Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 448

By Hal Bernton and Justin Mayo

BOISTFORT VALLEY, Lewis County — When Weyerhaeuser began clear-cutting the Douglas firs on the slopes surrounding Little Mill Creek, local water officials were on edge.

Some of these lands had slid decades ago, after an earlier round of logging. They worried new slides could dump sediments into the mountain stream and overwhelm a treatment plant.

Those fears came true last December when a monster storm barreled in from the Pacific, drenching the mountains around the Chehalis River basin and touching off hundreds of landslides. Little Mill Creek, filled with mud and debris, turned dark like chocolate syrup.

More than three months passed before nearly 3,000 valley residents could drink from their taps again.

"I have never seen anything like this before, and I hope I never do again," said Fred Hamilton, who works for the Boistfort Valley Water Corp.

State forestry rules empower the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to restrict logging on unstable slopes when landslides could put public resources or public safety at risk.

But in Little Mill Creek and elsewhere in the Upper Chehalis basin, a Seattle Times investigation found that Weyerhaeuser frequently clear-cut on unstable slopes, with scant oversight from the state geologists who are supposed to help watchdog the timber industry.

The December storm triggered more than 730 landslides in the Upper Chehalis basin, according to a state aerial survey. Those slides dumped mud and debris into swollen rivers, helping fuel the floods that slammed houses, barns and farm fields downstream.

A disproportionate number of those landslides started on slopes that had been clear-cut.

The Seattle Times, using information from state aerial surveys, examined 87 of the steepest sites that had been clear-cut. Nearly half of them suffered landslides during the storm. Those sites represented less than 8 percent of the total acreage — both logged and forested — in the Upper Chehalis and its tributary drainages. But the sites produced about 30 percent — 219 — of the landslides.

Among the other findings:

• Weyerhaeuser routinely downgraded20slide risks on those sites in logging applications submitted to the state. In watershed plans financed by Weyerhaeuser and approved by the state in 1994, more than half the acreage in the sites was rated at moderate- or high-hazard potential for landslides. But in a second round of site reviews before logging, Weyerhaeuser geologists concluded that most acreage had little or no potential for landslides.

• State forestry officials often noted "unstable slopes" or "unstable soils" in checklists that accompanied their harvest approvals. But there is no record in the files of any field visits by state geologists to scrutinize the logging plans in the 42 sites that later had landslides. Forty of those sites were logged by Weyerhaeuser, two by other companies.

David Montgomery, a University of Washington geomorphology professor who reviewed The Seattle Times' findings, believes Weyerhaeuser underestimated the risks of clear-cutting.

He notes that several logged areas included features specifically defined in state rules as potentially unstable.

Logging these areas removes trees that help intercept the rain and bind the soil. Decades of studies, which have been used to help shape state forest-practice rules, show logging such slopes can=2 0increase the number and size of slides.

Montgomery wrote some of those studies. His blunt assessments of the connection between logging and landslides have sometimes rankled state and industry officials.

"If the policy is not to increase landsliding, then they have no business cutting on some of these slopes," Montgomery said. "There is not a mechanistic model on this planet that would predict cutting down those trees would do anything other than reduce stability. The only question is how much."

Catastrophic flooding

The December 2007 flood walloped Lewis County, causing more than $57 million in property damage to homes, farms and businesses. A Seattle Times photo of landslides on a clear-cut mountainside helped ignite a public debate about whether logging practices had worsened the flood's effects.

Weyerhaeuser and the state Forest Practices Board, which sets state logging rules, are both funding studies to look at the relationship between logging and landslides in the December storm.

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In interviews, Weyerhaeuser officials place most of the blame for last year's landslides on the extraordinary amount of rainfall. Over the decades, they say, the company has made improvements in its forestry practices — some of which were credited in a 2000 report commissioned by the state with helping reduce erosion and landslide risks in the Upper Chehalis. And in some areas, they believe their logging may have made little — or no — difference in the number of landslides.

The Chehalis River's peak flood flow was more than double the previous record tracked by gauges in place since 1939. Some areas got especially soaked: The Stillman Creek drainage, for example, got 8 inches of rain in 10 hours.

