THE BLACKEST MARKET OF ALL - Smuggling of Nuclear Materials By Terrorists

Last week's seizure in Paris of weapons-grade uranium was chilling evidence of the ease with which a lone terrorist could build a nuclear bomb

The image of death and destruction is terrifying. "When it happens," one official from the FBI told The Sunday Telegraph, "there won't be any warnings and there won't be any demands. There will just be a colossal explosion in a US city, with horrendous radioactive fallout. And thousands of people will be dead."

Is it really just a question of "when" terrorists explode a nuclear bomb on American soil - rather than "if"? Richard Clark, the national co-ordinator for security and counter-terrorism to Bill Clinton, has said that the likelihood of a terrorist attack against the United States, using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in the next 10 years, is "100 per cent".

It is an indication of how seriously America takes the threat of nuclear terrorism that Washington has set aside $21 billion ( £15 billion) to deal with it within mainland America. A further $4.7 billion ( £3.3 billion) has been given to Russia to help it keep its nuclear arsenal secure.

It is not clear that the American campaign is working. There certainly appears to be no shortage of fissile material on the international black market: 32 seizures of illegal radioactive materials have taken place so far this year in Europe. Last week, Serge Salafi, a French petty criminal and fraudster, was arrested in Paris in possession of 85 per cent enriched uranium 235. He had only a small amount on his person - five grammes - but that was just a "sample", his proof to prospective purchasers that he could get hold of enough weapons-grade material - that is, material suitable for building a nuclear bomb.

Uranium used in a nuclear power station is usually enriched to a level of no more than three per cent. Eighty-five per cent enriched uranium can have originated only in a nuclear weapons facility.

"It is hard to believe," said one official from the DST, France's equivalent to MI5, which has supervised the investigation into Salafi, "but it seems that this small-time crook was able to make a connection with the nuclear smuggling racket without the slightest difficulty."

Others do not find it hard to believe at all. Edward Badolato is a former deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of Energy and the principal architect of America's nuclear weapons security programme.

"The smuggling of nuclear materials," he notes, "has been organised for some time by international businessmen and criminals in conjunction with customs and disgruntled military personnel who have access to nuclear material.

"In some parts of the world, it is practically done in the open. If you think of the parallel with the drug trade - where we know that the ratio of drugs smuggled to the amount seized is about 1,000:1 - you get some idea of the possible scale of the problem with material for nuclear weapons. What we catch is just the tip of what could be a very large iceberg."

Salafi's uranium would have almost certainly come from one of the plants for building, or storing, nuclear bombs that still litter the countries of the old Soviet Union. There have been dozens of people arrested in Europe for trying to sell plutonium or uranium that has come from Russian sources.

In 1994, for example, a Colombian, Justitiano Benitez, was arrested at Munich airport on arrival from Moscow. He was carrying half a kilogram of plutonium. He and his accomplices, Julio Eguia and Bengoechea Arratibel, later stood trial. In April this year, Alfonso Sandoval, another Colombian, was arrested in Bogota with 600 grammes of enriched uranium. It was traced to a Russian source.

Would-be purchasers of plutonium and enriched uranium want it for one purpose: to build a bomb. In sufficient quantities, the elements produce the self-sustaining nuclear reaction necessary for an atomic bomb. About 15kg of U235 - a highly radioactive isotope of the normal U238 - is needed for the chain reaction, and 5kg of plutonium.

Both elements are artificially produced, requiring very sophisticated technology. Most countries in the world do not, thankfully, have the ability to produce either plutonium or U235. That is why terrorists and the "rogue states" who want the bomb have to steal the materials from the countries that do.

Their favourite source is the countries of the former Soviet Union. Since the break-up of the Soviet bloc, nuclear weapons facilities there have become notorious for their ability to "lose" nuclear material, partly because it has been impossible to compile an accurate inventory of how much enriched plutonium and uranium they contained.

