A Nuclear Al Qaida & "American Hiroshima"

[Hound]

American Hiroshima: Part 2 of an Interview with Journalist Hamid Mir
War on Terror David Dastych
May 9, 2006
A prominent, internationally acclaimed Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, was the last newsman to meet and interview Osama bin Laden. In this interview, granted to Dr. Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., the award-winning author of "The Dunces of Doomsday," and David Dastych, an international journalist and former intelligence operative, Mir discusses the political and military situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorist threats to the USA and Europe and future plans of bin Laden's al-Qaida. (read part one of the interview by clicking here)

Williams & Dastych: Is support for al-Qaida and the jihad against the U.S. and the West gathering momentum throughout the Muslim world?

Mir: Honestly speaking, yes. Osama bin Laden is becoming the hero of anti-American Muslim youth by default. Many Muslims are of the view that America played a role in implementing the UN resolutions on East Timor. This Christian majority province of Indonesia got independence through the UN, but the Muslim majority Kashmir area of India is denied the same right because West is biased against the Muslims. Now the Muslim youth is getting allergic of Islamic clerics who oppose al-Qaida. More than 1,500 tribal elders and Islamic clerics have been assassinated by pro-al-Qaida militants in south Waziristan area of Pakistan in the past two years. These 1,500 elders and clerics cooperated with Pakistan army and opposed the presence of foreign fighters in their area.

Now this area is unofficially controlled by the Taliban. I have visited 12 provinces in east and south of Afghanistan recently. The Taliban is controlling all the rural and mountain areas of Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni, Zabul, Helmand, Oruzgan and some areas of Kandahar in east and south of Afghanistan. People cannot enter these territories on government vehicles. Men without beard have to make some explanation. District Taliban commander and provincial Taliban commander is the real ruler. Afghan police is weak. Coalition troops are limited in number and Pashtun population is supportive to the Taliban. The Taliban has become some kind of a Pashtun nationalist movement.
You can see the same situation in the Pakistani south Waziristan. The Taliban is becoming popular there because America is unpopular and the Pakistan army is busy in north Waziristan. The Taliban is trying to control some regular areas of Pakistan, too. But they failed because ordinary Pakistanis are ready to raise slogans against America but they don't like the Taliban's hold on their lives. The Taliban has no ability to attract common Pakistanis. They can only lead and motivate some youngsters to fight against America.

If the president of Pakistan and the president of Afghanistan are not ready to accept my claims, they should accompany me to these areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan with some international media personalities, and the world will come to know who is right and who is wrong. This is my challenge.

Osama bin Laden has become more popular only after 9/11. Incidents like the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail, the desecration of holy Quran in Guantanamo Bay prisons, and then the publication of the blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark spread a lot of hatred against the West in the Muslim world. This hatred is the real strength of bin Laden.

Williams & Dastych: How widespread is the support for Osama bin Laden now? Is it true that Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, and not OBL, is the real "brain" of al-Qaeda and its strategic planner?

Mir: Osama bin Laden is the most popular man in Saudi Arabia today. He is popular in many other Muslim countries. I don't agree with the theory that Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri is the brain behind Osama. He is a close associate of Osama, but not his "brain." Dr. Zawahiri was not aware about the 9/11 planning. He was not present in the meeting of Osama and Mullah Omar, which took place in Southern Afghanistan in August 2005. Suicide bombings in Afghanistan were approved by Mullah Omar in that meeting. How can Zawahiri be the brain of Osama? The real brain was Muhammad Atef who was killed in November 2001 in Ghazni by American predators. Osama himself has a very sharp mind. America has failed to nab him. The failure of America proves that Osama is clever.

Williams & Dastych: This opinion contradicts your previous opinion about Dr. Zawahiri, expressed in an interview for the Australian ABC TV, screened on March 22, 2004. What made you change your mind?

