Judge Orders Release of Detainee Names

— -- White House Defends Pre-Sept. 11 Terror Review

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 5 — Bush administration officials say they movedas quickly as possible to assemble a plan for eliminating theal Qaeda terror network, defending a review that took eight monthsand was completed only a week before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Clinton administration had handed off to the incoming Bushteam detailed assessments of the threat, and offered ideas on howto counter al Qaeda.

But aides to President Bush took issue Sunday with a report inthis week's Time magazine that the current administration's reviewof its predecessor's briefings became bogged down in bureaucracy.

The Bush White House denied receiving any firm plans for dealingwith al Qaeda, which has been tied to the attacks on the WorldTrade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

The Clinton administration did not present an aggressive newplan to topple al Qaeda during the transition, said White Housespokesman Sean McCormack.

"We were briefed on the al Qaeda threat and what the Clintonadministration was doing about it," he said. "These effortsagainst al Qaeda were continued in the Bush administration."

According to Time, Clinton's anti-terror czar, Richard Clarke,offered detailed proposals: arresting al Qaeda personnel, chokingoff the group's financing, aiding nations fighting the organizationand increasing covert action in Afghanistan to deny al Qaedasanctuary.

Clarke, who stayed on in the Bush administration, also calledfor a substantial increase in support for the anti-NorthernAlliance in Afghanistan and for planning of airstrikes on Afghanterror camps.

But a senior Bush administration official said Sunday theClinton White House offered the incoming Bush team only ideas onhow to "roll back" the threat over a three- to five-year period.

Soon after it began studying the issue, the new administrationdecided a rollback was inadequate, and began planning foreliminating al Qaeda entirely, said the official, speaking oncondition of anonymity.

Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, attended ameeting during the transition at which the Clinton and Bush teamsdiscussed counterterrorism issues.

Berger did not return calls to his office on Sunday.

A few days after Bush took office in January 2001, NationalSecurity Adviser Condoleezza Rice asked for proposals for majorpresidential policy review and, based on a response from Clark,ordered a review of policy toward al Qaeda, the senior officialsaid.

Top administration officials approved the "comprehensivestrategy to eliminate al Qaeda" exactly one week before the Sept.11 attacks, McCormack said.

Questions about the administration's planning against al Qaedacome on top of disclosures that U.S. intelligence officialsintercepted communications in Arabic that made vague references toan impending attack on the United States. They contained thephrases, "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match is about tobegin."

The intercepts weren't translated until Sept. 12. Theirrelevance is uncertain.

— The Associated Press

Tape Shows Firefighters Reached South Tower Impact Zone

N E W Y O R K, Aug. 5 — A tape of emergency radio transmissions on Sept. 11 shows that firefighters reached the burning 78th floor of the south tower where the jetliner sliced through, nearly 30 floors higher than officials had estimated.

Four people who have listened to the tape said at least two firefighters reached the crash site and were helping the injured, The New York Times reported for Sunday editions.

The 78-minute tape was found in the rubble months ago but was not played until fire officials signed a confidentiality agreement.

The agreement was requested because the tape may be used as evidence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui, who faces the death penalty, has said he is a loyal member of al Qaeda but denies a role in Sept. 11.

Officials had thought that firefighters had not climbed higher than the 50th floor in either tower. United Flight 175 crashed into the south tower between the 78th and 84th floors. American Airlines Flight 11 sliced through the north tower near the 91st floor.

Most of the transmissions on the tape came from the south tower.The fire department has identified the voices of at least 16 firefighters on the recording, and the families were invited to listen to the tape Friday after signing confidentiality agreements.

Debbie Palmer, whose husband, Battalion Chief Orio Palmer, can be heard on the tape, would not break her agreement but said the recording gave her some peace about her husband's last moments.

"I didn't hear fear, I didn't hear panic," she told the Times. "When the tape is made public to the world, people will hear that they all went about their jobs without fear, and selflessly."

— The Associated Press

Navy's Elite SEALs Seek to Diversify

C O R O N A D O, Calif., Aug. 5 — The Navy SEAL unit is one of the most elite in the U.S. military, but one of its toughest battles has come on the home front: attracting more minorities.

However, the special warfare branch — historically one of the military's whitest segments — has started succeeding in the past three years with a campaign that sends recruiters to predominantly black schools.

Since 1997, the share of minorities among the 1,600 enlisted SEALs has risen from just 9 percent to 13 percent, and from 6 percent to nearly 10 percent for the 600 SEAL officers, according to figures compiled by the RAND Institute and Naval Special Warfare Command.

Last month, the SEALs' recruiting effort was honored by the NAACP for its success in increasing diversity as well as changing mindsets within the tight-knit organization.

The top SEAL, Rear Adm. Eric Olson, said the biggest barrier to attracting minorities is perception, not qualification.

Minority applicants have graduated from the punishing six-month screening process — which eliminates seven out of every 10 who attempt it — at the same rate as whites, he said.

"The problem has been getting them to show up in numbers," said Olson. Many minorities either never considered the SEALs, he said, or believed they had no chance of being accepted. "The sense that we are an elite force prevented some who had the ability, the potential, to serve as SEALs from starting that journey."

