Schippers has a lot of credibility with me. I just wish he didn't have to run with Judicial Watch as an ally in this... I'm increasingly queasy with Larry Klayman.
Any port in a storm, I suppose.
Posted on 03/03/2002 7:15:24 AM PST by TheRedSoxWinThePennant
OCTOBER BULLETIN SAID AL-QAEDA TERRORISTS THOUGHT TO HAVE 10 KILOTON NUCLEAR WEAPON TO BE SMUGGLED INTO NEW YORK CITY Sun Mar 03 2002 10:40:24 ET **TIME MAGAZINE**
New York -- In October, an intelligence alert went out to a small number of government agencies, including the Energy Department's top-secret Nuclear Emergency Search Team, based in Nevada. The report said that terrorists were thought to have obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal, and planned to smuggle it into New York City, a special TIME magazine investigation reveals.
Publishing sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT, the next cover story of TIME will headline: "Can We Stop the Next 9/11?"
The report hits newsstands Monday, March 4th.
MORE
The source: a mercurial agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, who intelligence officials believed was of "undetermined" reliability, TIME reports. But DRAGONFIRE'S claim tracked with a report from a Russian general who believed his forces were missing a 10-kiloton device.
That made the DRAGONFIRE report alarming. So did this: detonated in lower Manhattan, a 10-kiloton bomb would kill some 100,000 civilians and irradiate 700,000 more, flattening everything in a half-mile diameter.
Counterterrorist investigators went on their highest state of alert, TIME reports. "It was brutal," a U.S. official told TIME.
It was also highly classified and closely guarded.
MORE
Under the aegis of the White House’s Counterterrorism Security Group, part of the National Security Council, the suspected nuke was kept secret so as not to panic the people of New York. Senior FBI officials were not in the loop. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani says he was never told about the threat. In the end, the investigators found nothing, and concluded that DRAGONFIRE'S information was false. But few of them slept better.
Counterterrorism experts and government officials interviewed by TIME say that for all the relative calm since Sept. 11, America’s luck will probably run out again, sooner or later. "It's going to be worse, and a lot of people are going to die," warns one U.S. counterterrorism official. "I don't think there's a damn thing we're going to be able to do about it."
The DRUDGE REPORT has been briefed on other revelations coming from TIME's investigation:
The Coast Guard is arming itself against a possible terrorist attempt to destroy a major U.S. coastal city by detonating a tanker loaded with liquified natural gas.
The Administration has recalled old CIA hands with experience in Central Asia. Says an Administration official: "You ended up going back to retirees because the bench was so light on Afghanistan. We’re still trying to get up to speed."
This week, Tom Ridge’s office plans to announce a new color-coded alert system to warn local law enforcement and the public about threats within U.S. borders, sources tell TIME.
While there is a genuine debate inside the government about whether Osama bin Laden is still alive, there is far less argument about what will happen after Washington is able to confirm that he is dead. A U.S. official told TIME last week that it is widely presumed that al-Qaeda sleeper cells will take retaliatory action once the terrorist leader is killed or proven dead.
"We're as vulnerable today as we were on 9/10 or 9/12," says presidential counselor Karen Hughes. "We just know more."
Developing...
Schippers has a lot of credibility with me. I just wish he didn't have to run with Judicial Watch as an ally in this... I'm increasingly queasy with Larry Klayman.
Any port in a storm, I suppose.
Yes, I lift those things quite often. However, it's not that hard to smuggle considering most shipping containers (the big semi-trailer sized metal boxes used in maritime shipping) are NOT searched (this fact was on the news not too long ago) and they hold plenty of monitor box sized items.
My tax $$ stops going to washinton the day this happens.
Please see relies #34 and #37.
Maybe not. But it probably could be placed in the hold of a ship and detonated in New York Harbor.
They definitely can be placed in a (heavy) suitcase, and the Russians have done so. This is not in dispute. General Lebed (Russian) has publicly charged on a number of occassions that a number of these are missing (the number missing varies depending on the source, but may be as high as 100).
The Russina government officially denies that any nukes of any kind are missing. Some U.S. officials have publicly stated that Russian nukes are missing, and some have stated the opposite.
The U.S. has also built a number of very small nukes. At one point in the past, we built nukes for tactical use that were small enough to be used on field artillery warheads. We built small nuclear mines to be placed on enemy ship hulls by navy divers. We even built small, remore controlled nuclear land mines intended to choke off Russian tank advances into Europe (never deployed, however).
Even though they can be made very small and hard to detect, your comment about placing them in the hold of a ship is right on the money.
They are so valuable that I doubt the terrorists would be willing to risk even a small chance that they would be caught smuggling one into the country. Putting one into a container is a guaranteed way to get it into position in a major harbor. These containers are almost never inspected on the high seas. A small number are inspected once the ship is in port, but that would be too late. If we started to open the suspect container, they would simply set the bomb off.
Obviously, they could already have smuggled a bomb in and pre-positioned it anywhere in the country. But if they have not, a cargo container on a ship is almost unstoppable on our end. If we found out it was coming, we could stop it on the high seas. It is also possible we could stop it when it is loaded, but that would require help from the country of origin.
Bottom line: If they have a nuke that they know how to detonate, they can almost certainly get it into position.
of course we need to profile and are doing so. our thoroughly trained federal baggage screeners are well aware that weapons of mass destruction are smuggled by anglo saxon grandmas from pittsburgh and planes are hijacked by 3 years olds from cincinatti. the security people are thoroughly going through knitting and diaper bags as we speak. so don't worry, our government never makes the same mistake twice, we are all safe and sound. your tax dollars are protecting you without offending any of the oppressed middle eastern victims.
