MonitoRadio Daily Program; [1995-04-20]

Looking for John Doe, both of them. Two suspects in the Oklahoma bomb attack. I'm David Brown and this is Monitor Radio. Monitor Radio is the worldwide broadcast edition of the Christian Science Monitor on PRI, Public Radio International. Coming up the latest on yesterday's bomb blast and the FBI's search for two white men. The explosion has many Americans questioning their sense of security a second look at realities and perceptions of ground zero middle America. We were chose it probably because we typify kind of the last area of innocence in the country. I know I told my own children I got the one thing you can count on is it probably not going to happen here again. And the World Trade Center revisited. I love those stories and much more coming up on Monitor Radio. First this news. For the Christian Science Monitor, I'm Judy Ewell at the Monitor Radio news desk. President Bill Clinton today repeated his earlier vow to punish the perpetrators of yesterday's bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma

City. He also directed flags to be flown at half staff for three days at federal buildings, military installations and on US ships at sea. Monitor Radio's Jim Cain reports from our Washington Bureau. The president spoke about the bombing in Oklahoma City during a welcoming ceremony for the president of Brazil on the White House South Lawn. Those responsible will be brought to justice. They will be tried, convicted and punished. We will never let the forces of inhumanity prevail in the United States. The president expressed hope that more survivors will be found as rescuers search the wrecked building. Those rescue efforts continue while federal and local authorities in Oklahoma mount an intense investigation into the blast. The FBI says it is pursuing hundreds of leads. For the Christian Science Monitor, I'm Jim Cain in Washington. The FBI says it has no suspects yet in yesterday's car bombing which killed at least 36 people. Special Agent Weldon Kennedy says the first priority

is to locate and recover any survivors in the wreckage of the building. Fire Chief Gary Mars says he doesn't know how many people are still unaccounted for. We are turning now to a very slow tedious process and they've got the most sophisticated techniques they have available right now. We have audio listening devices. We have the cameras, the small cameras that can get in there. They're using numerous dog teams. From time to time they'll shut down operations to try to quiet the scene and send some of those dogs and people back through again. So we're using every opportunity we can to find any remaining people in the building. Mars says it could take several days to recover all the bodies. Russia's Interior Ministry is denying a report that the Kremlin has called for an end to the fighting and the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Earlier, a Tartas reported that the Kremlin had ordered Russian troops to withdraw from Chechnya. It linked the order to the impending arrival of western leaders for celebrations in Moscow to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two. But Interfax reports

Russian soldiers and Chechen rebels are still shooting at each other near the western village of Bamut. The Bosnian government is refusing to renew a four -month truce that is set to expire at the end of this month. After meeting UN envoy Yasushi Yakashi for two hours, Prime Minister Harris Saladjik said he was fed up with international efforts to end the war, and he repeated his demand that the arms embargo be lifted. Akashi meets next with Bosnian servleaders in the Serbs' stronghold of Polly. Serbs have also said they will not extend the truce. In London, the Financial Times index rose four and a half points today to close at 3174. Just before the hour, the Dow Jones was up 16 points at 4223 in New York. This is public radio international. 6 ,000 Japanese police have now been mobilized to investigate yesterday's gas attack in the city of Yokohama. Nearly 400 people sought hospital treatment after the unidentified gas was released on a train and at a station. Monitor Radio's Peter Hadfield has the story from Tokyo. The biggest mystery facing police in this investigation is the nature of the gas itself.

Earlier reports that it was fast -gene have now been retracted. Police say there are no traces of whatever caused the gas, not even a container. But they're treating it as a criminal case. Suspicion has again fallen on the religious sect, Om Shinrykyo, which was implicated in a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system last month. Hundreds of tons of deadly chemicals have been found at the sect's headquarters over the last few weeks. The sect denies any involvement in the two incidents, but the government has now begun moves to revoke Om Shinrykyo's special status as a religious organization. For the Christian Science Monitor, I'm Peter Hadfield in Tokyo. US and North Korean officials are holding unscheduled talks in Berlin aimed at steering North Korea away from nuclear weapons capability. Last year, North Korea promised not to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for modern reactors and low -level diplomatic ties with the US. But Pyongyang is threatening to restart its graphite reactor unless the US drops plans to replace it with South Korean models. The North has set Friday has the deadline for an agreement to settle the

dispute. The US doesn't recognize Friday has a deadline. Turkey is calling for an emergency meeting with its NATO allies to protest the Netherlands decision to allow Kurdish separatists to set up a parliament in exile in the Hague. Ankara calls the parliament a propaganda tool of the Kurdistan workers party, which is fighting for a separate state in southern Turkey. The Netherlands has urged Turkey to end its military offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. From Monitor Radio News, I'm Judy Ewell, on PRI. This is Monitor Radio. I'm David Brown.

