"PETTY" CHARGES FOR "BIOTERROR" SUSPECT

It was clear from the start that the government's "bioterror" case against Buffalo artist Steve Kurtz was BS. Now, even federal prosecutors are admitting that the charges are bogus.

Last month, FBI agents quarantined the biotech-inspired artist's home -- and confiscated his recently-dead wife's corpse -- on terror suspicions. But on Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Buffalo charged Kurtz instead with a minor infraction, petty larceny, according to his supporters. No bioterror allegations were made.

Also indicted was Robert Ferrell, head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health. The charges concern technicalities of how Ferrell helped Kurtz to obtain $256 worth of harmless bacteria for one of Kurtz's art projects.

The laws under which the indictments were obtained--Title 18, United States Code, sections 1341 and 1343, covering mail and wire fraud--are normally used against those defrauding others of money or property, as in telemarketing schemes.

"Regardless of the plans these two men had for these materials, we can't allow people to buy and distribute bacterial agents like this under false pretenses," U.S. Attorney Michael Battle told the Buffalo News. It's not a case of terrorism, but it's a case of mail fraud."

YOU'RE IN THE ARMY - HOW?

How can soldiers who've left the Army be yanked back into service? Slate explains.

DEATHS DOG STUN GUN MAKER

For executives as Taser International, this should be the best day, ever. The company just signed a $1.8 million deal with the Pentagon – the largest in Taser's history.

But the stun-gun maker can't shake allegations that their supposedly "non-lethal" weapons have killed more than a few of their targets.

"In the past nine months, five people in Georgia, including three in metro Atlanta, have died after being shocked with Tasers by law enforcement officers. Nationally, 26 people who were shocked with Tasers while in custody died during that period — as many as had died in the previous 4 1/2 years the guns had been in use," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes.

"Las Vegas police will re-evaluate Taser gun training after a coroner's jury blamed the death of a handcuffed man on repeated shocks with the stun gun," KRNV-TV adds.

No death has ever been successfully pinned on the Taser in court, the company asserts. According to the AJC, "Tom Smith, president and co-founder of Taser International, says the guns have been used safely by law enforcement officers in the field more than 45,000 times since 1999 and used safely more than 100,000 times including demonstration firings. The increase in the number of deaths of people shocked by Tasers simply reflects the increased use of the weapons, the company says."

American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been turning more and more to the electric shock weapons, to control crowds and keep prisoners in line. An Army report, released last year, said the Tasers worked particularly well in Iraq, because Saddam had tortured so many with electricity.

MAYDAY FOR PENTAGON SPACE PROGRAM

While private companies are touching the edge of space, and NASA is figuring out how to get to the Moon and Mars, key parts of the Pentagon's already-troubled space program are crashing, fast.

The U.S. military relies on satellites to guide its bombs, relay its orders, and spy on its enemies. But the next wave of orbiting eyes and ears is costing tens of billions of dollars more than expected. It's an open question whether they'll ever make it into space.

The troubles start with Space-Based Infrared System-High ("SBIRS-High"), a series of satellites designed to spot missile attacks, both on distant battlefields and against the continental U.S. The Air Force just had to add another $1.5 billion to the project. That means the cost for SBIRS-High has tripled since it was first introduced, Aviation Week reports.

But those hiked prices seem downright petite, compared to the boondoogle that is the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle ("EELV") program. The Pentagon rocket modernization project was supposed to "reduce the government’s total [space] launch costs by up to 50 percent," notes Defense News.

Not any more. Originally billed at $18.8 billion, the EELV's is now projected to rise to $31.8 billion, according to a new Congressional report.

The government blamed the weak commercial space launch market and "incorrect assumptions about inflation" for most of the added costs. But, given the Pentagon's dismal recent history in space, that's a little bit like saying, "the dog ate my satellite."

THERE'S MORE: "People don't realize that in many ways the DoD space program is even more of a disaster than NASA's (partly because they sweep so much dirt under the black program carpet)," notes space blogger Rand Simberg.

ARMY WANTS SOLAR-POWERED TENTS, UNIFORMS

"If We Run Out of Batteries, This War is Screwed."

That was the headline to one of my favorite embedded accounts of the Iraq invasion. And it captured a fundamental truth about today's military: with so much warfighting gear going electronic, battles are increasingly won or lost by the side with the best power supply.

To break the battery addiction, the Army has been pouring more and more resources into alternative and renewable ways to generate power. The latest example, reports John Gartner in today's Wired News: "flexible solar panels that can be layered on top of a tent, or rolled up into a backpack to provide a portable power source."

Long-term, the idea is to have solar panels that can be camouflaged into tents or even uniforms. So the Army is working with contractors "to develop nanotechnology-based solar panels that can be woven directly into fabric. [The] technology replaces silicon with dye polymer plastics that transform any kind of light into electrical energy," Gartner writes.

"We want to cut back on the things that soldiers have to bring with them," including generators and personal battery packs, Jean Hampel, with the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center, tells Gartner. "In modern warfare, portable power for communications technology is every bit as important as firepower and manpower."

CONGRESS: NO ISRAELI BULLETS

Here's the situation: the U.S. Army is short on bullets. And only two companies can supply 'em. One's in East Alton, Illinois. The other's in Israel.

That's a problem, American lawmakers say. The Army, back in December, inked a $70 million deal with Israel Military Industries Ltd. for small-caliber ammunition. But some congressmen don't like the symbolism of G.I.s firing Israeli bullets at Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan. So they're telling the Pentagon: "by no means, under any circumstances should a round (from Israel) be utilized," according to Reuters. If the bullets have to be used, do it only in training, not on the battlefield.

The Army has enough small-caliber ammo for now, notes Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, the Army's assistant deputy chief of staff. But ongoing conflicts in Iraq and in Afghanistan have stretched ammunition-making facilities thin.

