FRIDA BERRIGAN Senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute, Berrigan said today: “If President Bush has his way, total military spending for 2003 will reach $396 billion, an $87 billion increase from January 2001. It would be the largest increase since the Reagan administration. But this spending spree has little to do with fighting the war on terrorism. About one-third of the $68 billion allocated for weapons procurement will pay for Cold War systems with no relevance to the current war. This includes an additional $12 billion for Joint Strike Fighter, F-22 and…

RUSSELL MOKHIBER Editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, Mokhiber said today: “Much of the history of corporate crime and violence in this country has never seen the light of day because corporate executives follow closely the advice of corporate counsel — when in doubt, shred it. Corporate lawyers have become so cavalier about the subject that they publicly discuss destruction of documents. Andersen was apparently following to the letter advice often dished out by white-collar defense lawyers, including that of Harvey Pitt, the accounting industry star defense lawyer until he became chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. White-collar defense lawyers…

In his news conference on Wednesday afternoon, President Bush responded to several questions about nuclear policies. The following analysts are available for interviews: JOHN BURROUGHS Executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Burroughs said: “Contrary to what Bush said today, the Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] expands the circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be used beyond those that deter an attack on the United States…. The U.S. cannot credibly tell Iraq and North Korea to permit inspections to verify the absence of nuclear arms while threatening to use nuclear weapons against those countries. Preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear…

KHADER SHKIRAT A visiting fellow at Harvard Law School and director of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment based in Jerusalem, Shkirat said today: “This is not ‘a war by two sides’ — two armies poised against each other. Israel is occupying and oppressing Palestinians. The Israeli military forces are attacking a civilian population. There are massacres, shelling using U.S. weaponry. Two Israeli Apache helicopters just fired four air-to-surface missiles on a Palestinian-registered civilian car in Ramallah, killing three people. There needs to be immediate international protection for Palestinian civilians, but the Bush administration…

CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Professor of communication at American University and author of National Security Directives of the Reagan and Bush Administrations, Simpson is available for limited interviews. He said today: “Senate Majority Leader Daschle knew or certainly should have known that there are contingency plans for a shadow government. But he apparently did not know that the Bush administration had begun actually operating one…. Once the story broke in the news media, the Bush administration began portraying this submerged security apparatus as a relatively innocuous government-in-waiting that would spring into action only after a catastrophic attack on Washington, D.C. — as…

WENONAH HAUTER Hauter is director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project. She said today: “It is outrageous that the Department of Energy had to be taken to court to be forced to release the documents relating to Vice President Cheney’s energy task force. We will look forward to the documents becoming public and seeing the role that energy corporations played in writing the energy legislation now being considered in Congress. Notwithstanding the administration’s stonewalling and disregard for the public’s right to know, it is clear that the Bush-Cheney energy plan was heavily influenced by fatcat energy industry tycoons, for…

KELLY CAMPBELL DAVID POTORTI Family members of Sept. 11 victims have formed a non-profit organization seeking effective alternatives to war as a response to the terrorist attacks. Peaceful Tomorrows favors the creation of an Afghan victims fund to match the outpouring of support for U.S. victims. Four family members have recently traveled to Afghanistan to meet with civilian victims of the subsequent bombing. Rita Lasar lost her brother, Abe Zelmanowitz, in the World Trade Center when he stayed back with a quadriplegic friend. He was later eulogized by George W. Bush. She said today: “I found the answer to what…

A fierce assault by thousands of U.S.-backed Colombian government troops — launched on Friday to retake a large safe-haven region controlled by rebels for three years — has already resulted in confirmed reports of civilian deaths. The Bush administration is now seeking more than $500 million in additional aid to the Bogota regime, which would supplement a previous $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. As the New York Times reported over the weekend, some members of Congress “express doubts about aiding a military with a poor human rights record and alliances to right-wing paramilitary forces.” The following critics of U.S. government…

CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON Associate professor of communication at American University and author of the books Blowback and Science of Coercion, Simpson said today: “Donald Rumsfeld strongly implied last night that the Department of Defense is not running covert operations in its military operations. The truth of the matter is that U.S. psywar and covert operations against American citizens and allied countries are expanding more rapidly today than at any other time in U.S. history. The program has several clear levels. For example, John Poindexter, a national security perjurer who supervised the Iran-Contra disaster, has been quietly appointed to lead the new…

DENIS HALLIDAY Halliday is a former UN Assistant Secretary General and ex-head of the UN oil-for-food program. He said today: “The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were in Iraq just two weeks ago. Those types of monitoring programs could be expanded to include chemical and biological weapons capability, but re-starting an Iraq-specific regime like UNMOVIC would very difficult because of domestic pressure in Iraq. It’s very hard for Iraq to trust the UN after the UNSCOM inspectors were used for espionage. The talk of ‘axis of evil,’ ‘regime change’ and threats of a major assault on Iraq are just grossly…