Such a bomb--even with the latest bomb designs--would easily weigh nearly 50 kilograms in weight and also need at least a minivan with all the rear seats removed to move it around.
I have personally worked with strategic nukes, although not with tactical nukes. The strategic nukes give off very little radiation, and would need little extra shielding to be very hard to detect. I have not personally worked with tactical nukes, but I know a little about them. They are small and would not need the seats taken out on a mini-van.
However, the only way Al-Qaeda has these relatively light weight and easily transportable nukes is if they got them from Russia. If they did, they may not be able to set them off without the activation codes.
Another likely scenario that has just come to light is bombs built to Pakistani specs. Apparently, complete details of the Pakistani bombs have been passed to other Islamic states. That means that if these nations can get the materials (not so easy...), they can make the bombs.
Based on what has been published, these bombs are relatively primitive and therefore comparatively heavy and large (but small enough to put on a missile). The important thing is that they definitely work, and can definitely be set off. They would be hard to hide, but could easily be packed into a typical cargo container on a ship. If Al-Qaeda has one of these, we had better have great intel. Otherwise a port somewhere is going to get blown up.
Please see replies #34 amd #37.
Gary Aldrich and Notra Trulock -- any comments,analysis or perspective, thoughts or advice on the article and replies for this thread and the info I present below would be appreciated. Thanks.
With 100 government employees manning the "Shadow goverment" in bunkers, with the placement of many more sensitive radiation detectors around the country and now with this report, it is important that the public get good ,reliable info and advice from honest experts. We do not want to under or over alarm the American people. It is a delicate balance.
It was reported on FR several times last year that the Israleis were able to intercept a smuggled "back pack" dirty radiation device being brought into the Israeli territories by a terrorist. This information was reportedly passed as credible to the highest levels of the USG.
With the Israeli interception story, there is the potential for a small scale, easily transportable dirty radiation device (using radioactive nuclear waste with convential explosives, not nuclear explosives) to also be brought into the US and used as a terror weapon. This has the advantage of being cheaper, easier to obtain the materials for, and easier to build and transport. The newly installed radiation detectors around the country were more likely also put into place to detect this type of dirty radiation bomb.
And with the recent reports of NEST teams and DeltaForce members being positioned and given new orders relative to nuclear devices in the US, these reports on FR of nuclear bobmms and of dirty radiation devices are taken much more seriously by th public and can become the basis fora serious state of alam.
Information,analysis and advice from reponsible and reliable experts like Gary Aldrich and from Notra Trulock on these matters would be helpful to Americans now facing this emerging threat.
Their input is very important to my way of thinking.
I am more inclined to think scenario #1 is more probable. It has been too easy in years past to smuggle things into the US, efforts now are in my opinion quite necessary, but might be closing the barn door after the horse got out efforts.
I am not well versed enough to honestly know how effective say satellite or airplane sensors are to be able to detect a nuke if it's shielded adequately. I just do not know. It could be sunk under water in a pool and lined with lead perhaps, or recessed down in a mine shaft or natural cave. It might be in the basement of a large building already, totally secure, walled off and bricked over, requiring as little as a sledgehammer and a few minutes time to get to it. Like who knows? Osama has moved from country to country before, it doesn't necessarily follow that if he loses afghanistan as a base that it would trigger his deployment and use of the nuke. If he does indeed own such a weapon, his insurance efforts to cover retaining ownership and control must have been of the highest levels once he got ownership.
Now just to me, strictly tactically speaking, his best possible use is if the us and israel and whatnot getting into a major shooting war with the palestinians and like iraq and iran, and he is able to show that they still have the means to strike back domestically inside the US in a major way, as both from the actual attack value to him, and for scoring propoganda points with one billion muslims. He has always wanted to show the islamic world that he is capable of doing what he says he can do, and better than any of their current leaders have shown, and so far has a decent track record of it, despite a serious setback and defeat in afghanistan. He has had one defeat for half a dozen or more victories so far on the war tally sheet, mostly from complete thinking out of the box and just being, well, bold about things.. This is a guy who had years of fighting another super power and is still here to the best of our knowledge, although he may very well be gone now too, and we just don't have conclusive evidence of it. His support/cell structure is just classically taught, various military planners teach the same things he has done, just he went further with it.
The critical times will come when a big war starts in the middle east, or a war between india and pakistan..
Of course, all this loose nuke talk could be a whopper truckload of manure to scare the socks off the US people, too. For various reasons.
Biologicals I am more inclined to believe exist inside the US now, I take russian reports of loose nukes as more probably bs so they can hide them and cheat on the start and salt treaties more than anything else. Losing a truckload of ak's I can believe, or the odd SAM or whatnot, but a working functional late model nuke is sort of a stretch, although anything is possible I guess. Even a wasted drunk and broke russky general would be hesitant to sell off some nuke to the islamics knowing it could be turned around and used on the rodina.
Fears Prompt U.S. to Beef Up Nuclear Terror Detection -
Sensors Deployed; Delta Force on Standby
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/638823/posts
Ah. The poopster. Not that I hold that report to be all that reliable, but did you read it? Can you read?
But DRAGONFIRE'S claim tracked with a report from a Russian general who believed his forces were missing a 10-kiloton device.
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