Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Suicide bomber targets Shiite party; Iraq to seal borders during election By SAMEER N. YACOUB THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide bomber struck the Baghdad headquarters of Iraq’s biggest Shiite political party Tuesday, killing three people, as the government announced plans to close borders and restrict movements to bolster security in the national election. Three candidates were slain as insurgents intensified their campaign to subvert the ballot. The Cabinet member responsible for internal security urged fellow Sunni Arabs to disregard threats by Sunni extremists and vote in the Jan. 30 election, in which Iraqis will choose a 275-member National Assembly and regional legislatures. Otherwise, the minister warned, the country will slide into civil war. In a positive development, a Catholic archbishop kidnapped in northern Iraq was released Tuesday without payment of ransom, the Vatican said. Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, an Iraqi, said he believes he was kidnapped by mistake. But an American soldier was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, and more foreigners were reported kidnapped, including Lebanese businessman Jebrail Adeeb Azar and eight Chinese construction workers. The Chinese were shown held hostage by gunmen claiming the captives worked for a company that deals with Americans. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said diplomats were “making all efforts to rescue” the hostages, who disappeared last week while traveling to Jordan. The suicide driver detonated his vehicle after security guards stopped it at a checkpoint in front of offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq, one of the major groups contesting the election. The Shiite party, known as SCIRI, has close ties to Iran and is strongly opposed by Sunni Muslim militants. Iraqi police said the bomber and two others died and nine people were wounded, including three police. The blast gouged a crater in the pavement, left several vehicles in flames and spread shredded debris on the street in the Jadriyah district. “SCIRI will not be frightened by such an act,” party spokesman Ridha Jawad said. “SCIRI will continue the march toward building Iraq, establishing justice and holding the elections.” Sunni Muslim militants, who make up the bulk of Iraq’s insurgents, have stepped up attacks on Shiites to frighten them into staying home on election day. Although many Sunni clerics and others oppose the election, Shiite leaders have told their followers that voting is their religious duty. Shiites comprise about 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people and are expected to gain the political power long denied them by the Sunni Arab community, estimated at about 20 percent. Large turnouts are expected in the Shiite heartland south of Baghdad and in Kurdish-controlled regions of the north. Insurgents have warned people to stay away from the polls and have threatened candidates. Gunmen shot and killed three candidates, officials said Tuesday. Two of them belonged to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s political coalition, the Iraqi National Accord. Alaa Hamid, who was running for the National Assembly, was killed Monday in Iraq’s second largest city, Basra, an official said. Hamid was also the deputy chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee in Basra, which had been relatively quiet. Riad Radi, who was contesting the local race for Basra’s provincial council, died Sunday when masked gunmen fired on his car as he was driving with his family, the official said. The third candidate, Shaker Jabbar Sahla, was shot dead in Baghdad on Monday. He was a Shiite running for the National Assembly on the Constitutional Monarchy Movement ticket, headed by a cousin of Iraq’s last king. U.S. and Iraqi officials fear that a Sunni boycott could cast doubt on the legitimacy of a new government, heighten tensions between Shiites and Sunnis and fuel the Sunni-led insurgency. On Tuesday, Interior Minister Flash Hassan al-Naqib, a Sunni, told reporters he expects Sunni insurgents to escalate attacks before the election, especially in the Baghdad area, to discourage a big voter turnout. “If any group does not participate in the elections, it will constitute treason,” al-Naqib said, adding that “boycotting the elections will not produce a National Assembly that represents the Iraqi people” but instead will bring on “a civil war that will divide the country.” To curb election day violence, Iracji authorities announced they will close the nation’s borders for three days starting Jan. 29, restrict travel inside the countr and expand the hours of the nighttimi curfew. About 300,000 Iraqi ant multinational troops will providi security _ with Iraq’s fledgling force taking the primary role. In the run-up to the election, U.S troops have increased raids in insurgenc flashpoints, arresting scores of suspectet guerrillas. Hundreds of troops from thi U.S. Army’s 11th Armored Cavalr Regiment have been dispatched tt Mosul, the main northern city and an insurgent stronghold. President Bush talked about election security during conversations Tuesday with Allawi, the prime minister, and Jordan’s King Abdullah, the White House announced. “We want to make sure that the Iraqis have the best possible election, that as many people in Iraq who want to, are able to participate in the election process,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. In Baghdad, the chief U.N. election coordinator in Iraq said the ballot would take place as planned unless there was a massive onslaught of violence. “We’re hoping that this won’t happened,” said Carlos Valenzuela, a Colombian who has worked in 14 elections. “The intimidation of electoral workers has been quite high and very serious.” Associated Press reporters Sinan Salaheddin, Hamza Hendawi and Bassein Mroue contributed to this report. HADI MIZ8AN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A U.S. soldier treats an injury to an Iraqi at the scene of an explosion in Baghdad on Jan. 18. A suicide driver detonated a car bomb outside the offices of Iraq’s largest Shiite political party, killing three other people, police and the U.S. military said. FBI stops using Carnivore software By TED BRIDIS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — The FBI has effectively abandoned its custom-built Internet surveillance technology, once known as Carnivore, designed to read e mails and other online communications among suspected criminals, terrorists and spies, according to bureau oversight reports submitted to Congress. Instead, the FBI said it has switched to unspecified commercial software to eavesdrop on computer traffic during such investigations and has increasingly asked Internet providers to conduct wiretaps on targeted customers on the government’s behalf, reimbursing companies for their costs. The FBI performed only eight Internet wiretaps in fiscal 2003 and five in fiscal 2002; none used the software initially called Carnivore and later renamed the DCS-1000, according to FBI documents submitted to Senate and House oversight committees. The FBI, which once said Carnivore was “far better” than commercial products, said previously it had used the technology about 25 times between 1998 and 2000. The FBI said it could not disclose how much it spent to produce the surveillance software it no longer uses, saying part of its budget was classified. Outside experts said the government probably spent between $6 million and $15 million. The congressional oversight reports were obtained last week under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group that criticized the surveillance software after it was first disclosed in 2000. PRT cnAlrpcman Puill RrMcnn cii A the bureau moved to popular commercial wiretap software because it was less expensive and had improved in its ability to copy e-mails and other communications of a targeted Internet account without affecting other subscribers. “We see the value in the commercially available software; we’re using it more now and we’re asking the Internet service providers that have the capabilities to collect data in compliance with court orders,” Bresson said. The FBI said last week it was sending back to the drawing board its $170 million computer overhaul, which was intended to give agents and analysts an instantaneous and paperless way to manage criminal and terrorism cases. Experts said the life span of roughly four years for the bureau’s homegrown surveillance technology was similar to the shelf life of cutting-edge products in private industry. “It’s hard to criticize the FBI trying if keep pace with technology,” said James Dempsey of the Washington based Center for Democracy and Technology. “There is just a huge amount of innovation and development going on in the private sector.” Henry H. Perritt Jr., who led an oversight study of Carnivore in 2000 for the Justice Department, said the FBI originally built its own surveillance system because commercial tools were inadequate. Perritt, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said he was unaware of any commercial wiretap software that includes audit features robust enough to convince a federal judge that e-mails from innocent Internet users weren’t captured by mistake. “You’d like to have a package that supervisors within a field office and in Washington could do an audit and make sure they’re using the tools compliant with the court order,” Perritt said. The FBI laboratory division, which I produced Carnivore, was headed by Donald M. Kerr, who left the FBI in August 2001 to become the CIA’s chief gadget-maker as head of its science and technology directorate. 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