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Chapter 1: Terrorist Nukes
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I have another article that documents Dudaev in Chechnya when there was a threat that was made against the Russian Government that if they didn't pull out of Chechnya, a suitcase-sized device would be used. Our intelligence community was contacted. It has been reported in the media. Our CIA sent over agents, into Chechnya, cooperating with the Russian intelligence to determine whether or not these devices were in fact in place in Chechnya. So, in fact, both the United States and Russia took this extremely seriously as recently as 1995; and in fact, under questioning yesterday by our friends from the NEST team, they train every day for the potential response necessary to deal with suitcase-sized nuclear devices. - Congressman Curt Weldon, Committee on National Security1
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On Sept. 11, 2001, the US went from the aftermath to the Cold War (which had only recently ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Empire), back to a new, hot war with Islamic terrorists.
In many ways this return to a state of war has been much like the Cold War: Our economy seems to hum along despite the damage and dangers, while an enemy engages in many small attacks and probing of our defenses rather than conducting any truly massive attacks, and in the meantime spies and saboteurs come to our nation, waiting for the signal to attack without warning.
What many don't realize is that, just as with the Cold War, nuclear weapons may very well be available to our enemies and they may soon use them on targets within our borders. As will be detailed in this publication, this danger is very real, even though much of the public remains blissfully ignorant of the problem, and our government does its best to pretend the problem isn't real.
The catch is that where we had some deterrence with the Soviets during the Cold War (an attack on the US would have initiated a massive counterstrike), our terrorist foes of today are not so deterred because
- They lack a homeland that can be threatened,
- Their desire is to have all nations return to a crude, feudal Islamic state - a process that nuclear exchanges and the confusing aftermath that would result might actually propel along, and
- They also desire, in many cases, to become martyrs to Islam, something that often emboldens them to sacrifice their own lives in order to make sure bombs or other weapons create maximum casualties.
It would thus be a mistake to think that there is much deterrence available to us which would prevent them from employing nuclear weapons if such devices were available. The type of terrorist that is willing to slaughter innocents by crashing aircraft into skyscrapers, or who will blow himself up in a crowded place to kill civilians - including children - is not going to have the same qualms that normal, civilized people do about killing. To these terrorists, right and wrong have been turned around. Killing and slaughter are good; making peace with America, the “Great Satan” is evil.
This means there are only a few viable solutions to this war. The first is to convert those who practice Islam to Christianity. This is the only real solution to this problem (as well as that of all mankind). The second step is to hunt down and destroy those groups and organizations that would attempt to spread their ideologies by force (a task that the US is engaged in as this is written).
The third, and one that has been virtually ignored by the US government, is to prepare the American public to survive should massive attacks involving nuclear weapons take place on our soil. This preparation could save untold lives and prevent many injuries.
This is why I have written this manual.
Because the terrorists we are in a life-and-death struggle with today are not going to be slow to employ nuclear weapons should they acquire them. And, as will be detailed shortly in the following pages, acquiring nuclear weapons or even improvising them may not be all that hard.
By the time you read this, such weapons might be in the hands of terrorist groups or even, God forbid, may have already been used on US soil.
Fortunately, as will be detailed in the following chapters, while the danger is very real, there is also much you can do to protect yourself and your loved ones. And as each of us takes these steps, we will also lower the effectiveness of terrorists to do harm to our people and our economy.
The threat is very real, and unfortunately in an effort to avoid “panicking the public” our mainstream media and government have downplayed many of the dangers, especially in the case of nuclear weapons that, as will be detailed later, have undoubtedly fallen into the hands of our enemies.
As one former special-operations officer who hunted terrorists in Europe recently put it:2
Let's face it, terrorism with radioactive materials after 9/11 no longer is an absurd notion. Terrorists crashing two jumbo-jet airliners into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon, and someone getting their hands on weaponized anthrax - and it is weaponized - and sending it through the mail, has pretty much dispelled the pre- 9/11 notions that these kinds of scenarios lay only in the realm of Tom Clancy novels and Hollywood movies.