"To fight a major combat operation in another theater will require the Army to impose restrictions on training expenditures and to focus current inventory and new production on combat operations," Blount reports.

In English, that means, "If shooting starts somewhere else in the world -- or if Iraq gets much hotter -- you're gonna see Israeli bullets fly."

FBI IT = FUBAR

The FBI's "Trilogy" computer-upgrade project has come to be known as one of the great information technology disasters of all time -- the "Gigli" of computing. Now, the New York Times reports, a key part of Trilogy -- the Virtual Case File -- won't be able to deploy by the end of the year, as promised. And FBI officials "could not predict when the entire system would be in place. As a result, an important technological component of the administration's domestic security effort remains in limbo."

The Virtual Case File system, which would allow agents to share information easily — a critical shortcoming of the present system — is already two years behind schedule and one bureau official who spoke on condition of anonymity went so far as to suggest that the program might ultimately have to be abandoned...

In the aftermath of the hijackings, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, told a Senate panel that the bureau's computer system was so limited that it could not search its files for combinations of terms like "flight" and "schools," precisely the kind of combination that might have helped to discern the patterns of activity leading up to the attacks. Instead, Mr. Mueller said, the system could search for words like "flight" and "school" only one at a time...

According to a staff report from the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I.'s primary information system, which was designed using 1980's technology, was "already obsolete when installed in 1995." The commission report said that "field agents usually did not know what investigations agents in their own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on."

For now -- and for the forseeable future -- that's how things will stay.

DRONES START BORDER DUTY

La policia is now the least of their worries. People trying to hop the U.S. border in Arizona are going to have to watch out for robot spy planes, too.

All summer, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is going to use a couple of single-engine, Israeli-built Hermes 450 drones to keep tabs on the U.S/Mexico line. Flesh-and-blood border patrol agents are spread thin across the rugged, desolate area. By acting as eyes in the sky, "these aerial vehicles permit greater border coverage and quicker response times," DHS claims.

DHS has been talking about the move for more than a year. And for a few weeks last fall, the Depatment even tested out unmanned border watching. Vigilante groups have gone robotic, too, with their own, wildcat patrols.

But these Hermes drones -- which cruise at about 9500 feet, and stay in the air for 20 hours at a clip -- are the first sustained effort that Homeland Security has undertaken.

INSURGENTS GETTING SMARTER, TOUGHER, POST SAYS

Yesterday's attacks in Iraq weren't the stumbling, almost-suicidal strikes of some earlier guerillas. "Well-equipped and highly coordinated, the insurgents demonstrated a new level of strength and tactical skill that alarmed the {U.S] soldiers facing them," the Washington Post reports.

The insurgents fought in large, coordinated squads, set complex ambushes and occupied downtown buildings from which they apparently planned a long fight, U.S. military commanders said. Striking first along two key avenues bracketing the city, the insurgents intended to isolate and overrun the local Coalition Provisional Authority compound and other downtown government buildings, the commanders said.

Several U.S. commanders suggested the insurgents had learned the tactics in recent weeks from skilled guerrilla commanders from outside the city, perhaps led by foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight the occupation.

USAF BRASS: WE LOST, NOW PAY UP

It's happening. Already, the U.S. Air Force brass is trying to spin their pilots' defeats against Indian fighters into cash for two new controversial, budget-busting jets.

As discussed yesterday, Indian flyboys in creaky Russian and French planes trumped their American adversaries 90 percent of the time during a recent exercise.

"We may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we thought we were," Gen. Hal M. Hornburg, the chief of Air Combat Command, told reporters.

He then made a pitch (scroll down) for the troubled F/A-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Pentagon-watchers have called both planes money-hogs that the military can't afford during wartime.

"The jets are designed as stealth 'air-superiority' fighters — planes whose main mission is to shoot down enemy planes... [But no] air force in the world, except perhaps those of Israel and France, could shoot down more than a few American non-stealth fighter planes in even a large, protracted dogfight (and most of those shoot-downs would be by dumb luck)," Slate's Fred Kaplan said last fall.

Now, the Air Force has new ammunition to fire back at its fighter critics.

"We've taken air superiority for granted," Gen. Hornburg said.

THERE'S MORE: How could refurbished Russian MiG-21 jets even be a threat to American fighters? "When you stuff them full of Israeli electronics, multi-function [air-to-air] radar, and a helmet-mounted sight for cueing its Python-3 missiles," said a Defense Tech pal in the USAF, pointing us to these two sites.

He adds, "Now does that justify an F-22? Not on its own, but old Russian clunkers can be made over pretty nicely."

AND MORE: Air power's dirty little secret is that the airframe pretty much doesn't matter these days," says Defense Tech reader JA. What it does is "provide mounting points for weapons, sensors and engine(s). The MiG-21's airframe is quite sufficient for acting as a placeholder for state of the art toys. To my way of thinking the USAF's Fighter Mafia has never made the case for the need for either the (A)/F-22 or A/(F)-35. Rumsfeld's failing has been in not bringing these overeducated idiots to heel."

TETHERS: SATELLITES' SAVIOR?

How could satellites be saved from nuclear attack? Simple, the Pentagon says: with giant, electrically charged space-ropes.

First, a little context. These days, it's hard to imagine the U.S. military doing much of anything without using satellites. Guiding bombs, relaying orders, spying on adbad guys' hideouts -- all of that is done from orbit.

But with one nice-sized nuclear blast in space, it'd all be over. The satellites would be no better than scrap. Kiss a couple trillion bucks in hardware -- and just about every Pentagon strategy of the past few years -- goodbye.

So what to do? Satellites can be hardened against radiation -- the new ones, anyway. But armoring the machines already in orbit would cost way, way too much. So Darpa, the Pentagon's mad-science division, is starting to look at ways to clean up radiation in space, Defense News reports. (We mentioned this project in passing a few months back.)

