The constitutional crisis facing the United States has only deepened as a result of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony on warrantless domestic spying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. Karl Rove's well-publicized scheme to tar critics of the secret NSA program as friends of terrorism has fallen flat.

Despite the committee's indulgence of Gonzales' stonewalling, the hearing revealed deep bipartisan concern about a presidency that defies all checks and balances. Committee chair Arlen Specter promised further hearings and said he would consider subpoenas for documents the Administration is withholding. These are the first indications that the institutions of restraint on presidential power, while comatose, may not be dead.

Further indications followed unexpectedly and quickly. The first was the call for a full Congressional inquiry into the warrantless spying program by Republican Representative Heather Wilson of New Mexico. A former National Security Council aide under George H.W. Bush, Wilson heads the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, which oversees the National Security Agency.

In a New York Times interview Wednesday, she called for a "painstaking" review that would include not only classified briefings but access to internal documents and interviews with NSA staff. She also called for a briefing of the full House Intelligence Committee on the program's operational details.

Lo and behold, Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy to the director of U.S. national intelligence, showed up just hours later on Wednesday afternoon to brief the full House Intelligence Committee -- for the first time ever -- on the warrantless spying. Wilson claimed credit for the White House reversal but said, "I don't believe it complies with the National Security Act, which requires that the committees be kept fully informed of intelligence activities."

Meanwhile, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, wrote a letter to Gonzales demanding answers by March 2 to fifty-one pointed questions about the warrantless surveillance program. And Specter announced he would introduce legislation requiring President Bush to have a special court examine the eavesdropping program.

These developments may seem like an earthquake after long years in which Bush scornfully defied all attempts at restraint and most of the Congress meekly acquiesced. But it is still a long way from effective checks and balances on executive power. The Bush Administration may still try to parlay its retreat into Congressional support for warrantless spying, just as it turned McCain's anti-torture bill into a legalization of prisoner abuse.

Seeking accountability

More forthright action is unlikely without public pressure. Turning Congressional concern into effective restraint will require a string of battles whose goal is not immediate victory but rather education of the public on why constitutional restraint on executive power matters. This kind of public education -- from Congressional hearings to courageous civic resistance -- is what finally terminated the criminal regimes of Senator Joe McCarthy and President Richard Nixon.

The next step toward any kind of accountability for Bush Administration criminality is to penetrate the wall of silence that surrounds Administration deceit. Leaks, ranging from the photos of Abu Ghraib to the Downing Street memos to the warrantless spying, have driven the anti-Bush backlash. Investigations like those proposed by Representative Wilson could well be the next arena.

The House Progressive Caucus has adopted an informal strategy of encouraging as many members of Congress as possible to introduce Resolutions of Inquiry. These ROIs allow members to pose factual questions to the President or Cabinet officials, and since the resolutions are privileged, relevant committees are required to report back to the House within fourteen legislative days.

In this session alone, Democrats have introduced twenty-two ROIs, the majority of which have centered on prewar intelligence, Plamegate and rendition. The assault began in July 2005, with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and others introducing a succession of seven ROIs in one month. The Downing Street memo ROI prompted extensive debate in the International Relations Committee about the role of Congressional oversight in relation to the war in Iraq, and while the resolution failed, the vote marked the first time all Democrats on the committee voted unanimously concerning Iraq.

On Wednesday, Progressive Caucus members turned their attention to questions of U.S. torture and rendition. Representative Ed Markey's resolution was one of three ROIs that came before the committee requesting documents on any person subject to torture after being transferred to another country by U.S. officials. It won support from Republicans James Leach, former chair of the Banking Committee, and antiwar conservative Ron Paul, but it was defeated by the Republican majority. Representative John Conyers and others now have their sights set on the NSA spying controversy, with four more ROIs expected to come up in the next few weeks.

The Senate is anticipating its own battles over information access and Congressional oversight. Last December, in response to the Administration's claims that Congress had access to the same intelligence as the President when deciding to go to war in Iraq, Senator Ted Kennedy offered an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Bill requiring the disclosure of the President's Daily Briefs. The amendment passed with the support of Pat Roberts, Republican chair of the Intelligence Committee. The measure also included two other amendments requiring information on U.S. rendition policy. In response, for the first time twenty-seven years, the Senate failed to pass an intelligence authorization bill because an unknown senator placed a hold on the bill. Kennedy has refused to back down, promising a head-on clash with the Administration.

