Should 'Dirty Bomb' Suspect Get Trial?

— -- ACLU Urges Trial for ‘Dirty Bomb’ Suspect

N E W Y O R K, Sept. 27 — The American Civil Liberties Union filed legalpapers urging that a former Chicago gang member accused of plottingwith terrorists to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb be tried incourt.

In papers filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, the civilrights organization said "precedent and principle" require thatJose Padilla be tried in court, with a lawyer representing him,rather than held indefinitely as an "enemy combatant."

"The higher the stakes, the more important it is to ensure thatthe government does not act arbitrarily or in error," the ACLUwrote.

Padilla, 31, was arrested May 8 and secretly held in a federaljail on a material witness warrant issued by a New York grand jury.The government said Padilla twice met with senior al Qaedaoperatives in Karachi, Pakistan, in March and discussed a plot todetonate a radiological weapon in the United States.

On June 9, President Bush decided that Padilla was an enemycombatant and should be transferred to the control of the U.S.military. He was flown the next day to a Navy brig in Charleston,S.C.

Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, has argued in court that he isbeing held illegally and should be released.

—The Associated Press

FBI, CIA Offer No Apologies for Pre-9/11 Mistakes

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 27 — They came to Capitol Hill following reportswith how their agencies kept missing clues and warning signs aheadof the Sept. 11 attacks.

But CIA Director Cofer Black and Dale Watson, who oversawcounterterrorism efforts of the CIA and FBI, respectively, offeredno apologies.

They said their agencies did the best they could with inadequatestaffing, tight budgets and legal restrictions.

"Our people fought with what was provided them," Black toldthe House and Senate intelligence committees Thursday.

The committees are conducting an inquiry into the attacks.

The difficulties of stopping the attacks were described inwritten testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller, who said there'sno evidence anyone outside the 19 hijackers knew of the plot.

His testimony was offered in closed session in June and releasedThursday.

Mueller offered the caveat that he wasn't discussing the case ofZacarias Moussaoui, the suspicious student pilot who faces chargesof conspiring in the attacks.

"Discipline never broke down. They gave no hint to those aroundthem what they were about. They came lawfully. They lived lawfully.They trained lawfully. They boarded the aircraft lawfully," hesaid.

One hijacker, Nawaf al-Hazmi, even reported an attempted streetrobbery to police in Fairfax, Va., on May 1, 2001, but laterdeclined to press charges, Mueller said.

The U.S. government placed Al-Hazmi, who had suspected terroristconnections, onto a watchlist to deny him access to the country onAug. 24, 2001. Three days later, Al-Hazmi used a debit card in hisown name to buy tickets for the flight that crashed into thePentagon, Mueller said.

In reports over the last two weeks, Eleanor Hill, the inquirystaff director, outlined many missed opportunities which, ifconnected, might have caused the Sept. 11 plot to unravel.

They include a rise in intelligence reports about a possibleattack, a memo by a Phoenix FBI agent warning that al Qaeda may besending terrorists to U.S. flight schools, the arrest of Moussaouiin Minnesota, and the realization that two men linked to al Qaedain January 2000 may be in the country. They turned out to be amongthe hijackers.

The official said these clues were among thousands othersoffering a variety of scenarios for possible attacks at home andabroad.

Watson, retiring from his post as chief of the counterterrorismdivision, compared it to a maze.

"If you know where the end point of a maze is, it's certainlyeasier to work your way back to the starting point," he said. He said counterterrorism will never be perfect.

"We're like a soccer goalkeeper," he said. "We can block 99shots and no one wants to talk about any of those and the onlything anyone wants to talk about is the one that gets through."

In his testimony, Black stressed CIA successes in fightingterrorism. He said intelligence officials foiled a 1998 attack onthe U.S. embassy in Albania, a millennium plot in Jordan anduncovered threats to U.S. embassies in Yemen and France last year.

Black said they took him to the hearing early, noting he hadrejected an offer to appear anonymously behind the screen.

"When I speak, I think the American people need to look into myface, and I want to look the American people in the eye," he said. Lawmakers were largely deferential to the officials, praisingthe dedication of intelligence personnel. Some said that Congressshares any blame for the attacks by not providing enough resourcesor adequate laws.

—The Associated Press

Terrorism Insurance Challenges Insurers, Companies

N E W Y O R K, Sept. 27 — A year after the Sept. 11 terroristattacks, insurers are still struggling with how to cover commercialproperty against terrorism.

