Section A·Page 12
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, December 1, 1999
Nation/World
U.S. diplomat detained in Moscow for alleged espionage operation
Strained relations further deteriorate with latest conflict
The Associated Press
MOSCOW—Threatening to further strain already thorny relations, Russia said yesterday its security services caught a U.S. diplomat trying to collect secret military information from a Russian citizen.
Russian security officials said Cheri Leberknight, a political attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, worked for the CIA and was caught red-handed while conducting an espionage operation. Officials also said they seized an array of spying devices.
The brief detention dominated Russian newscasts yesterday, with beaming Russian intelligence officials boasting that they had not lost their touch when it came to grabbing Western spies.
"The recent operations of Russian agents clearly testify to the fact that we not only haven't lost our mastery, but we're ready to actively counteract intelligence agents of the richest countries of the world," said Alexander Zdanovich of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the
Soviet-era KGB.
U. S. Embassy officials refused to comment about the incident.
When asked in Washington about the Lebeknight case, President Clinton said, "What we should do is investigate this like we do all others, but I don't think we should stop our efforts to try to drastically cut nuclear weapons or end corruption in Russia or do all the other things we're supporting."
A Petty Officer of the U.S. Navy was arrested in the United States earlier this month on charges of spying for Russia — raising the possibility of a tit-for-tat arrest, as often happened during the Cold War. Russian officials insisted the cases were not linked.
Relations between the United States and Russia already are strained by Moscow's military campaign in Chechnya, major arms control agreements, corruption scandals and NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia this spring.
Leberknight, a second secretary in the embassy's political section, was detained in Moscow on Monday evening and released shortly afterward, said Zdanovich.
"Detention of a diplomat is a very serious action, and we weighed everything before doing it," he said. "We had to do it because of the danger that very serious
The Interfax news agency quoted unidentified security officials as saying Leberknight was collecting information about Russian nuclear weapons.
secrets could be smuggled abroad."
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said he hoped the Leberknight incident would not damage U.S.-Russian ties but added that such episodes didn't help improve the climate in relations.
U. S.-Russian relations have steadily deteriorated since U.S. and British strikes on Iraq a year ago. Russia harshly criticized NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia and U.S. plans to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
U. S. criticism of Moscow's military action in Chechnya has irritated Russia and added to tensions.
In recent years, Russian officials frequently have accused Western nations of spying on Russia and have arrested several suspected agents.
The last time the Russians publically accused an American diplomat of spying was in February 1994, when Moscow expelled U.S. Embassy counselor James L. Morris. The move came in response to Washington's expulsion of an alleged Russian intelligence officer.
Navy charges petty officer with giving data to Russia
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON— The Navy has charged an 18-year veteran with espionage for allegedly providing Russia with highly classified information about U.S. eavesdropping, officials said yesterday.
Navy representative Lt. Matt O'Neal said Petty Officer 1st class Daniel M. King, 40, was in military custody at Quantico, Va., awaiting a military hearing. He was arrested Oct. 28 in Washington and was charged Nov. 5. The case was not disclosed by the Pentagon until CBS News reported it Monday night.
Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said King was accused of passing secrets to the Russians in 1994. Pentagon representative Rear Adm. Craig Quigley confirmed espionage charges were filed but he could not identify the country involved or other details.
"This is still very much a work in progress, with the investigation continuing." Quigley said.
In Moscow yesterday, officials said the Russian security service briefly detained a U.S. diplomat accused of gathering secret military information. Cheri Leberknight, the second secretary in the U.S. Embassy's political section, was detained Monday evening and released shortly afterward, said Alexander Zdanovich, chief representative for the Federal Security Service.
U. S. Embassy officials refused to comment on the Moscow report.
At the Pentagon, Quigley said he knew of no connection between the Moscow case and the disclosure of King's arrest.
King, a native of Elyria, Ohio, was assigned to a Navy communications decoding unit at Fort Meade, MD., at the time of the suspected crime.
O'Neal said that as far as the Navy could determine, King's supposed espionage activity was a one-time offense.
A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said King admitted to mailing a computer disk of data to the Russian Embassy in Washington. It included information on the use of U.S. submarines to eavesdrop on Russian undersea communications cables, the official said.
O'Neal said King came under suspicion earlier this year after a routine lie detector test. The Navy then launched an investigation that resulted in King's arrest in October.
Researchers note chemical imbalance in ill Gulf veterans
The Associated Press
CHICAGO—Brain scans of soldiers who believe they suffer from Gulf War illness suggest they have brain damage, possibly from chemicals they were exposed to during the conflict, researchers reported yesterday.
The researchers said veterans who reported symptoms of the illness had lower levels of a certain brain chemical than healthy veterans of the 1991 conflict.
"This is the first time ever we have proof of brain damage in sick Gulf War veterans," said the lead researcher, James L. Fleckenstein, professor of radiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
"They can be believed — they're not
malingering, they're not depressed, they're not stressed. There's a hope for treatment, and there's hope for being able to monitor the progress of the disease."
The researchers reported that magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which measures body chemistry, revealed that veterans who believe they have the illness have lower-than-normal levels of a chemical, N-acetyl-aspartate, in the brain stem and basal ganglia.
The brain stem controls some of the body's reflexes, and the basal ganglia are switching stations for nerve impulses controlling movement, memory and emotion. The basal ganglia, for example, are where the malfunctioning occurs that causes Parkinson's disease.
