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Beefs nuclear { March 3 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29406-2002Mar2.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29406-2002Mar2.html
Fears Prompt U.S. to Beef Up Nuclear
Terror Detection
Sensors Deployed Near D.C., Borders; Delta Force on Standby
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 3, 2002; Page A01
Alarmed by growing hints of al Qaeda's progress toward obtaining a nuclear
or radiological weapon, the Bush administration has deployed hundreds of
sophisticated sensors since November to U.S. borders, overseas facilities
and choke points around Washington. It has placed the Delta Force, the
nation's elite commando unit, on a new standby alert to seize control of
nuclear materials that the sensors may detect.
Ordinary Geiger counters, worn on belt clips and resembling pagers, have
been in use by the U.S. Customs Service for years. The newer devices are
called gamma ray and neutron flux detectors. Until now they were carried
only by mobile Nuclear Emergency Search Teams (NEST) dispatched when
extortionists claimed to have radioactive materials. Because terrorists would
give no such warning, and because NEST scientists are unequipped for
combat, the Delta Force has been assigned the mission of killing or disabling
anyone with a suspected nuclear device and turning it over to the scientists to
be disarmed.
The new radiation sensors are emplaced in layers around some fixed points
and temporarily at designated "national security special events" such as last
month's Olympic Games in Utah. Allied countries, including Saudi Arabia,
have also rushed new detectors to their borders after American intelligence
warnings. To address the technological limits of even the best current
sensors, the Bush administration has ordered a crash program to build
next-generation devices at the three national nuclear laboratories.
These steps join several other signs, described in recent interviews with U.S.
government policymakers, that the Bush administration's nuclear anxieties
have intensified since American-backed forces routed Osama bin Laden's
network and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan.
"Clearly . . . the sense of urgency has gone up," said a senior government
policymaker on nuclear, biological and chemical terror. Another high-ranking
official said, "The more you gather information, the more our concerns
increased about al Qaeda's focus on weapons of mass destruction of all
kinds."
In "tabletop exercises" conducted as high as Cabinet level, President Bush's
national security team has highlighted difficult choices the chief executive
would face if the new sensors picked up a radiation signature on a boat
steaming up the Potomac River or a truck heading for the capital on
Interstate 95.
Participants in those exercises said the gaps in their knowledge are
considerable. But the intelligence community, they said, believes that al
Qaeda could already control a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead or
enough weapons-grade material to fashion a functioning, if less efficient,
atomic bomb.
Even before more recent discoveries, some analysts regarded that prospect
as substantial. Some expressed that view when the intelligence community
devoted a full-day retreat to the subject early last year in Chantilly, Va.,
according to someone with firsthand knowledge.
A majority of those present assessed the likelihood as negligible, but none of
the more than 50 participants ruled it out.
The consensus government view is now that al Qaeda probably has acquired
the lower-level radionuclides strontium 90 and cesium 137, many thefts of
which have been documented in recent years. These materials cannot
produce a nuclear detonation, but they are radioactive contaminants.
Conventional explosives could scatter them in what is known as a
radiological dispersion device, colloquially called a "dirty bomb."
The number of deaths that might result is hard to predict but probably would
be modest. One senior government specialist said "its impact as a weapon of
psychological terror" would be far greater.
These heightened U.S. government fears explain Bush's activation, the first
since the dawn of the nuclear age, of contingency plans to maintain a cadre
of senior federal managers in underground bunkers away from Washington.
The Washington Post described the features of the classified "Continuity of
Operations Plan" on Friday.
Bush's emphasis on nuclear terrorism dates from a briefing in the Situation
Room during the last week of October.
According to knowledgeable sources, Director of Central Intelligence
George J. Tenet walked the president through an accumulation of fresh
evidence about al Qaeda's nuclear ambition. Described by one consumer of
intelligence as "an incomplete mosaic" of fact, inference and potentially false
leads, Tenet's briefing raised fears that "sent the president through the roof."
With considerable emotion, two officials said, Bush ordered his national
security team to give nuclear terrorism priority over every other threat to the
United States.
Tenet told Bush that Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was more deeply
compromised than either government has acknowledged publicly. Pakistan
arrested two former nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and
Abdul Majid, on Oct. 23, and interrogated them about contacts with bin
Laden and his lieutenants.
Pakistani officials maintain that the scientists did not pass important secrets
to al Qaeda, but they have not disclosed that Mahmood failed multiple
polygraph examinations about his activities.
Most disturbing to U.S. intelligence was another leak from Pakistan's
program that has not been mentioned in public. According to American
sources, a third Pakistani nuclear scientist tried to negotiate the sale of an
atomic weapon design to Libya. The Post was unable to learn which
Pakistani blueprint was involved, whether the transaction was completed, or
what became of the scientist after discovery. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is
believed to include bombs of relatively simple design, built around cores of
highly enriched uranium, and more sophisticated weapons employing
Chinese implosion technology to compress plutonium to a critical mass.
