Luskin said Fitzgerald's decision should "put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove's conduct."

For 22 months, Fitzgerald and a grand jury have been trying to determine who told journalists that Valerie Plame was a covert operative for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Federal law in the U.S. makes it illegal to identify such CIA employees.

Plame's name was leaked to reporters in 2003 after her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq.

Fitzgerald's probe had zeroed in on Rove, President George W. Bush's top political strategist, and Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Rove has acknowledged speaking with conservative columnist Robert Novak just days before Novak wrote a piece speculating that Wilson received a government consulting contract because his wife worked for the CIA.

Libby resigned in October 2005 after being indicted in the case.

He was charged with perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice in relation to conversations with federal investigators and his testimony before the grand jury.

Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," chronicles the former vice president's efforts to educate the public about global warming. It's in limited release around the country.

In his critique of the GOP, Clinton also touched on the war in Iraq, the rising federal deficit and high health care costs. The crowd of about 500 greeted him with loud applause and shouts of "We love you, Bill!" and "Four more years!"

Jeff Sadosky, spokesman for the state Republican Party, decried Clinton's rhetoric. "Bill Clinton's class warfare and race-baiting message gets us no closer to solutions for the issues he brings up," he said.

Sadosky referred in part to Clinton's comments earlier this month in Arizona. At that event, Clinton characterized Republican Party leaders as right-wing, white Southerners.

Sedgwick said it is possible that crime rates in the U.S. are approaching a floor below which it may be difficult or even impossible to go. "I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect you can always drive the crime rate down," he said.

Some criminal justice experts said the statistics reflect the nation's complacency in fighting crime. Crime dropped dramatically during 1990s, and some cities have since abandoned effective programs that emphasized prevention, the putting of more cops on the street, and controls on the spread of guns.

"We see that budgets for policing are being slashed and the federal government has gotten out of that business," said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Still, Fox said, "We're still far better off than we were during the double-digit crime inflation we saw in the 1970s."

In Philadelphia, which has had more than 160 murders this year, the police department has responded by creating a special unit charged with roaming the streets in the dangerous hours between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. The program, which is expected to start soon, will shift 46 officers from other assignments.

Philadelphia police Capt. Benjamin Naish said more people appear to be settling disputes with guns.

"I think that everybody continues to be frustrated within the government, within the department," he said. Philadelphia police have stressed that the number of killings is still below the averages in the mid-1990s and far below the 525 homicides in 1990.

The overall national increase in violent crime was modest, 2.5 percent, which equates to more than 1.4 million crimes. Nevertheless, that was the largest percentage increase since 1991.

Nationally, murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years.

Some big cities felt the brunt.

Murders rose from 59 to 104 in Birmingham, Ala., up 76 percent; from 59 to 85 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, N.C., a 44 percent spike; from 89 to 126 in Kansas City, Mo., a 42 percent rise; from 87 to 122 in Milwaukee, a 40 percent jump; and from 79 to 109 in Cleveland, up 38 percent.

"The killings are going in spurts," said Judy Martin, a victims' advocate in Cleveland whose son was shot to death in a 1994 carjacking. "A number of the murders this year seem to come from a number of young men jumping on someone and killing them. We are going downhill."

Detroit, Los Angeles and New York were among several big cities that saw murder numbers drop.

Theories about New York's decline vary. Some experts point to favorable shifts in demographics and the economy, as well as the crash of a once-thriving crack market that fueled violence in the 1980s.

Officials in the 36,000-officer department, the nation's largest, credit their crime-fighting approach. They cite a tactic refined over the past decade in which commanders use computers to track crime patterns - particularly those involving guns and drugs - and deploy patrols where and when criminals are most active.

Police in Houston attributed some of their spike in violent crime to New Orleans gang members who evacuated there along with thousands of other victims of Hurricane Katrina last fall.

The FBI figures were released on the same day authorities announced the arrest in Louisiana of a Katrina evacuee considered one of the Houston area's most-wanted killers. Authorities said he robbed two other evacuees of their FEMA money and shot them, killing one.

Moreover, at the end of the missive the reasons for developing the "positive agenda" was made clear. Not only were MoveOn members asking for it, but the MoveOn bosses considered it crucial to "getting people to the polls" and "winning in November" which meant that "Democrats" would "gain seats in November. There was no question about whether the Democrats deserved to win seats in November. This was a goal slipped into the "p.s." of the email to be taken as a given. We were also told in passing that the "conversation" at the house party would be "guided," which meant directed by a script which as we shall see also failed to mention the war.

The second email.

