Defense Articles

“Pentagon leaders should be instructed to stop using National Guard units for overseas combat instead of homeland security.”

-Editorial, “The Army We Weed,” The New York Times, Nov. 19, 2006

TERROR WAR STANDOUTS

“If there’s a hero out of all of this, it’s a young man and young woman in uniform. It’s the National Guard staff sergeant. It’s the corporal in the Marine Corps. These are the ones that are standing out. And it’s rather interesting, Mr. Chairman, that this is the first time, at least in recorded history, modern history, that the American public have fully supported those in uniform. But the support for the mission is waning, as you know.”

-Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., House Armed Services Committee hearing, Nov. 15, 2006

CRITICAL MONTHS

“I listened as you said the next months are critical, and it seems that we always hear the next few months are critical. I remember my first trip to Iraq in 2003, a couple of months after Saddam fell, and everyone agreed that we had a window of opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. … A year ago, there were 400 attacks a day against our troops. It’s up to 800 insurgent attacks now and we’re told it’s just a matter of a few months, the next few months are critical.”

-Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., to David Satterfield, State Department Coordinator for Iraq, House Armed Services Committee hearing, Nov. 15, 2006

MORE TROOPS

“In discussions with our commanders and Iraqi leaders, it’s clear that they believe Iraqi forces can take more control faster, provided we invest more manpower and resources into the coalition military transition teams, speed the delivery of logistics and mobility enablers and embrace an aggressive Iraqi-led effort to disarm illegal militias.”

-Gen. John Abizald, Commander, U.S. Central Command, House Armed Services Committee hearing, Nov. 15, 2006

SMART BOMB

“HALF US JON CARRY-WE R STUCK HEAR N IRAK.”

-1st Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota Amy National Guard, The New York Post, Nov. 2, 2006.

COMBAT ADVISERS

“The reassessment of U.S. strategy in Iraq should radically alter the combat mission of the American troops serving there. The key policy change is to embed five times as many U.S. combat advisers into Iraqi battalions. This will, on the one hand, reduce the size and casualties of U.S. forces, and on the other, strengthen the Iraqi army-the only institution that can stop the creeping civil war.”

-Hans Binnendijk and Bing West, “Force multiplier,” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2008

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL

“It’s not an emergency, it sure as hell is not supplemental, and it doesn’t appear in the budget. It’s an accounting trick.”

-Rep. Nell Abercromble, D-Hawall, “Interview: Newsmakers on the Record,” DefenseNews, Nov, 20, 2006

WORN DOWN

“The Army and its National Guard and Reserve have been worn down-some would say worn out-by the endless deployments of troops on one-year combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

-Joseph L. Galloway, “It’s Past Time to Start Repairing Army, Marines, “azstamet.com, Nov. 20, 2006

LOOKIN’ FOR SWAGGER

“I think James Baker and Dick Cheney should take Bush out to the woods around Camp David. After 24 hours in a sweat lodge, he should be given only a loin cloth, a hunting knife and a canteen of water. Bush should then set out to track and kill a black bear, after which he should eat its still beating heart so he can absorb its spirit. He should then fly back to Washington in Marine 1. His torso still scratched from the bear’s claws, his face bloodied and steaming in the November chill, he should immediately give a press conference at which he throws the bearskin on the front row of the press corps, completely enveloping Helen Thomas, declaring, Tm not going anywhere.’”

EDGEWOOD, N.Y. — CPI Aerostructures, Inc. (”CPI”) (AMEX:CVU) today announced that it has been selected as one of the Fast Track 50 companies by DefenseNews. CPI ranked #2 for 3-year revenue growth among the 50 leading defense companies on the list. Inclusion in this year’s list was based on revenue growth, which needed to be a minimum of 10 percent over the past year, three years and five years.

Edward J. Fred, CPI’s President & CEO stated, “We are delighted to be recognized by DefenseNews along with such a distinguished list of defense companies. Despite being the smallest company on the list, CPI exceeded all but one of its peers with 3-year revenue growth of 48.9%. With our proven performance as a military supplier, our strong balance sheet, and our prime contractor and subcontractor capabilities, CPI is poised for continued success.”

