavyeditor@argee.net.

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 05 – Feedback: Readers Respond to DefenseWatch

More range time needed

I read the article about the guy in Desert Storm in a Signal Unit (“Army Leadership Failures Are Not New,” DefenseWatch, Dec. 19), and I have to agree with him. I'm a REMF in an aviation Cav Squadron, and in the two and one-half years I've been here, I've been able to qualify with my weapon a total of five times – or once every six months. I qualify every time, but not as well as I'd like to. I'm not the problem though, it's the troops straight out of Basic and AIT who can't shoot straight.

My solution to the problem is this. Line units should be able to hit the range every other month at a minimum, and the pogue units like mine should get a range once every three months at a minimum. As it is now, it's every six months and it's a headache to do.

--Mike

FACs and Support Teams Play a Vital Role

I spent three years assigned to the Army divisions and brigades in Germany. It was a joke that my teams spent more times in forward deployed areas than any units of the Army ever did. We averaged three weeks a month out in the field fixing the radios the FAC's would need to call in the air strikes.

We were so much of an asset that we upset the whole plan for Reforger (the huge military exercise that was done each year in Germany). One year we were supposed to get pounded bad and have to do a fighting retreat. Well, it seems the big brass did not tell our guys we were supposed to get beaten. Instead,when the whistles blew, we were there mauling the bad guys. We kicked them so bad they had to stop the exercise and change the rules for our side. Wemade them stop the exercise three times and move every one back to starting positions to get the exercise to run the way they had planned it. Even whenthe rules severely limited us, we mauled the enemy forces so bad they had to stop advance and recover the battle damage we had inflicted on them. The bigbrass was shocked to see the damage we had done to the enemy. The point is, my team of ten Air Force radio technicians made that much of animpact in the resulting war games. This was briefed to an Army 3-star by anArmy colonel when they wanted to know why my side was kicking the bad guysso bad. We lived and fought right beside the forward air controllers in the forward deployed positions augmenting them when our workload permitted.

What more can any service member do for the troops around him? It was funny out there in the mud in the middle of a battle – it did not matter what your stripes looked like, it was all down to how well you could doyour job.

--Jerry Tinklin, Master Sgt. USAF (Ret.)

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 06 – Chronology: Evidence of al Qaeda Interest in Hijacking Aircraft

Editor’s Note: The following information detailing al Qaeda interest in aircraft used as terrorist weapons was obtained from news articles, reports and transcripts posted on the Internet.

Dec. 24, 1994 – Four terrorists belonging to the “Armed Islamic Group,” an Algerian terrorism cell linked to Osama bin Laden, hijack Air France Flight 8969 as it prepares to leave Algeria for Paris. In a two-day standoff in which several passengers are released and several others murdered, French officials learn that the hijackers intend to crash the airliner into a Paris landmark such as the Eiffel Tower. The aircrew flies the plane to Marseilles for refueling under the guns of the terrorists, but French commandoes storm the aircraft, killing the four terrorists before they can carry out the suicide mission. Experts later note that Osama bin Laden’s network begins sending agents to commercial aviation schools within months of the thwarted hijacking.

Jan. 6, 1995 – Philippines officials discover a terrorist plot by three men including 1993 World Trade Center suspect Ramzi Yousef to bomb 11 U.S. airliners heading for the United States in a single day. Project “Bojinka” (a Serbo-Croatian slang word for “loud bang”) had already proceeded to a point where the plotters had tested their explosives by planting a device on a Philippines Airline Flight on Dec. 11, 1994 that killed a Japanese passenger when it went off. U.S. officials – who obtained a detailed roster of the targeted airline flights – estimated that nearly 4,000 people would have been killed had the mass bombing succeeded.

One of those arrested by Manila police, Pakistani-born Abdul Hakim Murad, had received pilot training in the United Arab Emirates and U.S. flight schools in San Antonio, Schenectady, N.Y., and New Bern, N.C., and received his commercial pilot’s license on June 8, 1992. Murad would tell Philippines and U.S. intelligence officials that in addition to the mass bombings, he had another mission, according to former Philippines police commander Aida Fariscal: Murad had long been preparing a suicide mission in which he was to buy, rent, or steal a small plane, fill it with explosives and crash it into CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Murad also identified a number of “secondary targets” in the United States, Fariscal told The Washington Post, including Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and an undisclosed number of skyscrapers.

