Posted on 11/16/2001 1:11:24 PM PST by blam
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15 2001
Bin Laden's nuclear secrets found in al-Qaeda's Kabul safe houses
FROM ANTHONY LOYD IN KABUL
Times reporter finds blueprint for 'Nagasaki bomb'
Singed files left by fleeing terrorists
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S al-Qaeda network held detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters.
The Times discovered the partly burnt documents in a hastily abandoned safe house in the Karta Parwan quarter of the city. Written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction.
Both President Bush and British ministers are convinced that bin Laden has access to nuclear material and Mr Bush said earlier this month that al-Qaeda was “seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons”.
The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions, along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West’s worst fears and raises the spectre of plans for an attack that would far exceed the September 11 atrocities in scale and gravity.
Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasised that it was extremely difficult to build a viable warhead.
While the terrorists may not yet have the capability to build such weapons, their hopes of doing so are clear. One set of notes, written on headed notepaper from the Hotel Grand in Peshawar and dated April 26, 1998, says: “Naturally the explosive liquid has a very high mechanical energy which is translated into destructive force. “But it can be tamed, controlled and can be used as a useful propulsive fuel if certain methods are applied to it. A supersonic moving missile has a shock wave. That shock wave can be used to contain an external combustion behind the missile . . .”
The document was one of many found in two of four al-Qaeda houses which had been used by Arabs and Pakistanis and even reportedly by bin Laden himself. The houses — two in the Karta Parwan district and the others further to the east — were abandoned on Monday night as Taleban units and their allies fled the city in the face of the Northern Alliance advance.
Attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many documents still remained. They included studies into the development of a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads, external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making smaller bombs.
There were also studies into Western special forces’ hostage rescue techniques, phone numbers for industrial chemical and synthetic producers, flight manuals, aerodynamic research, and advanced physics and chemistry manuals.
The houses were checked after being identified by local people. Afghan looters had concentrated on removing more appetising objects, ignoring foreign language documents that were of no use to them.
Bin Laden has said it is his “religious duty” to obtain a nuclear bomb. In an interview with the Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir last week, he claimed that al-Qaeda had nuclear capability and said: “I wish to declare that if America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons as deterrent." Intelligence agencies already have indirect evidence from defectors, middlemen and scientists of Bin Laden’s obsession with obtaining or producing a nuclear device.
Al-Qaeda agents are known to have spent more than £1 million trying to obtain enough fissile material to make a “dirty bomb” that, if detonated with TNT in a populous area, could kill thousands and contaminate it for decades.
Intelligence sources told The Times last month that bin Laden and al-Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials illegally from Pakistan. And at least ten Pakistani nuclear scientists have been contacted by agents for the Taleban and al-Qaeda in the past two years, according to reports.
The knowledge that bin Laden has components for a nuclear weapon is believed to lie behind the warnings from President Bush and Tony Blair that he would commit worse atrocities than the suicide assaults in America if he could.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Bin Laden would have killed 600,000 people on September 11 if he could have done. This simply underlines again why he has to be stopped.
What concerns me the most is that you don't have to be an intelligence guru to have figured out what they were up to for the last 8 - or into Bush, Sr's watch - ago!
Why must we always wait for the coddled public to support what must or should be done?
NEXT TIME WE MAY NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF LEADTIME!
This problem is NEVER going to go away. New ones will crawl out from under the rocks after the old ones are dispatched.
Perhaps they were just sharing recipes for goats...?
I agree there is reason for concern and that continued caution is advisable. But the material the British reporter came across has nothing serious to do with constructing a device.
Maybe not, but it could be loaded into a Cessna Citation and exploded at 1000 feet above ground level. I wouldn't dismiss this stuff too lightly. These people want you dead.
I keep telling myself that if he had them, he would've used them.
The majority of the bomb-making instructions were easy to understand and used domestic items, including Alka Seltzer tubes, condoms, wax, mousetraps and cigarettes as contact switches to initiate charges.
So will the airlines be confiscating these items now?
Feasibility studies.
It would be foolish not to proceed on the assumption that he has somehow acquired a nuke of some sort.
But the material the British reporter discovered has nothing serious to do with constructing such a device, as I am sure you would agree. Since I was aware of most of that material from having read Rhodes' "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb", I presume it was very elemental stuff.
Actually says something about M. Atta and his low-tech effectiveness -- maybe he didn't quite "fit in".
Maybe it was a class room with Pakastani teachers, huh.
This find was too easy!
Was there a bill of sale from Marc Rich and the DNC?
I can't believe everyone has let you off the hook so easy. I'm honored to be the smarta$$ obligated to tell you... Its already been posted
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