In 1995, for instance, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority found 75kg of enriched uranium at the Kharkiv Physical-Technical Institute in the Ukraine - five times the 15kg officially declared.

The first rash of nuclear smuggling rackets began when the Soviet Union and the apparatus of central government all but collapsed. In the ensuing political and economic crisis, nuclear physicists and scientists either saw their salaries lose value or found that they were simply not paid at all.

The "closed cities" where nuclear bombs and missiles were manufactured came close to complete shut-down. In places such as Irkusk in Siberia - home to a gigantic nuclear facility that employed thousands of scientists on designing and building weapons of mass destruction - members of what had been the privileged Soviet elite found themselves without even basic supplies, never mind salaries. Impoverished, miserable, and often cold and hungry as well, it is hardly surprising that it turned out to be easy to bribe some of them to violate security procedures.

It still is. Two weeks ago, in the old Soviet republic of Georgia, the police detained the head of the state's Defence Logistics Department. Shota Geladze is suspected of trying to organise the transfer to Turkey of 1.7kg of weapons-grade plutonium.

Mr Geladze is a trusted official in the Georgian government, with full access to nuclear material. He is also well paid, at least by Georgian standards. But he seems to have been prepared to sell the constituents of nuclear bombs to people he knew would then sell them on to terrorists - terrorists who would use them to build a bomb that could kill and maim many thousands of people.

Three others were arrested with Geladze in a hotel room in Batumi, a port on the Black Sea. They were finalising plans for the sale of the plutonium. That plutonium was to have been transported by ship to Turkey. The men arrested have not yet revealed the identity of the buyers, but there are many in the queue.

The CIA has identified 12 terrorist groups that have attempted to buy enriched uranium or plutonium in order to make a nuclear bomb, including Chechen separatists, Palestinian extremists and Islamic fundamentalists such as Osama bin Laden.

There are also the governments that wish to acquire weapons-grade material: most prominently those of North Korea, Iran and Libya. Col. Gaddafi is known to have placed a long-standing order for the purchase of a nuclear weapon. His price? $5 million.

The holy grail for purchasers of nuclear weaponry is not, however, the small slabs of plutonium or enriched uranium that the petty smugglers are usually caught trying to sell; it is one of the 80 or so "backpack nukes" that were built for the Russian special forces during the Cold War.

These bombs were designed to be transported and activated by one man. They can deliver a one kiloton explosion - big enough to wipe out a small city. Gen Alexander Lebed, when he was Boris Yeltsin's defence minister, ordered an investigation into exactly where the "backpacks" were and who was looking after them. Yeltsin fired him before the investigation was completed.

Lebed remains convinced that the nuclear bombs have not been properly secured and could easily find their way on to the black market - and so into terrorist hands.

The possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack is particularly terrifying because it is difficult to forestall it. States can be deterred by the threat of massive retaliation: even the most bellicose members of the Iranian or Iraqi governments know that, if they launch a nuclear missile attack against America, their country will not exist the day afterwards.

It is that knowledge that, more than anything else, prevents states that have nuclear bomb technology (and Iraq may well now be among them) from using it against America or its Nato allies.

Terrorist groups, however, do not respond to the threat of nuclear retaliation: they are immune to it. They do not have capital cities that can be razed, or populations that can be annihilated. They do not have identifiable headquarters that can be targeted.

Moreover, National Missile Defence - President Bush's celebrated "Son of Star Wars", which will insulate America and its allies from missile attacks by rogue states - can offer no protection against a terrorist bomb.

"If a terrorist group gets hold of a bomb," says Steve Emerson, the director of the Investigative Project, a terrorism watchdog, "you can be sure it isn't going to put it on the tip of a missile and fire it into space. They will put it in a truck and drive it over the Canadian or Mexican border, or put it on a ship and detonate it in an American port. NMD will inevitably be totally useless against that threat."