While one might think that nuclear weapons would be hard for terrorists to come by, as will be detailed later in this manual, this is not the case for several reasons. One is that many of those in charge of much of the Russian arsenal were left without any way to get money following the collapse of the Soviet Empire. What followed was a “bargain basement” sale of about everything that wasn't fastened down. Everything from tanks and fighter aircraft to ammunition and military uniforms were sold on the black market.
And it is now know that at least some nuclear materials - and possibly weapons - have been sold during these impromptu fire sales as well. That some of these materials have leaked out is documented. In June 2003, US and Thai authorities arrested a teacher in Bangkok who was attempting to sell a packet of cesium for $240,000. Thai police later admitted that the radioactive material had come from a former Soviet republic.3
This was not an isolated incident, either. To date there have been at least 60 such incidents involving the trafficking in nuclear material according to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, just in 2003 alone.4 And given the ineptitude displayed by UN agencies over the years, one can only wonder how many sales of such materials might have gone on undetected, and how many more might be in the works.
Equally terrifying, no one has any good idea of how much radioactive material belonging to the former Soviet Union might already have been sold on the black market. That's because many records from that period have apparently been lost in most cases. Shukuri Abramidze, head of the Atomic Energy Commission of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, when asked about the possibility of missing nuclear materials in his country, replied, “We can show you what we possess, but it's impossible to know what we don't possess.”5
In other words, no one has much of a clue as to how much material is missing, or even what materials may now be in the hands of criminals and terrorists.
The material that is still in the hands of governments in countries that comprised the former Soviet Union is not well protected, either. In Georgia, US reporters recently discovered that radioactive materials were being storied in a concrete shed guarded by an unarmed, elderly man. The alarm system around the building often was not working during power failures. Yet it contained enough cesium, strontium, and cobalt to contaminate a large US city.6
That was just one of the hundreds or perhaps even thousands of such complexes sprinkled across the nations that were once part of the Soviet Union. A recent examination of 14 serious thefts which were known about (again noting that there is no way of knowing about thefts that might have occurred with materials not inventoried), criminal elements from the Middle East and Central Asia were most often involved. Many of these groups have links directly or indirectly to terrorist groups. Furthermore, the study found that criminal mobsters in Russia were also sometimes involved, using transport companies to obtain export licenses so that nuclear materials or weapons could be shipped in containers of goods.7
The amount of material that is currently up for grabs is nothing short of terrifying as well: enough to build up to 40,000 nuclear bombs.8
But a would-be terrorist need not go to all the trouble of building an actual nuclear bomb to create chaos. He could also use radioactive materials to create a “dirty bomb.” A dirty bomb is simply conventional explosives with some sort of nuclear material wrapped around it. When this weapon is exploded, the blast is no greater than that of a conventional explosion. The nuclear material doesn't go into the chain reaction to produce the horrific release of energy seen in nuclear bombs. But the nuclear material is dispersed by the conventional explosive, contaminating the area around it, and thereby exposing the people in the area to the radiation and also creating a massive cleanup nightmare.
A dirty bomb would not create a lot of casualties, but it would raise many health concerns for those exposed to the contamination, and would also make an area unusable until it was cleaned up, or the radioactive levels sank to a safe range - perhaps many years or even centuries later. All of this makes the dirty bomb an ideal terrorist weapon.
While lots of nuclear waste and other materials suitable for a dirty bomb are now circulating in the world's black market, a terrorist wanting to build a dirty bomb need not travel beyond US borders to obtain what he needs to build one of these devices. As the Los Angeles Times recently noted:9
Extremists searching for the ingredients of a dirty bomb need not look as far as Georgia. Sources are plentiful throughout the world, including the United States, and often they are not stored securely, experts said. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that 110 countries lack adequate controls over material that could be used in a dirty bomb.
Nearly 10 million containers of radioactive material - including the detritus from medical facilities - exist in the United States and 49 other countries, according to a 2003 survey by the congressional General Accounting Office.
The agency said that each year, hundreds of containers are lost or stolen in the US and other countries, particularly in the former Soviet Union.
The report warned that the radioactive material posed a “national security threat” and urged that controls be strengthened worldwide.
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LUGGAGE