Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less — because Saddam "did not let us in.")

True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure. I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup.

An August 2002 report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said Iraq "almost certainly does have large numbers of chemical weapons and some biological weapons."

(Yes, the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of health, but many people — including a majority of the British public, according to polls — regard that report as a whitewash.)

These people politicize everything, from military planning to scientific assessments. If you're with them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don't tell them what they want to hear, you're an enemy, and being right is no excuse.

To the Editor:

Something has skewed what should be the obvious public take on the American intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (front page, Jan. 29).

It is a fact that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program and not only had chemical weapons but also used them. United Nations inspectors rightly concluded that Iraq had apparently terminated most if not all nuclear weapons programs. What was missing was the evidence that the chemical arms had been eliminated.

None of our intelligence assets detected significant destruction of chemical weapons, and everyone — including Hans Blix, the former chief international weapons inspector — had to conclude that until we found otherwise, we should assume that some existed. Now, David A. Kay, the former administration weapons inspector, tells us that Saddam Hussein authorized renewed nuclear and chemical weapons efforts in the last few years, but that his orders were not carried out.

The question over intelligence accuracy, therefore, is not why did we think Iraq maintained weapons of mass destruction programs but how could we have concluded otherwise.

W. D. HOWELLS
Kittery Point, Me., Jan. 29, 2004

The writer was the State Department's director of politico-military research, 1983-87.

The most damning charge made by Blair – that Iraq could deploy WMD within 45 minutes – was strongly doubted by British intelligence (MI6) agents. In unprecedented testimony, MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove – officially known only as "C" and whose face is unknown – told Hutton telephonically from a secret location that Blair "misinterpreted" the 45-minute allegation.

Asked by Hutton for clarification, Dearlove said the intelligence was meant only to refer to "battlefield" weapons, not to strategic weapons that might pose a threat to Britain.

The charges against Blair could have brought him down, and he claimed vindication Wednesday. Technically, he's right, for Hutton exonerated him of the charge of "sexing up" the Iraq danger and for Kelly's death. Kelly killed himself when caught in the middle of a power struggle between Blair and the BBC. Most of Hutton's blame falls on the BBC for its "sexing up" broadcast, and the network's chairman promptly resigned.

But though Blair was acquitted by Hutton of a "dishonorable, duplicitous, underhand strategy" for war and survives another day, he is hurt. He was caught in a lie over the "outing" of Kelly. Exposing Kelly, a man authorized to speak on background to the media, was heartless and unethical.

Hutton concluded that Kelly "did not realize the gravity of the situation he would create by discussing intelligence matters with Andrew Gilligan," the BBC's defense reporter.

On the naming of the late weapons inspector, meanwhile, Lord Hutton concluded "that there was no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the government covertly to leak Dr Kelly's name to the media".

The law lord stated that he is "satisfied ... that throughout the period from July 4 to July 8 the government was becoming increasingly concerned that if it did not issue a statement that a civil servant had come forward to say that he had had a meeting with Mr Gilligan, it would be charged with a cover up".

"I am further satisfied that this was the principal reason why it was decided to issue the MoD [Ministry of Defence] statement on Tuesday July 8," he added.

"It was reasonable for the government to take the view that, even if it sought to keep confidential the fact that Dr Kelly had come forward, the controversy surrounding Mr Gilligan's broadcasts was so great and the level of media interest was so intense that Dr Kelly's name as Mr Gilligan's source was bound to become known to the public and that it was not a practical possibility to keep his name secret."

The report, though, clears Blair of any wrongdoing. The Hutton report states that the prime minister did not engage in a "dishonourable, duplicitous, underhand strategy" to leak the name of Dr. Kelly to the press. The report slammed the BBC for making "unfounded," "grave," and "false allegations of fact impugning the integrity of others," and faulted the BBC's management and board of governors for allowing the story by reporter Andrew Gilligan to air. The report calls the BBC's journalistic practices "defective" and declared that the board of governors had failed in its duty to act as an independent regulator.

Blair's control freakery put into practice by Campbell -- whose head should be the first to fall -- led to Kelly's death. Whatever words he used to Gilligan -- and the BBC says Gilligan checked his quotes with Kelly and they are in his notes -- Kelly clearly believed Blair/Campbell were misusing intelligence. As a leading biological weapons expert, he believed he should inform the public.