Within the Chehalis River basin, the company said, there were also numerous slides in forested areas, and the company noted such slides may be underreported because they are hard to spot in aerial surveys. By contrast, Weyerhaeuser clear-cuts in other drainages that received less rain had few landslides.

"This storm was so intense that we had no basis for making judgments about what is likely to be stable or unstable. So that is kind of what we are struggling with here," said Bob Bilby, Weyerhaeuser's chief environmental=2 0scientist.

"At the same time, we are not trying to absolve us of any guilt. ... We are mounting a fairly large project to take a look at the procedures we use to deal with unstable slopes."

The DNR also is reviewing its oversight, according to Lenny Young, manager of the agency's Forest Practices Division.

In 2001, new rules more strictly defined the kinds of unstable slopes where logging could be limited. In areas that already had watershed plans, such as the Chehalis basin, timber companies were exempted from the new rules, according to Young.

That exemption, which has been in place as Weyerhaeuser clear-cut in the basin, will be re-examined by the Forest Practices Board, said Young. Still, state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland, who heads DNR, defends his agency's enforcement record.

"Do we have enough oversight?" Sutherland said. "With the folks available, with the data available. With the technology available. My answer would be yes, we do. Can we improve it? Definitely."

By Kathy Gannon (AP)

In early June, about 300 fighters from jihadist groups came together for a secret gathering here, in the same city that serves as headquarters to the Pakistani army.

The groups were launched long ago with the army's clandestine support to fight against India in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. But at the meeting, they agreed to resolve their differences and commit more fighters to another front instead: Afghanistan.

"The message was that the jihad in Kashmir is still continuing but it is not the most important right now. Afghanistan is the fighting ground, against the Americans there," said Toor Gul, a leader of the militant group Hezb-ul Mujahedeen,d in an interview at the beginning of July. The groups included the al-Qaida-linked Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, banned by Pakistan and branded terrorists by the U.S., he said.

The U.S. military says militant attacks in eastern Afghanistan have increased 40 percent this year over 2007. And for two straight months, the death toll of foreign troops in Afghanistan has exceeded that of Iraq. On Sunday, nine U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province, the deadliest single attack for the U.S. since June 2005.

Pakistani military and European intelligence officials, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the information is sensitive, confirmed the June meeting and said it was the second such gathering this year. A senior military official described the inability to prevent the meetings as "an intelligence failure."

Despite growing pressure on Pakistan to quell Islamic militancy, jihadist groups within its borders are in fact increasing their cooperation to attack U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, according to interviews with a wide range of militants, intelligence officials, and military officers.

Militants say they operate with minimal interference, and sometimes tacit cooperation, from Pakistani authorities, while diplomats say the country's new government has until now been ineffectual in dealing with a looming threat.

"Where there were embers seven years ago we are now fighting flames," a serving Western general told The Associated Press, referring to both Afghanistan and Pakistan's border regions. He agreed to be interviewed on condition his identity and nationality were not revealed.

A Pentagon report released late last month=2 0described a dual terror threat in Afghanistan: the Taliban in the south, and "a more complex, adaptive insurgency" in the east. That fragmented insurgency is made up of groups ranging from al-Qaida-linked Afghan warlords such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's radical Hezb-i-Islami group to Pakistani militants such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, the report said.

Hekmatyar's is the strongest rebel group in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where Sunday's deadly ambush occurred. His group has also had close contacts with jihadi groups in Pakistan.

In the past, the Taliban were suspicious of the mujahadeen groups with close associations to the Pakistani military and intelligence. But now Gul, who fights alongside Hekmatyar's men in Kunar province, said they are united in the fight for Afghanistan. He told the AP he had been to Kunar in the last two months but refused to be more specific.

Mark Laity, NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said Pakistan's new civilian government has reduced its preventive military action and is trying to negotiate peace deals with the militants. He expressed concern that the deals were leading to "increased cross border activity."

The Pakistani government also appears to be loosening its grip on the volatile northwest, where the influence of Islam ic extremists is expanding. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere along the rugged, lawless Afghan-Pakistan border.

