Abstract
The guys who cried wolf
“Study Warns of North Korean Threat,” read the headline. The story, which flashed across the Associated Press wire last November 3, said a new report had revealed a “dramatic improvement in North Korea's missile capabilities.” The report suggested that North Korean weapons were now so advanced that Asia's “rogue nation” was poised to attack the United States with “high explosive chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear” weapons. North Korea, it seemed, had made so much progress in the last five years that it now ranked “with Russia and China as one of the greatest missile proliferation threats in the world.”
Last September 5, North Korean television broadcast this picture of what it described as the Taepo Dong 1-C.
That sounded serious— and official. And it was a report with a congressional imprimatur—or so it seemed. It was, after all, issued by the “Speaker's North Korea Advisory Group,” which the AP described as composed “of senior members of Congress.”
If a congressional committee was saying that North Korea had spent the last five years going from impoverished troublemaker to armed and deadly hightech military competitor, the United States had better pay attention, hadn't it? And shouldn't reporters and editors stand up and take notice, too?
As it turns out, maybe not. The report from the North Korea Advisory Group—a.k.a. the “Gilman report” after Republican Cong. Benjamin Gilman of New York—is actually the work of a group of Republican lawmakers who got together to make pronouncements about the North Korean “threat” that they were unlikely to have been able to make in a less self-interested or more bipartisan forum. For one thing, the report includes a chart that shows the range of North Korean missiles rising in tandem with increases in U.S. humanitarian aid— the food and medicine sent to starving people. (That bags of rice could increase the range of missiles might be possible, one supposes, if North Korean children are throwing the missiles with their bare hands.)
In addition, in what seems to be an increasingly popular trend in Washington, the report's summary is sometimes at odds with the tone—and the sub-stance—of its more detailed chapters.
Point one of the summary describes North Korea as threatening the United States with annihilation by Taepo Dong. Chapter one reveals that this missile is a once-tested, three-stage rocket that failed over the sea of Japan in 1998. A graph in chapter one, however, shows that the threat to the United States is actually based not on this missile, but on a “Taepo Dong II,” which has yet to make any sort of appearance. (As to actual missiles, the advisory group describes North Korea's smaller “No Dong” missile as accurate within one to two miles; the accuracy of the Taepo series it describes as “unknown.” Another commentator— Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, a retired army colonel writing in the Japan Policy Research Institute's November 1999 newsletter, describes the Taepo series as “the Scarlet Pimpernel of missiles.” “It wobbles here, it wobbles there, it wobbles everywhere,” he writes.)
Assessment by John McTague, a member of the committee investigating construction delays and cost overruns at the National Ignition Facility, of the theory held at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—that it was going to be easy to build NIF because Livermore had built lasers before, San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 1999.
Point two of the summary notes that North Korea's conventional forces have grown less capable over the past five years, but asserts that the North has compensated by building “an advantage in long-range artillery, short-range ballistic missiles, and special operations forces.” Chapter two, however, upon which point two is based, is a little more explicit about the extent to which the North is less capable.
While warning that one “should not underestimate North Korea's fundamental military might,” it admits that the North Korean army, like the civilian population, is desperate for food. “As the North Korean famine intensified after 1995,” says chapter two, “military personnel were allocated 700-900 grams of food a day.” (The United Nations, the report notes, considers 450 grams the minimum needed for human survival.) Chapter two also discusses North Korea's equally desperate shortage of fuel. “Lack of fuel,” says chapter two dryly, would be “a key factor in North Korea's inability to sustain military operations.”
The Gilman report rounds out with several other hard-hitting investigative points. “Does North Korea pose a greater threat to international stability than five years ago?” Why yes, says the report, it does. And it can do so (point four), because it is supported by food aid from the United States. Furthermore (point five), North Korea's government has become even more oppressive and authoritarian than before.
Star Wars advocates— pardon me, National Missile Defense advocates— have been squirmy ever since 1995, when a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that “no country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 states and Canada.” Two years ago, the Rumsfeld commission was appointed by Congress in the hope that it would uncover a more pressing missile threat. To some extent, it did—but not to the degree that unrepentant Star Warriors like advisory group member Curt Weldon would like. One can only conclude that the “Speaker's Advisory Group on North Korea” was formed in the hope that it would finish the job.
The problem is, issuing questionable reports simply expends the issuers' news-making capital—or maybe such reports are intended only for news outlets that share the same political outlook.