At the October briefing, Bush learned of a remark by a senior member of al
Qaeda's operational command. The operative had been an accurate, though
imprecise, harbinger of al Qaeda plans in the past.
After U.S. bombing began in Afghanistan, an American official said, the
same man was reliably reported to have said "there will be another attack
and it's going to be much bigger" than the one that toppled the World Trade
Center and destroyed a wing of the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
"What the hell did that mean?" the official said, recalling the stunned reaction
of those briefed on the remark. Other reports reaching Washington
described al Qaeda references to obtaining, or having obtained, special
weapons. "The benign explanation is bucking up the troops" with false
bravado, the official said, but the Bush administration took the report
"extremely seriously."
Searches of al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, undertaken since
American-backed forces took control there, are not known to have turned
up a significant cache of nuclear materials.
The New York Times reported that U.S. personnel in Afghanistan sent three
suspected samples to American labs for analysis but found no significant
radioactive source.
There is evidence that some of al Qaeda's nuclear efforts over the years met
with swindles and false leads. In one case, officials said, the organization was
taken in by scam artists selling "red mercury," a phony substance they
described as a precursor, or ingredient, of weapons-grade materials.
If al Qaeda has a weapon or its components, U.S. officials said, its
whereabouts would be the organization's most closely guarded secret.
Addressing the failure of American searchers to find such materials in
abandoned Afghan camps, one policymaker noted that "we haven't found
most of the al Qaeda leadership either, and we know that exists."
The likeliest source of nuclear materials, or of a warhead bought whole, is
the vast complex of weapons labs and storage sites that began to crumble
with the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has decommissioned some
10,000 tactical nuclear weapons since then, but it has been able to
document only a fraction of the inventory.
The National Intelligence Council, an umbrella organization for the U.S.
analytical community, reported to Congress last month that there are at least
four occasions between 1992 and 1999 when "weapons-grade and
weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian
institutes."
Of those thefts, the report said, "We assess that undetected smuggling has
occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude."
Victor Yerastov, chief of nuclear accounting and control for Russia's ministry
of atomic energy, has said that in 1998 a theft in Chelyabinsk Oblast made
off with "quite sufficient material to produce an atomic bomb."
An American official, commenting on that theft, said that "given the known
and suspected capabilities of the Russian mafia, it's perfectly plausible that al
Qaeda would have access to such materials." The official added, "They
could get it from anybody they could bribe."
Col. Gen. Igor Valynkin, chief of the Russian organization responsible for
safeguarding nuclear weapons, said on Oct. 27 that any claim Russia has lost
an intact warhead is "barking mad."
The U.S. government is not accepting that assurance at face value. "We
don't know with any confidence what has gone missing, and neither do they,"
said one American official.
Thefts of less threatening nuclear byproducts, especially isotopes of
strontium, cesium and partially enriched uranium, have been reported more
frequently. In November 1995, Chechen rebels placed a functioning "dirty
bomb" using dynamite and cesium 137 in Moscow's Izmailovo park. They
did not detonate it. Al Qaeda is closely aligned with the Chechens.
There are limits, "governed by the laws of physics," as one official put it, to
American technology for detecting these materials. In broad terms they have
to do with sensing radioactivity at a distance and through shielding, and with
the balance between false positives and false negatives. There are classified
Energy Department documents that catalogue what one of them called
"shortcomings in the ability of NEST equipment to locate the target materials
which if known by adversaries could be used to defeat the search equipment
and/or procedures." The Post has agreed to publish no further details.
A division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, known as NIS-6, is
leading efforts to build an improved generation of sensors. Some will use
neutron generators to "interrogate" a suspected object, and others are
planned for long-range detection of alpha particles.
A measure of the government's grave concern is the time devoted by top
national security officials to developing options for a crisis involving nuclear
terrorism.
One hypothetical scenario, participants said, began with a sensor detecting
what appeared to be the radiation signature of a nuclear weapon amid a
large volume of traffic on a highway such as I-95.
According to two participants, the group considered how the Energy
Department's NEST teams, working with Delta Force, might find and take
control of the weapon without giving a terrorist time to use it.
Roadblocks and car-by-car searches, for example, would create chaos,
require hours, and give ample warning to those hiding the device. But
without roadblocks the searchers might fail to isolate the weapon within a
radius defined by the limits of sensor technology. If commandos found the
device, they could expect to encounter resistance. Would the president
delegate to on-scene commanders a decision that might result in nuclear
detonation? Which officials, meanwhile, should be evacuated? Would
government inform the public of the threat, a step that would wreak panic
without precedent in any country and complicate the job of finding the
weapon?
"Evacuation is one of those issues you throw your hands up and say, 'It's too
hard,' " said one participant in a tabletop exercise. "Nobody wants to make
that decision, certainly not in advance."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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