In their obnoxious control freakery, Bush and Blair have forgotten that the role of a free press is to provide the public with access to government. Murdoch's Sun, Times and Fox want the Kelly inquiry to turn the BBC, one of the world's great news organizations, into another government mouthpiece.

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

"The BBC does accept that certain key allegations reported by Andrew Gilligan on the Today program on May 29 last year were wrong and we apologize for them," BBC Director General Greg Dyke said.

The National Union of Journalists, representing Gilligan, said the BBC could face a strike if he was disciplined or fired. The union said the Hutton report was "selective, grossly one-sided and a serious threat to the future of investigative journalism."

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

Cheney warned in March 2003, three days before the invasion: "We believe he (Saddam) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

WALLACE: OK. Over the years, you have voted against banning partial-birth abortions six times. You voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union of a man and woman...

KERRY: Yes, yes.

WALLACE: ... and you have voted against the death penalty, even for terrorists who kill Americans overseas — let me finish — although I know that you later changed your mind on that.

Any second thoughts about those other votes?

KERRY: No, absolutely not, Chris. They were votes of principle, and let me explain them, and I'll be able to explain them to Americans.

I don't support marriage among gays. I've said that many times. That was not my position. But I also don't support the United States Senate being used for gay bashing, for, sort of, discriminatory efforts to try to drive wedges between the American people.

WALLACE: But, wait a minute, Senator...

KERRY: The job...

WALLACE: If I may say just say, on that one, it passed 85-14.

KERRY: Yes, because a lot of people...

WALLACE: Most Democrats voted, you know, for the bill, and Bill Clinton signed it.

KERRY: Because it's an issue that scares people. I said that I do not support marriage, but I don't support the Senate being used to drive wedge issues.

There was no issue when we voted on that. That was politics. And I think it was the politics of discrimination. And that's what I said on the floor. Go read what I said. What I said was, "I don't support marriage. But I do not support..."

WALLACE: You mean gay marriage?

KERRY: Gay marriage. I don't support gay marriage.
[emphasis added]

A study done by the Violence Policy Center found that one in every five law enforcement officers was killed in the line of duty between Jan. 1, 1998, and Dec. 31, 2001.

In a Jan. 15. follow-up to his Jan. 12 column, "More deceptions to justify war actions," James O. Goldsborough stated that Fox News was the source of a bogus 1945 Reuters news dispatch that may have been the basis for a comparison of Iraq to post-World War II Germany by officials at the White House and Pentagon. Goldsborough further described the report as a "forgery" written by online columnist Rand Simberg for Fox and that it was then posted on Simberg's own Internet site two days later. In fact, Simberg originally posted the supposed news report as a column on his own site on July 28. He then submitted the column to Fox, which published it on July 30. In addition, the column was not presented by Simberg or Fox as an authentic Reuter's dispatch. Simberg labeled it as a "Routers" news article, while Fox added an introduction saying a Reuters dispatch in 1945 "might look something like this." However, the column was subsequently transmitted over the Internet by others as an authentic news story.

[T]he disputed election of 2000 left a lasting scar on the nation's psyche. A recent Zogby poll found that even in red states, which voted for George W. Bush, 32 percent of the public believes that the election was stolen. In blue states, the fraction is 44 percent.

[W]ASHINGTON ? Whoa! That was quite the steroid-infused performance. Who's the guy's political consultant ? Russell Crowe? He was so in-your-face, smirking his trademark smirk, it was disturbing to think of him in charge of the military. It's a good thing he stopped drinking and started talking about God.

You wonder how many votes he scared off with that testosterone festival: the taunting message, the self-righteous geographic litany of support? The Philippines. Thailand. Italy. Spain. Poland. Denmark. Bulgaria. Ukraine. Romania. The Netherlands. Norway. El Salvador.

Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?

His State of the Union address took his swaggering sheriff routine to new heights. "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country," he vowed.

Translation: Hey, we don't need no stinking piece of paper to bring it on in other countries. If it feels good, we'll do it, and we'll decide later why we did it. You lookin' at me?

Sure, Howard Dean was also over the top when he uttered the squeal heard round the world. With one guttural primary primal scream, he went from Internet deity to World Wide Wacko and remix victim, with the scream mixed in on Web sites to punctuate Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train."

Yes, Howard, you know you're in trouble when Chris Matthews says you make him look like Jim Lehrer; when David Letterman compares you to a hockey dad; when The New York Post suggests you have a "God complex." (As Alec Baldwin's twisted doctor said in "Malice": "You ask me if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something. I am God.")