Pakistan's Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas are emerging as increasingly strong insurgent centers, according to Gul, the militant. His information was corroborated by Pakistani and Western officials. Both those tribal areas are right next door to Afghanistan's Kunar province.

"Before there were special, hidden places for training. But now they are all over Bajaur and Mohmand," he said. "Even in houses there is training going on."

A former minister in President Pervez Musharraf's ousted government, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said insurgents were being paid between 6,000 and 8,000 rupees — the equivalent of $90 and $120 — a month in Mohmand and grain was being collected to feed them. He did not identify the source of the donations but said Pakistan's army and intelligence were aware of them.

Maulvi Abdul Rahman, a Taliban militant and former police officer under the ousted hardline regime, said jihadist sympathizers in the Middle East are sending money to support the insurgents and more Central Asians are coming to fight. Rahman said under a tacit understanding with authorities, militants were free to cross to fight in Afghanistan so long as they do not stage attacks inside Pakistan, which has been assailed by an unprecedented wave of suicide attacks in the past year.

"It is easy for me now. I just go and come. There are army checkposts and now we pass and they don't say anything.

Pakistan now understands that the U.S. is dangerous for them," he said. "There is not an article in any agreement that says go to Afghanistan, but it is understood if we want to go to Afghanistan, OK, but leave Pakistan alone.'"

The Taliban appears to have considerable latitude to operate. Last month Baitullah Mehsud, the chief Pakistani Taliban leader, held a news conference attended by dozens of Pakistani journalists in South Waziristan tribal region.

Authorities did nothing to stop it, although the Pakistani government and the CIA have accused Mehsud of plotting the December assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.

Journalists who attended said there were no security forces to be seen as a convoy of as many as 20 vehicles passed into the Mehsud's hideout 0 not far from where the army itself had taken an entourage of foreign journalists just a week earlier.

Tensions in Pakistan's anti-terror alliance with the United States are growing. U.S. airstrikes during a border clash with militants on June 10 killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops — the deadliest incident of its kind, prompting a sharp rebuke by Pakistan's army to Washington.

Pakistan's army vehemently denies giving covert aid to militants and points out that 1,087 of its soldiers have died in the tribal regions since 2002 — more than the U.S. military and NATO have lost in Afghanistan.

"If anyone says the army is providing sanctuary, nothing could be further from the truth," army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said. He criticized the U.S. and NATO forces for failing to capture insurgents when they cross into Afghanistan or stop them from coming into Pakistan.

"Is it the responsibility of only one side to stop the border crossings?" he asked.

A senior government official also said Pakistan — which once backed the Taliban but formally abandoned its support after the Sept. 11 attacks on America — has become the scapegoat for U.S. and NATO failures in Afghanistan.

"They don't want to tell their bosses that they've made a mess of it in Afghanistan, where there is no governance, corruption is everywhere and the Afghan government is involved up to the hilt in heroin smuggling, gun running," said the official, who had the authority to speak only if his name was not used. He denied the army was helping militants.

"Maybe one or two individuals are allowing things to happen, but as a policy it makes no sense to me. Just because we were in bed with them once doesn't mean we are today."

However, the Afghan government has directly accused Pakistani intelligence of plotting a recent assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai and the July 7 bombing outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed at least 58 people.

Such allegations are virtually impossible to substantiate. But retired Pakistani general Talat Masood said the army still treats militants and Afghan rebels as "assets" because of its deep conviction that India is expanding its influence in Afghanistan and using its consulates there to foment an ethnic re bellion in Pakistan's troubled southwest Baluchistan province.

"There are certain (militant) groups that have the full blessing of the army, some to which they are neutral and some they are against," he said.

Although Pakistan has received some $10 billion in mostly military aid since 2001, the army mistrusts the United States — worried it could one day abandon Pakistan and even turn its guns on a country where it has repeatedly voiced concern that al-Qaida's leadership is regrouping.

"They still believe in the same thing — that America will leave them tomorrow," Masood said. "And we'll be left high and dry with India strong, and a hostile government in Afghanistan and that we will have no friends."