Free Republic

WASHINGTON — On most days now, Mahdi Obeidi rides his new mountain bike, plays with his grandkids and works on getting a U.S. patent for technology he originally developed to build a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein. Obeidi, who headed Hussein's uranium enrichment program until it was shut down in 1991, is the only Iraqi weapons scientist that the CIA is known to have brought to the United States after the invasion last year. The CIA also flew eight of his family members here in August 2003 and secretly set them up in three adjoining apartments in a leafy Virginia...

A Canadian nuclear scientist who has not been seen for more than a month has simply vanished, leaving "absolutely no trace at all," police say. Lachlan Cranswick, 41, a physicist from the Chalk River Laboratories nuclear facility in Ottawa, was last seen on Jan. 18, when he left his job and boarded a bus to Deep River, his hometown along the Ottawa River with a population of roughly 4,300. Later that day, or possibly the next morning, Cranswick took out the garbage -- and the single man described as a meticulous loner has not been seen since.

NOTE: Photo included. SNIPPET: "On Jan. 18, Lachlan Cranswick left the Chalk River nuclear facility, where he worked, and took a bus to Deep River, the small town on the Ottawa River where he lived. The 41-year-old physicist, whose job entailed running experiments for the National Research Council, had just finished some work for a researcher overseas and left his findings on his desk, to be mailed later. Sometime that night or the next morning, he took his garbage bins outside for pickup. Then, he vanished without a trace. When he didn't show up for work for several days and...

TORONTO - There are still no leads in the case of an eastern Ontario scientist who disappeared without a trace last month, leaving his colleagues mystified. Lachlan Cranswick hasn't been seen since Jan. 18, when he left work at the National Research Council's Canadian Neutron Beam Centre in Chalk River, northwest of Ottawa. His nearby Deep River house was reportedly left unlocked and his car was in the garage. His wallet, keys and passport have all been accounted for......