RE: [Futurework] collective search items follow up

[Karen Watters Cole]

For those who have not seen it, here is the news item below as it appears in the NYT today.   Draft Report Said to Cite No Success in Iraq Arms Hunt By DOUGLAS JEHL and JUDITH MILLER, NYT, September 25, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/international/middleeast/25WEAP.html?hp WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — An early draft of an interim report by the American leading the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq says his team has not found any of the unconventional weapons cited by the Bush administration as a principal reason for going to war, federal officials with knowledge of the findings said today. The long-awaited report by David Kay, the former United Nations weapons inspector who has been leading the American search for illicit weapons, will be the first public assessment of progress in that search since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. Mr. Kay's team has spent nearly four months searching suspected sites and interviewing Iraqi scientists believed to have knowledge about the country's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Kay and his team had not found illicit weapons. They said they believed that Mr. Kay had found evidence of precursors and dual-use equipment that could have been used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons. They also said that Mr. Kay's team had interviewed at least one Iraqi security officer who said he had worked in such a chemical and biological weapons program until shortly before the American invasion in March. Sections of the interim report by Mr. Kay are expected to be made public later this month. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, Bill Harlow, said in a statement today that Mr. Kay was still receiving information from the field and that his progress report would not "rule anything in or out." The administration's inability to uncover evidence of banned weapons has prompted increasing criticism from Capitol Hill. Until now, administration officials had insisted that they did not know what Mr. Kay's report might conclude. The effort by the C.I.A. today to emphasize the interim nature of any document seemed intended to minimize political fallout from his findings.    … Addressing the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Bush showed no sign of backing away from the administration's view that the Iraqi claims were not credible. At the White House on Monday, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said that at the time of the war there had been "nobody who knew anything about Iraq who believed that Saddam Hussein had destroyed all of his weapons of mass destruction." "I think we will find that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction can be accounted for and we'll know the truth," Ms. Rice said, but she added: "David Kay is not going to be done with this for quite some time."   (end of excerpts)       Anyone want to check these out? ***************************************************************************************** From another list:  KAY REPORT ON IRAQI WMD MAY NOT BE RELEASED In an astonishing reversal, the Bush Administration signaled that it will not release the final report of the Iraq Survey Group led by David Kay, which was intended to provide a comprehensive assessment of the state of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs.   "I would not count on reports," said National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on September 22.  "David Kay is not going to be done with this for quite some time... I suppose there may be interim  reports. I don't know when those will be, and I don't know what the public nature of them will be," she said.  Her remarks came near the end of a press briefing and seem to have gone unnoted.  http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/09/wh092203.html   A story in the London Sunday Times two weeks ago said that the Kay report had been "shelved" because the Iraq Survey Group had found no evidence of Iraqi WMD and that a report might never be published.  "Britain and America have decided to delay indefinitely the publication of a full report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after inspectors found no evidence that any such weapons exist."  ("Iraq Weapons Report Shelved" by David Leppard, Sunday Times, September 14).  But in response to a reporter's question, the White House dismissed the Times account.   "I haven't heard anything like that. David Kay continues to do his work. He's been compiling massive amounts of documents about Iraq's history of weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction program," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan on September 16.      http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/09/wh091603.html   Secretary of State Colin Powell also recently reinforced widespread expectations of an authoritative, near-term public assessment of the Iraqi WMD program.  "Dr. Kay will be putting out a report in the very near future, and I look forward to seeing it, as everyone else does," he said on September 14: http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/09/dos091403.html   But now "everyone else" can forget about it, judging from Dr. Rice's comments this week, because Dr. Kay will not be "putting out" his report after all.   "The American people should be prepared for surprises," advised David Kay at a July 31 news briefing.  Indeed.   ******************************************************************************************* TERRORISM INFORMATION AWARENESS ALIVE AND WELL IN THE STATES Remember the "Terrorism Information Awareness" database controversy? That project would have allowed the Pentagon to assemble a huge collection of information on all U.S. citizens, including driver's license, credit card and financial records, etc., but Congress responded to citizens' privacy concerns by refusing to fund it. Now a similar project is take shape in more than a dozen states, fueled by $12 million in federal funds. Dubbed Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange), the database is being compiled and housed in a private company, but will be open to state and federal law officials, and perhaps even U.S. intelligence agencies.   The project ostensibly is aimed at identifying and tracking terrorists, but privacy advocates and others say the use of Seisint Inc., a Boca Raton, Fl., company founded by a millionaire who police say made his money flying planeloads of drugs back in the '80s, puts millions of Americans' personal data at risk. "It's federally funded, it's guarded by state police, but it's on private property? That's very interesting," says University of Florida law professor Christopher Slobogin, an expert in privacy issues. "If it's federally funded, the federal government obviously has a huge interest in it." Already California and Texas have backed away from the project, citing security concerns, and Florida officials acknowledge that Matrix appears to skirt the federal laws barring the U.S. government from collecting routine information on "innocent citizens." "The CIA doesn't have this now," says Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's intelligence office. "That's a major political issue we'll have to cross."   Snipped from Newscan Above the Fold (New York Times 24 Sep 2003) http://partners.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Terror...