FBI focusing on portable nuke threat

UPI ^ | 12/20/2001 | Nicholas Horrock

[katze]

Verrry interesting; a replay of Hardball comes on in 30 minutes. 11PM EST

[JustPiper]

Didn't look like a mock-up

[JustPiper]

Watch it Katz, I'm going to, btw Hitch is on it too ;)

[Stentor]

They could be US citizens of European descent, Frenchman, Australians!!

Or Eastern Europeans bitter at that the fact that they have been total losers for a very long time.

[katze]

Newspaper gave bad time. Grid says 12 AM EST. Sorry for the mistake.

[katze]

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.

[Gemflint]

Bump for the a.m. crew...

[Don Joe]

"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.

[Don Joe]

"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.

[katze]

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.

[Wraith]

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.

[EyesWideOpen]

nudge and a bump

[mikhailovich]

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.

[dirtboy]

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.

[MoJoWork_n]

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.

[packrat01]

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.