$2 million. That's the size of the reward the government is offering for the arrest and conviction of the people behind yesterday's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The decision to offer a reward was announced this afternoon by Attorney General Janet Reno at a press conference. At another briefing in Oklahoma City a short time earlier, FBI officials released composite sketches of two men they are now searching for in conjunction with a blast. And in another development, British officials detained a man who flew into London this morning from Chicago. He is being returned to the U .S., where officials in Washington characterize him as a potential witness. He is said to be a Jordanian American with a U .S. passport. Officials are reluctant to give further details at this time. We turn now to Oklahoma City, where Monitor Radio Skip Thurman has the latest. Hundreds of rescue workers are continuing to sift through the remains of the federal building here. One fire department official has expressed confidence that there are remaining survivors. State officials say the search will continue through the night as almost 200 people remain unaccounted for. Meanwhile, at a press

conference this afternoon, federal and state officials had the latest on the investigation. Well, in Kennedy as the FBI agent in charge here in Oklahoma City. Investigators have identified a vehicle that was used in connection with yesterday's attack on the federal building here in Oklahoma City. Further investigation has determined that two white males were associated with this vehicle. As a result, a restaurant will be sought for these two males. I must point out to you, however, that their exact identities are not presently known. Thus, the arrest warrant that I am discussing will be for two men each identified only as John Doe. Kennedy said he believes the suspects to be armed and dangerous. We urge people with information to call 1 -800 -905 -1514. That number will become operational at approximately 5 p .m. Eastern Bill at time.

This information has been communicated to law enforcement at all levels, domestic and international. Oklahoma Congressman, Republican J .C. Watt, said the positive developments are testament to the effectiveness of U .S. law enforcement and said once the men are apprehended, justice should be severe. I think we need to punish them whatever parties are involved, but I think we need to punish them to the full degree of the law. And I think this incident in my opinion speaks very loudly and very strongly from the death zone. Police Chief Sam Gonzalez said local authorities remain focused on clearing the 10 -block area now cordoned off. The objective of the Oklahoma City Police Department is perimeter controlled and the safeguarding of the buildings that are left open, trying to work as we can to get business owners back into their property as soon as they can to secure their properties, trying to maintain our streets and make sure that they're open and accessible to emergency equipment and to work with

the FBI as soon as we can to release those streets for cleanup and release the buildings back to the owners so they could go in and start cleaning those up. According to Kenneth Peoples, a member of the Baptist Medical Center's triage team on site, the rescue and cleanup work is tedious. It's real slow right now and what's going on over there with our unit is we're just waiting on them to see if they're going to find any more individuals inside. We're there posted in case they need us and that's all we can do. City officials fear it could take as many as six days to find all the bodies that may still be buried below the rubble. Officials report that more than 700 people have called special telephone numbers to notify authorities that they were safe and had escaped the blast but with as many as 900 people possibly in the building at the time of the explosion there are still many people unaccounted for. But the Christian Science Monitor, I'm Skip Thurman in Oklahoma City. I want to share with you a message that I read on the internet late yesterday that seemed to confirm a lot of what I

think about middle America. The message read, I thought I moved from Detroit to Oklahoma to be safer. Now I wonder. Perhaps many people up until yesterday have shared this feeling that middle America was somehow more innocent, safer than say New York or Los Angeles. We're joined now by Jean Devlin. She is editor -in -chief of Oklahoma Today, the official state magazine of Oklahoma and she is in her office in Oklahoma City. Jean, do we have the wrong perception? Not really. I think all of us feel overall that it's a little safer and quieter here than it is elsewhere. This is a place where people still a lot of people keep their doors unlocked and you still stop and help people on the side of the road. I think a lot of that is very true and it's probably why something like this has hit everybody so hard. I don't think Oklahoma sees other strangers so that the fact that anyone would do something like this, which is very hard for us to comprehend. Yesterday, someone was telling me that they're fairly large ethnic communities in Oklahoma City and that caught me by surprise. I didn't realize that that was the case. You know, that's something that I do, you know, watching the media, the national

media, and even some of our own media, I think is a misconception. We're a very ethnically diverse state, not the way the most people would expect. I mean, we do have a strong Hispanic population, but I think what people don't realize is that we have a number of land -grant universities here, which have traditionally been draws for people from the middle, students from the Middle East, students from the Pacific Rim, and we probably have some of the largest concentrations of international students in the country, if not the largest, possibly from the coast rivalist now, but for many, many years, this area probably had the highest population of international students in the country. You know, a firefighter was quoted in the New York Times who called Oklahoma City a little old cow town. You know, is that far off, or is that just part of the misperception? No, it's very accurate. We're a sprawling, you know, lack of zoning to be one of our Achilles fields here. Very much kind of wide open, very independent. You know, we deal with tornadoes every spring