This year’s Fast Track 50 list appears in the August 23, 2004 issue of DefenseNews. The list will also be posted online at www.defensenews.com, which should be accessible within the next few weeks. DefenseNews is part of the Army Times Publishing Company, the leading military and government news periodical publisher.

Founded in 1980, CPI Aerostructures is engaged in the contract production of structural aircraft parts principally for the U.S. Air Force and other branches of the armed forces. In conjunction with its assembly operations, CPI provides engineering, technical and program management services. Among the key programs that CPI supplies are the C-5A Galaxy cargo jet, the T-38 Talon jet trainer and the E-3 Sentry AWACS jet.

The above statements include forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which are described from time to time in CPI’s SEC reports, including CPI’s Form 10-KSB for the year ended December 31, 2003 and Form 10-QSB for the quarters ended March 31, 2004 and June 30, 2004.

Got Travelocity? Expedia? The next welcome addition to the cornucopia of online travel sites is now available–the Defense Travel System.

No more lengthy travel claim process! Shorter paper trail! With the new and improved online system, travelers on government orders can make travel arrangements right from the desktop. And aside from making commercial air, hotel and car rentals reservations, travel requests can be sent for approval and provide a printed voucher for settling the travel claim once the comfy TAD trip is complete.

The fully web enabled system will save the Department of Defense money, and enable a much more speedy way of handling travel, down to the lowest levels.

The catch? Although travelers won’t need to complete travel requests, they will create their own travel documents as long as they have been issued a Public Key Infrastructure Certificate. The certificate allows them to sign the request with an electronic signature. Once the document is signed, it will automatically route to an authorizing official, who will process it to the Defense Finance and Accounting Services office for payment. If travelers don’t have a PKI certificate, designated staff with PKI credentials can enter the request for them.

Now, if we can just get those first class upgrades.

A veteran U.S. Air Force acquisition officer is the new project director of the Defense Travel System Project Office.

Lt. Col. Larry Schaefer assumed command July 12 in a ceremony at the Crystal City, Va., project office.

Schaefer assumes command at a critical benchmark time for the Defense Travel System–a test at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D, is going exceedingly well.

“People just don’t realize what a major event (the testing) is,” said Lawrence Lanzillotta, Principal Deputy and Deputy Undersecretary of Defense of Management Reform. “This is a major milestone.”

Lanzillotta said no major obstacles remain to the successful fielding of the system.

“It will be tested and it will be operational,” said Lanzillotta.

Schaefer comes to the program director’s office from his last assignment at the Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

“I look forward to leading this team in the successful implementation ,” said Schaefer. “We will make the vision of the Defense Travel System a reality.”

Both Schaefer and Lanzillotta praised the work of Col. Pam Arias, the outgoing project director.

“She raised the Defense Travel System flag a little higher today because of her efforts,” sand Lanzillotta.

Arias is returning to the location of her last assignment, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., to assume a new acquisition assignment.

The veteran Air Force acquisition officer arrived last summer at a difficult time for the Defense Travel System. A test at a Missouri Air Force base had gone poorly and been halted.

“The fact it is fixed in a year is a tribute to all of you,” said Arias, gesturing to her staff.

A test on Monday exceeded expectations, said Arias.

“This is a ground-breaking system,” said Arias. “It is laying the path for all the systems that will come behind it.”

Defense Travel System will economize the costs of support to service members but maintain quality performance, she said.

The Defense Travel System, being developed by prime contractor TRW, Inc., is designed to fully digitize the approval, arrangements and payments for the temporary travel of Department of Defense service members.

Some corn varieties that arose on the Caribbean island of Antigua defend themselves with chemical attacks that leave insect gut linings in tatters.

