Sandy,
Go to Project/Project Information and check the Project Start Date. My
guess is that it is somewhere in 2002. If so, change it to coincide with
the Start of the first performance task. At the same time check for a
constraint on the first performance task (Project/Task
Information/Advanced tab). It is probably "start-no-earlier-than". With
the corrected Project Start Date, the first performance task should be
"as-soon-as-possible".
Hope this helps.
John