Samuel R Berger

On a Sunday visit to Walt Disney World, 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez could not escape reminders of the harrowing trip that brought him to the United States or the attention surrounding his international custody battle. Led by a Disney escort, he got into the rides without a wait. But some attractions clearly brought back bad memories. He was tense at the beginning of the "It's a Small World" boat ride, gripping the knee of his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez and asking "Is the boat going to sink?"

President Clinton has signed an order creating a national counterintelligence executive to oversee the government's efforts to protect its most vital national security secrets, administration officials said Friday. The new executive will have a four-member board composed of the director of the FBI, the deputy secretary of Defense, the deputy director of the CIA and a Justice Department representative. White House spokesman Jake Siewert said Clinton took the action to help adapt U.S.

President Clinton's national security advisor removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later returned to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday. The report was issued more than a year after Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.

Why, at first, am I reluctant to whine about the president's choices for the top State and Defense jobs? For one thing, the former is a woman who is poised to become the first female Secretary of State; one fears the searing brand of "sexist." And the latter is a Republican, so readers might stereotype your happily nonpartisan, nonsexist columnist as a Democrat.

The advance teams have been laying the groundwork for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in Asia. The State Department has been cranking out briefing materials on China for her to read. But with only two weeks to go, the Clinton Administration still hasn't decided whether the First Lady should attend the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing. The decision has been swept up in the crosscurrents of U.S. relations with China--and in intense domestic politics surrounding that policy.

When the leaders of the world's richest countries took up the question of Bosnia-Herzegovina over dinner here last week, French President Jacques Chirac seized the floor to make an impassioned appeal for action. British Prime Minister John Major, a telephone to his ear, relayed last-minute details of debate in the U.N. Security Council. And President Clinton?

Staff Sgt. Andrew Ramirez and the two other American soldiers had been beaten by their Yugoslav captors in the countryside, and in the early hours of their 32-day ordeal, even thought they were about to be executed, according to a Los Angeles rabbi who was in the delegation that won their release. A Yugoslav general gave Rabbi Steven Jacobs and eight other U.S. delegates 20 minutes alone Saturday afternoon with each of the soldiers in a Belgrade prison.

Worldwide Y2K/Terrorism: Americans abroad may be targeted for attack by terrorists during the next few weeks, possibly during some of the massive New Year's celebrations planned around the world, the State Department warns. The Dec. 21 announcement is the fifth and most urgent general alert issued to American travelers in recent months over the threat of terrorism.

President Obama and other U.S. officials have explored whether the administration should offer its own Middle East peace proposal to break the logjam between Palestinians and Israelis, officials said Wednesday. At a time of growing frustration in the White House over the lack of a peace agreement, Obama and aides recently discussed whether the administration may need to turn to such an approach, officials said. Two weeks ago, Obama talked about Middle East peace efforts with a number of former senior U.S. officials in Democratic and Republican administrations meeting at the White House with Gen. James L. Jones, the national security advisor.

The obstacles to finding the perpetrators of this week's Internet sabotage may be as much cultural as technical, underscored by an enduring mistrust of the FBI by technology firms. As the FBI pressed ahead with a broad investigation of those who disrupted Yahoo and other popular Web sites, officials called for a strong partnership between law enforcement and the high-tech industry.