When armyworm caterpillars make the mistake of chewing on some of this corn, they don’t grow well, reaching only half the weight of counterparts that consume less gut-wrenching corn, says Dawn S. Luthe of Mississippi State University. Now, she and her colleagues propose at least one reason why.

Corn plants under attack quickly accumulate a cysteine protease–a protein-slicing enzyme–surrounding the location where the caterpillars are chewing. In an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report microscope observations of the sorry state of the innards of insects that had digested enzyme-laced corn tissue.

“That’s pretty novel,” comments Clarence Ryan of Washington State University in Pullman, another specialist in built-in plant weaponry. Although chemical defenses are common in the plant world, Ryan says he hadn’t heard of an enzyme of this particular class being deployed that way.

Luthe explains that the toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), now widely engineered into commercial crops, also attack insect guts. But Bt toxins do their damage differently. She says that the new enzyme doesn’t knock out insects fast enough to substitute for Bt toxins. However, she speculates that combining the protease with other defenses could make a pesticide to which it would be hard for insects to develop resistance.

Corn breeders have long known about the caterpillar-stunting power of the Antigua lineages. These plants don’t express the enzyme in their kernels. A coauthor of the new paper, W. Paul Williams of a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory at Mississippi State, has used the corn in traditional, nontransgenic corn-breeding projects.

To see what causes the stunting, Luthe, Williams, and their colleagues studied the chemicals released by the Antigua corn varieties when caterpillars start chewing on them. Other corn-defense chemicals typically show up in 8 hours, but the cysteine protease surges in about an hour and remains at high concentrations for at least a week.

They identified the gene that encodes this enzyme and inserted it into another corn variety. They grew masses of the transgenic corn tissue, called callus, which they then fed to armyworm caterpillars. Under a scanning electron microscope, the guts of caterpillars that ate enzyme-enhanced callus had many little rips. Innards of caterpillars that ate nontransgenic callus looked smooth.

Another scientist who studies plants defenses, Gary Felton of Pennsylvania State University in State College, calls the work “an elegant demonstration of this new mechanism.”

Men who get circumcised reduce their risk of acquiring HIV, the AIDS virus, by more than half, a clinical trial in South Africa shows.

Many previous studies have suggested such a benefit from male circumcision (SN: 4/3/04, p. 212). But this trial and two ongoing trials in Uganda and Kenya are the first ones to investigate the procedure’s effect on HIV risk to men. It did so by randomly assigning some men and not others to be circumcised, says physician Bertran Auvert of INSERM, the French national research agency, in Saint-Maurice.

Auvert and an international team of researchers recruited 3,274 uncircumcised heterosexual men, ages 18 to 24, from an area near Johannesburg.

All wanted to be circumcised and agreed to get the operation either at the start or at the end of the planned 21-month study. After the volunteers were randomly divided, physicians circumcised half the men and instructed them to abstain from sex for 6 weeks to allow full healing. Men in both groups were counseled on safe sex practices and checked for HIV infection three times during the study.

After 18 months, an oversight panel of scientists halted the project because the data were clear–49 of the uncircumcised men but only 20 of those who were circumcised had acquired HIV. The researchers report the findings in the November PLoS Medicine.

“There can no longer be a shadow of doubt that male circumcision gives a man major protection against HIV infection,” says physiologist Roger V. Short of the University of Melbourne in Carlton, Australia, who wasn’t involved in the South African study.

Auvert says that although circumcision reduced HIV risk by 60 percent, some men might mistakenly interpret this benefit as full protection. The circumcised men in the trial reported having sex 18 percent more often than the uncircumcised men did. The reason for the difference is unclear, he says.

Shortly after circumcision, men are at high risk of contracting the disease from sex partners because of the surgical wounds. But Auvert notes there was no jump in HIV infections among recently circumcised men in this study.

Uncircumcised men have soft foreskin around the head of the penis containing many cells that are easily infected by HIV, according to epidemiologist Robert C. Bailey of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These cells, called Langerhans’ cells, “tend to be close to the surface,” he says. Once infected, he adds, “they carry the virus deeper,” to the immune system T cells that HIV most commonly infects.