One idea is to use '"electrodynamic-static space tethers' that would remove highly charged radiation particles." And no, as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

"The tethers would be carried by satellites in low Earth orbit and cut across magnetic field lines, inducing electromagnetic current that would dilute the nuclear radiation and push it away from satellites, a government official said.

DARPA is seeking $2.8 million for the space tether effort, a new program in its 2005 budget request.

Under that effort, DARPA plans to develop hardware for placement on a "small, high-powered" satellite platform, and conduct tether experiments in low Earth orbit that would include "high-energy electron remediation."

One company -- Lynnwood, Washington's Tethers Unlimited, has already proposed such a plan. Both NASA and Darpa are already funding the firm's research.

GIANT BLIMP GOES PFFFT

A giant, V-shaped blimp, designed for the edge of space, has flunked its first big flight test. Defense Tech pal Alan Boyle has the details over at MSNBC -- and gives the latest on the X Prize private space flight competition.

THE LETTERS ASHCROFT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE

On Wednesday, we mentioned how good government groups are suing Attorney General Ashcroft, for making secret a bunch of previously public letters about an FBI whistleblower. Riss Kick's invaluable site, The Memory Hole, now has the letters up, for your reading pleasure.

Russ has also posted a list of government documents the feds have recently tried to pull out of public circulation -- usually for "security" reasons. Clearly, ordinary citizens shouldn't be allowed to view such sensitive material as "Mailman Training" and "The Animal Liberation Front in the '90's."

CRAZY BUSINESS IN AFGHANISTAN

The largest private employer in post-war Afghanistan is... a Utah dot-com?!?!?

BAGHDAD BLOGGER: TODAY'S VIOLENCE BAD OMEN

"It's beginning," warns Back-to-Iraq blogger Chris Allbritton, currently in Baghdad, stringing for Time. "Today's violence was a warmup and word from four sources, including from within the resistance itself, is that today was the beginning of the real jihad in Iraq. CENTCOM is apparently very worried about the next few days."

For the next seven days, we, meaning western reporters, have been instructed not to leave our hotels or venture out. Anyone is a target from car bombs, assassinations, kidnappings, etc. They've cut the main power lines to the north, meaning much of the north is now in the dark we hear. Tonight, word is that the rebels might attempt a similar strike on the power lines from the West, which would cut off Baghdad. Today, Mosul, Fallujah, Baqouba and Ramadi were hit in a coordinated wave of attacks from rebels. Tomorrow, the word is that it's coming to Baghdad.

HOW MANY TROOPS? NO ONE KNOWS

Lots of commentators and armchair generals have shouted that the Army has to be grown, and fast. Some are even calling for a return to the draft. But so far, Phil Carter notes in a dynamite Slate essay, "no one is asking the most fundamental question of all: How many troops does the United States really need?"

Those who want to make the Army bigger assume that adding more troops will magically solve the military's overstretch problems, but that's not necessarily the case. Without an honest assessment of U.S. military requirements, we have no way of knowing how many troops to add (and what kind) or whether drastic measures (like a draft) might be necessary. More important, an honest study of U.S. military requirements may tell us that added manpower is not the answer and that other solutions will buy more bang for our taxpayer buck.

INDIA 1, USAF 0

The whole world knows that if you mess with U.S. Air Force pilots, you're going down. Hard.

Except, someone forgot to send the memo to India, apparently. Because, in recent exercises, Indian flyboys in low-tech Russian and French jets defeated American F-15C pilots more than 90 percent of the time.

Now, granted, the Indians had the Americans outnumbered: usually 10 or 12 to 4, during the Cope India air combat exercise held last February around the Gwalior Air Force Station. But American officials also credited Indian pilots with being "very proficient in [their] aircraft[s] and smart on tactics. That combination was tough for us to overcome," USAF Col. Greg Neubeck told Inside the Air Force. (The article is off-limits to those who don't subscribe. But The Times of India is running major excerpts.)

"The adversaries are better than we thought," Col. Mike Snodgrass added. "And in the case of the Indian Air Force both their training and some of their equipment was better than we anticipated."

According to the magazine, "The Indians flew a number of different fighters, including the French-made Mirage 2000 and the Russian-made MIG-27 and MIG-29, but the two most formidable IAF aircraft proved to be the MIG-21 Bison, an upgraded version of the Russian-made baseline MIG-21, and the SU-30K Flanker, also made in Russia."

The ability of these planes to "repeatedly defeat America's best fighter is a troubling development. So troubling, in fact, that it calls into question a core assumption of the Bush Administration's plans for military transformation," says Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute.

That assumption, widely repeated by military reformers since the mid-1990's, is that U.S. military power is so overwhelming the Pentagon can afford to take risks by delaying modernization of Cold War weapons while it pursues development of leap-ahead technologies. Examples cited by policymakers of areas where the U.S. lead is unassailable in the near term include heavy armor (tanks) and air superiority (fighters). We already know from the experience of the Iraq war that heavy tanks have proven far more important to occupation and counter-insurgency operations than anyone expected. Now comes news that third-world countries may be able to challenge U.S. command of the skies.

The Pentagon's initial take on lessons learned from the Iraq war was so dismissive of traditional warfighting competencies that it barely mentioned air superiority. But even a cursory examination of how U.S. strategy for the conflict unfolded reveals a heavy reliance on air power to compensate for numerical deficiencies on the ground. The possibility of having to conquer some future Baghdad without air superiority should make every general in the Army pause and reflect on what victory might require in the way of casualties and resources.