I was curious but unable to attend that "trial" house party, but the following week the real thing emerged. The next week on May 22 another email appeared, announcing a series of nationwide house parties on May 24. I decided to go. But I was disappointed that once again there was no mention of the war in the email. So I decided to call a staff contact that we were given. She was young, enthusiastic and dedicated but inexperienced. I asked her why there was no mention of the war. I pointed out that a clear and ever growing majority of voters were for that. And I informed her that Karl Rove essentially conceded that the war was Bush's Achilles heel. So if MoveOn wanted to defeat the Bushies, why not raise the war? Silence came over her. She then said, as if recalling something, that opposition to the war was "negative" and we had to have a "positive" agenda. I asked whether "Bring all the troops home now. Peace now." would amount to a "positive agenda." Silence. She did call the national office for me, but they had nothing to say in response.

At the house party itself, there were but a handful of people, less than ten, smaller than previous MoveOn events ­ and this in Cambridge, Mass. We were given a list of "positive goals" to decide upon, but the war was not mentioned. I piped up at once, asking why not. Most people had not seemed to consider that the war was missing from the list of possible agenda items, so taken were they with thoughts of national health care and a clean environment. We agreed to add the war to our agenda, and when we took the final vote on our positive agenda, the results were as follows. "Bring the troops home from Iraq in 2006" was number one by a wide margin. "Develop alternative energy sources for everyone" and "Decent medical care for everyone" were number two and three, respectively.

The third email.

On May 30 came another email, giving the top 10 choices from the house parties from which 3 were to be chosen by an online ballot. Again there was no mention of Iraq. The choices were "the top 10 most popular ideas from last week's house parties." Apparently other house parties did not think to bring up Iraq, because it was not offered as an alternative, or else the MoveOn bosses did feel inclined to include it. Of course MoveOn is far from transparent, so we cannot know. What we do know is that the number one issue on the minds of Americans did not emerge in the top 10! Quite amazing! (The 10 "most popular" choices were: "A living wage for all; Global leadership through diplomacy: Verifiable, accurate elections; High quality education for all; Balanced federal budget; Health care for all, Publicly funded elections; Preserve our natural resources; Energy independence: clean, renewable sources; Restored constitutional rights". The second of these is noteworthy, "verifiable, accurate elections"; MoveOn would do well to take careful note of this.)

The final email.

Finally, the results of all this emerged in the last email on June 1 in which "the whole MoveOn.org Political Action team" triumphantly announced the top 3! And the winners were: "Health care for all. Energy independence through clean, renewable sources. Democracy restored." Damned close to the three suggested at the outset in the very first email - before any voting at all - as you remember from the first paragraph above: "universal health care" "clean energy," "publicly financed elections." The MoveOn bosses turned out to be remarkable seers.

In this final email MoveOn said that this agenda was chosen by "more than 100,000 people in local house parties and then online." But in a previous email the MoveOn bosses claimed only 10,000 in attendance for the house parties so most of the voting was done on line when the final 10 choices "on the ballot" excluded Iraq and the online voters were in no position to add it in. The ballot choices were fixed. More than that, its base is catching on to MoveOn. It is pretty pathetic for an organization of 3 million members (as claimed in the email of June 1) to get only 100,000 votes online. That is less than 4% of the members voting! And 100,000 hits on a well-financed and established web site is no big deal.

How did the MoveOn bosses engineer this? It is unclear. Did they simply exclude results like those of our house party? Did they actually falsify the voting? Or did they simply exclude choices with their "guided conversations," restricted choices and demands for the members to be "positive." We cannot know, for MoveOn is as opaque as the higher reaches of its parent organization, the Democratic Party. But we do know that the MoveOn bosses are not to be trusted. They are one element in a wider strategy of the Dem establishment and its accessories to sabotage and cripple the antiwar movement.

John Walsh keeps up with MoveOn in an attempt to bring the war to the forefront of its agenda and in an increasingly deseperate hope that something will change there. He can be reached at John.Endwar @gmail.com

"Where you've got a military where the assets and the personnel are strained, then private contractors have had to step in and fill the void," she told CNN, agreeing to be interviewed if her company's name was not revealed.

But where there is money, there is also danger. No official totals exist of how many private contractors have been killed in Iraq. But Clark believes the death rate among the 25,000 or so contractors is higher than among U.S. military forces.

Going where the military won't

The danger does not bring glamour. Clark's outfit shepherds convoys along supply lines strewn with roadside bombs targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces and those who support them. Missions have included guarding trucks carrying gravel for military bases.

"Military doesn't even like to go where we are going, and most of the companies that do this don't want to go where we are going ... and that's why we're going," explained one of Clark's men, nicknamed "Mr. GQ."

His colleague, Gonzo, gives a graphic description of what their team faces: "If we get ambushed and cut off, then yes, we are going to fight back and push through. That's what we get paid to do - protect the clients, protect the asset - that's our job.

"It sounds crude, but basically our job is to be a bullet sponge."

There is debate about how far these private contractors should go, what authority they have and who should police them, and no hard and fast answers. In the meantime, the contractors continue to face danger.