and every fall, and I think it's one of the reasons why there's a lot of calm down at the site of this disaster because we're used to things unexpectedly dropping in our laps and having to deal with it. And so when people say, my it's so well organized for a disaster of this magnitude, none of us are really surprised. I mean, it's a very pitching kind of helpful type place, and people just do what's necessary to, you know, help the people that are heard or injured. Having said that, Jane, do you think anything basically has changed in the past 24 hours in terms of how people there perceive their city? I think we all realized it was random. And I think the people who say this could have been Omaha or could have been, you know, another community like ours, you know, we realize again that it wasn't anything we hope. I mean, unless, you know, there ends up being some tide awake or something like that. I've ended up being the international terrorist group that people seem to feel at the moment are involved with this. You know, we're intelligent enough to know that that's very random and that maybe that again that we were chosen probably because we typify kind of the, you know, last area of innocence in the

country. I know I told my own child, I go, the one thing you can count on it, is it probably not going to happen here again? I mean, this is a one in a lifetime, once in a century type happening. I mean, that way maybe we feel safer now. I think we will be a little bit more on the alert from now on. Gene Devlin is editor -in -chief of Oklahoma today, the official state magazine of Oklahoma. She's been speaking with us from her office in Oklahoma City. Gene, thanks very much. Oh, thank you. Bye -bye. How does a city cope with the unthinkable? Ask the people of Warrington in England. On March 20th, 1993, the peace in that quiet northern town was shattered, when an IRA bomb exploded in the main shopping center packed with weekend shoppers, many buying gifts for Mother's Day. 50 people were injured, two children were killed. The Reverend Stephen King's North is a Methodist minister who works in the town center. Reverend King's North, this tragedy must have seemed utterly inexplicable at first. How did the people of your town

begin to come to terms with what had happened? It took many weeks, of course, to get over the shock and people couldn't take it on board that it actually happened to their town because it was so strange that we had no Irish connection. But slowly the folk got together and various groups were formed in the community and we quickly realised that we had to turn the tragedy into some positive result to feel that it wasn't all devastation. How do you mean turn it into a positive result? Well, we were fortunate, we knew the perpetrators, we knew it was the IRA, we knew therefore we had a look. And one of the parents, Tim Perry, one of the land who died, his father was very positive and said, we mustn't die in vain. I think that theme was taken on by the community and different groups decided that we must learn something about the Irish situation. It dawned on us just how ignorant we had been about the English history and our relationships with folks in the island of Ireland. I'm intrigued by something that you just said, you said that you were very fortunate in that you knew who the attackers were, what do you mean? Well,

in order to turn our situation into thinking positive, we've spent two years listening and learning about the Irish situation, rather than just pointing at these perpetrators and saying what animals they are, we realised that something motivated them and we had to therefore learn from our experience and discover for ourselves what motivated those folks. So we could come into dialogue and it could be a growth process. Now we couldn't have done that if we hadn't known who had perpetrated the terrorist activity in the first place. So in Oklahoma, it's tragic of course and it's far greater loss of life and greater injury than we suffered, but at the moment the tragedy for Oklahoma is they don't know who perpetrated this act. I think some people might argue that by researching and studying the situation by knowing the enemy if you will, that in a way people were playing into the very hands of the terrorists, that the terrorists set off this bomb for some purpose, that they wanted to draw attention to their cause

and in a way the people were feeding that. This bomb woke us up and it's not tragic that it takes some awful terrorist act like that, for us to wake up to those issues and you know that has to be faced. I mean what we could have done was just go on the offensive and learn nothing and become very bitter people. That wouldn't have helped anyone, certainly least of all ourselves. Reverend as you're probably aware among the victims of the Oklahoma blast are many children. How did the fact that children were the victims in war and shape the reaction in your city to the strategy? I think when it involves children it really dorms on people that something must be done every day people have got to get involved and say whatever the politicians say we're going to get off our backside to be going to learn about this, we're going to give every ounce of our strength to growing and understanding. Reverend Stephen King's North is a Methodist minister who works in the town of Warrington, England. On March 20th 1993 the tranquility of Warrington was shattered by an IRA bomb. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Many consider the Oklahoma

bombing a watershed event in US history but it is not by any stretch the first such attack. Back in 1927 a man lined the perimeter of a Michigan school with hundreds of pounds of dynamite and blew it up killing 38 children and seven adults. Investigators said that the man was a tax protester. And way back in 1920 a bomb blast on Wall Street that killed 40 people and injured hundreds was blamed on so -called anarchists. Authorities came up with a list of suspects but all had fled to Russia. This is monitor radio. Stay with us. I'm Judy Ewell with these headlines. President Clinton has ordered tightened security to protect thousands of federal facilities across

the country following yesterday's devastating bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City. The president has ordered flags lowered to half staff until Monday in memory of the victims. The United Nations special envoy for the former Yugoslavia, Yasushi Akashi is trying to convince Bosnia's Muslim -led government and the Bosnian Serbs to extend the truth before it expires on May 1st. So far Akashi has met with no success. Brazil's president Fernando Cardoso is in Washington DC on a state visit meant to mark a new era of Brazilian -American friendship. And that's a look at world news headlines. This is monitor radio. Yesterday's bombing has led to beefed up security at many public buildings. In some places though it was already very tight especially at the World Trade Center side of a terrorist bombing two years ago.