"The actual story is not nearly as bad as it may seem," Chirstopher Coglianese counters on the National Security Roundtable (NSRT) discussion group. "Remember that the Indians have two hostile nations on their border, both with credible air forces. Indian pilots actually fly almost twice as many hours a month as ours and much of it is under operational conditions. Even though equipped with Russian-designed aircraft, as the Air said to me, they ain't the Russians (notorious for being undertrained)."

THERE'S MORE: The Cope India could actually work to promote a much-maligned Air Force project, now in development, one Defense Tech pal in the USAF notes.

Opponents of the F/A-22 stealth fighter plane say the jet is designed only for Cold War-era, mid-air dogfights. That's a waste of billions, the logic goes, because "the USAF has (and would not have) no peer competitor in air superiority."

"But the F-15 is the representative of that "air superiority,'" our pal points out. So "its poor outing against a country with improving technology and good tactics would seem to do damage to the argument that there is no need for a modern air superiority fighter.

But back over on the NSRT list, one poster responds: "At my age I'm entitled to be cynical so let me suggest this whole episode smells like Delhi on a hot day...What better way to keep an aerial boondoggle like the F-22 program healthy and sucking up funds needed to pay for light infantrymen than to let a bunch of INDIANS flying planes bought from the RUSSIANS win some aerial engagements over India."

AND MORE: On the eDodo message board -- often populated by Air Force types -- some are saying that the results of Cope India are not quite what they seem.

USAF pilots were flying "Red Air" -- meaning they were simulating the (presumably worse) tactics and (presumably lower) capabilities of enemy flyers.

That means they walked into the fight with their arms tied behind their backs. It makes for a good media coup in India... But in a full-up fight, I'd put ALL my money on the Alaska F-15C's over the Indian Air Force...

They may have 'lost the war' in the excercise. But it was an excercise. In the real thing, our boys won't be flying as 'Red Air.'

AND MORE: "I have a hard time getting a justification for the F-22 from our planes losing to refurbished Mig-21s," says Defense Tech reader MB. "What I get from that is look at how to upgrade the planes we have and take some of the money saved over F-22s to buy some more jet fuel so our guys can get some more flight time."

SPYCAST STORY GETS STRANGER

The already odd story of a British record label suing the band Wilco over spies' shortwave broadcasts just look a left turn into downright weird.

As detailed below, Akin Fernandez and his London-based label, Irdial Discs, took the alt-country gurus to court for illicitly using a recording, taken straight from the airwaves, of a woman repeating the phrase "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot." That's the title of Wilco's 2002 breakthrough album, and the band used a minute and a half of the tape during one of its songs.

Strange enough. But now, it's unclear whether Fernandez even taped the "Yankee" shortwave broadcast himself. Simon Mason, a spycast enthusiast and author of Secret Signals: The Euronumbers Mystery, said he gave Fernandez the captured transmission -- one of many -- in an informal deal.

According to Mason, Fernandez asked him for his numbers station collection -- much of which is freely available online -- when Fernandez was putting together the Irdial compilation. "I was happy to do so as I felt he was sticking his neck out and spending his money on what I thought would be a very esoteric collection of about 300 boxed sets with a very limited appeal, and that there was no money to be made on selling them," Mason recalled in an e-mail.

"All that money I could have made if I had copyrighted them!" Mason wrote. "Since I gave Akin the recordings willingly for nothing, I don't have any come back. But in hindsight I would have come to some sort of deal that meant I would get a cut, but life is too short to get upset about it now."

Mason may be maintaining a Zen exterior. But some intellectual property lawyers are more than steamed at Fernandez for laying claim to Mason's recordings.

"If Irdial simply published someone else's recording verbatim, then under U.S. Copyright law, they don't own anything," EFF attorney Jason Schultz said in an e-mail.

"If anyone held a copyright here, it would be Mason," added Wendy Zeltzer, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Fernandez' admits that Mason was "one of the major donators" to the Irdial set. But despite the familiar-sounding MP3 file on Mason's website, Fernandez said "the recording used on Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was made by me."

ASHCROFT GETS SUED OVER SECRECY

Open government groups are suing John Ashcroft after the Attorney General tried to reclassify publicly-available allegations of corruption, incompetence and cover-ups in an FBI translation unit.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in DC, "asks the court to find the [Department of Justice's] May reclassification of information unlawful and unconstitutional and require the agency to declassify the information," according to a statement by Project on Government Oversight, one of the plaintiff groups.

The information relates to allegations made by whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI linguist who was fired after reporting to superiors numerous instances of wrongdoing in the FBI translation unit where she worked.

This information was presented by the FBI during two unclassified 2002 briefings held by the Senate Judiciary Committee and was referenced in letters from U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to DOJ officials. The letters were posted on the senators’ Web sites, but were removed after the DOJ reclassified the information. POGO has the letters and wants to post them on the Web to initiate public debate.

"We believe the Department of Justice reclassified the information to stifle congressional oversight of the department and shield it from legitimate public inquiry," said Danielle Brian, POGO’s executive director. “It is absurd to reclassify information that has been in the public domain for so long. This is an entirely inappropriate use of the classification system."

BIO-BATTLIN' BUILDINGS

Office buildings are just about the juiciest target there is for a chemical or biological attack: windows that don't open, self-contained airflow, and lots of people in an enclosed space. That's why Darpa is developing its "Immune Building" program -- an effort to use a structure's heating, ventilation, and AC systems to get rid of toxic agents.

I take a quick look at the mostly classified program in a postage-stamp-sized Wired magazine article, out now. And here is a presentation on the project, from the DarpaTech 2002 conference.

STEALTH SHIPS' SECRET: PLASTIC

Air Forces have been getting better and better at making their planes practically invisible to radar. Now, Navies may be starting to catch up, according to Military.com.

The site highlights "three new high-profile designs: the Visby corvette, designed by the Swedish shipbuilders Kockums, the British Type 45 Destroyer, designed by BAE Systems, and the U.S. Navy's DD(X) destroyer, under construction by Northrop Grumman."