Abuse of Presidential authority is likely to come up in other venues as well. A debate lies ahead on renewal of the Patriot Act. Senator Specter has promised to hold hearings on the Guantánamo prison. The Senate leadership has promised Intelligence Committee hearings on the abuse of prewar intelligence. Looking further to the future are Representative Conyers' proposals for a special prosecutor, a vote of censure and a select committee to investigate impeachable offenses by President Bush. Human rights groups have recently brought suit to find NSA spying unconstitutional. And of course, there are the upcoming Congressional elections.

Foiling Rove's strategy

At the January meeting of the Republican National Committee, Karl Rove explicitly laid out a strategy to win the 2006 election by stigmatizing the Democratic Party as weak on national security. Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have followed Rove's script in their aggressive defense of warrantless NSA spying.

Nothing would make Rove happier than to have warrantless spying and other abuses of presidential authority treated as a partisan issue of Democrats against Republicans. But they aren't. As Al Gore recently observed, "Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program." Specter told the Washington Post, "I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."

One key to foiling Rove strategy is to treat government lawlessness as a nonpartisan concern. The combination of bipartisan complicity and bipartisan concern opens a new opportunity to split support for Bush's criminal activities and to build a coalition to terminate them.

This is possible because Rove's script isn't playing so well even in the Republican Party. Insight magazine quoted Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as saying, "I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context." Before the Gonzales hearing Specter said that the spy program of his own party's President is in flat violation of the law. In a post-hearing interview with the Washington Post, Specter said of Gonzales, "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser!"

The Republican resistance is even more impressive given an Insight magazine report that Rove has threatened to put any Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee who votes against the President on his blacklist, denying them political and financial support. Despite that, four of the ten Republicans on the committee, including South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, raised doubts about the legality of the NSA program.

Republican politicians are faced with contrary pulls. On the one hand they are fearful, as Rove warned them that the defection of even a few Republicans could be catastrophic for the 2006 elections. On the other hand, if the Bush Administration is crashing, they have an interest in distancing themselves from it so that they don't go down with it. Then there's always principle: Norman Ornstein, head of the American Enterprise Institute, estimates that a majority of Republicans in both houses, if polled in secret, would be concerned about the government's invasion of privacy.

Another key to foiling Rove's strategy is to focus on the fundamental issue of constitutional checks and balances on presidential power. The issue is not whether Republicans or Democrats care more about protecting Americans against terrorists; the question is who -- in or out of either party -- will stand up for the principles of constitutional democracy?

Conyers exemplifies what it means to articulate that frame. He told The Nation, "There is no doubt that our nation is at a constitutional crossroads, and the domestic spying scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. We can continue down the path of an out-of-control executive unwilling to account for his actions and a Congress unable to muster the will to challenge him, or we can return to a system of checks and balances, where Congress performs genuine oversight and stands up for our citizens' rights and liberties."

Such a frame both allows and requires the entire spectrum of Bush Administration criminality to be painted as part of the same picture: not just warrantless domestic spying but lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction; conducting an aggressive war in violation of international law; engaging in torture of terror suspects; outsourcing of torture through "rendition"; secret prisons; use of white phosphorus and other illegal weapons in Iraq; and multiple other violations of national and international law. These are all actions that have been conducted and justified on the basis of an antidemocratic, anticonstitutional doctrine of unlimited presidential power.

None of this would be happening without the growing public distrust of President Bush and outrage over his debacle in Iraq. They underlie the Administration's inability to keep Congress in line. They are also the primary reason Rove's plan to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 is less and less effective. But that growing alienation needs to find expression in a repudiation of those in high places who have committed and justified crimes -- and an irresistible public demand that those who are supposed to hold them accountable step forward to meet their responsibilities.