Circumcision removes the foreskin. During healing after the procedure, the protein keratin toughens the skin of the penis, which reduces HIV penetration there, Bailey says.

If circumcision offers protection for young-adult men, then it would be at least as valuable–or even more so–if done earlier in life, says Bailey, who is leading the study in Kenya.

The new data support a policy of early circumcision, Short concurs. “The later in life a man is circumcised, the more likely he is to be already infected with HIV.”

Remarks by the Deputy Secretary of Defense

The Honorable Gordon R. England

Japan Defense Society

16 October 2006

Good morning and welcome to the Pentagon! It is delightful to have you here, and thank you for taking the time to make this visit.

Before I entered Government service, in my career in industry, I had the great pleasure to work extensively with Japanese industry and government. We established strong relationships that continue today. I still value those relationships.

In the 21st century, America and Japan, and all our friends and allies, face a much broader array of challenges, and greater uncertainty, than ever before.

* First, terrorists have declared their intention to destroy our very way of life–here, in Japan, and around the world. This is an international threat.

President George W. Bush said that this is a struggle “that will set the course for this new century, and determine the destiny of millions around the world”. This is the fundamental strategic challenge of our time.

* We also still face potential state-based threats.

Some major countries–like China and Russia–are still in the process of transition. Their future choices will have a profound impact on global markets and security.

What I call “renegade states” have the ability to cause great harm–particularly if they acquire and use WMD.

[section] Iran continues to make threatening statements against Israel and the United States, and continues its quest for WMD.

[section] You are very close to another threat. North Korea has tested missiles and–apparently–nuclear weapons. Their actions are of the greatest concern to the United States, Japan, and many countries. Of course, the UN met this weekend, and the U.S. and Japanese governments are working closely together to contain this threat.

These challenges require strong international partnership. No single nation can successfully meet them alone.

* The United States–and this is a very strongly held view here–is fortunate to have, in Japan, such a strong, long-standing partner and friend.

* Relationships between nations are built on relationships between people. Nations don’t have relationships–people do. The Japanese and American people have built strong relationships in trade, and culture, and science.

In missile defense, Japan is a valued and important partner. We’re sharing technologies and developing joint policies. Japan’s contributions are making the overall missile defense system better. This is a model for further cooperation. The Missile Defense Agency will be meeting with you for an in-depth discussion of this important program.

Japan has made–and is still making–other important security contributions, along with the U.S.:

* You are providing leadership in the international responses to North Korea’s provocations.

* For Operation Enduring Freedom, Japan is providing a refueling mission and fuel in the North Arabian Sea–which is very helpful to us.

* In Iraq–Japan deployed Ground Self-Defense Forces for two years to aid reconstruction; and you still have a C-130 airlift mission.

But, speaking directly and as a friend, there is a lot more that Japan–as a global leader–can and needs to accomplish. Our current partnership–the relationship we have–is still in many ways a legacy of post-WWII arrangements–no longer applicable to 21st century challenges. We need to update these relationships.

* Japan currently spends less than 1% of its GDP on defense.

* Japan’s defense industry is largely unchanged, as technology and world have changed dramatically since the Wall came down in 1989. In our own industry, we’ve gone through enormous changes in the industrial base. Defense industry needs to benefit from the competitive pressures of the global environment.

The key–for both Japan and the United States–is defense transformation, in government and in the industry that supports government.

* Globalization–the faster flow of information, and technology, and ideas–constantly creates new opportunities for growth and development, and makes new approaches possible. Data flows everywhere around the world instantaneously. It is a different environment than we had in the past.

* Defense transformation is essential to achieve the goals of our bilateral Alliance Transformation and Realignment. The objective here is deeper cooperation among key roles, missions and capabilities.

This is a hopeful time for Japan.

* Prime Minister Abe has stated his determination for Japan to play a key role as a leader on the world stage. I understand that one of his first initiatives will be giving full ministerial status to Defense … a welcome step.

