Does al-Qaida have20 suitcase nukes?

World Net Daily ^ | 10-2-02 | World Net Staff

[Rudder]

Author claims bin Laden purchased them in '98 from ex-KGB agents for $30 million

A new book by an FBI consultant on international terrorism says Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network purchased 20 suitcase nuclear weapons from former KGB agents in 1998 for $30 million.

The book,"Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror," by Paul L. Williams, also says this deal was one of at least three in the last decade in which al-Qaida purchased small nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear uranium.

Williams says bin Laden's search for nuclear weapons began in 1988 when he hired a team of five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan. These were former employees at the atomic reactor in Iraq before it was destroyed by Israel, Williams says. The team's project was the development of a nuclear reactor that could be used "to transform a very small amount of material that could be placed in a package smaller than a backpack."

"By 1990 bin Laden had hired hundreds of atomic scientists from the former Soviet Union for $2,000 a month – an amount far greater that their wages in the former Soviet republics," Williams writes. "They worked in a highly sophisticated and well-fortified laboratory in Kandahar, Afghanistan."

This work continued throughout the 1990s, the author says.

In 1993, according to the book, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a bin Laden agent who turned into a Central Intelligence Agency source, purchased for al-Qaida a cylinder of weapons-grade uranium from a former Sudanese government minister who represented businessmen from South Africa. The purchase price was $1.5 million and the uranium was tested in Cyprus and transported to Afghanistan.

Al-Fadl reported that, at the time of this transfer, al-Qaida was already working on a deal for suitcase nukes developed for the KGB.

Williams says the Russian Mafia made another mysterious deal with "Afghani Arabs" in search of nuclear weapons in 1996. The Russians who sold the material now live in New York.

Then again in 1998, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim was arrested in Munich and charged with acting as an al-Qaida agent to purchase highly enriched uranium from a German laboratory.

That same year, according to Williams, bin Laden succeeded in buying the 20 suitcase nukes from Chechen Mafia figures, including former KGB agents. The $30 million deal was partly cash and partly heroin with a street value of $700 million.

"After the devices were obtained, they were placed in the hands of Arab nuclear scientists who, federal sources say, 'were probably trained at American universities,'" says Williams.

Though the devices were designed only to be operated by Soviet SPETZNAZ personnel, or special forces, al-Qaida scientists came up with a way of hot-wiring the bombs to the bodies of would-be martyrs, according to the book.

Suitcase nukes are not really suitcases at all, but suitcase-size nuclear devices. The weapons can be fired from grenade or rocket launchers or detonated by timers. A bomb placed in the center of a metropolitan area would be capable of instantly killing hundreds of thousands and exposing millions of others to lethal radiation.

Yossef Bodansky, author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America" and the U.S. Congress' top terrorism expert, concurs that bin Laden has already succeeded in purchasing suitcase nukes. Former Russian security chief Alexander Lebed also testified to Congress that 40 nuclear suitcases disappeared from the Russian arsenal after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Williams quotes an anonymous federal official as saying: "The question isn't whether bin Laden has nuclear weapons, it's when he will try to use them."

In addition to the suitcase nukes, Williams reports that al-Qaida has also obtained chemical weapons from North Korea and Iraq. Williams says the FBI confirmed to him that Saddam Hussein provided bin Laden with a "gift" of anthrax spores.

Williams says al-Qaida also includes in its arsenal plague viruses, including ebola and salmonella, from the former Soviet Union and Iraq, samples of botulism biotoxin from the Czech Republic, and sarin from Iraq and North Korea.

[Rudder]

Breaking on Drudge today: 12-15-02--Is it true?

[cardinal4]

Bin Ladin would have used one by now.

[PRND21]

Bin Ladin would have used one by now.

Bin Laden is alive?!

[sonofatpatcher2]

Doubtful, but possible.

[Travis McGee]

It is NOT true.

Al Queda has 17 suitcase nukes and 4 steamer trunk nukes.

Osama Bin Ladin told me yesterday when I asked him.

Glad to clear this up for you.

[Tijeras_Slim]

All 20 were lost by the automated baggage handling machinery at Denver Airport.

