FBI focusing on portable nuke threat

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The leading congressional expert on Russia's small portable nuclear weapons told United Press International that the FBI has stepped up its investigation of whether al Qaida or other terrorist groups have acquired these deadly devices from Russian stockpiles.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., chairman of the Research and Development Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that he was briefed by the FBI late last week and that the investigation of whether terrorist groups have weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear devices, is now a top priority at the bureau after years of indifference.

"Now they're looking at everything and following up on every lead," Weldon said. It was Weldon, through his R&D subcommittee, who produced over past three years some of the most exhaustive and startling information about the Russian stockpile of weapons that could be an advantage to Osama bin Laden, his al Qaida network or other terrorist groups.

"The question is whether or not bin Laden has had access to nuclear material," Weldon said. "I think it is better than a 50-50 chance that he does."

"Do I think he has a small atomic demolition munitions, which were built by the Soviets in the Cold War? Probably doubtful," Weldon said. But he added that after Sept. 11 the FBI could not avoid running every lead to ground.

In 1997, Weldon brought former Russian security chief Gen. Alexander Lebed before his committee. Lebed testified that perhaps 100 small nuclear devices were missing from inventories under his control. Lebed said the devices were a "perfect terrorist weapon," made to look like suitcases, "and could be detonated by one person with less than 30 minutes of preparation," according to committee documents.

The Russian government immediately tried to discredit Lebed's testimony, but Weldon's committee brought a prominent Russian weapons scientist, Aleksey Yablokov, before the committee in 1998 who reported that he knew the Russians produced small nuclear weapons for combat use.

Yablokov was vilified when he returned to Moscow as a "traitor" for his testimony. Yablokov sued one major Russian magazine over this vilification, Weldon said, and won a 30,000-ruble judgment against the publication.

Perhaps the most startling testimony came from a defector from the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, who testified in 1998 that the Russians secretly pre-positioned weapons, including small nuclear devices, in the U.S. and other countries around the world to be used for sabotage by its agents in time of war.

This witness said it was his job while working undercover in Washington from 1988 to 1992 as a correspondent for the Russian news agency Tass to locate places where these weapons could be hidden both around Washington and in other parts of the country.

Weldon has described the weapons in this testimony as "small nuclear weapons that can fit into a knapsack or a briefcase or suitcase and are designed to be delivered and detonated by one or two people."

He created a mock-up of one in a suitcase form that he uses in speeches and Congressional hearings based on descriptions from Russian sources. He keeps the mock-up in his office.

A Federation of American Scientists compilation, titled Soviet Weapons, notes that there is very little information in the public venue about the size and destructive power of the small weapons. The U.S. backpack nuke weighs 163 pounds and can be carried by one or two men. One Russian naval arms compilation talks about small portable nuclear weapons weighing from 59 pounds to 154 pounds.

The yield, too, is hard to pin down. One former American scientist who worked at the Department of Energy labs said that the "Davy Crocket," which was the small bomb later converted to special operations, had a one-kiloton explosive power and would level the Capitol Building and everything in a half mile radius. It also would spread radioactive waste across a wide area of Washington. The bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. (Each kiloton has an explosive power equal to 1,000 pounds of TNT.)

The GRU witness, who testified using a pseudonym, Col. Stanislaw Lunez, said that even after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russians continued to frame war plans against a range of Western nations including the U.S.

"According to Soviet military plans, very well advanced, maybe a few months, maybe a few weeks, of course, a few hours before real war would be placed against his country (the U.S.), Russian Special Operations Forces need to come here and pick up weapons systems, because they will fly here as tourists, businessmen.

"According to their tasking, in a few hours they need to physically destroy, eliminate American military chains of command, President, Supreme Commander in Chief, Vice President, Speaker of the House, military commanders, especially to cut the head from the American military chain of command," Lunev said.

He said that the Russians had a plan to sabotage industrial, communications and power targets as well.

Weldon said later the FBI discredited Lunev, saying that he exaggerated things, but another federal agency that Weldon declined to identify protects Lunev in an undisclosed location in the U.S. He said Lunev's credentials as a ranking GRU spy assigned to the U.S. have never been questioned.

Later Vasily Mitrokhin, a KGB official, disclosed in his best-selling book "The Sword and the Shield" that the Soviets had secreted weapons and explosives near NATO facilities throughout Europe for use in a war. Weldon said that Belgian officials located and dug up some caches near NATO's headquarters

The backpack nukes are part of some 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons that the Russians possessed in 1991 when they agreed to a unilateral arms reduction with the first Bush Administration. The Russians were to destroy 2,000 warheads a year from 1991, which would suggest there is only a handful left.

The U.S. destroyed the bulk of its weapons, but Weldon said that there is no evidence that the Russians have conducted such a program.

"That's part of the problem. I've continually called for a treaty with Russian and really a worldwide effort to ban or to limit tactical nukes," Weldon said.

"There has been no effort and we have had no success in getting Russia to decrease their tactical nukes. They feel they act as a buffer for Europe; the proximity of European countries. We just don't know whether they have total control of their atomic munitions."