Once Michael Dukakis got in trouble when he failed to get angry when asked how he would react if his wife were raped and murdered.

But Dr. Dean's snarly, teeth-baring Iowa finale was so Ross-Perot-scare-off-the-women-and-horses crazy that some Democrats on Capitol Hill, already anxious about the tightly wound doctor, confessed they could not imagine that jabbing finger anywhere near The Button.

But Republicans were thrilled when Mr. Bush strutted up onstage on Tuesday night to basically tell the country that if you don't vote for him in November, you're giving up in the war on terrorism. "We've not come all this way ? through tragedy, and trial and war ? only to falter and leave our work unfinished," he asserted, as if all those Democrats racing from Iowa to New Hampshire in the middle of the night were crying out to the voters: "Falter! Falter!"

Dr. Dean's poll numbers are diving because people freezing in New Hampshire think he's too hot.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are better at looking cool. But their dissing the U.N. ? that palace of permission slips ? and their doctrine of pre-emption are just as hot, and so was Mr. Bush's cocky implicit defense of the idea that if you whack one Middle East dictator, the rest will fall in line. "Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not," he said. "For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America."

Maybe he's right, but what about Bill Clinton's line that unless we want to occupy every country in the world, maybe our policy should also concentrate on making friends instead of targets? The president and vice president like to present a calm, experienced demeanor, but their foreign policy is right out of the let's-out-crazy-the-bad-guys style of Mel Gibson's cop in "Lethal Weapon" movies.

For proof of how intemperate their policy has been, compare this year's State of the Union with last year's. Last year it was all about Iraq's frightening weapons. This year the only reference was to "dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations."

Would Americans have supported a war to go get "program activities?" What is a program activity? Where is the White House speechwriters' ombudsman?

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Nothin' Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico

11:25 A.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.

Q Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs.

Q What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I'd like.

Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven't spent enough to keep the country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that's exactly what we're going to do. But I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Stretch -- what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It's part of how the economy grows. You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?

Q Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?

Q But Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

Q Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like?

Q Ribs.

THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let's order up some ribs.

Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I'm here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?

Q An answer.

Q Can we buy some questions?

THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people -- they make a lot of money and they're not going to spend much. I'm not saying they're overpaid, they're just not spending any money.

Q Do you think it's all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?

THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they're good, generally.

By early this week, (Moseley Braun campaign manager Patricia) Ireland was in negotiations with (Dean senior adviser Don) Haber on the details of Braun's departure. Braun's issues: She has a big campaign debt, and the trickle of money she was getting would dry up once she quit the contest. Braun also wanted an understanding on what role she would play with the Dean team. Ireland and Haber sealed the deal Wednesday evening.

"We are going to help her with the debt," Haber told me. The debt tab could be in the neighborhood of some $300,000 and Dean's camp will help Braun raise the money to pay it off.

Braun will campaign for Dean three days of the week, with the Dean campaign picking up her travel expenses. Braun will become a Dean campaign consultant and will be paid about $20,000. Up to three of Braun's staffers, including Ireland, will be hired by the Dean campaign. In the short term, Braun will head to New Hampshire and South Carolina for the Dean campaign. A large number of Democratic voters in South Carolina, which holds its primary Feb. 3, are African-American.

British use of cluster bombs in the Iraq war could count as a war crime and justifies further investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor in the Hague, a group of international lawyers say.

Seven academics from Britain, Ireland, France and Canada interviewed eyewitnesses and examined evidence to see if there was a case for referring British conduct to the court, said the pressure group Peacerights, which organised the review.

"There is a considerable amount of evidence of disproportionate use of force causing civilian casualties," one of the lawyers, Professor Bill Bowring of London Metropolitan University, told a news conference on Tuesday.

"The U.S. cannot be tried before the court because it refuses to sign up to it. The UK did."

Cluster munitions are small bomblets scattered on a target area by larger bombs, rockets or artillery shells, designed to destroy infantry or soft skinned vehicles.

Use of bunker-busting munitions had also killed civilians, Peacerights said.

"THIS ONE GOES TO TOP"

ICC officials were unavailable to comment, but Bowring said senior politicians, possibly including Prime Minister Tony Blair, could have something to worry about.

"Heads of state are not immune in principle," the law professor said. "This one goes right to the top."

Inside the United States, where the war began, we must continue to give homeland security and law enforcement personnel every tool they need to defend us.