Mir: Yes, you are absolutely right. I changed my opinion about Zawahiri in the last six months. I traveled thousands of kilometers in East and South Afghanistan in August 2005, and then in the North and South Waziristan in Pakistan, through September and October of the same year. I met many Taliban and al-Qaida operatives in these remote mountain areas. During my interviews with them, and after doing lots of research, I came to the conclusion that Dr. al-Zawahiri is not the brain behind Osama bin Laden. Definitely, he is close to him even now, but these days Abdul Hadi (also an Egyptian, based in Southern Afghanistan) is more important. He is heading the Shura (Grand Consultative Council) of al-Qaida. I also met some other very important al-Qaida leaders in Kunar. They told me that Zawahiri came to know about the 9/11 attacks through them, as he was not aware about the plans of these attacks earlier. Dr. al-Zawahiri is actually an important al-Qaida link to Iran. He has old connections in the Iranian intelligence. In the last four years, he has spent lots of time in Iran. For the last two years, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are not together for security reasons; but they are in touch.

Williams & Dastych: There were many diverging reports about the supposed whereabouts of OBL (Afghanistan, Pakistan's Tribal Territories, Chinese Muslim territories, Iran). What is your guess? And do you get news from them from time to time, as before?

Mir: I don't believe in guessing games. Osama escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001, came to Pakistan, and then entered again in Afghanistan from Khost. He was moving in between Pakistan and Afghanistan very carefully. U.S. Military Commander General Richard Meyers told me the same thing in an interview some time ago.
Two years ago, he was seen in Kunar province of Afghanistan, One year ago he was seen in Pakistani tribal areas. I think he is changing his positions but still hiding in the difficult areas of eastern Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan. Local population is very cooperative with Al Qaeda. Not only for money but also out of conviction. He is the beneficiary of American occupation of Iraq. Now that Americans have reduced their troops from Afghanistan, they are busy in Iraq. They got Saddam Hussein with 150,000 troops in Iraq. How can they get Osama from Afghanistan with only 16,000 American troops?

He is also the beneficiary of differences between Musharraf and Karzai. I got CDs from al-Qaeda in Kunar in 2004, and also in North Waziristan in 2005. They provide their messages on CD and they record their military actions on camera.

Williams & Dastych: Do you think that the Bush administration refuses to make any attempt to capture or kill bin Laden a top priority? Why?

Mir: I think that Americans are scared of sending their troops to Afghanistan in big number. Afghanistan is more difficult than Iraq. Americans are involved in Iraq. They are fighting Osama also in Iraq; they know that he would be more deadly in Afghanistan.

Williams & Dastych: Did you ever see any of the tactical nuclear weapons mentioned by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri? When and where?

Mir: I have not seen any nuclear weapons in the hands of Osama or Zawahiri, but their close associates told me, in November 2001 in Kabul, that they had bought some suitcase nuclear bombs from the Russian black market many years ago. I asked a question about the nukes to Osama bin Laden in 1998. He ignored my question. When I asked this question again, in November 2001, he said: "Yes, we have nuclear weapons as deterrence." In 2004, I visited one mountain area in Kunar province of Afghanistan, where al-Qaida reportedly tested a nuclear "dirty bomb" in 2000.

Williams & Dastych: What was (in your opinion) the extent of the assistance al-Qaida received from A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories? How close was the relationship between OBL and Dr. A.Q. Khan?

Mir: It was difficult for Dr. Qadeer [Khan] to cooperate with al-Qaida openly. Dr. Qadeer was under permanent surveillance of the CIA. I came to know through some sources that one captured al-Qaida leader, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, had claimed to the CIA that he met Dr. Qadeer in 2003, but it was not confirmed. Americans have not come out with any video or audio statement of K.S. Muhammad. Another important point: Dr. Qadeer is a metallurgist; he can enrich uranium and you know that its enrichment needs lot of logistics which were not available in Afghanistan. Dr. Qadeer was only in a position to provide some technical drawings but I didn't find out any details on that either.

Williams & Dastych: What is your assessment of al-Qaida's nuclear arsenal today?

Mir: I think they must have smuggled nuclear materials, including dirty bombs to Europe and America. They are waiting for some appropriate time, and they might be waiting for a U.S. attack on Iran for giving a signal to their "sleepers" to begin their action. Al-Qaida and Iran have a long secret relationship.