As federal authorities prepared to try the Bojinka conspirators in federal court in New York in May 1996, former CIA Counterterrorism Director Vince Cannistraro called the plot “extraordinarily ambitious, very complicated to bring off, and probably unparalleled by other terrorist operations that we know of." Four months later, Murad and a third conspirator, Afghan-born Wali Khan Amin Shah, were convicted of multiple terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison. Yousef was convicted of both the Bojinka plot and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in 1998, receiving multiple life sentences.

Immediately after the 9-11 attacks, Philippines officials expressed shock and outrage at the intelligence failure. At a press conference in Manila, Gen. Avelino "Sonny" Razon, a senior investigator in the Bojinka plot, said, "We told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995. Why didn't they pay attention?"

December 1997 – January 1998 – Instructors at the Phoenix, Ariz. Branch of the Pan Am International Flight Academy contact the Federal Aviation Administration concerned with the behavior of a Saudi student pilot, Hani Hanjour, who was attempting to learn to fly multi-engine jet aircraft despite his lack of knowledge of English, a requirement in the civil aviation industry. The FAA reportedly responded by offering to provide Hanjour an interpreter. Officials say Hanjour was the terrorist who piloted hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

May 18, 1999 – The FBI arrests Orlando resident Ihab Mohammed Ali after discovering a letter he had written to a suspect in the Aug. 7, 1998 east Africa embassy bombings. FBI agents then visit the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., after learning that Ali had attended the civilian flight school in 1993 before working as a pilot for Osama bin Laden in Africa. Ali was the co-pilot of a small jet owned by bin Laden that crashed on landing at an airport in Khartoum, the Sudan, later in 1993. Testimony at the 2000 trial of several bin Laden accomplices accused of the embassy bombings revealed bin Laden wanted to use the jet aircraft to transport al Qaeda personnel and weapons – including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles – from Pakistan to the Sudan. Ali has been in federal custody since his arrest and has been charged with lying to a federal grand jury and criminal contempt, facing a possible sentence of life in prison.

September 2000 – Moroccan citizen L’Houssaine Kherchtou tells FBI agents that in 1993 he was trained as an al Qaeda pilot in Kenya and attended a meeting at an undisclosed location where an undisclosed al Qaeda official from Egypt was briefing Ihab Mohammed Ali on western air traffic control procedures. During the embassy bombing trial in New York last year, the following testimony emerged:

"He [Kherchtou] observed an Egyptian person who was not a pilot debriefing a friend of his, Ihab Ali, about how air traffic control works and what people say over the air traffic control system," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. "And it was his belief that there might have been a plan to send a pilot to Saudi Arabia or someone familiar with that to monitor the air traffic communications so they could possibly attack an airplane perhaps belonging to an Egyptian president or something in Saudi Arabia."

Jul. 4, 2001 – U.S. officials are generally aware over the July 4^th holiday that al Qaeda is planning unspecified attacks against the United States. Vice President Dick Cheney later said on Sept. 16 that a “big operation” was feared beginning at that time but that there was “no specific threat involving really a domestic operation.” In the Middle East, the U.S. Central Command ordered U.S. warships to leave port for security reasons. The Washington Post reported on Oct. 15 that the CIA approached more than 20 foreign countries in mid-summer to arrest and disrupt al Qaeda terrorists.

Early August 2001 – Officials at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minn., contact the FBI to express their alarm over a student pilot, Zacarias Moussaoui. One instructor, a former U.S. military pilot, repeatedly calls the bureau several times to find someone in authority willing to act on the information. Moussaoui reportedly was belligerent and evasive about his background and because he was adamant about learning to fly a 747 jumbo jet despite his clear incompetence as a pilot. According to Minnesota Rep. James L. Oberstar, who later was briefed on the instructor’s alert, said the instructor's warnings could not have been more blunt. "He told them [FBI officials], ‘Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?’ "

August 2001 – The Israeli Mossad warned American intelligence officials large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent, The London Telegraph reported on Sept. 16, five days after the attacks. "They had no specific information about what was being planned but linked the plot to Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement," a senior Israeli official told the British newspaper.

Aug. 17, 2001 – Moussaoui is detained by the FBI on immigration violations.

Aug. 21, 2001 – At the urging of the CIA, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service posts an alert for agents to be on the lookout for two suspected al Qaeda terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after al-Mihdhar was spotted meeting with a known bin Laden associate in Malayasia in June 2000. The INS discovers that the two men are already inside the United States and the FBI begins an unsuccessful search for the two, who both participate in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77, which strikes the Pentagon.

Aug. 28, 2001 – French officials notify the U.S. government that Moussaoui was suspected of having ties with al Qaeda, but the FBI is unable to persuade Justice Department officials to request a search warrant for his personal computer. Following the 9-11 strikes, the FBI did obtain a search warrant and found information in Moussaoui’s computer indicating that he had been studying crop dusters and wind dispersal patterns.