On one day recently, two roadside bombs went off simultaneously near one of Clark's security trucks, and the convoy was then attacked with heavy small-arms fire from nearby rooftops.

"The blood in the back seat of the truck, all the bone fragments and flesh pretty much told the tale - they got hit pretty bad," Gonzo said.

That same night, three roadside bombs were detonated beside the same convoy. Two of Clark's men were killed and five wounded.

A year's pay in 3 months
There is plenty of money and plenty of work to go around, much of it taken by Blackwater - one of the larger companies and perhaps the best known, because tragedy befell its employees in Falluja March 31, 2004. Four employees were killed - two of their bodies hung from a bridge.

Blackwater was founded in 1997, and business boomed after 9/11. Wartime demands are allowing it to expand even further, and it recently opened new headquarters in North Carolina, where it can train people from the military and law enforcement.

Blackwater also looks for opportunities beyond war zones to disaster areas, such as the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, or places where peacekeepers could be stationed, like the crisis-hit region of Darfur in Sudan.

Cofer Black, a former head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center and now vice-chairman of Blackwater, said the company is ready to tackle more hot spots.

"My company could deploy a reasonable small force under guidance or leadership of any national authority and do a terrific job of protecting, you know, innocent women from being raped, young kids from having their arms hacked off with machetes."

Like most contractors, Gonzo is ex-military and has specific personal reasons for being in Iraq and facing the danger.

A veteran of the first Gulf War, he says he can earn in three months what it would take him a year to get in the United States. "My wife and I are pretty frugal. My goal is pretty simple - I just want to be able to pay off a house and some property."

He holds up a picture of his three children. "We all have to be over here for a reason. Mine's so that I can provide a better life for my wife and kids."

"I have had people working nights and weekends," said Joseph Martz, the head of the Los Alamos design team. "I have to tell them to go home. I can't keep them out of the office."

Congress approved the new bomb, known as the reliable replacement warhead, with bipartisan support in 2005 as part of a defense spending bill. The weapon would, by law, have the same explosive power as existing warheads.

Proponents of the project say the U.S. would lose its so-called "strategic deterrent" unless it replaces its aging arsenal of about 6,000 bombs, which will become potentially unreliable within 15 years. A new, more reliable weapon, they say, would help the nation reduce its stockpile.

Critics say the project could trigger a new arms race with Russia and China, and undercut arguments that countries such as Iran and North Korea must stop their nuclear programs.

The United States and Russia signed a treaty in 2002 calling for the countries to each cut nuclear inventories to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012.

London's FTSE 100 index dropped 2.1 percent, the German DAX Xetra 30 index fell 1.8 percent and the French CAC-40 index slipped 2.2 percent.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index fell 614.41 points, or 4.14 percent, to finish at 14,218.60 points, the lowest close since Nov. 16, 2005. It was the biggest percentage loss in a day since May 10, 2004, and the biggest point drop since Sept. 12, 2001, after the terrorist attacks in the U.S.

South Korean shares dropped 2.9 percent, while Hong Kong plunged 2.5 percent. In Bombay, Indian shares plummeted 4.5 percent to their lowest point this year.

U.S. economic data later in the week will be the key to the next move for world markets, said Richard Hunter, head of U.K. equities at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers in Britain. The market could also get more clues as U.S. Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke is due to speak twice more this week.

"The current levels of uncertainty show no signs of abating in the short term, and for the moment it would appear that only a series of benign economic data would provide some relief," Hunter said.

That may not be likely.

"Wall Street is expecting a bloodbath for inflation figures, and that's spooking foreign investors in Japan who are selling their most liquid holdings, like tech stocks, as they price this in," said Ben Hao, head of equity trading at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Tokyo. The U.S. Department of Labor will release its key gauge of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, on Wednesday.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King added to investor nerves by signaling that the bank might be ready to boost interest rates after holding them steady at 4.5 percent for 10 months.

King said Monday the global economy was facing a "bumpier stretch of the road" and said monetary police may have been "too accommodative."

"So far we have seen little more than a modest correction to the prices of a wide range of assets that had risen sharply over the previous two years," King said.

"The realization that such levels of asset prices were unlikely to be sustainable, coupled with a tightening of monetary policy in many countries, has injected uncertainty into financial markets," he said.

In Asia, blue-chip technology stocks such as Sharp Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. were hit particularly hard Tuesday.

Indian shares, among those hit the hardest in recent weeks, fell sharply again, with the benchmark index tumbling to its lowest point this year. The benchmark Sensex index fell 414 points, or 4.4 percent, to 9,063.

South Korean shares plunged 2.9 percent to a more than a seven-month low. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or Kospi, fell 35.98 points to 1,203.86, the lowest closing level since Nov. 1, 2005.