Williams & Dastych: What do you know about the plans for an "American Hiroshima"? Are they still being considered by Osama bin Laden, or abandoned as unrealizable?

Mir: Osama bin Laden planned deadly attacks against his enemies already in 1998. I actually met a person in Afghanistan, who visited Moscow many times, between 1998 and 2001, with Jumma Namangani (an ex-soldier of the Russian army, who joined al-Qaida in 1989). They were in touch with Russian underworld, through some Chechen leaders. These Chechens have organized the smuggling of at least three nuclear "suitcase bombs" for al-Qaida from Moscow to Georgia, and from there to Italy. I was also introduced to a Ukrainian scientist in Kandahar, in 1998. One al-Qaida operative, known to me as Saad, told me that this Ukrainian scientist was working for al-Qaida.
Some of the Osama's fighters left for the targets in Europe and America even before the fall of the Taliban in November 2001.These are hard-core militants; most of them are Algerians and Chechens bearing European passports with false Christian and Jewish names. I will give more details in my coming book.

Williams & Dastych: Was al-Qaida involved in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995?

Mir: No, I don't think so. You should not underestimate Osama bin Laden. He was always planning bigger attacks, even bigger than 9/11. He has not abandoned his plans for an "American Hiroshima," and he is very, very patient.
I think there's an urgent need to engage al-Qaida in talks. I really predict that the West will begin to talk to al-Qaida one day. Why to delay these talks? Why not to begin them now? Should we wait for more destruction and more bloodshed?

Williams & Dastych: If you could meet Osama bin Laden and Dr. al-Zawahiri, and interview them again, would you risk your life, as in November 2001?

Mir: Yes, I would, but it seems very, very difficult now.
David M. Dastych, 64, is a veteran international journalist, former intelligence operative (the Polish Intelligence and the CIA). He is presently a free-lance author and David's Media Agency owner, based in Warsaw, Poland.


http://www.therant.us/guest/dastych/05092006.htm

[Hound]

Adnan el Shukrijumah
Osama's 'American Hiroshima' field commander studied at Hamilton's McMaster University
Adnan el Shukrijumah
Photo: FBI
By Judi McLeod
Monday, May 1, 2006

Adnan el Shukrijumah--who attended flight schools in Florida and Norman, Oklahoma, with Mohammad Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers--attended Hamilton, Ontario’s McMaster University.

That’s just one compelling revelation in the new book, The Dunces of Doomsday by Paul L. Williams.

"You can look for the next Mohammad Atta by tracing him through Hamilton when you get back to Toronto," Williams told Canada Free Press (CFP) in an exclusive interview in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

Williams, who also wrote Osama’s Revenge and The Al Qaeda Connection, was in Washington to address a Terrorism Symposium sponsored by America’s Truth Foundation.
Update on
this story!

"Following the success of 9/11, Adnan el Shukrijumah received his commission to serve as the field commander for the next attack on U.S. soil–the so-called American Hiroshima," Willams wrote in The Dunces of Doomsday. "In preparation for this mission, he–along with fellow al Qaeda agents Anas al-Liby, Jaber A. Elbaneh, and Amer el-Maati–was sent to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a facility that housed a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor, the largest reactor of any educational facility in Canada.

"At McMaster University, where the al Qaeda agents may have registered under fictitious names, Shukrijumah and friends wasted no time in gaining access to the nuclear reactor and stealing more than 180 pounds of nuclear material for the creation of radiological bombs."

Williams, an investigative journalist who served as a consultant for the FBI, doesn’t pull any punches in his latest book, which describes "The Peanut Farmer and the Ayatollah", explaining, "How the worst president in American history permitted and stimulated the rise of radical Islam."

There’s a bounty on the head of Shukrijumah, who graduated from engineering physics at McMaster in 1998. The Rewards for Justice Program, United States Department of State, is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading directly to his capture.

He "Should be Considered Armed and Dangerous" notes an FBI alert signed by Director Robert S. Mueller 111.

The alert states further that "If you have information concerning this person, please contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate."

How Osama’s field commander found his way to the university that houses the largest reactor of any educational facility in Canada McMaster is a story that demands an answer.