Correspondent John Kalish visited the twin towers in Lower Manhattan today. Before the World Trade Center bombing which killed six and injured more than a thousand visitors to the 110 -story twin towers could walk into the skyscrapers get in an elevator and pretty much go where they please. Today you have to wait on a long line present identification wait for security to call up to whoever you're visiting and then be issued a visitor's pass. This morning I went to the 52nd floor of one World Trade Center where Lin Tofty works as a librarian at the law firm of Hillbets and Nash. Tofty was at a computer terminal in February 1993 when the bomb exploded in the building's garage. She walked down 52 flights of stairs and swallowed so much smoke she coughed for three months. Tofty was at work yesterday when one of her co -workers relayed the news of the tragedy in Oklahoma. One of our secretaries came and it said did you hear about the

bombing you know we're all very close to things like this we all think about it a lot and she said like there was children trapped in there I didn't know the details until I went home last night and turned on the TV and then I couldn't watch it it was a horrible feeling I could not confront it. Tofty who prayed as she fled the World Trade Center bombing two years ago says she prayed again yesterday for the survivors in Oklahoma. Tofty says that she and others who lived through the nightmare of a terrorist bombing will never really get over it. Everyone was shell shocked we worked I don't know how we all worked because everyone was in another world the stress was unbelievable and to this day there's not one day that goes by that I don't remember what happened a fire alarm went off on Friday because of an electrical interruption and I panicked I could fear the fear just went from my head to my feet you just don't ever get used to it we were in the mall a fire alarm went off in the store and I had to get out it was just an unbearable feeling of not knowing what's going to happen. New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced

yesterday that increased security measures have been instituted at a number of sensitive locations in the city including the World Trade Center a federal office building and a federal courthouse a terminal at JFK airport was briefly evacuated this morning due to a suspicious package also law enforcement authorities here are expressing concern over stolen computer files detailing the World Trade Center's new security system the files were taken earlier this month and contain what are described by one police official as information terrorists would love to have for the Christian science monitor I'm John Kalash in New York. With all the speculation going on President Clinton is imploring that Americans avoid stereotyping he says this is not about religions or nationalities it is about murder it's worth noting that within four hours of yesterday's blast the American Arab anti -discrimination committee sent out a facts condemning it and Marie Bayloony is with the ADC why send out this facts we did hear rumors of people that were suspects being called Middle Eastern looking

and we were worried that that would unduly prejudice law enforcement officials to just look down a narrow road of suspects the nature of the act was just incredible but we're worried that it will be compounded by smearing Arabs and Muslims just by this kind of association we were overcome by the just the horrendous nature of this act and we wanted just like everyone else to express how how we felt and how much we wanted to help in any way we could and Marie Bayloony is with the American Arab anti -discrimination committee in Washington the cover of this week's new republic magazine showcases a title with eerie overtones given yesterday's catastrophe in Oklahoma City the headline be afraid be very afraid refers to the threats posed by terrorism of a chemical and more seriously a biological nature Robert Wright is a senior editor at the new republic he authored

this article and he joins us now from Washington mr. Wright described for is one of the terrorist scenarios involving biological weapons that you see is relatively easy to execute well unfortunately it would be on a much more massive scale than what happened in Oklahoma City it wouldn't be a bomb probably it's actually hard to deliver biological weapons in that way but if you wanted to rent a private airplane and fly it over a city and release say anthrax spores according to the office of technology assessment you could kill hundreds of thousands or a million people and no one would know what happened it can take days for for for a biological attack to really hit home because the spores enter a person's system and then the bacteria start to replicate and the person doesn't become sick for a day or two so in that sense it's very easy to deliver these things

anonymously is it as easy to develop the the the anthrax itself though and and how how common are the ingredients needed to come up with the biological agents you you can find them at at medical laboratories all over the country and all over the world you know I mean I'm happy to say it's still much harder to do this than it is to to build a car bomb but we're talking about about devastation that is you know 100 or 1000 times as great as you saw in Oklahoma City and the the world as a whole really hasn't yet waken up to this the well what do you mean there is we now have a chemical weapons convention that the U .S. has not yet ratified but has signed that is very effective it's kind of I mean in principle effective it's kind of a model of the international

control of of a certain class of weapons it has very very intrusive inspection regimes in terms of the right of the international community to go in and look at a suspicious facility in a given country but the irony is that biological weapons are much more threatening and devastating than chemical weapons and their their and the biological weapons convention that exists has no means of enforcement whatsoever no intrusive inspection regime no systematic sanctions for violators biological weapons are kind of the the great under worried about a threat out there let let me ask you something mr. right I think some people listening to you may wonder if you are being alarmist you know alarmism has its place in life and it's a little alarmism before something happens is better than a lot of regret afterwards and and and again the point I'm making is that