Bush's retreat on Congressional oversight of NSA spying is a small step, but it demonstrates the Administration's vulnerability to a bipartisan challenge based on constitutional principles. What is at stake is not just punishing the crimes already committed by the Bush Administration but making it possible to prevent Bush and his successors from committing similar or worse offenses in the future.

A jury verdict in Memphis late last year caused little stir among the general public, but it may have caught the attention of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other high officials of the Bush administration. The jury found Colonel Nicolas Carranza, former Vice Minister of Defense of El Salvador and now a U.S. citizen living in Memphis, responsible for overseeing the torture and killing in that country 25 years ago. Could similar charges be brought against high U.S. officials for the actions of their subordinates in Abu Ghraib, Falluja, and Guantanamo?

Carranza was sued by victims of armed forces under his control. The jury applied the principle of "command responsibility," which holds a superior legally responsible for human rights abuses by subordinates if the official knew or should have known about them and failed to prevent them or punish those who committed them.

Intelligence agency whistleblowers recently leaked to ABC News a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" authorized for CIA agents in mid-March 2002. The agents, according to an ABC News report, did so "because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen."

The techniques included "Water Boarding:" "The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt." CIA officers who subjected themselves to the technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. According to John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, "It really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law."

President Bush has said "We do not torture." But according to a classified report by the CIA's own Inspector General John Helgerwon, the techniques appeared "to constitute cruel and degrading treatment under the [Geneva] convention." If so, they are likely to be crimes not only under international law, but under the U.S. Anti-Torture and War Crimes Acts.

Where they have acknowledged prisoner abuse, Bush administration officials have often blamed it on a few "bad apples" at the bottom of the chain of command. But under the principle of command responsibility, this is no excuse -- and no legal defense.

Colin Powell's top aide, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, said late last year that the United States has tortured and, "There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office."

According to Wilkerson, "His implementer in this case was Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department." Wilkerson explained, "The vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."

The former commander at Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, confirms Wilkerson's charge: Abusive techniques at Abu Ghraib were "delivered with full authority and knowledge of the secretary of defense and probably Cheney."

This is not just a question of past abuses. According to Wilkerson, "There's no doubt in my mind that we may still be doing it." When the vice president of the United States "lobbies the Congress on behalf of cruel and unusual punishment" Wilkerson says he can "only assume" that "it's still going on."

Asked whether Cheney was guilty of a war crime, Col. Wilkerson said the vice president's actions were certainly a domestic crime and, he would suspect, "an international crime as well." Wilkerson says his charges are based on an "audit trail" he prepared for Secretary Powell, including government memoranda and reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Criminal investigation is warranted where facts or circumstances "reasonably indicate" that a crime has been committed. Wilkerson's charges are sufficient in themselves to require the Department of Justice to immediately open a criminal investigation of Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Such an investigation could take as its starting point Wilkerson's "audit trail," the statements of CIA agents and the CIA Inspector General, and extensive published evidence indicating torture and prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel around the world.

If I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and other high government officials can be investigated for outing Valerie Plame, don't facts that "reasonably indicate" war crimes and crimes against humanity deserve equal time?

Bush administration officials have said over and over that they have acted within the law. If so, they have nothing to fear from an investigation and should encourage one to clear the air.

The United States is supposed to have "equal justice under law." Colonel Carranza has had his day in court. We as citizens -- and our prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives -- need to address the question: When will Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and their collaborators get theirs?

Thousands of well-meaning people are mobilizing to pressure Congress to pass legislation banning torture. But the Bush Administration is maneuvering to turn it into legislation that would instead protect the torturers by eliminating a basic legal right. To stop them, torture opponents will need to be not just as innocent as doves but also as cunning as foxes.

When Congress returns to Washington on Monday, a campaign will unfold in support of Senator John McCain's legislation banning torture, which is attached to a defense bill. But McCain's amendment is accompanied by one from Senator Lindsey Graham that bans the appeals that prisoners at Guantanamo have used to take their cases to civilian courts.

In the 2004 case Rasul v. Bush, brought on behalf of Guantanamo captives, the Supreme Court established the right of foreigners held by the United States to habeas corpus, the 800-year-old legal procedure grounded in the Magna Carta and enshrined in the US Constitution, which requires government officials to explain to a court why they are holding someone in captivity. Graham's amendment strips courts of the power to hear such cases.