In the study, brain scans of 22 sick veterans revealed levels of N-acetyl-aspartate to 10 percent to 25 percent lower than those in 18 healthy veterans, Fleckenstein said. The finding held up in an additional six sick Gulf Veterans drawn from a different part of the military, he said.
Researchers believe that soldiers who became ill were those who had a genetic vulnerability to certain chemicals that they were exposed to during the war, including nerve gas, the insecticide DEET, pet flea collars some wore to repel pests and the drug pyridostigmine bromide. PB was administered to as many as 250,000 soldiers in the belief it would protect them from the toxic effects of nerve gas.
When toxins of the same type are given to animals, studies show, similar abnormalities in the same regions of the brain resulted. Fleckenstein said.
The new findings did not surprise Charles Townsend, 48, one of the study's subjects.
He served as an airborne sergeant with the 50th Signal Battalion during the war and now can reel off a list of his symptoms, including ulcers in his sinus cavities and colon, swollen lymph nodes, rashes, severe headaches and bleeding gums.
"You forget where you're going, you don't remember a word you want to speak as you're preparing to speak it. It interrups the train of thought." he said.
Fleckenstein said treatments are being explored by his colleague Robert W. Haley, chief of epidemiology at UT Southwestern. Haley helped define Gulf War syndromes and identify toxic exposures associated with the likelihood of having them.
Sierra Club attacks Bush's policies on environmental issues
The Associated Press
"We're thinking maybe we can get the people in New Hampshire
CONCORD, N.H.—Hoping to inject environmental issues into the political debate, the Sierra Club plans a series of advertisements taking aim at GOP front-runner George W. Bush's record in Texas.
The Washington-based environmental group began spending tens of thousands of dollars yesterday to blanket New Hampshire's television and radio news outlets with advertisements critical of the Texas governor's record on air pollution.
The group hopes its ads will inspire Bush's opponents to raise the issue during a debate in Manchester tomorrow.
to get him to clean up Texas, because our ability to get him to clean up the problems in Texas has failed," said Daniel Weiss, of the Sierra Club.
A number of recent studies have called attention to
Bush: is under fire for poor air quality in Texas cities
Houston surpassed Los Angeles as the country's smoggiest city, and four other Texas cities are on the verge of violating federal health standards for air quality.
Earlier this month, environmental groups said coal-burning plants in Texas released more mercury into the environment than those in any other state.
And, according to the Sierra Club, EPA data indicate Texas has the nation's highest level of carcinogenic and toxic air emissions and is the third worst state for water pollution.
"It's been a heyday in Texas for industry under Governor Bush," said Neil Carmen, a scientist with the Sierra Club in Texas. "It's been a lovefest between polluting industries and the governor."
Mindy Tucker, a representative for Bush, said the Sierra Club should be praising his environmental record. Bush was the first governor to get the power industry to voluntarily reduce air pollution from plants that were grandfathered out of clean-air legislation passed in the 1970s.
Environmentalists had lobbied for the plants to be closed if they did not meet pollution standards.
Carmen also criticized Bush for canceling an automobile inspection program that would have helped reduce smog from cars in Texas' two most polluted areas, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Two weeks ago, Bush sent to the EPA a revised plan for reducing
ozone-forming pollutants in the Houston and Beaumont areas, Tucker said.
At about the same time, Texas environmental regulators said they planned to cite a Chevron Chemical plant near Houston for emissions that they said contributed to the area's highest daily smog reading in a decade.
Carmen said Bush had become more aggressive toward the environment in recent weeks only because he was running for president.
"Suddenly, just coincidentally, Gov. Bush is running for the presidency, and he's decided to do something that looks a little more aggressive," Carmen said. "It begins to look very suspicious."
Lawyers,judge start sorting out Microsoft case
The Associated Press
CHICAGO— The long Microsoft antitrust battle moved to Chicago yesterday, where lawyers gathered with a judge who had agreed to serve as mediator between the software giant and the government
U. S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson determined earlier this month that Microsoft was a monopolist whose actions hurt consumers and stifled innovation. But he did not rule which antitrust laws Microsoft might have violated.
The one-day session with Richard Posner, chief judge of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was an introductory meeting, to be followed by future, still-unscheduled talks, said one person who planned to participate but asked not to be identified.
Jackson has said privately that, if negotiations for a settlement appeared to be moving forward, he might delay that phase of the case. The judge set the next round of courtroom arguments for Feb. 22.
Three previous efforts, all in Washington, have failed to produce an out-of-court settlement since the trial's start.
A prime 'question will be whether Microsoft should be allowed to continue including its Internet browser and other such features within Windows.
Windows 95 was the first to include Microsoft's Internet browser, a design decision aimed at stemming the raging popularity of a rival's Web software.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was not expected to attend the session.
"The first day is just to scope out the differences," said Robert Litan. A former senior Justice Department official, Litan helped negotiate a related settlement with Microsoft during 1994 talks that lasted three weeks and were punctuated by shouting matches across the table.
("Posner) will have a pretty good feel by the end of the second meeting if there is any prospect," Litan said.
"Each side has to put some kind of proposal on the table," said Mark Schechter, another former senior Justice official who participated in the 1994 settlement talks with Microsoft. "At that point, you can see how far apart the two sides are."
Jackson also cautioned that Posner, a conservative jurist who Jackson said was likely to be taken seriously, wouldn't tolerate unnecessary delaying tactics.
"I don't think that he is going to be prepared to waste a whole lot of time if it looks from the outset that it's not promising," Jackson told lawyers two weeks ago, according to a transcript. "But if he seems to think that more time is needed, that certainly is something I would be willing to consider, too."
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