I don't want to belittle what happened in Oklahoma City but it's literally nothing compared to what could plausibly happen if you have a couple of highly motivated reasonably well educated people who who want to inflict tremendous horror and so I I this is the kind of thing it's it's better to worry about beforehand than afterwards Robert Wright is a senior editor with a new republic and the author of the moral animal he spoke with us from Washington and you're listening to monitor radio the worldwide broadcast edition of the Christian science monitor I'm David Brown in Boston listeners in North America may

order a cassette of today's edition of monitor radio by calling toll free 1 -800 -747 -7444 all others should call us at 617 -450 -7804 you earth shakers a new breed of eco optimists say the planet's not in such bad shape

after all I'm David Brown and this is monitor radio monitor radio is the worldwide broadcast edition of the Christian science monitor on PRI public radio international with earth day just around the corner will have a discussion on the world's environmental health and the house building boom that love canal new homes at bargain prices thanks to the legacy of toxic waste love can now should have been left as a monument to our mistake it should have been fed staff and just abandoned plus we'll bring you the latest news on the search for the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing as attorney general Janet Reno briefs the press those stories and much more coming up on monitor radio stay with us for the Christian science monitor I'm Kathy McLaughlin at the monitor radio news desk at least 36 people are confirmed dead in yesterday's apparent car bombing at a federal building in Oklahoma City rescue workers are continuing to

search for survivors monitor radio skip thermon reports from Oklahoma City rescue workers continue lifting concrete and steel one layer at a time for the lower floors of the nine -story building federal emergency experts on structural integrity are on hand to closely monitor the safety of the weekend building Kenneth peoples is giving care to survivors pulled from the wreckage alive he says the process is tedious the real slow right now and uh what's going on over here with our unit is just we're just waiting on them to see if they're going to find any more individual inside rescue workers can see bodies inside the rubble and say the death count will rise throughout the day but the number who escaped alive but we're previously on a count and four is also rising with the Christian science monitor I'm skip thermon in Oklahoma City many world leaders have condemned the Oklahoma bombing state run radio in Iran says such terrorist acts have no human justification but added that American policies laid the ground for incidents like yesterday's the presidents of Israel and Italy called for an end to terrorism and

Philippine's president Fidel Ramos proposed an international conference on hunting terrorists in Chechnya Russian troops and Chechen rebels continue to fight near the village of Bamut a Russian news agency reported today that the Russian government had called a cease fire but Russia's interior ministry said it wasn't true monitor radio's Eric Engelman reports from Moscow a spokeswoman for Russia's interior ministry categorically denied reports of a cease fire in Chechnya reading a prepared statement she said Russian troops were continuing to disarm rebel formations she said the interior ministry had received no orders to call a truth each our task news agency early reported the Russian government called a cease fire in the breakaway republic passing that the truth was meant to appease Western leaders many of whom are coming to Moscow next month for World War II victory celebrations the Interfax news agency meanwhile reports continued fighting around the village of Bamut which Russian forces captured briefly before being forced to retreat Interfax quoted General Mikhail Yegorov the acting commander of Russian forces in Chechnya as saying he expected strong resistance from rebels and at least three other towns for the Christian science monitor

I'm Eric Engelman in Moscow for the third day a rocks government refused to allow a Polish diplomat to visit two Americans jailed near Baghdad sources in Iraq say the visits will be cut back to once every two weeks instead of once a week David Daliberty and William Barloon were arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison last month after crossing into Iraq from Kuwait a powerful car bomb explosion rocked a suburb of Athens Greece today police say two people are dead they could not say if the explosion was caused by a bomb or a gas leak this is public radio international on a trip to Sarajevo U .N. Special Envoy Yasushi Akashi failed today to persuade the Bosnian government to extend a four -month ceasefire that expires at the end of the month Akashi said the two sides had an honest difference of views he said he will continue his efforts France has threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping force if the truth is not extended there are reports that Rwandan government troops have forced tens of thousands of refugees to abandon camps in southwestern

Rwanda UNA officials say a number of people have died in the Exodus they also say conditions in the camps are deteriorating monitor radio's Joyce Hackel has more from Nairobi humanitarian workers say they've only been allowed to distribute limited amounts of water to the refugees and transit in southwest Rwanda the mainly Tutsi Rwandan soldiers are evicting more than a hundred thousand people from the country's largest displaced camp refugees fled to camp last July after rebels overthrew the government and halted a genocide the government is now trying to close the camps saying the settlements harbor militiamen bent on bringing down the new regime the evacuations haven't been peaceful ten refugees were trampled to death in a stampede after soldiers fired into the air to seal off one camp Rwandan troops have been accused of shooting and killing 16 other villagers you and agencies are trying to truck some of the people back to their home but many have already set off on foot the christian science monitor i'm Joyce Hackel in Nairobi the world's largest auto maker general motors is reporting record first

