Civilian Workers

A former civilian worker for the Army was convicted today of conspiring with a U.S. soldier to sell American military secrets to East German and Soviet agents. The federal jury took seven hours over two days to find Huseyin Yildirim of Bellear Beach, Fla., guilty of serving as a courier for convicted spy and former Warrant Officer James W. Hall II. Yildirim, a Turkish-born, naturalized U.S.

The sleek F-18s took off and landed as usual Friday, and much of the other base activity appeared to be standard operating procedure. But beneath the facade of normalcy, emotions among military and civilian personnel were turbulent after Defense Secretary Les Aspin's official recommendation to close El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. "Everybody has been coming to me all day and saying: 'Charlie, it can't be true,' " said Charles Walker, 70, a civilian worker at the Base Exchange.

Keeping pace with a proposed reduced military force, officials with the Navy's largest civilian employer in San Diego--the North Island Naval Aviation Depot--plan to cut their work force by one-fifth. "Over the last two or three years, the defense establishment and the Navy have become smaller and we will become smaller with them," said Mike Hammond, a spokesman for the facility.

Samuel Walker saw combat in Iraq firsthand: He was splattered with human flesh and shrapnel in a dining hall when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few feet away. When Walker got back to the U.S., he brought some of the battlefield home with him. He heard phantom screams in broad daylight, smelled gunpowder that wasn't there. A loud noise would send him into a defensive crouch.

A representative of civilian Sheriff's Department workers at the Central Jail has complained of "incidents of harassment, intimidation, disrespect and lack of professionalism" by deputies in their treatment of non-uniformed employees. A department spokesman rebutted the allegations, saying the relationships "are improving all the time."

The House on Thursday approved sweeping new powers for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to overhaul the Pentagon's personnel system, advancing his campaign to transform the military. Rumsfeld also won repeal of a ban on research into certain nuclear weapons. The Bush administration's Republican allies pushed the Rumsfeld plan through the House with only modest changes, quashing protests even from pro-military Democratic hawks.

Unlike Lebanon or Iran or many of the other foreign places where American citizens have been caught in dangerous cross-fire, Panama is a land many Americans have long called home. A good number of them are part of the Panamanian landscape in one way or another, making it all that much harder for American forces to protect them during the U.S. invasion.

An American civilian who worked at a Turkish air base was shot to death Thursday, apparently by Turkish revolutionaries, becoming the first American to die in a wave of terrorist attacks since the U.S.-led military alliance went to war against Iraq. A caller to newspapers claiming to represent Dev-Sol, an underground leftist group, said the slain American, Bobbie E. Mozelle, had been singled out because he was believed to be a CIA agent. "The bases cannot be used for the bloody schemes of U.S.

A senior member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants his panel to investigate whether insurance giant American International Group Inc. and other providers have unnecessarily denied and delayed costly medical treatment for civilian contractors injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) also called for an investigation into the Labor Department's role in overseeing the federally financed insurance system for civilians working overseas.

Lawmakers on Thursday sharply criticized a federal program that relies on private insurance companies to provide medical care and benefits to civilians injured while working in support of the U.S. military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. Members of a House subcommittee charged that the insurance firms had exploited the taxpayer-supported program to reap enormous profits while shortchanging workers. "We've got to straighten out this mess and we're going to do that," said Rep. Elijah E.