Most have dropped terrorism coverage where possible, leavingbuilding owners scrambling to protect their assets.

The coverage that is available is limited — no nuclear,biological or chemical events are included — and policies pay forless than $500 million in damage. The value of the twin towers ofthe World Trade Center was more than $7 billion.

It's also very expensive — in some cases more expensive thaninsuring the entire property value in the event of a fire.

Insurers are worried about taking on too much risk withouthaving a definite idea how frequently acts of terrorism could occurin the United States.

However, a new kind of catastrophe modeling — developed by thesame companies that pioneered hurricane and earthquake models — mayhelp ease some of the industry's fears and make more coverageavailable.

Hemant Shah, president of Risk Management Solutions, a SanFrancisco catastrophe modeler, says that if insurers can understandthe range of outcomes and guess their likelihood, they are morewilling to offer coverage.

That's been the case as better models have been developed forearthquakes, hurricanes and floods around the world, Shah said.

Several terrorism catastrophe models have been introduced intothe market in recent weeks. RMS introduced a model based on gametheory, the mathematical discipline featured in the movie ABeautiful Mind.

AIR Worldwide unveiled its own model that uses the "Delphimethod" to assess frequencies and locations of future attacks. TheDelphi method develops a statistical model based in part oninterviews with terrorism and military experts about where and howfuture terrorist attacks may develop.

Despite the new models, acceptance and implementation of thosemodels remains a longer process for the industry, observers say.

A few insurers began offering stand-alone terrorism insuranceearlier this year on a limited basis or with small coverageamounts. However, it still remains difficult for many commercialproperty owners to find coverage, the Insurance InformationInstitute's chief economist, Robert P. Hartwig, said in a recentreport.

"Many businesses are unable to obtain terrorism coverage at anyprice, especially higher-profile structures with potential forcatastrophic property and third-party losses," Hartwig said.

"Other businesses, when offered coverage, have frequentlydeclined, citing cost, the belief that they are unlikely to sustaindamage from a terrorist attack or their expectation that governmentaid will be available in the event that such an attack doesoccur."

A July 2002 survey by Prudential Securities, a unit ofPrudential Financial, found less than half of its commercialcustomers had any terrorism coverage.

A majority of those who obtained coverage faced higher premiums,coverage limits, higher deductibles, cancellation clauses of 60days or less and exclusions for nuclear, biological or chemicalattacks. Rate hikes ranged from a low of 20 percent to a high of200 percent, the survey found.

—The Associated Press

Government Mistakenly Gives Moussaoui Classified Documents

A L E X A N D R I A, Va., Sept. 27 — Even though former Oklahoma residentZacarias Moussaoui is barred from receiving classified documents,the man indicted as a Sept. 11 accomplice inadvertently received atreasure trove of them, according to court documents.

The government scoured Moussaoui's cell to locate the classifiedFBI interview reports, which were mixed in with similar butunclassified documents. Eventually, all the FBI reports inMoussaoui's possession were seized so the government could find theclassified documents.

For his part, Moussaoui chastised the government with a "Motionto Expulse the United States from the Arabian Discovery Cave."

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema on Thursday released all thecorrespondence, pleadings and court orders related to the affair.She granted a motion by Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, whoargued the government sought to hide the documents solely to avoidembarrassment.

In a letter to prosecutors soon after the mistake wasdiscovered, the judge suggested the government should not make abig deal out of the error.

"You may find in the final analysis that less harm will be doneby not drawing the defendant's attention to these documents," thejudge wrote on Aug. 23.

At the time, however, the government had identified only twoclassified documents in Moussaoui's possession. Prosecutors latersaid there were seven and eventually settled on 48.

U.S. Marshals who originally searched the cell in the AlexandriaDetention Center reported they couldn't locate all the records.

"Despite their hard work and valiant effort, the MarshalsService could not find two of the seven documents. Unfortunately,one of the remaining two documents is the most critical of theseven," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Spencer wrote.

On Sept. 5, Spencer wrote that the documents "are the propertyof the United States and the court has authority to order that theproperty be returned to the United States."

In a separate letter the same day Spencer wrote, "The defendantnow has access to national security information. ... The access tothis material by the defendant is a situation that, even if of ourown making, is improper and unacceptable. Simply put, it is illegaland dangerous for the defendant to possess the material, and theremust be some way that we can correct the situation."