And one of those essential tools is the Patriot Act, which allows federal law enforcement to better share information, to track terrorists, to disrupt their cells and to seize their assets. For years, we have used similar provisions to catch embezzlers and drug traffickers. If these methods are good for hunting criminals, they are even more important for hunting terrorists.

(APPLAUSE)

Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year.

(Democrat APPLAUSE)

The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule.

(Gotcha APPLAUSE)

Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands. . . .

(APPLAUSE)

. . . Norway, El Salvador and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq.

(APPLAUSE)

As we debate at home, we must never ignore the vital contributions of our international partners or dismiss their sacrifices. From the beginning, America has sought international support for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support.

There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations and submitting to the objections of a few. America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.

But even the most powerful nation in the history of the world must bring other nations to our side to meet common dangers.

The president's policies do not reflect that. He has pursued a go-it-alone foreign policy that leaves us isolated abroad and that steals resources we need for education and health care here at home.

The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence. He embraced a radical doctrine of preemptive war unprecedented in our history, and he failed to build a true international coalition.

Instead of the diplomatic disengagement that almost destroyed the Middle East peace process and aggravated the danger posed by North Korea, let us seek to forge agreements and coalitions, so that together with others we can address challenges before they threaten the security of the world.

Most Americans also support Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. They are not stupid. They know that the so-called intelligence about Saddam Hussein was wrong. Despite this, 67 per cent still believe the US did the right thing.

Because I live in New York, I rarely get to hear the voice of this majority. Instead, I get magazines such as Vanity Fair, which last month had a column by the editor angrily listing statistics from the war in Iraq. Such as: number of American soldiers killed: 500. Number of weapons of mass destruction found: 0.

But, as some readers pointed out, there were statistics missing from the list. These include: number of mass graves uncovered in Iraq: around 260, containing as many as 20,000 bodies. Number of people liberated from brutal, murderous leadership: 12 million. And number of times Bush lied about receiving oral sex from a White House intern: 0.

I was reading USA Today and, as I opened it to study a map of Iraq, one half of the newspaper fell into the lap of my fellow passenger. I turned to apologise, but he said: "No problem. Actually, do you mind if I have a look?"

Together we studied the picture, trying to work out how far the Americans were from seizing power. It was clear from the diagrams that troops were near Saddam's airport, and close to the centre of Baghdad. I turned to my seat mate and said: "I don't think this is going to be a long battle, after all."

It was only then that I noticed, with horror, that he had started to cry. And then I noticed something else: a photograph, wrapped in plastic, pinned to his lapel. It was a picture of his 20-year-old son, a young marine who died in the first days of the war. The man's wife was sitting across the aisle from us. She had a round bowl on her lap, filled with water and some drooping tulips. The movement of the aircraft was making the water slop around. She was trying to wipe her hands, and her tears.

The couple told me they had just been to a private meeting with Bush to discuss the loss of their son. [emphasis added]

[A]ccording to advance reports, George Bush will use tonight's State of the Union speech to portray himself as a visionary leader who stands above the political fray. But that act is losing its effectiveness. Mr. Bush's relentless partisanship has depleted much of the immense good will he enjoyed after 9/11. He is still adored by his base, but he is deeply distrusted by much of the nation.

But his political handlers seem to have decided on a go-for-broke strategy: confuse the middle one last time, energize the base and grab enough power that the consequences don't matter.

The most sinister example was the recess appointment of Charles Pickering Sr., with his segregationist past and questionable record on voting rights, to the federal appeals court — the day after Martin Luther King's actual birthday. Was this careless timing? Don't be silly: it was a deliberate, if subtle, gesture of sympathy with a part of the Republican coalition that never gets mentioned in public.

More than 100 journalists and executives at major media companies, from NBC's top executive to a Fox News anchor to reporters or editors for the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, CBS and ABC, have made political contributions in recent years.

Bush said he was forced to use his constitutional authority because, "a minority of Democratic senators has been using unprecedented obstructionist tactics to prevent him and other qualified individuals from receiving up-or-down votes. Their tactics are inconsistent with the Senate's constitutional responsibility and are hurting our judicial system."

Senate Democrats argued that Pickering did not deserve elevation to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because he wrote an article as a young man recommending ways to strengthen Mississippi's anti-miscegenation laws; left the Democratic Party in 1964 when it split along racial lines and, more recently, presided over a 1994 trial in which he took extraordinary steps to reduce the sentence of a man convicted
in a cross-burning incident.

