Col. Lunev Tells CBS of Nuclear Threat

In case you missed the appearance of NewsMax's Col. Stanislav Lunev on the "CBS Evening News" last night, here's a transcript.

Note that although CBS poured cold water on Lunev's statements, they are more worthy of scrutiny than ever after Sept. 11.

DAN RATHER: Tonight's Eye on America is the first in a series of hard news reports this week assessing possible terror threats facing the U.S. There are many fears and many scenarios, but what are the real risks? Tonight's focus: the threat of nuclear terror. CBS's Jerry Bowen brings you the facts.

JERRY BOWEN: The country's Customs agents have something fairly new in the fight against nuclear terrorism: hidden radiation detectors that go off if anyone tries to smuggle in any radioactive material. But if some of America's one-time enemies are correct, the threat may already be here.

COL. LUNEV (former Soviet military intelligence officer): So unfortunately, some of these devices are still located on American soil.

BOWEN: Stanislav Lunev is a former Soviet military intelligence officer, a defector who's now in the federal Witness Protection Program. He claims that before the Cold War ended a decade ago, Soviet agents planted so-called 'suitcase nuclear bombs' – similar to this mock-up – in the United States and other Western countries; nuclear bombs that could be triggered if war broke out.

LUNEV: They were designed to destroy extremely highly protected American targets.

BOWEN: Lunev, his identity protected, told the same story to Congress, and a former Soviet general told CBS's "60 Minutes" that the suitcase bombs existed. But many U.S. defense analysts are convinced Russia actually retrieved and dismantled all the small nuclear devices.

MICHAEL O'HANLON (Brookings Institution): My own view is that's not a major worry. Those kinds of weapons, if they ever existed, were under the clear control of the Russian or Soviet state, and I don't think they would have been available to terrorists.

BOWEN: But the Soviets weren't the only ones to create a so-called suitcase nuke. This recently declassified film shows how the United States had them in its arsenal in the early '60s. Defense experts dismiss the possibility that terrorists can build one themselves.

JOHN LEPINGWELL (Center for Nonproliferation Studies): And certainly, to do something like that in the mountains of Afghanistan would be extraordinarily difficult.

BOWEN: But four years ago, Osama bin Laden was named in a federal indictment for attempting to buy enriched uranium, nuclear material which experts say can be used in a conventional explosive; the poor man's way to spread radioactive fallout.

LEPINGWELL: But it's difficult to get that much radioactive material into the bomb and then disperse it around an area in such a way as to cause major casualties.

BOWEN: But might bin Laden have obtained some larger nuclear warheads with outside help?

LUNEV: I know from intelligence estimations that he obtained several devices from former Soviet Union, tactical nuclear devices.

BOWEN: Reports like this are unsubstantiated. And whether al-Qaeda could handle and smuggle such things is thought to be highly improbable.

Still, U.S. Customs agents are training border guards from countries surrounding Afghanistan to detect nuclear material, one more small front in a very different kind of war where nothing is being taken for granted. In Los Angeles, this is Jerry Bowen for Eye on America.

He claims that before the Cold War ended a decade ago, Soviet agents planted so-called 'suitcase nuclear bombs' – similar to this mock-up – in the United States and other Western countries; nuclear bombs that could be triggered if war broke out.

Right. And for the last ten years, the ex-Soviets have managed to smuggle pounds upon pounds of tritium every few weeks into this country so that each and every suitcase bomb can be refueled, without being detected at all, even once?

You'll excuse me if I find the good Colonel's story a little hard to swallow.

And for the last ten years, the ex-Soviets have managed to smuggle pounds upon pounds of tritium every few weeks into this country so that each and every suitcase bomb can be refueled, without being detected at all, even once?

Tritium is used in the production of LCD panels and the tritium paint used on gun sights and watch dials, so it does have commercial uses.

I can't seem to locate anything that tells me what tritium is worth, per gram; but presumably both governments and lunatic Saudis could afford it.

The half-life of tritium is slightly more than 12 years. The amoung needed is very small, on the order of perhaps 2 or 3 ounces per bomb. It would get squirted into the bomb at detonation time, which means that a small vial could be designed that would allow you to swap out old tritium and insert new ones without having to take the bomb apart.

I've always been told its closer to pounds, not ounces. And because He3 (the decay product) poisons chain reactions, it doesn't take very much to screw things up, in a fractional crit device like a suitcase nuke. Thus, I've been told that in a bomb like this, you want to swapout every few weeks, as opposed to seven years or so in warhead type bombs...

Tritium is used in the production of LCD panels and the tritium paint used on gun sights and watch dials, so it does have commercial uses.

Question is: Is that the right KIND of tritium? Uranium alone doesn't make a bomb, it has to be of a specific quality...

I can't seem to locate anything that tells me what tritium is worth, per gram; but presumably both governments and lunatic Saudis could afford it.

I've been told that it's about $50,000 an ounce. I would imagine the costs would pile up over 10 years. I still find it VERY difficult to imagine that these things could operate in this country for years without someone here eventually noticing something...then again....

Somebody claiming to be a physicist who has worked in government nuclear projects phoned in to C-SPAN a few minutes ago. He said that, in his opinion, the damage done by the planes flying into the WTC towers was such that nuclear devices must have been used. Can any FReeper take a Geiger counter to Ground Zero, and see what he finds?

BS, pure and simple. Anyone can phone into C-SPAN and claim to be whatever the hell they want, I suppose. If it was a nuclear device, why the hell didn't the top of the building immediate disintegrate? Why no mushroom cloud? Hell, there was no EM Pulse...that alone should prove that the claims of a nuclear device used are BUNK.

A fully-fueled 767 ramming a building at FULL speed has a LOT...a LOT of kinetic force behind it. I believe the official figure was the equivalent of 20 of those "Daisy Cutter" bombs we've only recently started "sharing" with our "special friends" in Afganistan.

It wasn't the initial impact that did those buildings in anyhow: It was the fire. They choose trans-national flights for a reason: tons of fuel = fire a'plenty = steel support rods eventually melting down and giving way.

Osama Bin Laden has an Engineering degree, and comes from the largest engineering firm in the Middle East (The Bin Laden Group, started by his Father.) It wouldn't take very much for him to figure out the weakest points to strike at on those towers....

I really hope this guy wasn't actually working for the Government..otherwise, my tax dollars are paying for morons (oooooh...big revelation there...)

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