quarter profits the company earned 2 .2 billion dollars despite dropping sales and a declining market share a day after falling to another record low the dollar was up today against the japanese yen in tokyo the dollar traded at 82 yen up more than a yen from late yesterday from monitor radio news i'm cathy mclofflin on pr i mclofflin this is monitor radio i'm david brown in the 25 years since earth day was first celebrated news concerning the health of planet earth has been overwhelmingly gloomy

the general consensus is that pollution and population growth have colluded to wreak ecological and biological destruction apocalyptic visions of the environment's future have also figured prominently but just recently a more sanguine view has emerged namely that the serious problems outlined over the last quarter century have been responsibly and effectively addressed with impressive results Greg Easterbrook is one of the proponents of that optimistic position he is the author of a new book titled a moment on earth the coming age of environmental optimism and he joins us now from our Washington studio also with us is silvia url she is a marine biologist who has written a book called sea change the message of the oceans and she joins us from New York mr. Easterbrook first you've characterized the environmental laws of the last 25 years as a stunning success explain your optimism as regards the western world not the developing world and

perhaps not the oceans which silvia url knows knows better than anyone but as regards the land areas of north america and western europe environmental trends i think are almost uniformly positive since the first day earth day in nineteen seventy air and water have become cleaner in the united states and european union reforestation not deforestation has become the rule recycling has begun to increase several important categories of pollution have been eliminated or nearly eliminated this does not mean problems are over any more than becoming ill and beginning to recover whatever leave the patient agreeable to a relapse but i think it does mean that trends are positive in the western world miserable you're a pioneer in in the environment you write in your book that the price for not respecting the environment is now being paid with the blighted lives of citizens who have little to say about the policies that have altered their future i presume that means you're not as confident as as mr. Easterbrook at the earths in good hand i don't

see things i don't have my current feeling is that the environment is in trouble and will continue to be so until we take seriously our dependence on nature i increasingly there seems to be a detachment of humankind from our obvious roots that we are dependent on the natural systems that surround us that precede us by by thousands of millennia millions of millennia in some cases and through our actions in our lifetime and certainly at an accelerating rate we are altering that that living matrix that that makes up the the natural systems i certainly see it in the sea anyone can see it on the land as well i'm concerned about the loss of some important legislation or at least the weakening of important legislation such as the endangered species act that does has been very helpful in terms of protecting not just species but ecosystems

it really means that we have to stay on top of changing times and address issues as as the emerge and not be complacent and think that things are just fine they aren't mr. Easterbrook is it possible that your message might be taken i mean look at the time in which in which people are are talking what you're talking this is a time when much of much of the edifice of environmental regulation which you credit as a success is under threat of being a weakened or perhaps dismantled by congress well the the line i use david is that the most dangerous environmental trend in the united states today is not occurring in nature or not occurring in industry it's occurring in the united states congress uh clearly there are attempts in the part of republicans in the house and and senator bob dole and in the senate to indiscriminately attack both the oaths environmental programs that need reform and rationalization but simultaneously also attack the ones that are working and producing the very positive trends that make possible the environmental rebound that's in progress in the western world

if it were widely understood by the public and in public debate that most environmental trends in the united states are now positive voters would be outraged at the notion of unwinding those programs as you hear though mr. Easterbrook as you heard miss miss Earl outlining what she regard a serious threat to the world's oceans uh do you agree that the threats are as are as serious as she suggests well in the western world there are clearly a number of challenges ahead generally we see fish declining everywhere with silver Earl knows much better than i the oceans are are an unknown in many aspects of biology and species diversity knowledge levels of them are relatively primitive and of course if you look in the third world virtually all trends in most third world countries are negative there there are true emergency situation exists but i think if you want to allocate your environmental resources wisely and and the wise place to put them would be in the developing world today not the first world you must first understand that by and large the environmental emergency is over

here problems remain but the emergency is over the emergency is still in progress at a dramatically worsening degree in the developing world that's where our resources should go and the return on our dollar will be ten times as high in the developing world as it is there miss Earl those words ring like a bell the environmental emergency is over here in the u .s. what are you you chuckling oh goodness i will i see an emergency situation with respect to for example the grand banks or in other areas of the sea i i worry greatly that we we do become complacent in view of modest not grand successes modest successes if we just shrug and say hey it's okay now we can move on and and get about our business of doing other things then i think we're in real peril Sylvia Earl is a marine biologist who's written a book called sea change the message of the oceans she's been speaking with us from New York we've also heard from Greg Easterbrook he

is the author of a new book titled a moment on earth they're coming age of environmental optimism he's been speaking with us from our Washington studios thank you both for joining us thank you thank you on a vacant 77 acre field in Niagara Falls New York construction is about to begin on 250 homes the site is just a few feet from the love canal hazardous waste treatment site love canal became synonymous with toxic waste in the late 1970s when more than 700 families were permanently evacuated 22 ,000 tons of hazardous waste had seeped to the surface in the middle of the neighborhood after a massive cleanup the state of New York declared much of the area habitable in 1988 people began buying vacant homes in 1990 and now those new homes are to be built monitor radio's Vince Winkle has more the neighborhood that surrounds the fenced off love canal site is almost serene to the north are the more than 200 once evacuated homes that have been

