8A
Thursday, November 30,1995
NATION/WORLD
UNIVERSITY DAI LY KANSAN
U.S. Army experts survey Bosnia
The Associated Press
KALESIJA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — U.S. military experts arrived in northern Bosnia yesterday to scout the battered countryside where thousands of GIs are to keep the peace.
"We've got a lot to do and very little time to do it," said Col. John Brown, splashing through the mud in a U.N. pickup truck.
Within weeks, some 20,000 U.S. soldiers are to begin arriving. They will fan out across northeastern Bosnia.
French, British and other troops will patrol the rest of the country.
In the meantime, Brown's teams will be bouncing over hundreds of miles of northeastern Bosnia, checking landing strips, potole- riddled roads, scores of villages
and many minefields.
The Gls will face "the same dangers that have been here for several years and will continue. That's why we're down here," said Brown, chief of staff for the 1st Armored Division.
Brown and nine other officers from the division flew from Germany to the Croatian city of Solit.
Shortly after arriving, the team made its first foray into the smogshrouded hills around the U.N. airbase at Tuzla.
"We're just taking a look around," Brown said during a stop in burned-out Kalesija. The town, about 10 miles east of Tuzla, was on the frontlines through much of the war and has been empty since May 1992.
AP reporters followed the truck saw it turn down one road
and stop within sight of former rebel Serb positions, now in government hands. The truck stopped cautiously and turned around to avoid possible mines.
Just east of the Tuzla airbase, the team hesitated, then plunged into an enormous field once used for small civil aircraft. Now it's a sea of soggy grass and ankle-deep mud.
Spewing muck behind, the truck plowed through as the officers took in the landscape that conceivably could become the Army's staging ground, home to makehift barracks or a baseball field — or nothing at all.
Brown said there are all kinds of options for how the field could be used.
As the officers ventured into an abandoned warehouse, they had one of their first encounters with
the locals; a half-dozen Muslim boys with curious, wry smiles.
"Hi, how're you doing?" one of the officers said. The boys giggled and one of them mimicked in return, "HI."
Brown said his team would use its observations during the trip to decide how many soldiers and supplies to station around Tuzla, and whether to base the U.S. headquarters here or elsewhere.
"We'll ensure that wherever they go, (civilians) will be secure. And then we'll look at access and other considerations," he said.
"You guys get everything you need? the team's U.S. Army driver and guide asked at the warehouse. With a polite grunt of assent, Brown and his entourage trudged back up a road, climbed into their truck and drove on.
NATO expects to gather a peacekeeping force of 60,000 in Bosnia within several months. Where the troops will come from:
NATO troops in Bosnia
NATO troops in Bosnia
60. 000
*1,000 from each of nine other nations
SOURCE: Defense Department; research by PIT CARR
*29/95
TOTAL:
Additional U.S. troops
The U.S. will also use more than 17,000 troops stationed outside Bosnia to support the operation:
Congress clamps down on lobbyists
In Croatia, other former Yugoslav nations (except Bosnia)
5,000
In countries on Bosnia's perimeter, to handle logistics
3,000
Knight-Ridder Tribune/DAVID ARBANA
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Stung by polls that indicate the public still believes lobbyists have runaway influence in Washington, Congress yesterday approved the first overhaul of lobbying law in half a century.
abuses."
President Clinton said he would sign the bill that would require lobbyists to disclose information many would prefer to hide: who their clients are, the issues they are seeking to influence and how much they spend on persuading Congress and the executive branch.
"There may be some activities that have been going on quietly, secretly that will stop because of the light of day," said Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla, a primary sponsor of the bill. "I believe there have been
Yesterday's 419-0 House vote — following a 98-0 vote by the Senate in July — belied the difficulty of pulling the bill through the legislative thicket. At least 10 times since the first, loophole-riddled lobbying regulations were passed in 1946, efforts to update the law had ended in failure.
While reformers called the bill progress, they acknowledged it was not perfect. A particularly large omission was an exemption from disclosure for so-called "grass-roots" lobbying, the fastest-growing area of the persuasion business — including activities such as advertising, toll-free phone lines and computerized direct mail aimed at generating phone calls and letters from the public to Washington.
Canady and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., promised that those and other leftoverswould be addressed in future legislation.
The current registration law has been ignored frequently. Some 6,500 lobbyists are registered, but by some estimates that amounts to just one-tenth of those whose jobs are aimed at influencing the government. Those who do register disclose little meaningful information.
The new law would close many loopholes by broadening the definition of lobbying to include not only direct contacts with policymakers and their aides, but also preparation and research intended to be used to influence policy.
Disclosure reports would be required every six months; noncompliance could lead to civil fines up to $50,000.
Student caught sending e-mail bomb
The Associated Press
NEWARK, N.J. — The FBI has accused a Monmouth University Junior of committing computer-assisted revenge by sending 24,000 electronic messages to two administrators and crashing the school's message system.
It took about five hours to fix the e-mail system at the West Long Branch school on Nov. 20, said Grey Dimenna, university general counsel.
The random-text messages were sent automatically by an E-mail bomb program, Dimenna said.
Dominick LaScala appeared in court Tuesday on federal charges of using a computer used in interstate commerce to send data he knew would damage a system, a felony; and using a computer with reckless disregard, a misdemeanor.
LaScala was freed on $10,000 ball. No plea was entered.
Systems operators and FBI agents traced the messages in less than two days to LaScala, 21, of Bethpage, N.Y., FBI Special Agent John Mahoney said in a complaint.
The messages were traced through various Internet accounts in two states to an account maintained by another Monmouth student, Mahonev said.
LaScala's university computer privileges had been suspended for ignoring requests to stop posting commercial messages on inappropriate parts of the Internet.
School administrators haven't decided whether LaScala will face university discipline, which could include expulsion, Dimenna said.
If convicted on both federal counts, he could face a maximum of six years in prison and a $350,000 fine.