A 1999 RAND study, commissioned by Congress, found that blacks were underrepresented in the SEALs and other military special operations units, and it noted that the Sea-Air-Land force was widely perceived as a "white" organization.

Olson, who assumed command of Naval Special Warfare in Coronado that same year, said he believes diversity is both "simply right" and practical for a force that routinely operates around the globe, often in secret.

"The more diverse we are, the more we are in some way like the people in the places we go, the more quickly and successfully we can do what we went there to do," Olson said.

In 1999, 18 minorities signed up for SEAL training, and seven graduated. In February, there were 57 minority candidates, with 18 graduating.

The SEALs' share of minorities still lags the Navy's, where minorities are 17 percent of the 400,000 sailors and 20 percent of its 76,000 officers, but that could change over time, as more minorities complete the 2½ years of training to become a full-fledged SEAL team member.

As with other front-line combat positions, women are barred from special forces. As of 1999, 61 percent of possible positions in the Army were open to women, 91 percent in the Navy, 62 percent in the Marines and 99 percent in the Air Force. The major fields closed to women include infantry, armor, special forces/SEAL and submarine warfare.

The SEALS went outside the ranks to find a leader for its diversity effort — Dr. Warren Lockette, the force's 47-year-old civilian medical officer.

Lockette, who is black and led integration efforts at two Michigan medical schools, has sent white SEAL operators to recruit at predominantly black high schools, hoping that both the recruiter and his audience learn from the experience, and he set up mentoring for minority SEALs.

As a member of the selection board for SEAL officers, he also has challenged candidates to bring something unique to the organization, be it fluency in the Indonesian language or a graduate degree in oceanology.

"What I want people to do is not feel they have limitations," said Lockette.

He met one of his recruits, Richard Witt, when the Hispanic graduate student was at the University of Michigan researching the physical stresses on SEAL trainees.

Now a junior-grade lieutenant, Witt has talked up the SEALs to Navy ROTC students at colleges and high schools.

"The word is getting out, and now there is a system in place that continues to help others in the future as well," Witt said via e-mail from an undisclosed location overseas, where he is on an anti-terrorism mission. "I am an example of this system."

— The Associated Press

Healing the Battle Scars of Rescue Workers

P H I L A D E L P H I A, Aug. 5, —

They lived through the carnage of the worstterrorist attack on U.S. soil: the police, fire and rescue workerswho pulled bodies of the living and the dead from rubble, many ofthem their friends and colleagues.

Though their work has earned them the title of hero, rescuerswho lose co-workers continue to be haunted. Could they have donesomething differently that may have saved their partner's life? Didtheir own actions lead to a colleague's death? And why weren't theythe ones who died?

"We've been to 37 funerals of just our own people — we've hadas many as five a day — then we go back to work because we have12-hour tours," said Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Lt.Michael Brogan, who worked extensively in the rescue and recoveryefforts at the World Trade Center. "You need to vent emotionally,otherwise you're going to crack up."

Take stress and the trauma, add to it the resistance some lawenforcement workers have to counseling, and you get the potentialfor paralyzing fear and guilt — as well as an array of harmfulattempts to cope: alcoholism, depression, suicide.

In an effort to get officers the assistance they need after atraumatic event, a growing number of private groups and policeorganizations have launched programs that quickly dispatch policepsychologists and officers trained in peer support tobattle-scarred police departments.

"It's the old macho thing. … They're supposed to be able toleap tall buildings and all that," said Larry Glick, executivedirector of the National Tactical Officers Association, a40,000-member nonprofit professional group based in thePhiladelphia suburb of Doylestown. "They see [seeking help] asbeing a sign of weakness."

The group's Critical Incident Response Team is just one exampleof the growing number of organizations working to address thepsychological trauma rescuers experience as part of the job — something many agree was not well recognized in years past.

"We owe it to them to help them work through it, buthistorically we have not done that," said Donald R. Howell,executive director of the International Critical Incident StressFoundation, a 5,000-member nonprofit group outside Washington,D.C., that sent several hundred counselors to New York City afterSept. 11. "Things have evolved in such a positive way."

Brogan, a 25-year veteran, said for officers seeking help afterthe first World Trade Center attack in 1993, "there was nothing … and I think there were some long-term effects."

He said something else has changed since then, too: Moreofficers are willing to go through counseling, in part because oflessons learned from Oklahoma City, where six rescue and recoveryworkers took their own lives in the aftermath of the 1995 bombingof the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The blast killed 168people.

"The guys have seen me cry and I've seen them cry," Brogansaid. "We all know we're not supermen … but the adaptivenessI've seen is nothing short of miraculous."

Lillian Valenti, director of the Port Authority's medicalservices department, said the worst is likely to come becausepost-traumatic stress disorder symptoms sometimes don't show up forthe first year to 18 months after a catastrophe.

"We've only just begun," she said. "We have to help peopledeal with what has happened and cope with their fears about whatcould happen next."

— The Associated Press