* There is a great friendship between our countries, and we stand ready to support Japan as it expands its security role.

Let me share a few thoughts about how this Department is transforming the way we do business, as part of our defense transformation.

* I brought with me all my experience in industry–including a simple yet powerful approach. We work every day to be more effective, in order to be more efficient.

Across the Southeast, military contractors are producing everything from virtual reality training modules to boots and breakfast cereal as part of the nation’s $243.7 billion 2002 defense spending bill.

Pockets of new jobs and higher salaries for the region’s military personnel are good news for the Southeast, especially in states that have experienced high employment losses during the past few years. However, this timely stimulus will not be sufficient by itself to spark an overall economic rebound in the region.

Businesses in Mississippi and Louisiana are on tap to add crucial new jobs as a result of $1.8 billion worth of ship contracts won by Northrop Grumman. The boost to employment will be significant compensation for shrinking work opportunities that have plagued both states.

Defense spending on aerospace production and research, concentrated in Georgia, Florida and Alabama, accounts for $8.7 billion of the $20 billion in military contracts awarded to the region as a whole. Rather than creating new jobs, however, these contracts will mostly serve to retain jobs.

Technology and communications expenditures could breathe new life into the struggling high-tech industry, which is especially important in Florida. Information technology, biomedical technology, modeling, simulation and training industries, and plastics industries have “attained critical mass” there, according to Business Florida, along with the aviation, aeronautics and defense industries. Aviation and aerospace industries alone generate more than $15 billion in annual sales in Florida. According to one research study cited in the Real Estate Journal (published by the Wall Street Journal), technology-related jobs account for $16.8 billion in wages annually, far outstripping the impact of tourism, which provides $9.6 billion each year.

In Tennessee, a state hard hit by the waning domestic apparel industry, an infusion of more than $1 billion in defense contracts to 2,000 companies will be a significant help. Apparel employment there has halved since 2000.

Contractors across the region will benefit from construction stimulus. In 2001 the Southeast received $1.7 billion of the $10.5 billion allocated for military construction in the nation as a whole. Analysts expect spending on military construction to increase slightly each year through 2005, helping to offset regional downturns in commercial construction that threaten to continue throughout 2003.

In addition, a 4.4 percent pay increase for armed services personnel will add to discretionary income and boost retail spending.

Defense spending remains important in the Southeast

The Southeast, which claimed about 16 percent of the nation’s direct expenditures for defense in 2002, has historically relied on military spending as an economic spur. In 1996 the Southeast was the third-largest regional recipient of defense contracts, behind only the Western and Mid-Atlantic states.

Cuts in defense spending in the late ’80s and early ’90s compelled manufacturers to turn military capacity toward civilian production. For example, global positioning systems have been widely adapted for civilian use in navigation and agricultural equipment, some shipyards building naval vessels turned to producing pleasure boats, and some airplane manufacturers producing military planes switched to making corporate jets. While the orientation of traditionally defense-oriented industries shifted, the clusters of technological expertise and skilled labor remain intact and have drawn defense contractors back to the region. Georgia in particular has benefited, moving from eighth nationally in the amount of defense contract dollars received in 1996 to fifth in 2001. Florida moved from fifth to fourth in 2001.

Although Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee receive considerably fewer defense dollars than Florida and Georgia, military spending is nonetheless an important factor in these states’ economies.

Aviation struggles despite defense demand

The Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta, Ga., one of the region’s largest benefactors of defense spending, landed a $4 billion contract to produce 40 C-130J aircraft for the Air Force and 20 KC-130J aircraft for the Marines. However, the six-year contract will not produce any new jobs at the plant; rather, it will ensure that the plant’s 7,000 employees retain their jobs, according to a Lockheed spokesperson.

The story is similar to what’s going on elsewhere in the nation. Setbacks from the combined effects of terrorism and SARS as well as curtailed travel during the war with Iraq have cut commercial aviation production dramatically. Companies that would normally expand their facilities and workforce in response to the added demand of defense contracts currently have excess capacity. So instead of adding employees, the defense business is helping to forestall layoffs and shutdowns by contractors.