So it may be a good thing that more and more “news releases” or “special re-ports”—even from seeming committees of Congress— are losing their power to make news. Even the writer of that first AP story on November 3 felt required to seek another opinion. Asked to comment, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a recognized expert on the subject, described the Gilman report as a “hyped up account.” And as for the group's conclusion that North Korea had become a greater threat in the last five years, Albright suggested that “a more balanced approach may have concluded the opposite.”
—Linda Rothstein
WEB Watch
Time, no doubt, has been on our minds lately. Millennium fever, Y2K, and myriad end-of-the-world prognostications all conveniently converged on December 31 to make the New Year's countdown a particularly anxious one. But not all clocks tell the same time. Here are a few to ponder.
time.gov
Did Y2K return your computer's clock to year zero? Worry not. The U.S. government's official “atomic clocks,” which are maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Naval Observatory, should have weathered the turnover to 2000 without a hitch.
Atomic clocks are based on the cesium atom's natural frequency which, according to the NIST, is “inherently stable” for millions of years. In 1967, the old second based on the earth's rotation was officially replaced by the atomic clock's second, defined “as exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations or cycles of the cesium atom's resonant frequency.”
At time.gov you can have the precision of an atomic clock—the time should be accurate, according to the site, to “within one second, depending on internet de-lays”—right on your computer desktop. The site, which is jointly maintained by the naval observatory and the NIST, also offers links to exhibits about the history of timekeeping and clock mechanics.
Time.gov provides official time for U.S. time zones only. For those who live outside the United States, there is a Coordinated Universal Time display and a link to an international time zones web site.
panaga.com/clocks/clocks.htm
At Internet Clocks, Counters, and Countdowns, web browsers will find a multitude of clocks ticking down to disaster. The site provides links to every conceivable countdown to catastrophe and doomsday clock.
One of the sites listed at Internet Clocks, Counters, and Countdowns.
Included on its list of links: environmental doomsday, asteroid doomsday, Armageddon countdown, time until planetary alignment, countdown to the peak in the 11-year cycle of solar flares, a U.S. Military Spending clock, and, of course, the Bulletin clock, which is billed as “The Original Doomsday Clock.”
The “Rapture Index,” one of the more portentous sites listed on the page, diligently records human calamities in an attempt to divine the coming of the “end time.” As the site explains, “The Rapture Index by no means is meant to predict the rapture, however, the index is meant to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture.”
Just in case the apocalypse isn't your cup of tea, the site also features a variety of other clock-related links, including links to various “alternative” time systems, “meta-clock” pages, and miscellaneous clocks. Under “Alternate Time Systems,” for example, you can find links to the 28-hour-day page, the Daylight Savings Time protest page, and the Universal Time Organisation's metric time clock.
millennium.greenwich2000.com
So, you procrastinated too long and were unable to get tickets to the best millennium New Year's party in town. Well, dry those tears; there's plenty of time to prepare for the “real” new millennium, which is still a year away. As this “purist” millennium countdown page, hosted by the Greenwich Observatory, explains according to the Gregorian calendar, there was no year zero. As a result, the new millennium begins on January 1, 2001—something Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick fans realized decades ago.
—Michael Flynn
In brief
▀ Denting the Trident
Inspired by the 1996 World Court ruling that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is “generally illegal” under international law, peace activists from Britain's Trident Ploughshares 2000 have staged a series of clandestine raids on Trident submarine bases to “disarm” the subs with hammers and drills and other implements of destruction. Last June, three activists used inflatable rafts to enter the Faslane naval base in Loch Goil, Scotland. Before they were apprehended, they damaged 20 computers and jammed winches and machinery on the base's floating submarine laboratory. In October, the “Trident Three” had their day in court. Remarkably, the judge, Sheriff Margaret Gimblett, accepted their lawyer's argument that the Trident submarines were illegal, and therefore the activists were simply trying to prevent a crime. Since acquitting the three, however, the judge has had second thoughts. As she told BBC Online (October 22), “I am rather worried about my job after this. I certainly won't be expecting a mention in the Queen's Honours list. I may even have made a wrong decision, but the cards will have to fall as they may.”
The “Trident Three” celebrate after winning a victory in court.