Table of Contents

ARTICLE 07 – Medal of Honor Recipient – FOX, JOHN R., 1^st Lt. USA

Citation: For extraordinary heroism against an armed enemy in the vicinity of Sommocolonia, Italy on 26 December 1944, while serving as a member of Cannon Company, 366th Infantry Regiment, 92d Infantry Division.

During the preceding few weeks, Lieutenant Fox served with the 598th Field Artillery Battalion as a forward observer. On Christmas night, enemy soldiers gradually infiltrated the town of Sommocolonia in civilian clothes, and by early morning the town was largely in hostile hands. Commencing with a heavy barrage of enemy artillery at 0400 hours on 26 December 1944, an organized attack by uniformed German units began.

Being greatly outnumbered, most of the United States Infantry forces were forced to withdraw from the town, but Lieutenant Fox and some other members of his observer party voluntarily remained on the second floor of a house to direct defensive artillery fire. At 0800 hours, Lieutenant Fox reported that the Germans were in the streets and attacking in strength. He then called for defensive artillery fire to slow the enemy advance.

As the Germans continued to press the attack towards the area that Lieutenant Fox occupied, he adjusted the artillery fire closer to his position. Finally he was warned that the next adjustment would bring the deadly artillery right on top of his position. After acknowledging the danger, Lieutenant Fox insisted that the last adjustment be fired as this was the only way to defeat the attacking soldiers. Later, when a counterattack retook the position from the Germans, Lieutenant Fox's body was found with the bodies of approximately 100 German soldiers.

Lieutenant Fox's gallant and courageous actions, at the supreme sacrifice of his own life, contributed greatly to delaying the enemy advance until other infantry and artillery units could reorganize to repel the attack. His extraordinary valorous actions were in keeping with the most cherished traditions of military service, and reflect the utmost credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

Editor’s Note: If you know of any MOH recipient who is hospitalized or has passed away recently, please email DefenseWatch MOH Editor Jim H. at bulldogleader@mindspring.com.

Table of Contents

EDITOR'S NOTE: Your Support is Important!

Footnote: The ultimate success in reviving and expanding SFTT depends on everyone. We need your financial contributions to continue our operation. While any amount is welcome, we suggest a $30 annual contribution from each member will enable us to succeed.

The IRS recognizes SFTT as a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Educational Foundation (IRS EIN 31-1592564).

Donations are tax deductible. Send us some moral support and encouragement to help in the struggle to improve combat readiness. Every little contribution helps. Mail your checks to:

Soldiers For The Truth Foundation
P.O. Box 11179
Greenwich CT 06831

Table of Contents

EDITOR'S NOTE: Article Submission Procedures/Subject Editors Sought

1. Try to keep articles to 750 words or less. SUBMIT IN MS WORD FORMAT, if possible!

2. Submit your piece to one of the following editors:
Ed Offley, Editor
defensewatch@aol.com

J. David Galland, Deputy Editor
defensewatch02@yahoo.com

DefenseWatch is looking for volunteer subject editors willing to assist in screening and editing article submissions. We are looking for experts in the following areas: U.S. Army, U.S. Coast Guard, Special Operations forces/counter-terrorism, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and veterans affairs. If interested in joining the DefenseWatch team, please contact Ed Offley at defensewatch@aol.com.

Table of Contents

GLOSSARY OF MILITARY ACRONYMS:

We've had numerous requests from troops in different branches of the military to establish this link so that we will all know how "all you others" talk that talk. The DoD site is not working but the nonprofit Federation of American Scientists has an excellent online acronym roster. Please see below:

http://www.fas.org/news/reference/lexicon/acronym.htm

Table of Contents

HACK BOOK SALES

Hack's books, About Face, Hazardous Duty, The Price of Honor and The Vietnam Primer can be found at www.hackworth.com. They make a great addition to any library. Hack is offering them at a special SFTT price.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe - Make Changes to your E-mail addresses:

An Automated Subscription Manager is Online at URL: (Coming soon)

Manual E-mail Subscriptions See Instructions below

To SUBSCRIBE to SFTT-News - Send e-mail to (Coming soon)

Enter [ subscribe sftt-news ] in the body of the message. No subject is required.

To UNSUBSCRIBE from SFTT-News - Send e-mail to (Coming soon)

Enter [ unsubscribe sftt-news ] in the body of the message. No subject is required.

For help or questions with the mailing list send to (Coming soon)

For help or suggestions on the new SFTT web, send e-mail to (Coming soon)