Boeing’s contract to assemble a missile interceptor in Huntsville, Ala., will also help maintain the status quo, providing jobs mostly for its existing employees. The Arrow 2 interceptor, developed jointly by the United States and Israel, will be produced along with the earlier Avenger system. Although Avengers are still being manufactured for export, demand is flagging. Thus, Arrow 2 production will fill the gap. Boeing employs about 2,600 people in the Huntsville area on various NASA and military projects.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales came under withering attack from members of his own party yesterday over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, facing the first resignation demand from a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and doubts from others about his candor and his ability to lead the Justice Department.

Gonzales appeared frustrated, weary and at times combative during a five-hour Senate panel hearing that was widely considered crucial to his bid to hold on to his job. He sought to present a careful defense of the firings, apologizing for the way they were handled but defending them as the “right decision.”

“While the process that led to the resignations was flawed, I firmly believe that nothing improper occurred,” Gonzales said. “It would be improper to remove a U.S. attorney to interfere with or influence a particular prosecution for partisan political gain. I did not do that. I would never do that.”

Yet the attorney general, who spent the past three weeks preparing for his testimony, struggled to recall key details of his involvement in the firings, including a pivotal conversation with President Bush .

Gonzales conceded that he never looked at the prosecutors’ performance reviews and did not know why two of them were being removed until after they were fired. He also said he did not remember a final high-level meeting in his office suite in November to discuss the firings, nor did he remember when he decided to carry out the dismissals.

“I recall making the decision,” Gonzales said at one point. “I don’t recall when the decision was made.”

The numerous uncertainties irritated many of the Republican committee members, who criticized Gonzales for bungling the dismissals and their aftermath, and questioned his apparent disconnection from the process. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the panel’s most conservative member, joined Sen. Charles E. Schumer ( N.Y. ) and other committee Democrats in calling on Gonzales to resign.

“I believe there’s consequences for mistakes. . . . And I believe the best way to put this behind us is your resignation,” Coburn said.

The sharp criticism from Coburn, Sen. Arlen Specter ( Pa. ) and other Republicans poses another difficult political challenge for Gonzales, who has been under siege by Democrats for weeks but has heard only a handful of Republicans call for him to step down.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday that Bush “was pleased with the attorney general’s testimony” and that Gonzales “has the full confidence of the president.”

“He again showed that nothing improper occurred,” Perino said. “He admitted the matter could have been handled much better, and he apologized for the disruption to the lives of the U.S. attorneys involved, as well as for the lack of clarity in his initial responses.”

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7, and another was removed earlier last year, as a result of a suggestion from the White House two years ago. Democrats allege that some prosecutors may have been removed to interfere with political corruption probes, and two of the fired prosecutors have alleged improper pressure from GOP lawmakers.

Much of the uproar, however, has centered on statements by Gonzales and some of his aides about the dismissals that are contradicted by information in e-mails and other documents released by the Justice Department . The conflict has grown to include a showdown between the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress over access to White House records and employees.

One bit of good news for Gonzales came late in the day, when Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, announced that he will refrain from publicly asking Gonzales to resign. Justice Department officials had said privately that their best hope for yesterday’s hearing was to keep key Republicans, particularly Specter, from calling on Gonzales to quit. About half a dozen GOP lawmakers have asked the attorney general to step down.

A Justice Department official said last night that Gonzales’s aides consider the lone Republican call for his resignation yesterday a “positive barometer.”

“While we realize Senate Republicans are not happy, they are willing to stick with the attorney general,” said the official, who spoke about members of Congress on the condition of anonymity.

Specter and Gonzales got off to a rough start, arguing heatedly over the attorney general’s preparation for news conferences and hearings. Specter also questioned Gonzales’s candor about meetings and conversations on three of the prosecutors that Gonzales had with his staff, White House aides and Bush.