Aware of the dangers of weapons-grade material leaking from Russia, Washington has, for a decade, subsidised Russia's efforts to protect its nuclear arsenals. Under the Nunn-Lugar Act, the US has even paid a subsidy to Russian scientists to persuade them not to sell their expertise to the highest bidder.

"So far," says Edward Luttwak, a Pentagon analyst, "our two safeguards against terrorists getting hold of a nuclear bomb have been the Nunn-Lugar Act and the stupidity of the terrorists, who seem incapable of dealing with honest thieves and agree to buy only from con men.

"We can't take that stupidity for granted, however. It won't last forever. And President Bush has just decided drastically to reduce the amount of money going to Russia under the Nunn-Lugar Act. It will, of course, make it that much harder for Russian scientists to resist the temptations of the smugglers."

Everyone must hope that enough fissile material to make a nuclear bomb never finds its way into terrorist hands. Today, however, the prognosis is not promising.
[End of Transcript]

"The CIA has identified 12 terrorist groups that have attempted to buy enriched uranium or plutonium in order to make a nuclear bomb, including Chechen separatists, Palestinian extremists and Islamic fundamentalists such as Osama bin Laden."

The holy grail for purchasers of nuclear weaponry is not, however, the small slabs of plutonium or enriched uranium that the petty smugglers are usually caught trying to sell; it is one of the 80 or so "backpack nukes" that were built for the Russian special forces during the Cold War.
These bombs were designed to be transported and activated by one man. They can deliver a one kiloton explosion - big enough to wipe out a small city. Gen Alexander Lebed, when he was Boris Yeltsin's defence minister, ordered an investigation into exactly where the "backpacks" were and who was looking after them. Yeltsin fired him before the investigation was completed.

Lebed remains convinced that the nuclear bombs have not been properly secured and could easily find their way on to the black market - and so into terrorist hands.

Makes you feel good... All the more frightening is the fact that we can do almost nothing about it, short of finding out where these things are-a difficult task at best. Makes a body glad to live way out in the woods.

All of which is exactly why we need to nuke Medina now. For those who don't know, it's the Muslim's #2 holy site -- the place where Mohammed is buried. Nuke it now, and hold Mecca, their prized jewel, hostage. Any terrorist who dares to "do" the USA again would then be guilty of destroying the very earthly presence of the very religion they are so very passionate about. A kind of modified mutually assured destruction. Medina must be nuked, NOW. We could even offer them a day to evacuate, since we are not so barbaric as to devalue the lives of civilians. We have 'em by the cajones and we have a good excuse. Are we smart enough to pull the trigger on the opportunity, though? Don't think so.

Perhaps I'm not thinking this all the way through, but what you just said sounds absolutely BRILLIANT! The only way that I might change it is to make the threat up front rather than do the actual deed. If you truly SHOW them that you mean it, that might just work!

And the reason I say Medina is to prove that we would actually do it by actually doing it; while at the same time providing Islam plenty of wiggle room by sparing their BY FAR most holy places, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, with its Ka'aba. That is the sine qua non of their religion. Without Mecca, they have no religion. It's that simple. I only wish we were smart enough. Oh, all hell would break loose rhetorically, and in the streets of Islamania; but they would know they'd been had -- I am sure of it.

We have to convince them that the price of setting off a mini nuke like this will be absolutely unbearable. That's a challenge for a people who glorify dying for Allah. (Though I understand that pig's blood ritually defiles them and then they can't go to Allah Land.)

I wonder if there is any way to detect the concentrations of radioactivity produced by a yet-unexploded portable nuke, from a satellite?

Hi Cleburne. I was just reading your profile. 15 years old! I'm encouraged that you're involved, participating, gaining knowledge and searching for truth and justice. Homeschooler also! Keep your hand in His.

"Whole days and WEEKS have I spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer"
George Whitefield

Is Nuclear War Really Unthinkable?

How about this -

As likely as "Y2K/NWO Concentration Camps?"

From one of your *own* threads:

http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a37eb164263a4.htm#4

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