resold to the east in an area deemed unsafe for residential use houses are being demolished and buried to make room for an office park and to the west are vacant fields which will soon be filled with modern homes it is that plan that has placed those active in the love canal battle of 1978 back in front of the microphone love can now should have been left as a monument to our mistake it should have been fenced off and just abandoned doctor Beverly pagan is a cancer researcher with the Jackson laboratory in bar harbour main in 1978 she spoke out against her employer the New York state health department on the issue of love canal she eventually lost her job over love canal pagan had reported that chemicals from the dump had seeped across the neighborhood causing health problems among residents including miscarriages and birth defects in the 1970s they did criticize my study but actually they eventually agreed with me they did evacuate the entire neighborhood and

in fact just a few years ago they published a study on birth defects and miscarriages among women surrounding hazardous waste sites in New York state that validated everything that I said today there is still some mystery as to just what's buried in the love canal doctor Paul Castiniac is director of the toxicology center at the University of Buffalo in fact we still don't know what we're dealing with totally in the love canal there are literally reams of GC mass spec printouts of chemicals that reside in that canal that have not yet even been identified we know a lot about what's there but we don't know everything about it okay we're in the love canal treatment room and the main function of this room of course is to treat the leachate that we have coming from the from the field a containment facility Brian Sadowski helps manage the treatment plant currently

overseen by the Occidental Chemical Corporation spokespeople for Occidental and New York's health department insists the area is suitable for habitation and that all the chemicals are secure within the confines of the treatment site ed horn is with the state's bureau of toxic substance assessment these studies laid out what is and the habitability decision laid out what was felt to be the best science in terms of whether there is or is not a risk additional risk to living in these neighborhoods because of chemicals from the love canal and the studies said that the areas which were declared habitable have no additional risks as a consequence of being close to the love canal that we can determine so construction is about to begin on this subdivision 250 single family homes price to sell it between sixty and ninety thousand dollars with state

subsidies of up to twenty thousand dollars for qualified buyers the houses will face warning signs posted on the fence of love canal luella kenny was evacuated from the neighborhood after her seven -year -old son john died in 1978 his official cause of death was linked to chemical exposure she is angry that new homes are being built all those chemicals are still buried there at love canal i mean they would tell me that it was safe that i could go back there and i could live and i could take my children back there no way because and i would not believe them and i would not trust them and if i had my children as many people with small children i'd take them back into love canal just because is the american dream let's move into you know a house we have to have a house no that isn't what we want i mean we want a safe place we want we want our children to grow up we want them to grow up without having deformities we want them to grow up to grow up period kenny's emotion is shared by many who suffered at love canal in the 1970s but the state

health department stands behind its habitability decision the 1988 document that allows the repopulation of the neighborhood state officials say the millions of dollars spent on testing in the area prove without a doubt that the chemical risk has been alleviated meanwhile construction of the new homes should start next month if all goes according to plan the first residence should move in by September 17 years after the first evacuation of love canal for the christian science monitor i'm Vince Winkle in Niagara Falls New York this is monitor radio stay tuned i'm michael nico with these headlines the u .s justice department says investigators have a number of good solid leads in yesterday's car bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma city president clinton vowed today that the forces of inhumanity responsible for the bombing would be caught and punished north korea and the united states have broken off talks without reaching

agreement on how to implement a nuclear record piongang has threatened to restart its nuclear program if there's no agreement by tomorrow for the third day iraq has refused to allow a Polish diplomat to visit two americans jailed near Baghdad for illegally entering iraq sources in iraq say the visits will be cut back to once every two weeks instead of once a week and that's uh... this is monitor radio updating our top story official figures still say at least 36 people killed in yesterday's Oklahoma city bombing but as many as 200 people are still unaccounted for there appear to have been several developments in the hunt for the perpetrators of the blast monitor radio's washington bureau chief jim kaine joins us now jim there have been several developments this afternoon what is the latest on suspects well the developments came david in two

news conferences one by the fb i in Oklahoma city and that was immediately followed by a news conference here in washington uh... with attorney general jenny reno they have announced that they have uh... identified two suspects uh... to unknown white men at this time their names are unknown they have descriptions and have released those descriptions and composite drawings of the two men they've also identified the truck they believe was uh... carrying the bomb which has been essentially vaporized by the explosion but they said it was a truck that was rented and they gave no further details of that in addition attorney general reno said a reward is being offered today the government is offering a reward of up to two million dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma city although we have many hundreds of leads we want to make sure that we have all relevant information that could lead to the conviction of all of those involved in this event jim