Since his Hamilton days, Osama’s boy el Shukrijumah has been out there making a name for himself–named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in North Virginia, where U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said he is sought in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States.

Among his known aliases, the FBI lists el Shukrijumah’s al Qaeda nickname: Jaffar Al-Tayyar ("The Pilot"). As of September 2005, "The Pilot" is under suspicion of having helped himself to a missing crop duster in California.

Born in Saudi Arabia but thought to be a Yemen national, el Shukrijumah was raised in Miramar, Florida, where his father was a radical Islamic Iman.

Dr. Mamdouh Shoukri is Vice-President, Research and International Affairs at McMaster University, where he is also a Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

On October 17, 2001, Dr. Shoukri registered his disapproval that unnecessary alarm regarding terror fears had suspended tours of McMaster’s nuclear reactor.

"In the current state of heightened security awareness and anxiety, it is unfortunate that The Spectator would print something that may unnecessarily alarm its readers," Dr. Shukri told the Hamilton Spectator.

Since Williams has teamed up with international journalist and CFP columnist David Dastych, the pair revealed a link between Iran and bin Laden that dates back to June 21, 1996 when bin Laden attended a terror summit in Tehran.

Having found and exclusively interviewed Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, Williams and Dastych told WorldNetDaily "al-Qaeda has already obtained nuclear suitcase weapons from the Russian black market, weapons that have been tested in Afghanistan in 2000, and may have already been forward-deployed inside the U.S.

Williams says that Osama has already smuggled seven to ten suitcase nuclear bombs into the U.S. through the Mexican border.

Williams and Dastych believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

"The face of el Shukrijumah should be thrown up on the television screen on an upcoming segment of America’s Most Wanted", Williams told the American Truth Foundation symposium.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover050106.htm

[Hound]

Adnan el Shukrijumah, McMaster University
Is McMaster University graduate Ciro Vitolo, FBI's most wanted Adnan el Shukrijumah?
By Judi McLeod
Tuesday, May 2, 2006

The first three photos above are FBI pictures of Adnan "Jaafaral the Pilot" G. El Shukrijumah, described by Time Magazine as "an accomplished Arab Guyanese bombmaker and commercial pilot". (Time Magazine, August 23, 2004). The fourth photo on the right is a picture identified in the McMaster University 1998 Engineer and Physics graduating class as graduate Ciro Vitolo.

If Ciro Vitolo is not Osama bin Laden field commander Adnan El Shukrijumah, then it’s his twin.

Canadian Online Director Services 411.ca lists only two persons in Canada with the surname Vitolo. One is a first name beginning with the letter `G’. and the other an `S’.

The name Ciro Vitolo appears nowhere on the Worldwide Internet. Nor does it appear anywhere in the thousands of articles carried in faculty or student newspapers.

A check of the name on Lexis Nexis turned up empty.

A mention of a Ciro Vitolo and his photograph turned up in a September 24, 2005 Joe Warmington Night Scrawler column in the Toronto Sun… "I’ve run out of space but I want to point out to the prime minister that limo drivers like Ciro Vitolo and independent cabbies like Mike Tranquada can’t continue to make it with gas prices this high. Leadership is needed," Warmington wrote.

Brian Thompson of Canada Free Press attended the Toronto Sun library yesterday to view the photo. It was not the picture Thompson was looking for. The picture that appeared in Warmington’s column, Thompson discovered, was that of a much older man.

Indeed, the only person otherwise identified as Ciro Vitolo is the one who’s the dead ringer for Adnan El Shukrijumah at McMaster University, whose picture was photographed in a glass framed picture of the 1998 graduating class, in the hallway of the third floor in McMaster University’s John Hodgkin’s engineering building.

If the Ciro Vitolo El Shukrijuma look-alike truly walks among us, and if it is just a coincidence that he looks just like the terrorist on the FBI suspected terror list, check in with CFP for a prompt and abject apology.

El Shukrijumah, who thanks in part to author Paul L. Williams, will be featured on this Saturday night’s America’s Most Wanted, television show, has a $5-million bounty riding on his head.