Moussaoui, who is representing himself, has access to thousandsof non-classified documents. The court-appointed lawyers who assisthim are cleared to receive the secret records.

The French citizen, 34, goes on trial Jan. 6 on charges ofconspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to commit terrorism. TheJustice Department said it would seek the death penalty if he isconvicted.

Moussaoui lived and attended flight school in Norman, Okla., in2001.

—The Associated Press

N.Y. Firefighter Submits Memorial Building Design for WTC Site

M A N C H E S T E R, Conn., Sept. 27 — If nearly 30 years of firefighting hastaught Graham MacDonald anything, it's that safety always comesfirst.

Whether the well-being of rescue workers or the welfare ofbuilding occupants is at stake, MacDonald says, safety needs to beparamount even before an emergency happens.

So when the Manchester man watched last year as the events ofSept. 11 unfolded in New York City, he said he knew somethingneeded to be done to prevent such a "catastrophic loss of life"from happening again.

At the same time, MacDonald says, he knew those who had diedneeded to be memorialized.

So not long after the images of Sept. 11 flashed acrosstelevision screens last fall, MacDonald, a deputy chief with thefire department, set to work to create a building to replace theWorld Trade Center that would consider both safety andcommemoration.

As he sat on the back porch of his home this week, MacDonaldexplained how his building design not only honors the more than 400emergency workers and thousands of civilians who died in the WorldTrade Center collapse, but also provides state-of-the-art safetymeasures that never have been seen before.

MacDonald's design, brought to life on a computer screen byManchester resident Steven Daniels, includes a cluster of fivebuildings of 100 stories each, arranged in the shape of thefirefighters' Maltese Cross.

At the base of the buildings, a 5-foot-wide stone wall bordersthe site in the shape of a police officer's badge. The EmergencyMedical Services Star of Life is incorporated into a white marblefountain at the point on the police officer's badge.

dings, a concrete walkway called a "Path of Life" crosses theproperty. Footprints from the family members of those who diedwould be melded into the walkway to show how those lives left animpression on earth, MacDonald says.

But the dozens of safety features imagined for the buildingswhich could be constructed to any height and could house office andresidential space is where the heart of the design is.

To begin, MacDonald connected the individual buildings at eachfloor to provide another means of egress in an emergency, asidefrom a stairwell or elevator. Fire doors separate the buildings ateach end of the walkways, while sprinklers protect the walkwaysfrom fire.

High-speed elevators would bring firefighting equipment into thebuildings and electric carts would transport it throughout thestructures.

To combat the problem of high-rise building rescues, MacDonaldproposes equipping each building with exterior tracks so a bucketdevice could travel vertically and horizontally along the buildingfor quick rescues.

The problem with high-rise rescues is that a typical aerialladder hoisted from a fire truck can reach only about sevenstories, MacDonald explains. And the archaic practice of catchingpeople in a net as they jump off a building has been abandoned.

The bucket, he says, could pick up people from one building andbring them to another, presumably a "safe" building in the eventof an emergency, where they could exit via the stairwell or theelevator.

MacDonald has submitted his design to the Port Authority of NewYork and New Jersey and the Lower Manhattan DevelopmentCorporation.

Since he is not an architect, the Manhattan corporation has saidhe cannot submit a design for a building. Civilians may only submitdesigns for a memorial, even if it's a memorial that happens to bea building. Nevertheless, the Port Authority has acceptedMacDonald's design for consideration.

Just who is in charge of the World Trade Center land hasn't beendecided, MacDonald explains. The Port Authority may give up itsrights in exchange for land elsewhere in the city and if that's thecase, MacDonald's design would be out of consideration.

"If you don't try, you don't know," Daniels says, adding thatthe hours spent after work and on weekends creating the design wereworth the effort, even if it ends up not being considered. "Assoon as I saw it I said, 'We have to do it.' The hours werenothing."

The vision has gotten exposure in the firefighting world on anIMAX movie screen at a national firefighters convention and in aninternational trade publication.

But MacDonald wants New Yorkers to hear his ideas, and has askedConnecticut residents who learn of his design to pass along theconcept to anyone they may know in the city.

"I'm trying as hard as I can to reach people," MacDonald says."It might have an influence."

—The Associated Press