Graham sprang his amendment on the Senate in the closing days of the session with no hearings and little debate. A firestorm of criticism forced Graham to accept a compromise--negotiated with Democratic Senator Carl Levin--that allows captives limited appeals to civilian courts. (Newsweek has reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House Counsel Harriet Miers were also in on the negotiations.) But the Graham compromise still strips federal courts of jurisdiction to hear applications for habeas corpus brought by Guantanamo prisoners.

The Senate passed the compromise amendment 84 to 14. Republican Senator Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, described it as "a sophisticated, blatant attempt at court-stripping."

Bill Goodman, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the first habeas corpus cases for Guantanamo captives, says the Graham amendment "will formalize the lawless policies of the Bush Administration that allow the Department of Defense to hold prisoners indefinitely without any requirement that it show any reason for doing so." That has and will continue to result in "torture of US prisoners."

The Graham amendment bans habeas corpus appeals against conditions of confinement. The consequence, according to Michael Dorf, the Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University, is that "a prisoner cannot get into federal court by claiming (or presenting evidence) that he is being subject to torture or otherwise degrading treatment."

Deviously, the Graham amendment has been packaged with McCain's anti-torture amendment. But the package will make things worse, not better, for Guantanamo captives unless Graham's amendment banning habeas corpus is removed. As Bill Goodman points out, while the pair of amendments "profess to ban torture," without the right to judicial oversight, they are "defanged." They are "a right without a remedy and, as such, meaningless."

The Bush Administration is now negotiating with Graham and others to make the legislation even more restrictive. A Justice Department spokesperson told Newsweek, "We definitely agree with the principle behind the current bill, though there are still some concerns that the language may need to be improved." White House spokesman Trent Duffy also told Newsweek that the White House is positive about the Graham bill and is "working with Senator Graham on technical aspects" of the legislation.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has talked with Senator Graham about the bill at least twice. The Justice Department spokesperson told Newsweek Gonzales was "particularly focused on thwarting some of the 160 habeas lawsuits filed by Gitmo detainees." (Gonzales was the author of the notorious 2002 memo advising the President that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in order to provide "a solid defense to any future prosecution" of US officials under the War Crimes Act. Gonzales's personal role in laying the groundwork for torture is sufficient for professor Marjorie Cohn, now president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, to have drafted an indictment of Gonzales for violating the War Crimes Act.)

The Bush Administration is apparently divided. Despite the role of the White House in preparing the Graham compromise amendment, Vice President Cheney opposed it. Indeed, Cheney has fought any legislation that would eliminate the government's right to torture, though he seems willing to compromise on language that leaves the CIA, but not the military, free to torture. In the past, President Bush has threatened to veto the entire defense bill if McCain's anti-torture amendment is included.

Both the Graham and McCain amendments are attached to a defense bill that now goes to a Senate-House conference. Graham and Levin plan to demand that the final legislation include both.

The conference committee will undoubtedly be the focus of pressure from those who want to preserve the right of habeas corpus. A statement by Habeas Counsel, the coalition of prestigious attorneys representing Guantanamo captives, says, "To legislate this way is disgraceful. It is also completely unnecessary. This is not an emergency situation. The Graham-Levin amendment should be stripped out in conference. The genuine deliberation required by the gravity of the issue can then begin."

Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, a member of the Progressive Caucus and an outspoken opponent of torture and "extraordinary rendition" (a k a government-run kidnapping), describes the task facing cunning progressive foxes:

"If the US wants to demonstrate that we are a nation committed to justice and the rule of law, we should adopt the McCain amendment barring torture and drop the Graham amendment suspending habeas corpus rights for those detained at Guantanamo Bay. If persons held by the US lack the right to challenge their detention or their treatment, the McCain amendment's protections against torture and other forms of cruel or humiliating treatment may turn out to be illusory."

Only nine of the more than 500 Guantanamo captives have even been charged with crimes, and their trials are being prolonged year after year. This is exactly the situation habeas corpus is designed to remedy. And without it, the captives can rot in prison forever and possibly be subject to torture and inhumane treatment that the courts are unable even to learn about.