Chameleon like, El Shukrijumah, with his black hair and eyes and dark, Mediterranean complexion, could pose as a member of any number of nationalities. Perhaps his best recognizable feature is his small stature. El Shukrijumah stands only 5’3" to 5’6", and weighs about 132 pounds.

An FBI alert points out, "El Shukrijumah occasionally wears a beard. He has a pronounced nose and is asthmatic. El Shukrijumah speaks English and carries a Guyanese passport, but may attempt to enter the United States with a Saudi, Canadian, or Trinidadian passport."

The Washington Times reported on October 17, 2003 that El Shukrijumah posed as a student at McMaster while trying to obtain radioactive material from the school’s small nuclear reactor.

"At McMaster University, where the al Qaeda agents may gave registered under fictitious names, Shukrijumah and friends wasted no time in gaining access to the nuclear reactor and stealing more than 180 pounds of nuclear material for the creation of radiological bombs," Paul L. Williams wrote in his book, The Dunces of Doomsday.

McMaster officially rebuts reports of the nuclear theft attempt.

It would be impossible to carry 180 pounds of material away from our nuclear reactor," a McMaster spokesman told Canada Free Press yesterday. "It’s laughable because that only happens in Hollywood movies."

And as for El Shukrijumah having posed at McMaster as a student?

"We have no indication that the individual has ever been a student, nor has he ever been seen around any of our facilities," Chris Heysel, director of nuclear operations and facilities at McMaster, told the National Post in 2003. "We have come across no evidence to substantiate any of the information in the media report and we have every confidence in the security and safety surrounding the facility."

Dave Tucker, a health physicist who manages radiation safety for the university, said there is no indication that any nuclear material is unaccounted for. "There is a very small number of people who have access to our nuclear facilities and we know who they are and we know that (Mr. El Shukrijumah) isn’t one of them. There are few enough that we know personally the people who have unescorted access to the reactor," he said.

If, as Tucker says, "a very small number of people" have (unescorted) access "to our nuclear facilities and we know that (Mr. El Shukrijumah) isn’t one of them", how about Ciro Vitolo?

It would be helpful to know if McMaster University has a forwarding address for El Shukrijumah but student information of that nature can be kept confidential.

Shouldn’t security trump university bureaucracy?

Their denial of having seen El Shukrijumah around any of their facilities notwithstanding, Canada Free Press has two questions for McMaster officials.

Have any McMaster officials bothered to compare the FBI El Shukrijumah file photos with that of Ciro Vitolo’s photograph on display on the third floor of the John Hodgkin’s engineering building?

Can McMaster brass assure authorities looking for him that Adnan "Jafar the Pilot" G. El Shukrijumah, (alias Adnan G. El Shukri Jumah, Abu Arif, Ja’far Al-Tayar, Jaffar Al-Tayyar, Jafar Tayar, Jaafar Al-Tayyar) is not in fact the Ciro Vitolo of their photograph?

Lives could depend on it.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover050206.htm

[Hound]

Title: An American Hiroshima

Peter Robinson: Investor Warren Buffet who knows enough about calculating odds to have become one of the richest men in the world, "The danger of a nuclear terrorist attack is the ultimate depressing thing. It will happen. It's inevitable. I don't see any way that it won't happen." Is a nuclear attack by terrorists in the United States inevitable? Graham?

Graham Allison: Yes if we just keep doing what we're doing, but no if we act to prevent it.

Peter Robinson: Scott?

Scott Sagan: No, but it is a catastrophe waiting to happen and there's a lot that we need to do to make sure it does not happen soon.

Peter Robinson: All right. Nuclear weapons are big and cumbersome and expensive and during the Cold War, when we had an arsenal of many thousands and the Soviet Union had an arsenal of many thousands, we had a lot to worry about. But the Soviet Union doesn't even exist anymore so although we have new worries, terrorists flying airplanes into buildings, nuclear weapons are something on which we ought to be able to relax. Why is that view mistaken?