The ships each have their own ways of escaping detection. The Visby's: plastic.

It is the largest vessel ever constructed of carbon fiber -- a super-hard, lightweight plastic that is also used in the making of race car chassis and racing yacht hulls. Specifically, the boat's surface is composed of two layers of carbon fiber filled with a Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)-like foam, or what Kockums calls sandwich-construction carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). This composite material has been proven to reduce a ship's "signature," so that not only is it more difficult to pick up on radar, but also less vulnerable to mines and other types of electronic detection, such as infrared. Since the material is not made of steel, it also escapes detection by magnetic waves. And since the Visby, at 600 tons, is about half as light as a conventional corvette, it has quicker escape abilities. That's not even mentioning the lower maintenance costs for a ship composed of plastics as opposed to one built from steel, and the lower fuel consumption costs.

WILCO PAYS UP FOR SPYCASTS

Critics and fans just about deified singer Jeff Tweedy and his alt-country band, Wilco, when the group released its album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002. But now, on the cusp of Wilco's next miraculous release, a small British label has forced Tweedy to fork over tens of thousands of dollars for questionable samples that gave his previous star-making record its title.

In 1998, London-based Irdial-Discs put out a four-CD collection of broadcasts from so-called "numbers stations" -- mysterious shortwave transmissions, allegedly sent by the worlds' intelligence agencies, of monotone readers spewing alphanumeric streams. On the first of the discs, a woman in an indecipherable accent -- a Mossad agent, according to legend -- keeps repeating three words: "Yankee ... hotel ... foxtrot."

It's the same recording that loops for a minute and a half during "Poor Places," the 10th track on Wilco's 2002 album. After a two-year legal fight, Tweedy agreed in an out-of-court settlement to give Akin Fernandez, Irdial's owner and sole employee, a substantial royalty for the recording.

Fernandez is trumpeting his victory as a "classic David and Goliath confrontation." But copyright lawyers and intellectual property activists aren't so sure. How exactly, they're wondering, does a guy get ownership over something he taped off of the radio?

My Wired News article has some partial answers -- and some background on the enigmatic "numbers stations."

THERE'S MORE: Chris Smolinski runs a "numbers stations" supersite, Spynumbers.com. Simon Mason offers excerpts from his book Secret Signals: The Euronumbers Mystery here. And some good articles about the broadcasts are here, here, here, and here.

AND MORE: This is where you can find MP3s of Irdial's spycast recordings.

AND MORE: Over on the Irdial blog, owner Akin Fernandez defends his right to bring a copyright suit against Wilco. And he provides some insights into how he ultimately checkmated Warner/Electric/Atlantic, Wilco's label, into a deal.

WEA is not going to fight a case to diminish its own ability to protect its intellectual property; in other words, if we had lost the case it would have been a most unwelcome outcome for them and all of thier shell labels.

Anyone could have pointed to the created caselaw to defend the copying of recordings from CDs where the source signal was not copyrightable or not owned outright by the recordist, making all the nature discs, CDs of primitive musics, and other audio exotica put out by labels copletely up for grabs by the sample manipulators.

There is no reason why we should not have brought this case. In fact, it would have been completely wrong of us to knowingly let this infringement go unchallenged.

RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT? NOPE

"'You have the right to remain silent.' At least, you did before the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada yesterday," the Washington Post says. "Now, when a police officer suspecting you of a crime stops you in the street and asks your name, you can be prosecuted for refusing to answer." (via Slate)

Read more about Hiibel's case here and here.

PENTAGON: CANCEL IRAQ CELL DEALS

Ever since America invaded, there's been something fishy about cell phone service in Iraq. First, the Coalition Provisional Authority ordered Bahraini mobile firm Batelco to shut down its cell service -- after allegedly spending millions on infrastructure. Then, a contract was mysteriously awarded to Orascom Telecom (OT), an Egyptian firm teetering on bankruptcy's brink.

Now, the Washington Times reports, the Pentagon has asked the CPA to cancel $500 million worth of contracts of OT and two other cell providers, "citing fraud and the companies' links to an Iraqi-born Briton with ties to Saddam Hussein."

OT is partly owned by Nadhmi Auchi, who also has a controlling interest in the bank BNP Paribas. The French financial giant has been accused of helping Saddam Hussein drain the U.N.'s "Oil-for-Food" program for his personal gain.

The Orascom contract contains a provision prohibiting ownership of the license from being held by "supporters or beneficiaries of the Saddam Hussein regime," [a Pentagon] memorandum said...

Pentagon investigators have said bribes of up to $11.5 million were paid to Iraqis and other foreign nationals to win the contracts for the three companies with links to Auchi, who was convicted last year by a French court as part of an oil company financial scheme...

U.S. officials said last week that the FBI is conducting a preliminary inquiry into whether Auchi or his associates bribed U.S. and Iraqi officials to fix bids for Iraqi cell phone contracts.

PENTAGON SPOOKS, ARMY GEEKS, AND PRIVATE ASTRONAUTS

Wired News is on fire today - and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with me:

- Ryan Singel uncovers a bill to let Pentagon spooks "work undercover and question American citizens...without having to reveal that they are government agents."

- Two years ago, the Army unveiled a video game as a recruitment tool. America's Army has been so succesful, John Gaudiosi notes, that the Army has now opened its own video game studio in North Carolina.

- The first private manned space flight ever left today from the Mojave Desert. Dan Brekke reports from the scene.

EURO-GPS: READY FOR ORBIT?

It's a fair bet that satellite navigation won't be at the top of the agenda when President Bush meets with European leaders in Ireland next week for the annual summit between the United States and the European Union. But, in the long run, a little-known agreement to allow New World and Old World satellites to play nice with each other could prove to be the summit item that has the greatest impact on average people worldwide.