Graham and the Bush Administration oppose rights for Guantanamo detainees in part on the grounds that they are terrorists who deserve no better. They refuse to face the very real possibility of innocent people caught up in the system, acknowledged by the military's own commanders at Guantanamo. According to the Wall Street Journal:

"American commanders acknowledge that many prisoners shouldn't have been locked up here in the first place because they weren't dangerous and didn't know anything of value. 'Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks,' says Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, Guantanamo's current commander."

Graham's original proposal to eliminate habeas corpus for foreign captives was met by extraordinary condemnation. Ten retired military leaders endorsed a letter from Rear Adm. John Hutson calling the restriction on habeas corpus a "momentous" change. "The practical effects of such a bill would be sweeping and negative." Signers included Army Lieut. Gen. Robert Gard, Marine Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes and other senior officers.

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, the organization of military lawyers, said the Graham amendment would sanction "unreviewable executive detention that cannot be harmonized with the nation's longstanding adherence to the rule of law."

The American Bar Association has urged the Senate to reconsider and defeat the original Graham amendment. Michael Greco, president of the association, gave a stirring defense of habeas corpus, which "cannot and should not" be replaced by the "extremely limited review" provided by the Graham amendment, which "would undermine the very principles that distinguish us from our enemies."

Does Congress have the power to tell the Supreme Court what cases it can or cannot hear? In American law, courts have the power to review the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress, but they tend to defer to the other branches of government, especially where national security issues are involved.

Both Graham's original amendment and his compromise amendment directly conflict with the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush that Guantanamo captives have the right to habeas corpus. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a challenge to the constitutionality of the Bush Administration's military tribunals for Guantanamo captives.

No one knows how the Court would respond to an instruction from Congress to reverse its interpretation of the Constitution. Indeed, the conflict over the power of courts to hear prisoners' appeals is plunging the country into an ongoing constitutional crisis in which all three branches of government are involved.

Since treatment of captives held by the United States has included well-documented cases of torture, brutality and even treatment leading to death, the Graham amendment would erect a screen behind which such crimes may be conducted with impunity. Opponents of torture need to make sure they are not inadvertently helping to pass an amendment that would protect torturers.

Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name has reaffirmed the basic American principle that even the highest government officials are subject to the rule of law. His charges represent the start of a revitalization of the institutions designed to maintain government under law. But that revitalization still has a long way to go.

As a prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald rightly brought charges where the law was clearest and the evidence most compelling. But the alleged crimes he is investigating are in essence the apparent cover-up operation for another possible set of crimes against national and international law. Why would I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby commit perjury and lie to FBI agents, as he is accused of doing?

The letters from Acting Attorney General James B. Comey appointing Mr. Fitzgerald delegated to him "all the authority of the attorney general" to investigate and prosecute "violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure."

We would argue that Mr. Comey's charge, based on the evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has uncovered, authorizes the special prosecutor to investigate the following:

Did top Bush administration officials deceive Congress? Several federal statutes make it a crime to lie to Congress. As Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York recently put it, "If, as mounting evidence is tending to show, administration officials deliberately deceived Congress and the American people, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy against the entire country."

Did top administration officials violate the U.S. Anti-Torture Act? The law makes torture and conspiracy to commit torture a crime. The former commander at Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has stated that abusive techniques were "delivered with full authority and knowledge of the secretary of defense and probably [Vice President Dick] Cheney."

Did top administration officials violate the War Crimes Act? Passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, the law makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national to commit a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2002 memo, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, urged that the United States "opt out" of the Geneva Conventions for the Afghan war on the grounds that opting out "substantially reduces the likelihood of prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

What was he worrying about? Did the special prosecutor find evidence that top Bush administration officials ordered or condoned the string of Geneva Conventions violations that run from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay and from the leveling of Fallujah to attacks on medical facilities?

Did top administration officials violate the War Powers Act? The law requires the president to present to Congress the basis for proposed U.S. military action. If the administration provided false information, is it guilty of violating the War Powers Act and, in effect, usurping the war powers given to Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?