Graham Allison: I think you express the view very well because for large numbers of Americans, the idea that nuclear weapons were what the Cold War were about. But the Cold War's over. My dad used to tell me this. He said "Cold War's over. We won. Move on." You know, I said "Pop, that's right except for two things." One, the weapons didn't go away. These weapons have long, long shelf life and the material from which you could make additional nuclear weapons didn't go away. It actually has half lives of thousands of years. So we are left with the leftovers, the remains of the Cold War. And there continue to be nuclear weapons in Russia and in other states like Pakistan or indeed maybe even North Korea which could come loose. Secondly and even more threatening, there are thousands of potential nuclear weapons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, which if they came into the hands of a terrorist group like Al Qaeda, they could make a homemade nuclear bomb that would fit in the back of a van and would blow up a city.


much more...
http://www.hoover.org/publications/uk/2933486.html

[al-Canine]

We Must Act As If He Has The Bomb

Graham Allison
The Washington Post | 11/18/2001

The question is suddenly urgent: Could the inconceivable happen? President Bush has previously warned the world that Osama bin Laden is seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction. Now, bin Laden himself claims to have chemical and nuclear weapons -- and "the right to use them." We cannot know for certain whether he is bluffing, but Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has confirmed that documents detailing how to make nuclear weapons have been found in an al Qaeda safe house in Kabul. And we can certainly expect that as the noose tightens around the terrorist's neck, he and his associates will become increasingly desperate.

All of this means that, incredible as the possibility remains even in the aftermath of Sept. 11, we must now seriously contemplate that bin Laden's final act could be a nuclear attack on America.

The consequences of such an attack would far outstrip the horror we have already witnessed. Imagine that al Qaeda had struck the World Trade Center not with a van filled with explosives, as in 1993, nor with planes fully loaded with jet fuel, but with an SUV containing a nuclear device. Even a crude device could create an explosive force of 10,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT, demolishing an area of about three square miles. Not only the World Trade Center, but all of Wall Street and the financial district and the lower tip of Manhattan up to Gramercy Park would have disappeared. Hundreds of thousands of people would have died suddenly. In Washington, if such a vehicle exploded near the White House, an area reaching as far as the Jefferson Memorial would be immediately and completely destroyed, and a larger area, extending from the Pentagon to beyond the Capitol, would suffer damage equal to that caused to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

That same year, in a Post op-ed, I warned: "In the absence of a determined program of action, we have every reason to anticipate acts of nuclear terrorism against American targets before this decade is out." I was fortunately wrong about the timing, but I believe the same estimate can be made with even greater justification today. The question is whether the outrage of Sept. 11 will now motivate the United States and other governments to act urgently to minimize the risk of nuclear mega-terrorism. Unhappily, the evidence to date is not encouraging.

As the Bush administration took office in January, a bipartisan task force, chaired by former Senate majority leader Howard Baker (now ambassador to Japan) and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler, presented a report card on non-proliferation programs with Russia. The task force's principal finding was that "the most urgent unmet national security threat [my emphasis] to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen, sold to terrorists or hostile nation states, and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home."

The danger can be summarized in three propositions. First, attempts to steal nuclear weapons or weapons-usable material are not hypothetical, but a recurring fact. The past decade has seen scores of incidents in which individuals and groups have successfully stolen weapons material from sites in Russia and sought to export it -- but have been caught. Just in the past month, the chief of the Russian defense ministry directorate responsible for nuclear weapons reported two recent incidents in which terrorist groups unsuccessfully attempted to break into Russian nuclear storage sites. In the mid-1990s, more than 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium -- enough material to allow terrorists to build more than 20 nuclear weapons -- sat unprotected in Kazakhstan. Recognizing the danger, the American government purchased the material and removed it to a Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Second, if al Qaeda or some similar group obtained 40 pounds of highly enriched uranium, or less than half that weight in plutonium, it could, with materials otherwise available off the shelf, produce a nuclear device in less than a year. Obtaining such fissionable material -- an ingredient that is fortunately difficult and expensive to manufacture -- is in fact the only high hurdle to creating a nuclear device. But as a director of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories wrote a quarter of a century ago, "If the essential nuclear materials like these are in hand, it is possible to make an atomic bomb using the information that is available in the open literature." An even easier alternative is a radioactivity dispersal device, a conventional bomb wrapped in radioactive materials that disperse as fallout when the bomb explodes.