For years, drivers have found their way home, and bombs have found their way to targets, because of the global positioning system, or GPS. The array of 27 American satellites gives receivers on the ground an accurate sense of where they are on the globe. Since the late '90s, Europeans have been working on their answer to GPS, called Galileo.

At first, the system was supposed to be a GPS competitor. But now, after years of wrangling, the United States and Europe have agreed to cooperate. That could mean more widely available tracking systems -- ones that work in just about every urban canyon, office park and hiking trail across the globe.

"Odds are, you'll get stronger reception, and more reliable services," said Ralph Braibanti, who directs the State Department's space and advanced technology office, and who negotiated the agreement for the U.S. side.

But it will take more diplomatic finagling to make the program work. Galileo's 30-satellite network is scheduled to come online in about 2008. Several people close to the project said they would be shocked if the deadline holds. Most of the financing for Galileo -- about 2.5 billion euros, or $3 billion -- is supposed to come from a public-private partnership. But European bureaucrats haven't yet settled on a private partner. And it's murky how that business will actually make money from the venture.

My Wired News article has details.

NEXT-GEN STUN GUNS TARGET CROWDS

The problem with today's stun guns is that you can unload a can of electrical whoop-ass only on one person at a time. But that's starting to change, New Scientist says.

Militaries and their contractors are getting closer to putting the hurt on a whole bunch of people at once, according to the magazine, with "weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them."

Currently, stun guns like the Taser "work only at close quarters," and only effect one person at a time, the magazine notes. That's because the Taser uses a pair of darts, tethered to a wire, to deliver its electric shock. Range is limited to less than 25 feet.

If they work as planned -- a big if -- "the new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances," by ditching the wires.

A weapon under development by Rheinmetall, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, creates a conducting channel by using a small explosive charge to squirt a stream of tiny conductive fibres through the air at the victim.

Meanwhile, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

"We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out next year. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only 3 metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for "as long as there is an input power source," says Bitar.

XADS is also planning a more advanced weapon which it hopes will have a range of 100 metres or more. Instead of firing ionised gas, it will probably use a powerful laser to ionise the air itself.

THERE'S MORE: Slashdot is suspicious of XADS -- "So, this company has a free-hosting website and and a free-email address for their 'president,' and the photo looks like cardboard tubes wrapped with green camouflage tape. Hmmmm."

AND MORE: The company does have a small business contract with the Navy for a "Personnel Neuromuscular Disruptor Incapacitation System" -- awarded November '02.

AND MORE: Defense Review interviews XADS' president here.

WORLD WAR II'S PAPER BOMB ATTACK

It's one of World War II's oddest, and least-known stories: In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese sent a fleet of hydrogen-filled, paper balloons across the jet stream to strike North America. And it worked.

Out of the 9,000 handmade incendiaries sent, 1,000 eventually landed here. And not just along the West Coast , but as far east as suburban Detroit.

Slate (via /.) reviews the tale, gives a warning or two about censorship, and provides a few links.

THERE'S MORE: "In my research for Terrors And Marvels: How Science
And Technology Changed The Character And Outcome Of World War II, I came across an original photo, in the FDR Library at Hyde Park, of one of the paper balloon bombs, tethered on a base in Montana," Defense Tech dad Tom Shachtman writes.

The photo was there because it had crossed the president's desk, and it had clearly alarmed him and his aides. (It is reproduced in the book.) In general the balloons did very little harm, though, no more than isolated lightning strikes might have done, and their landing sites were less predictable than lightning strikes.

The Canadian government did ready a plane full of peat moss that they could impregnate with bubonic plague, for retaliation on Japan in case one of the paper balloon bombs did contain biological, disease-causing agents. In withholding information on the balloons from the public until American and Canadian scientists could determine the make-up of the payloads, the censorship served its basic purposes: to prevent panic in the general public, and also to prevent trigger-happy people in the military from sending peat-bombs in return.

ATOMIC DOUBLE-TALK FROM GOP

"We really, really, really need new nuclear weapons."

"Ask for new nukes? Who, us?"

That was the crux of the Republicans' double-headed argument yesterday as the Senate debated whether or not to fund the research and development of atomic "bunker busters" and low-yield "mini-nukes." The GOP won out, 55-42, and the plans will go forward.

"We know our adversaries are building hardened bunkers, deeply buried," Allard warned.

America's current nuclear arsenal can't take out these underground chambers. So the country needs to start working on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator – a bunker-busting atomic bomb.

But when Democrats started arguing against the $500 million in projected funds for the project, Allard shifted gears. Suddenly, the bunker-buster wasn't an urgent need. It was a research project.

"What we're looking at is a study," he said. The $500 million – that was just a placeholder figure, in case Congress might, some day, wish to get serious about the weapon.

Then, just as quickly, Allard pivoted yet again. Democrats, he warned, "shouldn't bury their heads in the sand." Voting against the new nuclear research, that would be like "ignor[ing] that the world is changing."

A mile a minute, it would seem.

SENATE: NEW NUKES OK WITH US

"The U.S. Senate on Tuesday backed the Bush administration's plan to study a new generation of low-yield and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, rejecting concerns that the research could spur an arms race," Reuters reports.

Voting 55-42, the Senate defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to slash $36.6 million to study so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons that would be used to destroy underground facilities as well as smaller nuclear arms with half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The administration has said it has no plans to build such weapons, but wants to keep the door open to their development to deal with emerging threats. It successfully pushed Congress last year to repeal a 10-year-old ban on researching low-yield weapons of less than 5 kilotons.

