WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is preparing for possible violence from cults, guerrillas, hate groups and end-of-world-fearing zealots as 2000 approaches.

Law enforcement officials are working on contingency plans to cope with everything from cyber attacks to bombs at New Year's Eve parties, though they say they lack knowledge of specific, credible threats.

The FBI counter-terrorism section "has been planning for any violent activity by such groups," said Vatis, who is leading a separate drive to thwart cyber attacks that could disrupt the economy or government. At issue is the fear that Jan. 1, 2000, may seem like a watershed date for fanatics ready to put end-of-world rhetoric into action.

In addition to the perceived threat from within, U.S. officials fear anti-Western guerrilla groups and others may try to take advantage of the federal stretch to keep tabs on any Y2K related failures. The White House is setting up a $40 million information coordination center to help policymakers with Year 2000 issues and coordinate any emergency responses.

"In some instances, it may not be immediately apparent whether a service outage is the result of the 'millennium bug' or a computer intrusion," Vatis testified. Such uncertainty could make Y2K an inviting date for malicious strikes, officials said.

Together with a Pentagon task force for computer network defense, Vatis's National Infrastructure Protection Center will hold a classified, two-day conference called "Preparing for Cyberwar," including Y2K contingencies, in early October.

With just over 100 days left before the year 2000 (Y2K) problem is upon us, Web programmers are still using noncompliant code, says Y2K specialist Jocelyn Amon. ‘I spent six hours searching Internet Web pages for Y2K errors and was easily able to find over 300,’ says Amon.

The errors listed include hard-coding 19 so the rollover from 1999 becomes 19100 instead of 2000, along with numerous errors with the Leap Day, as well as something Amon calls the ‘booby trap’, where programmers assume ‘the non-four-digit year value in 2000 will be 00.’ In fact, says Amon, it will be 100 because that's how many years there are since 1900. She points to almost 70 examples of this problem alone. The bugs aren't in any one language. Amon found examples of date-related errors in code written in C, C++, Perl, Java and JavaScript...

The Inland Revenue has apologised for threatening to seize goods from a law abiding company following a Y2K-related glitch. The Bradford Midland Tax District Office believed the unnamed Yorkshire firm had not paid its tax and national insurance contributions.

It threatened to send bailiffs round. Inland Revenue blamed mistake on new desktop software, installed as part of its Infrastructure 2000 (I2K) project, according to correspondence leaked to IT weekly newspaper Computing.

It said the Y2K work was: "causing extreme problems within the Inland Revenue....and (has) been for several weeks now." The I2K has caused system crashes preventing users from accessing up to date information. It is part of the Inland Revenue's on-going Y2K compliance efforts and has been outsourced to EDS.

The Inland Revenue said the Yorkshire company was not the only one to have been threatened with the bailiffs when they had actually paid - mostly via an automated clearance system.

The Year 2000 problem isn't sneaking up on Bob Bemer. He's been warning folks about it for 30 years. Bemer, 79, is ''The Father of ASCII,'' the method computers use to translate letters and numbers into digital language they can understand.

Bemer belonged to a group of computer programmers back in the 1950s who, led by Navy Rear Adm. Grace Murray Hopper, developed COBOL - the "common business-oriented language" used by most mainframes today. In fact, Bemer coined the name.

It is in COBOL that the Y2K bug, which may cause computers to fail to distinguish the Year 2000 from 1900, most often exists.

How serious is the Y2K problem? "I'm a firm believer that, if ignored or avoided, it will turn the world upside down,'' Bemer said.

Sounding the alarm

Many other computer scientists joined Bemer in an effort to declare 1970 the National Year of the Computer. Through this campaign, Bemer hoped he could get a forum to warn of the approaching Y2K train.

He persuaded presidential science adviser Edward E. David to approach President Nixon with the idea. But he was ignored.

Probably the first published warning about Y2K came from Bemer in an editorial he wrote to the 6,500 technologically influential readers of Honeywell Computer Journal in 1971. His first writing for public consumption came in February 1979 when his article ''Time and the Computer'' was published in Interface Age.

In this article Bemer wrote, ''Don't drop the first two digits. The program may well fail from ambiguity in the Year 2000.''

The problems to come

Bemer says we'll see the problems soon.

Some of the problems will surface on Jan. 1, but not in the volume most people expect.