How could you tell Rep Weldon didn't deny, with Motor Mouth Matthews doing all the talking? At the end, when Matthews asked if Weldon believes there are 2 suitcase nuclear weapons here, I got the idea that Weldon had something to say, but wasn't allowed to finish, with Matthews cutting him off. Earlier,`Weldon admitted he beieves that binLaden has the nuclear material to go around a conventional weapon, and to my understanding that isn't quite the same as having suitcase nukes that would destroy an entire city like NYC. Please correct me if/as needed.

Back to Matthews--he is a real horsesass, IMO, the way he patronized the Gen and Col (MSNBC mil experts), with his "that is why you're generals and colonels", when they agreed with the way our forces are fighting the war. Matthews is still the Clinton guy, and no way is he going to give Pres Bush credit for anything--at least not in tonight's program, and I don't waste time watching him otherwise.

Speaking of horseasses, caught Lanny Davis on O'Reilly, and ole Lanny was doing his apologizing for Clinton, and the lack of what he did to stop terrorists--poor Lanny, sucker of the decade, doing his best to try to cover the sorry Clinton.

"Didn't look like a mock-up"

On Hannity and Colmes he said it was made by a CIA agent, and I forget the exact words, but he said something to the effect that it was based on actual weapons in our inventory. He did not equivocate; there was none of the "this is what it 'might' look like 'if' such a thing existed" stuff. He was quite direct about stating that these things do exist.

"suitcase nukes that would destroy an entire city like NYC"

The only way suitcase nukes would take out a city like NYC would be if you deployed one every few blocks and set them all off. It would take thousands of suitcase nukes to do the job. Even a single "city buster" wouldn't wipe out the entire city. A suitcase nuke will take out a few square blocks at most.

Yes, Rep Weldon did say that such a bomb could destroy a "complex" such as a large building. I believe he said such as the White House. To be honest, Matthews machine-gun-rapid yapping and interruptions were distracting enough to cause me to lose some of what Rep Weldon was saying. Mr Weldon claims that a Russian official told him that 80 of their inventory are missing.

I found what Mr Weldon said to be beneficial, since many of us might believe that a suitcase nuke could be even more devastating; any fallout contamination might be another story. OYOH, best to be vigilant, but sometimes I wonder if we need to be told of speculation.

Good article nikola. If Bin Ladin had this suitcase nuke capability, why did he not use it in the first place? He sacrificed how many of his people to ensure the take over of those Boeing 767s? With the more destructive capabilities of these suitcase size nukes and the requirement of only one to two people for detonation i.e. minimal martyrdom, does it not make sense that the suitcase nuke should have been the first choice? With the false sense of security in the U.S. before September 11 it would have been easy to accomplish but this but it never took place. With the U.S. reaction in Afghanistan, why did Bin Ladin not threaten to use a suitcase nuke placed somewhere in the U.S. or Britain in order to counter the U.S./Northern Alliance offensive. The Taliban have fallen and Bin Ladin is no where to be found. Bin Ladin and his organization have an interest in weapons of mass destruction but in reality do not have them or they would have used them in the first place. They made their big move on Sept 11. and funny nothing more since. You would have thought that he would have been pissed enough from the hearing lose resulting from the B-52 strikes to have made a further point by detonating one of these so called suit case nukes, but has chosen to run instead. Benny took his shot and is more interested in survival.

The trafficking of fissile materials from former Soviet Republic states is well documented.

By whom?

Every time such evidence is "documented", the US Govt refutes its' validity. So, one could just as easily state that such evidence is "not founded". Depends on who and what YOU want to believe.

I seriously doubt OBL's last days on earth are coming any time soon. He is long gone people. Along with the top Al Qaeda leadership. We haven't a clue where he is. As someone posted on another thread while we don't know where OBL is you can be sure of one thing

Well, with six days of hindsight and the release of the latest OBL video, IMO he's dead already, or Al Queda would not have released a video that does not reference events after the time he is alleged to have left Afghanistan - it would have been very easy for him to mention the leader of the new government or hold up a recent newspaper to prove he is alive. He didn't, which is telling.

RE: "Revenge of Cartwright Jones"

Name of a character playing the role of a bogus officer in "Where Eagles Dare", with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. Made in 1969, from the novel by Alistair MacLean.

"Cartwright Jones" is a corporal purported to have an "uncanny" resemblance to a real British general. Conveniently, in the film, the corporal is also an "actor, playing the role of a lifetime". He is allowed to fall into Nazi hands so that Brit Intelligence can make a stab at identifying intelligence leaks, and sort out who's who among an assortment of double and triple agents.

IMDB link

Not sure why he'd need to be avenged. In the movie, he's rescued. It's the head Bad Guy/double agent who saunters out the door of the plane, sans chute.

If the Russians merely leave the bomb lying there, then they risk someone finding it and activating the anti-tampering device...and we now have a radiological disaster.

Rule One of nuclear weapons is: "Never take ANY chances with nuclear weapons security." Leaving them lying around unattended in your opponent's territory is a fairly gross violation of Rule One.

Nobody ever claimed the Rooskies were smart. I could see if it were a couple of KGB or GRU "extremists" who pulled it off, and later got caught.

Barely.

Can't prove a negative. If they're not here, we'll never find them.

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