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The GAO set out to procure enough radioactive material to build a dirty bomb. Suppliers were only too happy to help. How the agency did it. Gregory Kutz and his colleagues wanted to order enough radioactive material to make a dirty bomb. So they set up bogus companies and applied for separate licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state of Maryland. They didn’t succeed with Maryland, but they got a license from the NRC in less than a month. Then Kutz and his associates doctored the license to increase the amount of radioactive material they could buy, and...

MIAMI - Jose Padilla gave evasive or vague answers about his activities in the Middle East shortly after arriving at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in May 2002, an FBI agent testified Thursday at his trial on a charge of supporting terrorism. Padilla did not remember the address or telephone number for his wife and children in Egypt, or the last name of his roommate, agent Russell Fincher said. In contrast, Padilla remembered many details of his life growing up in Chicago, including specific streets where his family lived, Fincher said. He also was carrying documents with other personal information such...

WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators set up a bogus company with only a postal box and within a month obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that allowed them to buy enough radioactive material for a small "dirty bomb."

A new study by the Canadian government predicts that the explosion of even a small dirty bomb in downtown Toronto could result in a rush on the city’s medical facilities and an economic toll of more than $23 billion. The disclosure comes just months after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said a dirty bomb assault in that country was "overdue.” The study explored the nightmare scenario involving the detonation of a device containing a modest amount of americium-241, a plutonium byproduct, The Canadian Press news agency reported, noting: "The grim outline is not far-fetched. A database of lost and stolen...

MIAMI - The federal judge in Jose Padilla's terrorism support trial refused to declare a mistrial Thursday after at least one juror saw one of Padilla's co-defendants in shackles outside the courtroom. Attorneys for Adham Amin Hassoun said his right to a fair trial had been jeopardized, but U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said after interviewing jurors that none had been "unfairly prejudiced in this matter." On Tuesday, the 16 jurors were being transported in government vans from the courthouse's basement garage to their cars. As one of the vans was leaving, three deputy U.S. marshals escorted Hassoun through the...

Al Qaeda terror cell members jailed for plotting to kill 'thousands of people' in BritainLast updated at 14:49pm on 15th June 2007  Seven members of a terror cell run by Al Qaeda "general" Dhiren Barot have been jailed for a total of 136 years.  The group were vital to Barot's deadly plans to attack the UK and the US, Woolwich Crown Court was told. Barot was jailed for life last year for plotting to kill "hundreds if not thousands" of people using explosives-packed limousines and a "dirty" radiation bomb.    Jailed (left-right): Abdul Aziz Jalil, Qaisar Shaffi, Omar Abdur...

MIAMI -- Fingerprints found on a purported al Qaeda training camp questionnaire discovered in Afghanistan match those of terrorist suspect Jose Padilla, a government analyst testified yesterday. John Morgan, a Secret Service fingerprint specialist, said seven fingerprints on a "mujahedeen data form" match Mr. Padilla's, who prosecutors say was attempting to join a terrorist training camp in southern Afghanistan in July 2000.

Lost in all the coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy were the sobering words of Vice President Dick Cheney about a calamity facing America that will dwarf anything it has ever experienced as a nation. Characterizing it as "the greatest threat we face," Cheney once again raised the ugly specter of nuclear terrorism against the U.S. "It's a very real threat," he said, "something that we have to worry about and defeat every single day." Tying the warning to politicking over Iraq war policy, he said a precipitous withdrawal from that country by U.S. military forces would invite and encourage...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - An American wanted for allegedly training with the "Lackawanna Six" at an al-Qaida camp was among the 23 men who tunneled out of a Yemeni prison last week, the FBI confirmed Friday. Authorities earlier said they believed Jaber Elbaneh, 39, was probably among the escapees, but were not certain because of conflicting information, including a posting by the international police organization Interpol that pictured Elbaneh but described someone else. Elbaneh is charged in Buffalo with providing material support to al-Qaida by attending the al-Farooq training camp run by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan months before the Sept....