[backhoe]

FYI. member Dan Day supplied this:

And how much damage (radius in miles) could a suitcase nuke deliver?

Max yield of a "suitcase nuke" is about 1 kiloton That's 1/15th the yield of the (relatively small) a-bomb we dropped on Hiroshima.

The smallest US nukes ever made had yields on the order of 0.02 kilotons:

That's about 5 times the power of the OKC bomb, so you could pretty much wipe out any single building or close-spaced cluster of buildings, but you couldn't wipe out all of DC with it. Total damage wouldn't be any greater than that already achieved in lower Manhattan right now.

[Paulus Invictus]

If this is true, hello world choas! The rag heads would be irradiated toast everywhere if one or more of our cities were eliminated. Armageddon would also occur if Israel got one of the suitcases exploded anywhere near them.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

The suitcase nuke is the biggest scam perpetrated on the American public since global warming and One-Hour Martenizing.

[Centurion2000]

Nope ... at least one would have been used by now.

[struwwelpeter]

"Da, we sell nuclear devoise, but he promise to be careful wit it."

[theyreallthesame]

"Total damage wouldn't be any greater than that already achieved in lower Manhattan right now."

I thought we were talking about Nukes...Not HILLARY.

[muleskinner]

Is the guy in the middle the Eagles coach?

[Yasotay]

It is very clear that Saddam has nukes. It is also very clear that the US Government believes that there is a VERY good chance that the terrorists have nukes. The real question is do they have a "working nuke"? Otherwise why did the President go to the Nuclear Command bunker on 11 September .... Why was the mall in DC evacuated? Why was the national leadership sent to "secure" locations? Why is the VP kept away from the President? The normal defense against Chemical weapons is filters and over pressure. Bio defense is drugs.

[Quix]

I doubt that seriously.

I believe he'd wait until

(A) ordered to do so by puppet masters behind the scenes.

OR

(B) using them stood a much greater chance of

(1) either finishing the USA off essentially

OR

(2) causing WWIII in which Russia, China, North Korea, Lybia, Cuba and Mexico would help finish the USA off . . . some sources insist with a European country joining in on the side of our enemies.

He has a lot more reasons to keep his nuclear powder dry until the MOST OPPORTUNE moment(s).

I'm confident he or his successors are waiting. . . how long or for what is another matter.

One can fantasize that the above evidence is not true. It's far more logical to be true. There are toooooo many factors indicating it OUGHT to be true REGARDLESS of the well sourced evidence above.

Just logically it seems to me to be exceedingly likely to be true. I mean--if YOU were Bin Laden with HIS resources, wouldn't YOU have done so--assuming you'd had his values, of course. Similarly, wouldn't you be waiting until the MOST OPPORTUNE, MOST DESTRUCTIVE MOMENT to use them on the 'great satan?'

[Timm]

The uranium or plutonium in these bombs has to be replenished after several years. The bombs do not have an indefinite shelf life. They would be much less useful to Bin Laden now than when he bought them, and less so over time. Why would he buy them and not use them for ten years? Has there been no "opportune" moment before now? No time at which it would make sense, for him, to nuke New York, though there has been what he saw as an opportune moment to kill tens of thousands of people with hijacked aircraft?

When Afghanistan was being overrun by agents of the great satan, why wouldn't Bin Laden use a bomb then? What would he be waiting for?

The Soviets didn't have enormously good record keeping, but it's unlikely any of their nukes, much less 20, or 100, or whatever we were told, fell out of their control. If they did, we ought to have better evidence of it now than second and third-hand stories that are ten years old.

[The Real Deal]

I think that it is highly unlikely! We would have seen a mushroom cloud by now!

[jlogajan]

The suitcase nuke is the biggest scam perpetrated on the American public ... One-Hour Martenizing.

Looks like they caught ol' Gil in another scam

[templar]

Total damage wouldn't be any greater than that already achieved in lower Manhattan right now.

But, it could be the location of the damage, not the size of the damage, that would count. Congress, Whitehouse, Hoover Dam, etc. Nukes, even very small ones, could make some targets that would seem impervious to attack quite vulnerable.