''The press has been painting a picture of this airplanes-falling-out-of-the-sky crap,'' he said. ''Look out for next February and March. That is when people are going to realize some things are wrong. Their statements and bills don't come out right. Other things may go wrong.''

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being little or no problems and 10 being worldwide catastrophe, White forecasts a 2 with some disruptions and annoyances. Bemer sides with many other Y2K experts with a 7 or 8.

For those people who still think Y2K believers are far-out kooks who have been watching too much prime time television, here's a little bit of news for you. Some notable experts are as worried as we "kooks" are. Worse, these experts are not simply worried about the problems endemic to widespread computer failures.

Last week a consulting firm headed up by ex-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Neil Livingstone issued a new "White Paper" on Y2K. Livingstone told Reuters last week he "has every reason to believe" the U.S. will soon be subjected to terrorist attacks due either directly or indirectly to the Y2K problem.

"Whether by bombing a jetliner or attacking crowds in (New York's) Times Square, it's almost certain the Year 2000 will be ushered in with a major terrorist attack," he said.

Specifically, Livingstone's firm predicted a "violent upsurge in guerilla violence" against America by cultists, crazies or just plain old terrorists trying to take advantage of any security lapses that might occur because of the Bug.

Furthermore, another former Joint Chiefs Chairman, retired Adm. William Crowe joins Livingstone in his assessment. His research led him to conclude that because of our high-tech military weapons systems, terrorists will have to resort to bombings and other acts of domestic violence. And, he believes, Y2K--or the threat of it--provides the best cover for terrorists, both foreign and domestic, to make their play.

Only God Almighty knows for sure what is and is not going to happen at or around the Year 2000, but clearly there are other warning signs which should tell us to get prepared for something.

Besides these most recent warnings, WorldNetDaily's David Bresnahan has written extensively since January of this year on secret plans the National Guard and other departments and divisions of the Pentagon are making in anticipation of Y2K. Also, this paper published an article about the FBI canceling all personnel vacations and leaves during the four-week period of time beginning in mid-December of this year.

Furthermore Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, has made often not-so-veiled warnings to Congress, the President and the American people regarding the lack of readiness of U.S. businesses and government agencies to handle Y2K "glitches." Most notably, a recent story by the Associated Press quoted a government report stating that "up to one third" of the country's 102 nuclear power plants "may be Y2K ready but not necessarily Y2K compliant."

A few months ago a separate story said most U.S. small businesses were not compliant, and there is no indication that other countries with which we do business are anywhere near Y2K compliant.

The only thing a rational person can conclude is that somehow, someway, it is highly probable that something bad will happen either because of Y2K or on behalf of Y2K. Problems and violence will either be born of lunacy or rationalized planning, of a foreign or domestic nature, and on either a small or large scale, but you can bet--say the experts--that something will happen.

The only voices of "calm and reason" are, of course, coming from the Clinton administration--hardly reassuring because of the proportionately few truth tellers there.

On an almost daily basis God is allowing us to be forewarned about Y2K and the possibility that our lives will be disrupted in a big way come January 2000. What we do with this information is up to each of us. Personally, I plan to listen to God. Praying to Him wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Russia, January 2000. It's 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in Moscow, and some parts of the country no longer have electricity or heat. In some areas, people have abandoned their homes. Some have started fires in the streets to keep warm. Business is paralyzed by massive computer billing and payroll problems. Most banks are closed, and will not say why. As expected, Russia's early warning network against nuclear attack went black on New Year’s Day. No missiles fired accidentally as some had feared, but the security systems at several missile sites have failed. And in Vladivostok, there are unconfirmed reports that the cooling system aboard a deactivated nuclear submarine has malfunctioned, creating the threat of a reactor meltdown. Even though the Kremlin was expecting problems, it's hard pressed to contain the chaos.

Y2K fiction? Incidents similar to these have been predicted. When the millennium dawns in Russia, no one here is quite sure what will happen. Russians aren't very concerned because their leaders have told them there isn't a problem, yet Russia may be very vulnerable. Russia does not have the money or time to fix all its problems, and it has plenty of them, despite the smug pronouncements by the Kremlin that Russia doesn't own enough computers to have a Y2K crisis. "They have a bigger problem than we do," says Paul Goble, Director of Communications at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the top expert on Soviet nationalities in the Reagan Administration. "In their nuclear power plants, in their nuclear weapons systems, in their design laboratories, those computers are two or three generations behind ours. They're not on Pentium III. They're not even on Pentium I."