Democrats, who have asserted that Bush has been trying to pack the federal courts with staunch conservative ideologues, blocked some nominees during his first two years in office when they controlled the Senate. When Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2002 by a narrow margin, Democrats then resorted to the threat of filibusters, or extended debates, to block the nominees. Although Republicans held 51 seats, a slim majority, they could not muster the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

Mr. Bush and Republican senators replied that the judge's record was being distorted. They said that in recent decades he had been a force for racial reconciliation in his home state and had strong support among local African-Americans. His actions in the cross-burning case, they said, were motivated by a sense that prosecutors had mishandled the case and let the principal offender off lightly.

Title: Duct tape on Black
Artist: Unknown

At a town-hall meeting in Hudson, N.H., Wednesday, (Wesley) Clark defended serving on corporate boards after retiring from the military in 2000 and registering as a lobbyist. "We were trying to make America safe. That's what lobbyists mostly do,'' Clark said.

[E]arlier this week, Wesley Clark had some strong words about the state of the nation. "I think we're at risk with our democracy," he said. "I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame."

In other words, the general gets it: he understands that America is facing what Kevin Phillips, in his remarkable new book, "American Dynasty," calls a "Machiavellian moment." Among other things, this tells us that General Clark and Howard Dean, whatever they may say in the heat of the nomination fight, are on the same side of the great Democratic divide.

The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren't.

One is that the Democratic candidate, no matter how business-friendly, will not be able to get lots of corporate contributions, as Clinton did. In the Clinton era, a Democrat could still raise a lot of money from business, partly because there really are liberal businessmen, partly because donors wanted to hedge their bets. But these days the Republicans control all three branches of government and exercise that control ruthlessly. Even corporate types who have grave misgivings about the Bush administration — a much larger group than you might think — are afraid to give money to Democrats.

. For example, some have said that the intense scrutiny of Mr. Dean's Vermont record is what every governor who runs for president faces. No, it isn't. I've looked at press coverage of questions surrounding Mr. Bush's tenure in Austin, like the investment of state university funds with Republican donors; he got a free pass during the 2000 campaign.

So what's the answer? A Democratic candidate will have a chance of winning only if he has an energized base, willing to contribute money in many small donations, willing to contribute their own time, willing to stand up for the candidate in the face of smear tactics and unfair coverage.

That doesn't mean that the Democratic candidate has to be a radical — which is a good thing for the party, since all of the candidates are actually quite moderate. In fact, what the party needs is a candidate who inspires the base enough to get out the message that he isn't a radical — and that Mr. Bush is.

Cambodia has a fair trade system and promotes itself as an enlightened garment producer. That's great. But if the U.S. tries to ban products from countries that don't meet international standards, jobs will be shifted from the most wretched areas to better-off nations like Malaysia or Mexico. Already there are very few factories in Africa or the poor countries of Asia, and if we raise the bar higher, there will be even fewer.

Reich: You say, Bill O'Reilly, that this man, George Soros, is out of the pale.

O'Reilly: That's right.

Reich: But I don't think so. And if you measure what the right wing is doing relative to him...

Soros believes that a "supremacist ideology" guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans." It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ("The enemy is listening"). "My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me," he said in a soft Hungarian accent.

Joanna Smith Rakoff, a writer who worked as a Web editor and wrote for University Business Daily, an affiliated publication, had her first substantial article for Lingua Franca published just before the magazine folded. Two years later, she has been told to return the money for the work she did. The money is to be directed to "secured" creditors, rather than freelancers, who are the unsecured kind.

Ms. Smith Rakoff, who has written for The New York Times, said she had received a note demanding that her $1,550 fee be returned in 10 days - or else she would be sued and forced to pay the money back. "I feel angry and betrayed," she said. "This thing has taken over my life. I can't afford to pay it and I can't afford not to do anything about it because then there will be a default judgment against me."

Adobe and other makers of image-manipulation programs have, at the behest of a little-known group of national banks, inserted secret technology into their programs to foil counterfeiting, the companies acknowledged this week.

Photoshop and other programs will no longer be able to open files containing images of several nations' currencies, said Kevin Connor, director of product management for Adobe. The code to detect such images came from the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, a low-profile association representing the national banks from Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

At the request of the group, Adobe and other software companies have inserted the functionality into their programs. [emphasis added]