MIAMI (Reuters) - Five years after the U.S. attorney general announced on live television that Jose Padilla was a "known terrorist" plotting to set off a radioactive bomb, a federal court must find a jury willing to presume he is innocent. The "dirty bomber" allegation made by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft when Padilla was arrested in 2002 never showed up in the formal charges brought against him after he had spent 3 1/2 years jailed in a military brig. But Padilla's lawyers fear the stigma could taint jurors' view of the 36-year-old American whose trial begins on Monday. "If you...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2007 – The enemy in Iraq is adaptive, and is interested in “catastrophic attacks,” the commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq said today. Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, met with Pentagon reporters over a satellite link from Baghdad. Insurgents blew up a tanker filled with chlorine yesterday in southern Baghdad. The attack killed at least two people and wounded more than 30. Coalition officials in Baghdad said this could be an escalation in the insurgent attacks. The attacks are meant to cause fear, and chlorine gas – which was...

The nation's top nuclear weapons agency announced Tuesday that it's planning to field-test devices that could eventually be used by local agencies around the country to disable a terrorist "dirty bomb" or nuclear weapon in the absence of experts trained to defuse nuclear bombs. The plan is an answer to concerns that, in the event of a terrorist plot on U.S. soil, the Nevada-based Nuclear Emergency Search Team wouldn't be able to get to the scene of an attack soon enough. The team, known as NEST, is the first line of defense against such attacks, which federal authorities say could...

STORY HIGHLIGHTS • NEW: Georgian officials and CIA's 2006 sting resulted in arrest • Unclear how suspect, who isn't cooperating with police, got uranium WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republic of Georgia authorities, aided by the CIA, set up a sting operation last summer that led to the arrest of a Russian man who tried to sell a small amount of nuclear-bomb grade uranium in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket, U.S. and Georgian officials said. The operation, which neither government has publicized, represents one of the most serious cases of smuggling of nuclear material in recent years, according to analysts...

LONDON: The exotic murder-by-polonium of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko throws into question most of the previous analyses of "dirty bombs," terrorist attacks using radioactive isotopes wrapped in explosives (or using other dispersion techniques) to spread radioactive material in crowded areas. Essentially all analysts, myself included, played down the possibility of using alpha radiation — fast- moving helium nuclei ejected during the radioactive decay of certain isotopes, such as of polonium 210, the substance that killed Litvinenko — as a source of dirty bombs.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the KGB and its more recent incarnation known as the FSB, is a perfect example of an intelligence officer who transferred his loyalties from his country, and the people he was entrusted to serve, to the “enemy” for reasons other than monetary gain...His areas of expertise included counter-terrorism and organized crime. For reasons unknown, Litvinenko became a supporter of the Islamic terrorists leading the rebellion in the separatist region of Chechnya, despite the fact that they had murdered hundreds of his fellow Russians. [SNIP] The fact that Litvinenko recently died as a result of...

Was ex-spy trying to sell dirty bomb? The radiation spy scandal took a sensational twist last night with the revelation that KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko had converted to Islam before he died. Scotland Yard detectives are now trying to discover if he had any secret links with Islamic extremist terror groups. Their biggest fear is that the former Soviet spy, who died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital, may have been helping Al Qaeda terrorists or other extremist groups get hold of radioactive material to be used in a devastating “dirty” atom bomb. The news comes on top of...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (CNN) -- About 500 people were evacuated from the New Mexico State Fairgrounds Expo as a precaution Saturday evening after low levels of radiation were detected, police said. A Geiger counter registered the presence of radiation after two objects were discovered at the 236-acre fairgrounds in the heart of Albuquerque, said Lt. Juan Martinez, a spokesman for New Mexico state police.

The Savoy hotel, Waterloo station, the Heathrow Express and a Tube train under the Thames were on a hitlist of targets drawn up by a British al-Qaeda terrorist, a court was told yesterday.Dhiren Barot will be sentenced today after he admitted planning “back-to-back” attacks on London, which he predicted would have created “a black day for the enemies of Islam”. His two-day hearing, the most significant terrorist case since 9/11, can be reported after The Times and the BBC succeeded at the Court of Appeal in having reporting restrictions lifted. In detailed documents prepared for the approval of al-Qaeda’s leadership,...

A Muslim convert raised in Britain admitted plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the UK as part of a plan to kill "hundreds if not thousands" of British and American civilians. Dhiren Barot, 34, planned to commit mass murder on a huge scale by blowing up some of the world's largest financial institutions, detonating a radioactive bomb in Britain and even flooding London by rupturing the Thames. Barot planned to murder "enemies of Islam" in an unprecedented plot involving buildings and public transport. In the UK Barot plotted to detonate a radioactive bomb and to blow up buildings by...

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