(Russian) Tycoon (living in London) foils ‘nuclear bomb sale’ plot

UK Times ^ | Oct. 24, 2004 | David Leppard

[FairOpinion]

THE London-based Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky has claimed that the intelligence services helped to foil a plot by Chechen terrorists to sell a nuclear device on the international black market.

Berezovsky last week described the curious events that led to him tipping off the authorities about the plot.

The exiled Russian oligarch, who according to The Sunday Times Rich List is the 14th richest man in Britain, said that he had contacted British and American intelligence after being approached by a Chechen at his home in Surrey.

The Chechen said he was acting as an intermediary for a man who wanted to sell a nuclear bomb concealed in a suitcase for $3m (£1.6m).

The tycoon arranged for a member of his staff to meet the Chechen at the Bristol hotel in Paris. The two-hour meeting was taped on Berezovsky’s instructions and the tycoon handed the tape to the CIA at the American embassy in London.

A senior Whitehall security official confirmed that MI5 was aware that Berezovsky had approached the authorities on several occasions “offering to assist in investigations into the supply of illicit nuclear and radiological materials”.

“He has made these allegations to the authorities in private, but we can’t discuss the details,” the official said.

After the Beslan school siege last month, for which Shamil Basayev, the Chechen warlord, claimed responsibility, the possibility that rebels in the breakaway republic may be able to acquire a small nuclear device is causing alarm among senior officials in Moscow and the West.

Two years ago American officials revealed their fears that Chechen rebels had stolen radioactive materials, possibly including plutonium, from a Russian nuclear power station in the southern region of Rostov.

The disappearance of the materials from the Volgodoskaya nuclear power station, near the city of Rostov-on-Don, heightened fears that weapons-grade material, including caesium, strontium and low-enriched uranium. had been obtained by Chechen terrorists.

The theft was reported by Russian officials to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which told the US energy department. Speaking for the first time about the plot, Berezovsky said that he had been approached in 2002 by a Chechen living in Paris whom he knew as Zakhar.

The Russian tycoon had previously helped Zakhar by giving him $5,000 when the two men were in exile in Paris. He said: “I didn’t hear from him again until he rang me when I was in England and said he had enormous, very important information about nuclear weapons.

“I informed the American embassy in London. I told them it could be serious or it could be a provocation.” Berezovsky asked Yuli Dubov, a business associate and fellow exile, to investigate the background to the plot. Dubov said that Zakhar had claimed that the portable bomb was one of several made by Soviet scientists during the early 1990s.

“One of them disappeared during the mess of the early 1990s,” Dubov wrote in a report. “The person who holds this suitcase with a bomb wants to sell it and he (Zakhar) is empowered to act for him.

“Zakhar approached Berezovsky. The price asked for it is not large, only $3m. The idea is that Berezovsky pays $3m and advises on whom the A-bomb should be delivered (to). Zakhar will then organise everything in the best possible way.”

During a subsequent meeting, arranged at the behest of the CIA in London, Zakhar was asked by Berezovsky’s aide to provide evidence that the nuclear device existed. But Zakhar, by this time suspecting a trap, failed to do so. Berezovsky said that he reported the matter to British intelligence through an intermediary.

That was end of the affair, as far as Berezovsky was aware. It could have been a hoax and he does not know whether the intelligence services tried to retrieve the nuclear device. The plot is the latest in a series of strange incidents to involve Berezovsky, who was granted political asylum by David Blunkett, the home secretary, last year.

Once Russia’s most influential tycoon, Berezovsky, 58, has a £1.8 billion fortune and recently bought a Surrey estate for £10m from Chris Evans, the radio DJ. He was forced to flee Russia after falling out with President Vladimir Putin.

[FairOpinion]

Very interesting.

It sounds true, or he wouldn't have contacted the intel services.

[FairOpinion]

Related (?) article:


New leads point to election (terror) attack
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1254768/posts

[Strategerist]

The disappearance of the materials from the Volgodoskaya nuclear power station, near the city of Rostov-on-Don, heightened fears that weapons-grade material, including caesium, strontium and low-enriched uranium. had been obtained by Chechen terrorists.

WTF? Neither caesium or strontium in any quantity or purity is "weapons-grade" for anything, and low-enriched uranium isn't "weapons-grade."

It's simply astonishing how incompetent the media is covering this subject.

[A. Pole]

The exiled Russian oligarch, who according to The Sunday Times Rich List is the 14th richest man in Britain, said that he had contacted British and American intelligence after being approached by a Chechen at his home in Surrey.