PENTAGON REPEATING CONTRACTOR MISTAKES

"From the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison to the mutilation of American civilians at Falluja, many of the worst moments of the Iraqi occupation have involved private military contractors 'outsourced' by the Pentagon," writes Defense Tech pal Peter Singer in a must-read Times op-ed. "Yet despite the problems and the widespread accusations of overbilling, it appears the civilian leadership at the Pentagon has learned absolutely nothing from the whole experience."

Last month the Pentagon awarded a $293 million contract for coordination of security support to a British firm called Aegis Defense Services. The huge contract has two aspects: Aegis will be the coordination and management hub for the more than 50 other private security companies in Iraq, and it will provide its own force of up to 75 "close protection teams," each made up of eight armed civilians who are to protect staff members of the United States Project Management Office.

The contract is a case study in what not to do. To begin with, a core problem of the military outsourcing experience has been the lack of coordination, oversight and management from the government side. So outsourcing that very problem to another private company has a logic that would do only Kafka proud. In addition, it moves these companies further outside the bounds of public oversight.

Moreover, with the handover of Iraqi sovereignty in just weeks, why is the Pentagon, rather than the Iraqis themselves, making this decision? Indeed, it seems contrary to the overall American strategic goal of handing over the responsibilities for security to the Iraqis as a prelude to getting out of the business ourselves.

The contract also repeats the "cost plus" arrangement that has proved problematic in the past. In effect, this deal rewards companies with higher profits the more they spend, and thus is ripe for abuse and inefficiency (as we have seen with the accusations of overbilling that have swirled around Halliburton). It has no parallel in the best practices of the business world, for the very reason that it runs counter to everything Adam Smith wrote about free markets.

"LOOK AND SHOOT" HELMETS

"The look of death" is how I would have described the gaze you get if you're silly enough to step on the Defense Tech girlfriend's modular, ultra-chic, asymmetric couch. No longer. Not since I heard about the Air Force's latest gagdet: a helmet that lets a pilot lock on foes -- just by staring at them. Now that, my friends, is a look of death.

The Pentagon handed out a $86 million contract on Friday to Boeing, to build 2,000 of these Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS). The first 250 units will be ready by next March, the company says. Eventually, pilots of Air Force and Air National Guard F-15 Eagles, USAF F-16 Fighting Falcons, U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets will all get the targeting systems.

"First used in Operation Iraqi Freedom, JHMCS gives pilots the ability to rapidly acquire and designate a target simply by looking at it," according to a Boeing statement. "By putting an aiming cross, which is projected on the helmet visor, over the desired target and pressing a button, the pilot can quickly and easily aim the weapons and sensors to designate and attack airborne or ground targets."

This not only makes the pilot and aircraft more lethal, but it also makes them more survivable because it reduces the time the pilot and aircraft are exposed to potential enemy fire. JHMCS also displays aircraft altitude, airspeed, g's and angle of attack on the visor, as well as tactical information, to increase the pilot's awareness of the state of his aircraft and the combat situation.

That's all nice. But what happens if a pilot happens to wink in the wrong direction? Or if someone steps on her chi-chi new couch?

NOT-SO-EXTREME MAKEOVER FOR G.I. FATIGUES

It isn't the hi-tech reboot of G.I.'s cammos, scheduled for later in the decade. But the Army unveiled today a brand new combat uniform -- the first major change to the outfits since 1981, according to the AP.

Gone are the separate cammo patterns for desert and forest fighting. Now, G.I.s will wear a single, grey-and-tan montage.

The changes are more than cosmetic, however. 18 substantive changes were made to the uniforms, according to an Army statement: "The bottom pockets on the jacket were removed and placed on the shoulder sleeves so Soldiers can have access to them while wearing body armor. The pockets were also tilted forward so that they are easily accessible. Buttons were replaced with zippers that open from the top and bottom to provide comfort while wearing armor."

Knee pouches were added, to add padding. An infrared-relfective American flag if affixed to the right shoulder, to help G.I.s with night vision goggles spot their pals. And an "integrated blouse bellows for increased upper body mobility."

Members of the Army's Stryker brigade have been testing out the uniforms in Iraq since last year. The whole Army should be in the outfits by 2007.

TORTURE SCANDAL CONTINUES TO RISE

The "few bad apples" defense is dead.

- U.S. News: "The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, issued a classified order last November directing military guards to hide a prisoner, later dubbed 'Triple X' by soldiers, from Red Cross inspectors and keep his name off official rosters."

- The Washington Post: "In January 2002, for example, Rumsfeld approved the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners... Then, in April 2003, Rumsfeld approved the use in Guantanamo of at least five other high-pressure techniques also listed on the Oct. 9 Abu Ghraib memo, none of which was among the Army's standard interrogation methods."

- The Telegraph: "New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington this week... Four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly."

- The Times: "Beginning in November, a small unit of interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison began reporting allegations of prisoner abuse... The disclosure...raises new questions about whether senior officers in Iraq were alerted about serious abuses at the prison before January. Top military officials have said they only learned about abuses then, after a soldier came forward with photographs of the abuse."

THERE'S MORE: "It is going to get much worse," writes liberal hawk Christopher Hitchens, who appears to be coming back to his senses after a long bout of Bushphilia. "The graphic videos and photographs that have so far been shown only to Congress are, I have been persuaded by someone who has seen them, not likely to remain secret for very long. And, if you wonder why formerly gung-ho rightist congressmen like James Inhofe ('I'm outraged more by the outrage') have gone so quiet, it is because they have seen the stuff and you have not. There will probably be a slight difficulty about showing these scenes in prime time, but they will emerge, never fear. We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see."

ROBO-COPTER: TALK TO ME

"See that building over there? Bomb the hell out of it."

That's how easy the Pentagon wants commanding its Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) to be, Aerospace Daily reports. The drone copter, scheduled to come on line around 2012, should be able to act on verbal commands -- and respond back in plain English, too.

