Posted on 03/17/2002 7:58:02 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov denied reports Sunday that weapons grade nuclear material is missing from Russian defense stockpiles.
"Concerning weapons grade material, there is not a single case that any Russian weapons grade material has been stolen, sold or something like that," Ivanov told "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert.
But Ivanov did not rule out the possibility that non-weapons grade nuclear material had been sold.
"There were cases of isotopes - I think you call them isotopes - from the civilian energy sector, which some fools thought it might be presented as nuclear material and tried to sell it," he told Russert. "But that has nothing to do with defense."
Ivanov offered his assurance that Russian plutonium was under what he called "very strict government control."
The Russian Defense minister was responding to the most recent CIA report on the safety and security of Russian nuclear facilities, which contended:
"Weapons grade and weapons useable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes. We assess that undetected smuggling has occurred, although we do not know the extent of the magnitude of such thefts. Nevertheless, we are concerned about the total amount of material that could have been diverted over the last ten years."
Russert failed to ask Ivanov about the claims of former top Russian security official General Aleksandr Lebed, who told Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., in 1997 that up to 80 suitcase-sized nukes had disappeared from Russian nuclear arsenals.
Russian officials subsequently denied Lebed's claim.
In September, Rep. Chris Shays, R-Ct., chairmen of the House Subcommittee on National Security, said "We don't really have a straight answer from our own government" on whether Lebed's report was accurate.
In 1992, former senior KGB intelligence officer Stanislav Lunev defected the U.S. and revealed KGB plans to plant dozens of suitcase-sized nukes throughout the U.S. He documented his account in his 1992 book, "Through the Eyes of the Enemy".
Lunev is now a contributing writer for NewsMax.com.
In 1999, a second KGB intelligence officer, Vasili Mitrokhin, defected to Great Britain and corroborated many of Lunev's claims.
Well, maybe not. They haven't been stolen, they were sold.
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