Did top administration officials violate the U.N. Charter? U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the U.S. attack on Iraq was "illegal." The conduct of the war has involved many breaches of internationally guaranteed protections of civilians. Did the special prosecutor find evidence of deliberate violation of U.S. treaty obligations, which under Article VI of the Constitution are the law of the land?

If the special prosecutor found evidence of violation of "any criminal laws," he is obliged to investigate and prosecute. Where the abuses he finds are not covered by existing federal law, they must be addressed by Congress, either by new laws or through the impeachment process.

The Bush administration's alleged abuses of national and international law are closely linked. The Valerie Plame affair was not just a random incident, but rather an effort to silence critics attempting to halt an aggressive war whose initiation and conduct appear to have violated both national and international law. Indeed, aggressive war, illegal conduct of war and torture are nothing less than war crimes.

Investigation and, if warranted, prosecution of such crimes is crucial for the revitalization of democratic government in our country. To let such flagrant flouting of the rule of law go unpunished would be to invite government officials to subvert our Constitution again.

Repudiating war crimes committed by high U.S. officials is also an essential starting point for repairing the damage done to our country's international relationships and reputation. There is no way to take the taint off our country for the abuses symbolized by Abu Ghraib without holding those responsible for them accountable.

This editorial originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

During his brief two-year tenure in northern New Mexico, Father John Dear has tangled with Archbishop Michael Sheehan, New Mexico National Guard soldiers and his own parishioners over his anti-war views. Dear, a Jesuit priest with a felony record and more than 75 arrests from past peace protests, now is targeting Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is slowly reopening after its latest security scandal blamed on missing classified computer disks.

"We're praying. We're begging God to shut down this place that builds these weapons," Dear told the Santa Fe Reporter. "We don't have any ill will for the people of Los Alamos. We want to say the people are good, the work is evil." "They can't even handle the security of the place," he added. "How can we trust them with nuclear weapons?"

It's a question protesters will be asking, or shouting, in Los Alamos on Friday, Aug. 6. A protest march, which begins at 7:15 a.m. and goes from Ashley Pond to the Lab, will mark the 59th anniversary of the US atomic blast that killed or injured 160,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan. A daylong rally also will be held on the Plaza in Santa Fe, with speeches by peace activists scheduled at 2 p.m.

Dear will help lead the Los Alamos Hiroshima Day protest, unlike last year when Sheehan ordered him not to attend because of conflicts within the Archdiocese of Santa Fe about his activist role. Dear is no longer under Sheehan's authority; he resigned in June after serving as pastor of several northern New Mexico parishes since 2002. He now is concentrating on his writing and anti-war speeches scheduled across the country. "Jesuits have always been freelance troublemakers anyway," Dear says. "For me, there's no real distinction between spiritual and political. To me, the Gospel is totally political. Jesus was executed, and everything he did was nonviolent and illegal."

Eagle Nest parishioners were so infuriated by Dear's sermons against the Iraq war last year they asked Sheehan to remove Dear from the parish. Sheehan complied with the request, leaving Dear still in charge of parishes in Cimarron, Springer and Maxwell.

Last December, Dear encountered a group of New Mexico National Guard soldiers on a fitness run outside his home in Springer, so he encouraged them to quit instead of being sent to Iraq. Dear hopes Los Alamos National Laboratory employees plagued by low morale from yet another security scandal also will quit the Lab. He says he has encouraged about a dozen Lab employees to quit over the past year, but he doesn't know if any resigned. "I think God does not bless the work of making weapons of mass destruction, so I hope people have the courage to find other life-giving jobs," he says. "That place is a disaster at every level, not the people but the work." Dear moved south of Santa Fe after resigning from the archdiocese, and founded a New Mexico branch of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace movement.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Celine Radigan wouldn't comment on past conflicts regarding Dear's activism. She says Sheehan has not ordered priests to steer clear of controversial topics but "has just asked the priests of the archdiocese to preach according to Roman Catholic teachings." For Dear, that means focusing on Christ's teachings of peace and nonviolence. "It's time to stop all work on weapons of mass destruction and to be consistent with our policy around the world," he says. "If Iraq can't have one, we can't have 20,000."