Although the idea might seem far-fetched, "that's today's technology," [UCAR program manager Don] Woodbury said. "The U.S. is behind the rest of the world in this area. There are at least three aircraft fielded today that have [voice command] capability in the cockpit." Outside of UCAR, very little work on voice command of aircraft is taking place in the U.S., according to Woodbury.

DARPA hopes to develop UCAR's voice command system mostly with off-the-shelf technology, Woodbury said. Such technology could have application to manned aircraft such as the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter as well, he said. "Even without UCAR, it might be useful for ... Apache pilots to be able to interact with their machines verbally," he said. "They ought to be looking outside the cockpit where the targets are."

Jointly managed by DARPA and the Army, the $500 million UCAR program is attempting to develop a highly autonomous unmanned combat helicopter that can work in groups, engage in close combat at the nap of the Earth, and operate seamlessly with other manned and unmanned Army systems. The helicopter is being designed to accommodate a number of possible weapons, including the Joint Common Missile (JCM) and Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS), although it always will require human consent before firing.

The UCAR will be tasked through the Army's existing command and control architecture rather than through a dedicated ground station, accepting commands from personnel in ground vehicles, other aircraft, or even dismounted. With its enhanced autonomy and onboard artificial intelligence, UCAR would be able to operate on a "much longer leash" than traditional unmanned aerial vehicles, according to Woodbury.

NEW NUKE RESEARCH BLOWN UP?

It ain't dead, yet. But the Bush administration's push to research and develop new nuclear weapons could be on the verge of flat-lining, after a key Congressional leader moved on Wednesday to eliminate funding for the atomic arms projects.

Ohio Republican Rep. David Hobson, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, wiped out $96 million in nuclear projects from the government's budget for next year -- including funds for researching nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs and low-yield, "mini-nuke" weapons. Hobson also snapped the purse strings of projects to build thousands more plutonium hearts for nuclear weapons and to fast-track atomic testing.

Just last week, the Department of Energy submitted a plan to pare thousands of weapons from America's existing nuclear arsenal. But, despite the proposal, much of the country's nuclear arms budget is still at "Cold War" levels, Hobson complained in a statement. The Energy Department "needs to take a 'time-out' on new initiatives until it completes a review of its weapons complex in relation to security needs, budget constraints and this new stockpile plan."

Anti-nuclear activists were giddy after Hobson's stand. Two weeks ago, the full House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment to take away the money for researching the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" -- a weapon designed to burrow deep into the ground before unleashing a nuclear hell-storm in underground bunkers. Taken together, activists said they believe the maneuvers forecast a gloomy future for a new atomic arsenal.

My Wired News story has details.

NEW RIFLE GETS LOVE

"You will have to excuse me for a moment whilst I take a moment and slobber," Rob Cherry pants.

The object of his liquid affection: the Army's new XM8 rifle, which is winning rave reviews at Ft. Bragg and from the Army Times.

"With attachments, it can go from a compact rifle with a 9-inch barrel for close combat shooting to a sharpshooter rifle with a 20-inch barrel for 600-meter range," the Fayetteville Observer notes. "It costs less than an M-4, is lighter and is capable of firing 20,000 rounds without malfunctions."

It also won't jam if it's clogged full of dirt. "Jose Gordon of Heckler & Koch USA, the gun's maker, demonstrated this last fact when he buried an XM-8 in Fort Bragg's red dust and then fired it."

RED, ROUND "TRICORDER" PREPPED FOR SPACE

It's shaped like a basketball. It was inspired by Spock's tricorder. And, if NASA researchers have their way, it could be helping out astronauts aboard the International Space Station in as little as three years.

The Personal Satellite Assistant is a robot prototype designed to buzz around the space station, performing a variety of jobs for astronauts and mission controllers: monitoring life-support systems, keeping tabs on the day's tasks and reminding space scientists how to do their experiments right.

After six years of development, engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center say they now have a version of the Personal Satellite Assistant, or PSA, that's fully mobile, with a sensor suite that's nearly space-ready.

But it's unclear whether the red spherical bot will ever make it into orbit. Like so much else at the space agency these days, the fate of the PSA remains uncertain. The drone's makers hope to have an answer from the higher-ups by the end of the summer.

My Wired News article has details.

THERE'S MORE: In case the PSA wasn't sci-fi enough for you, consider how the prototype drone is built. Or rather, printed. A 3D printer's laser zaps a vat of plastic, constructing the PSA a tiny layer at a time. When it's done, the globe rises out of the liquid, fully formed. "Pretty cool," Keith Nicewarner, the project's lead system engineer, giggles.

AND MORE: Then there's the matter of testing the PSA. That's done in a full-scale mockup of the International Space Station's American wing. Over this, a force-feedback gantry crane tangles a cable, which holds a gimbal. The PSA floats inside. The set-up simulates the effects of microgravity, and allows the 'bot to buzz around, unencumbered by friction or drag.

AND MORE: Via Xeni and SMZ, here's a picture of the PSA being tested, circa 2000...

BUSH ADMIN EXPLORING BIO-OFFENSE

"The Bush administration is ramping up bioterrorism research that will press beyond traditional defenses against natural biowarfare germs to explore genetically engineered superbugs, as well as the means to mass-produce and disseminate them," the Oakland Tribune reports.

The Homeland Security Department's new National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center... tasked scientists to study how to "acquire, grow, modify, store, stabilize, package (and) disperse" bioweapons and to run computer simulations of large-scale production.

It called for "red teaming" operations, in which scientists would figure out how to execute terrorist attacks...

"If any other country set forth a program like this, U.S. intelligence undoubtedly would call it an offensive program," said Edward Hammond, head of the Sunshine Project, a group in Austin, Texas, that tracks bioweapons and biodefense issues.

THERE'S MORE: "There is a danger that these activities would pro