I wonder, why a Chechen would approach this "oligarch" (great thief)?

[GSlob]

Given the intensity of Chechen/Russian hatred, to believe that the Chechens would try to sell the device instead of USING it - strains human credulity and defies reason.

[FairOpinion]

They can be used in a dirty bomb.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[FairOpinion]

I think they figured, that he must hold a grudge against Putin and would be willing to help the Chechen terrorists to blow up a nuke in Russia.

[agere_contra]

Weapons grade caesium is used in, err, weapons-grade photoelectric cells. Dangerous stuff.

Any traded weapons might have gone subcritical due to shelf-life. In which case 3 million is a lot for a paperweight.

[Strategerist]

They can be used in a dirty bomb.

There's no such thing as "weapons-grade" for a dirty bomb.

[Southack]

"Dubov said that Zakhar had claimed that the portable bomb was one of several made by Soviet scientists during the early 1990s. “One of them disappeared during the mess of the early 1990s,” Dubov wrote in a report. “The person who holds this suitcase with a bomb wants to sell it and he (Zakhar) is empowered to act for him."

The smaller the nuke, the shorter the shelf life.

The less shielding that you have, the sooner that your electronics and conventional explosives deteriorate from the radiation.

The less fissionable material that you have, the faster you generally need your atomic trigger isotopes to emit neutrons. The faster you emit neutrons, the shorter your half-life. The shorter your half-life, the less time that you have before the nuke simply fizzles instead of booms.

This is simple physics. Moreover, heavy metals like uranium and plutonium are among the most brittle materials known to man, and the slightest bit of humidity turns them into uranium oxide or plutonium oxide (i.e. worthless rust).

So a "suitcase nuke" from the 1990's is likely little more than a rusted, shattered, fragmented collection of wiring and explosives today.

[FairOpinion]

Even if a dirty bomb is detonated, it would create chaos and economic disaster.

Risk of radioactive "dirty bomb" growing
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995061

"Since 1993, there have been 300 confirmed cases of illicit trafficking in radiological materials, 215 of them in the past five years. And the IAEA warns that the real level of smuggling may well be significantly larger, citing reports of a further 344 instances over the past 11 years which have not been confirmed by any of the 75 states that monitor illicit trafficking.

The only two known incidents that could be classed as radiological terrorism have occurred in Russia. In 1995 Chechen rebels buried a caesium-137 source in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow, and in 1998 a container of radioactive materials attached to a mine was found by a railway line near Argun in Chechnya."

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[Reeses]

defies reason

Most likely this was a sting operation. There's probably 1,000 stings for every real offer out there. Berezovsky likely saw it for what it was, reported it as a "good citizen" act.

[Southack]

The main problem with a dirty bomb is that the news media will blow it (pun intended) all out of proportion.

Even Japan and Germany in WW2 had the ability to make dirty bombs, it's just that they were more educated and less sensationalistic than the journalists of today (i.e. they knew better than to deploy a militarily useless weapon).

If your radiation source isn't engaging in a chain reaction, then its lethality is limited to people either breathing it in as dust or hanging on to pieces of it like a souvenier trophy necklace.

Brief exposures to non-chain-reaction radiation sources are trivial to your health.

Sadly, our modern news media will scream "PANIC" and "NUCLEAR ATTACK" at the first detonation of a dirty bomb, when the reality is that a dirty bomb is just a bomb...whose dust you don't want to breath and whose schrapnel you don't want to wear as jewelry.

[Fedora]

Quite interesting, though given the source I'd like to see some independent corroboration:

Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: the Life and Times of Boris Berezovsky

[TwoWolves]

The seller may know that it's not viable, but is hoping to swindle someone else with it. There are a lot of uses for $3M.

[Dan Evans]

Moreover, heavy metals like uranium and plutonium are among the most brittle materials known to man, and the slightest bit of humidity turns them into uranium oxide or plutonium oxide (i.e. worthless rust).

The uranium or plutonium is plated with metals to protect them from corrosion.

[Dan Evans]

Sadly, our modern news media will scream "PANIC" and "NUCLEAR ATTACK" at the first detonation of a dirty bomb, when the reality is that a dirty bomb is just a bomb..

I don't worry so much about a dirty bomb as I do about nuclear littering. A bomb advertises itself. But what if they just dropped the stuff in a high-traffic area?

[FreedomPoster]

>>It's simply astonishing how incompetent the media is covering this subject.

No it isn't. Journalists are generally technologically ignorant and innumerate. If they weren't, they would have been accountants or engineers or some such.