“The reality is that your characterization of your participation is just significantly, if not totally, at variance with the facts,” Specter said.

By the close of the hearing, Specter told Gonzales that his “panorama of responses” to questions created a “loss of credibility.” He said he will privately offer Bush his opinion about whether Gonzales should remain attorney general.

On October 31, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft instated new Bureau of Prisons (”BOP”) regulations that permit attorney-client communications to be monitored where “reasonable suspicion exists to believe that a particular inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of terrorism.”1 The Attorney General claims to derive his authority to promulgate these regulations from 18 U.S.C. § 4001(b)(1), which vests control of the federal penal institutions in the Attorney General, and 5 U.S.C. § 301, which gives the head of an executive department the authority to prescribe regulations for the government of his or her department.2 Normally, a public comment period would precede the imposition of such regulations, but the Department of Justice also claimed authority based on a finding of good cause and the foreign affairs exception to the Administrative Procedure Act to institute these measures immediately.3

Although the fact that attorney-client conversations are subject to monitoring may seem to be a relatively alarming intrusion into the arena of a sacred form of privilege,4 the BOP regulations stand as only one means by which the government is currently able to monitor attorney-client conversations. For example, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (”FISA”), the government can obtain a court order authorizing electronic surveillance of attorney-client conversations where it shows, among other things, that there is “probable cause to believe that the target of the proposed surveillance is . . . an agent of a foreign power,”5 and it has certified that “a significant purpose of the surveillance is to obtain foreign intelligence information.”6 Other means for monitoring suspected criminals are available to the government under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (”Title III”).7 This statute requires, inter alia, that the government establish that there is probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed or is about to commit a particular crime, that the proposed surveillance will intercept communications concerning the offense, and that the facilities sought to be monitored are commonly used by the suspect.8

In cases where FISA has been used to record attorney-client communications, the use of privilege or “taint” teams has been found to be an acceptable means of maintaining the integrity of a defendants’ right to have privileged communications with his attorney.9 These teams, composed of government employees, serve to insulate the defendant from the prosecutor by screening for the sought-after information while preventing potentially privileged information from reaching the government trial team.10 Along the same lines, Title III prohibits the use of intercepted privileged communications as evidence in court.11

Prior to their October 31, 2001 update, BOP regulations provided that “Special Administrative Measures” (”SAMs”) could be used to prevent the passage of information from suspected terrorists to potential cohorts or the media.12 These measures were deemed to include such things as “housing the inmate in administrative detention and/or limiting . . . correspondence, visiting . . . and use of the telephone, as is reasonably necessary to protect persons against the risk of acts of violence or terrorism.”13 In addition to these possibilities, the new version of the BOP regulations includes the monitoring of attorney-client conversations as an additional SAM that may be imposed, and allows the government to utilize this measure without a court order or showing of probable cause.14 When compared to the Fourth Amendment requirements for the surveillance or monitoring of any other suspected criminal, the absence of a probable cause requirement is one of the most significant liberties taken by the new BOP regulations.15

As if in preemptive response to constitutional criticisms, the new regulations include provisions that attempt to protect the rights of the accused. Among these is a requirement that written notice shall be given “to the inmate and to the attorneys involved, prior to the initiation of any monitoring.”16 Additionally, just as “taint teams” are provided for under FISA, the BOP regulations require that “a privilege team [be] designated, consisting of individuals not involved in the underlying investigation,” in order “to ensure that any properly privileged materials are not retained during the course of the monitoring . . . and that the investigation is not compromised by exposure to privileged material relating to the investigation or defense strategy . . . .”‘7 Furthermore, this privilege team is not permitted to disclose any information obtained without approval by a federal judge, unless the privilege team leader “determines that acts of violence or terrorism are imminent.”18 The government believes that these provisions “carefully and conscientiously balance an inmate’s right to effective assistance of counsel against the government’s responsibility to thwart future acts of violence . . . perpetrated with the participation or direction of federal inmates.”19