▀ Keeping secrets, part 1
Steven Aftergood's Secrecy & Government Bulletin reports that last fall Sen. Jon Kyl added a provision to the Defense Authorization Act that will force a costly re-evaluation of millions of pages of previously declassified documents. Why? Kyl, quoted in the August 26, 1999 Washington Times, claimed that a “recent 140-page study” had “detailed numerous examples of key [weapon] design information that was not intended to be released, but, in fact, was released” as a result of Clinton administration declassification efforts. The study Kyl was citing, however, was a January 1999 Energy Department report titled Drawing Back the Curtain of Secrecy: Restricted Data Declassification Decisions, 1946 to the Present. That report lists no examples of improperly declassified materials; it just describes information that was properly declassified in accordance with the Atomic Energy Act. Because of Kyl's effort, says Aftergood, legislation was passed “predicated on a falsehood.”
▀ Secrets, part 2
According to Britain's Guardian newspaper (October 22, 1999), just-released historical documents show that in March 1945 Winston Churchill blocked an attempt by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to tell the French about the atomic bomb. Although Churchill believed they could not be trusted with the secret of the bomb, the French shouldn't take Churchill's doubts about them personally—in 1941 Churchill said he wanted Britain to build a bomb of its own because he didn't trust Americans.
▀ It depends on how you look at it
The November 4, 1999 Albuquerque Journal noted that people who break into and mess up other people's web sites have taken to describing their activities as “hac-tivism.” The Pentagon, however, calls such activities “cyber warfare”— something it seriously considered engaging in during the conflict in Yugoslavia, but then decided not to (Washington Post, November 8, 1999). According to the Post, the Defense Department's legal advisers warned that if U.S. forces misused cyber attacks they might be charged with war crimes.
▀ Equal opportunity … bioweapons
The U.S. government is taking the threat of agroterrorism seriously. Last October, the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings on the “agricultural biological weapons threat,” with testimony provided by the CIA, FBI, the Agriculture Department, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. But fears of deadly pathogens striking America's heartland haven't kept the United States from working on its own anti-crop agents. According to New Scientist (September 11, 1999), the U.S. government and the United Nations have been hard at work brewing up fungi designed to destroy coca plants and opium poppies. The United Nations says the toxins are “pest control agents” to be used in countries whose governments consent. The editors at New Scientist, however, say the fungi “look like biological weapons, which are supposed to be prohibited by an international treaty.”
▀ Noted in passing …
In November, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation passed on a report made to the Western Australian Parliament about a nuclear-waste-carrying truck that also made food and beer deliveries along its route…. Pentagon officials who want to install a missile defense radar in Alaska got support from State Sen. Loren Leman of Anchorage, who pointed out that an area near Delta Junction would be ideal because “this summer's wildfire has conveniently killed every tree for miles” (Anchorage Daily News, November 6, 1999)…. The Justice Department shot down a CIA bid to be exempt from rulings by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel…. Zambia's Sunday Times reports that a “kwaito band, Cream,” shot its new music video at “a really hot location”—namely Pelindaba, once a secret South African nuclear plant. Band members “really liked the textured concrete walls.” … Although no sign of radiation exposure has been found in four years of testing, the Energy Department requires all bow hunters who participate in the annual deer hunt near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (80 miles south of Columbus, Ohio) to send the liver and one kidney of every deer they kill to a laboratory for testing…. Last July, Newsweek reported that the stealth fighter would have been a lot stealthier if it had been painted pale blue instead of black—but that wasn't “macho” enough for the air force.
The fastest house in the industry
While many of us feel we spend way too much time in airplanes these days, MaxPower Aerospace, a Tennessee firm specializing in the resale of aircraft and aircraft parts, is betting that a few people out there just can't get enough of the jetset life. To accommodate, they're marketing 1,210-square-foot houses made from the retrofitted bodies of retired Boeing 727s.
For around $200,000, MaxPower says, it will deliver the aircraft to your property, build a support column, mount the 727 on top of it, and re-attach the wings (which become a pair of lovely sun decks). For no additional charge, the new home can be outfitted with original airline extras such as in-flight galleys and closets. You can even unplug the smoke detectors with impunity! Special installations, such as those on a private lake, cost more depending on where the support column needs to be anchored. So far, one aircraft has been ordered and three more are available.
MaxPower vice president Mike McFall notes that their 727s are excellent for areas that experience hurricane- or tornado-force winds that would send an ordinary mobile home reeling. Because a MaxPower aircraft home can rotate freely on top of its column, the home can be made to face into the wind, making it as durable as when it cruised the jet stream. Thoughtfully, however, MaxPower modifies the wings to no longer develop lift, so they won't take your new home back into the jet stream.
—Bret Lortie
“Our relationship will never work! Whenever it gets interesting, you've got to rush to the surface for air.”