early on officials had talked about suspects uh... perhaps a middle eastern descent what descriptions are offered now by the fb i well the descriptions were very general again just to white males uh... one with the uh... light uh... brown crewcut and other with dark hair uh... when asked specifically if those descriptions ruled out uh... people of middle eastern descent the fb i agent said uh... not at all that they were very general descriptions and he did not uh... mean to rule that out whatsoever i'm curious about what developed uh... as a as a london angle of a british connection to this story uh... this afternoon british authorities confirmed that they were sending back someone who they described as a suspect who was later identified by the fb i as a witness tell us more about that jim well attorney general reno was asked essentially that at the news conference uh... earlier today uh... she was asked what more she could say about the witness who was detained in london nothing other than that he is being returned to this country at

this point he is being returned as a possible witness under escort being returned to the u .s. under escort he was what uh... on route to london's Heathrow when he was apprehended that from chicago is that right originally he was going to fly from chicago to roam uh... he was uh... stopped uh... and questioned for a short time in chicago long enough apparently to miss his flight his luggage went on to roam and apparently has been seized there and is being returned he then caught a flight to london where he was stopped by british authorities at he throw airport and now is on his way back to the united states it was my understanding that uh... some of the evidence are discovered by officials in uh... uh... in roam some of the evidence found in his luggage might connect him somehow to to uh... possible terrorist activity or what do you know of that well again it's dangerous to jump to conclusions what uh... officials uh... or i should say what sources have said unconfirmed uh... by officials on the record

is that while there were no explosives found in that luggage uh... there were some items that could possibly be useful in the construction of a bomb uh... including some uh... the electronic equipment and that sort of thing that is monitor radio's jim kaine speaking with us from our Washington bureau jim keep us posted we'll do david when you think that it took presumably less than twenty four hours for the fby and and for british immigration agents to zero in on a target that alone makes you wonder about the methods used in this kind of investigation bruce hoffman is the director of the center for the study of terrorism and political violence at the university of san jr .s in scotland and mr. hoffman the dragnet obviously fell incredibly fast how do agencies even begin to put in place an investigation like this where do they begin well i think it's facilitated by um... network of cooperative relationships that have been built up amongst law enforcement at the federal state and local levels and where there's a sharing of intelligence the unity of effort

um... such as the cooperation we saw in the the equally expeditious cracking of the world trade center case two years ago presumably this individual that was uh... apprehended at london's he throw airport was on a plane from chicago which would have meant that that individual would have had to have left the oklahoma city area and how would officials have known that had been able to track this this person literally annealing a haystack in a sense well fairly the passenger manifest i mean that that's the one thing that the information age in the age of technology it's very easy to um... put patterns together to put names and circumstances together in such an arrangement that it may yield intelligence clues that i suspect in this case that the passenger manifest coupled with um... the the originating city of his ticket the time of day of the flight um... any behavior that also might have aroused suspicion along the way um... even uh... things like entry in another country and answering even routine questions from customs officials any kind of clue that would tip them off to something unusual a ticket

paid for for instance with cash as opposed to a credit card a uh... particular you know um... name could also trigger it uh... checking social security records of birth date in the name that didn't uh... that didn't connect with one another just basically any sort of clue that would indicate something out of the ordinary would officials have to have had some kind of idea already set up perhaps several scenarios from which to work oh yeah that's certainly the case that a whole range of scenarios developed so no i i i think that they do work off of a template the same way in passenger profiling people checking in at the airline count that there's a certain profile that immediately triggers alarm and suspicion it may well be just the routine questions asked of this person while he was checking in that was the first indication of the first suggestion that something was a miss something was a bit different he may not have had any checked luggage for example speaking of the baggage we understand that this individuals baggage actually went on a separate flight uh... an alitalia flight which was on route to Rome and when that plane landed in Rome officials

searched the duffel bags said to belong to him and uh... found in those bags let me read from a list that uh... that we were provided by the associated press electrical tape silicone hammer tweezers and a photo album with pictures of missiles and weapons what does that tell you well certainly some suspicious uh... it also sounds uh... incredibly inept uh... but i suspect that he felt that he would just be treated as any other passenger and is that as long as you pass undetected and that there was nothing inherently illegal in it but rather i mean it's perfectly legal to own trees is perfectly legal to purchase silicone but nonetheless that may have been precisely the type of information that put together with his profile put together with the particulars of the way his ticket was purchased how he was traveling uh... that may have kicked off the authorities Bruce Hoffman is the director of the center for the study of terrorism and political violence at the university of st. Andrews in scotland thank you very much you're listening to monitor radio the worldwide broadcast edition of the christian science monitor monitor radio is produced by Kathleen McKenna Trevor

Nelson chris turpin emily donahue Helen Palmer and david miller patrick timmerman directs technical director is jeff turton and monitor radio senior producers chris ballman i'm david brown embossed monitor radio is made possible in part by your public radio station by the archer daniel's midland company with adm ingredients in thousands of consumer products it's no wonder adm is called supermarket to the world and by the christian science monitor with subscribers in all fifty states and in more than 140 countries worldwide for subscription information one eight hundred four five six two two two zero