Third, terrorists would not find it difficult to sneak such a nuclear device into the United States. The nuclear material required is actually smaller than a football. Even a fully assembled device, such as a suitcase nuclear weapon, could be shipped in a container, in the hull of a ship or in a trunk carried by an aircraft. Since Sept. 11, the number of containers arriving at U.S. points of entry that are being X-rayed has increased to approximately 10 percent: 500 of the 5,000 containers currently arriving daily at the port of New York/New Jersey, for instance. But as the chief executive of CSX Lines, one of the foremost container-shipping companies, put it: "If you can smuggle heroin in containers, you may be able to smuggle in a nuclear bomb."

If bin Laden and other terrorists have not so far succeeded in acquiring nuclear weapons, or materials from which to assemble them, we should give thanks for our great good fortune. If they have acquired them -- as bin Laden now claims -- most people will quickly conclude that, under existing conditions, this was bound to happen.

There can be little doubt that bin Laden and his associates would carry out a nuclear assault were they capable of doing so. Last year, the CIA intercepted a message in which a member of al Qaeda boasted of plans for a "Hiroshima" against America. According to the Justice Department indictment for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, "At various times from at least as early as 1993, Osama bin Laden and others, known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons." Additional evidence supplied by a former member of al Qaeda describes the group's attempts to buy uranium of South African origin, repeated travels to three Central Asian states to try to buy a complete warhead or weapons-usable material, and discussions with Chechens in which money and drugs were offered for nuclear weapons. Bin Laden himself has declared that acquiring nuclear weapons is a "religious duty."

Preventing nuclear terrorist attacks on the American homeland will require a serious, comprehensive defense -- not for months or years, but far into the future. The response must stretch from aggressive prevention and preemption to deterrence and active defenses. Strict border controls will be as important to America as ballistic-missile defenses.
To fight the immediate threat, the United States must move smartly on two fronts. First, no effort can be spared in the military, economic and diplomatic campaign to defeat and destroy al Qaeda, and in the international intelligence and law-enforcement effort to discover and disrupt al Qaeda sleeper cells and interrupt attempted shipments of weapons.

Second, the United States must seize the opportunity of a more cooperative Russia to "go to the source" of the greatest danger today: the 99 percent or more of the world's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that are stored in Russia and the United States. The surest way to prevent nuclear assaults is to prevent terrorists from gaining control of these weapons or materials from which to make them. President Bush acknowledged this in his joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Thursday, declaring that "Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction."

What the two presidents failed to announce, however, are concrete actions to achieve this objective. While their success in agreeing to cut the number of operational strategic nuclear weapons cannot be gainsaid, the stark reality is that this reduction has no effect on our most urgent unmet national security threat.

Bush and Putin should have announced that the United States and Russia would lead a new joint international undertaking to minimize the risks of nuclear terrorism, as well as terrorism by means of other weapons of mass destruction. They should have pledged to ensure that their respective governments will do everything physically and technically possible to prevent terrorists or criminals from stealing weapons or weapons-usable material from their stockpiles. They should have instructed their governments to develop a joint plan of action to concentrate weapons and materials in the fewest possible sites, secure them by the most technically advanced means, and neutralize highly enriched uranium by blending it down for subsequent use in civilian nuclear power plants. Within Russia, such a program should be jointly financed by the United States, its allies in the war against terrorism and Moscow.

Despite the successes of the past week, the long-term goals of our war on terrorism remain elusive, and the future no doubt holds frustrations as well as celebrations. In that light, calling upon leaders to act to prevent attacks of a kind that have not yet occurred may seem overly demanding. But if we fail to act on this agenda now, how shall we explain ourselves on the morning after a nuclear Sept. 11?

Graham Allison, an assistant secretary of defense under President Clinton, is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the author of "Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy" (MIT Press). This article is revised and updated from a version that appeared in last week's Economist.

The Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com)

[al-Canine]

An American Hiroshima

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: August 11, 2004

ASPEN, Colo. - If a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, a midget even smaller than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, exploded in Times Square, the fireball would reach tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

It would vaporize or destroy the theater district, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Carnegie Hall (along with me and my building). The blast would partly destroy a much larger area, including the United Nations. On a weekday some 500,000 people would be killed.

Could this happen?

Unfortunately, it could -- and many experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely. The Aspen Strategy Group, a bipartisan assortment of policy mavens, focused on nuclear risks at its annual meeting here last week, and the consensus was twofold: the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn't done nearly enough to reduce it.

Graham Allison, a Harvard professor whose terrifying new book, ''Nuclear Terrorism,'' offers the example cited above, notes that he did not pluck it from thin air. He writes that on Oct. 11, 2001, exactly a month after 9/11, aides told President Bush that a C.I.A. source code-named Dragonfire had reported that Al Qaeda had obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon and smuggled it into New York City.

The C.I.A. found the report plausible. The weapon had supposedly been stolen from Russia, which indeed has many 10-kiloton weapons. Russia is reported to have lost some of its nuclear materials, and Al Qaeda has mounted a determined effort to get or make such a weapon. And the C.I.A. had picked up Al Qaeda chatter about an ''American Hiroshima.''

President Bush dispatched nuclear experts to New York to search for the weapon and sent Dick Cheney and other officials out of town to ensure the continuity of government in case a weapon exploded in Washington instead. But to avoid panic, the White House told no one in New York City, not even Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Dragonfire's report was wrong, but similar reports -- that Al Qaeda has its hands on a nuclear weapon from the former Soviet Union -- have regularly surfaced in the intelligence community, even though such a report has never been confirmed. We do know several troubling things: Al Qaeda negotiated for the $1.5 million purchase of uranium (apparently of South African origin) from a retired Sudanese cabinet minister; its envoys traveled repeatedly to Central Asia to buy weapons-grade nuclear materials; and Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, boasted, ''We sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other Central Asian states, and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase [nuclear] bombs.''

Professor Allison offers a standing bet, at 51-to-49 odds, that, barring radical new antiproliferation steps, a terrorist nuclear strike will occur somewhere in the world in the next 10 years. So I took his bet. If there is no such nuclear attack by August 2014, he owes me $5.10. If there is an attack, I owe him $4.90.

I took the bet because I don't think the odds of nuclear terror are quite as great as he does. If I were guessing wildly, I would say a 20 percent risk over 10 years. In any case, if I lose the bet, then I'll probably be vaporized and won't have much use for money.

Unfortunately, plenty of smart people think I've made a bad bet. William Perry, the former secretary of defense, says there is an even chance of a nuclear terror strike within this decade -- that is, in the next six years.

''We're racing toward unprecedented catastrophe,'' Mr. Perry warns. ''This is preventable, but we're not doing the things that could prevent it.''

That is what I find baffling: an utter failure of the political process. The Bush administration responded aggressively on military fronts after 9/11, and in November 2003, Mr. Bush observed, ''The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the dictators who aid them.'' But the White House has insisted on tackling the most peripheral elements of the W.M.D. threat, like Iraq, while largely ignoring the central threat, nuclear proliferation. The upshot is that the risk that a nuclear explosion will devastate an American city is greater now than it was during the cold war, and it's growing.

http://www.nytimes.com/

[al-Canine]

The Sky Isn't Falling (Yet)

Joshua Foer | Editorial
The Washington Post 10-26-2004

Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) packed his bags and headed for the hills this month, leaving behind only a note attached to his door in the Russell Senate Office Building explaining that because of a "top-secret intelligence report," his office would be closed until after Nov. 2.

The reaction on Capitol Hill to Dayton's strange behavior seems to have been ridicule. A Republican senator thought it would be funny to inquire about taking over his vacant office space. D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams told a reporter, "I'm literally scratching my head trying to figure out what frequency he's on."

I don't know what Dayton saw in that top-secret report, but whatever horrifying October surprise he's worried about apparently didn't frighten anyone else. So I suspect that Dayton may be suffering from a case of prime-target-fixation syndrome. As a recovering low-level sufferer myself, I feel qualified to make the diagnosis. You won't find PTF syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. That's because the malady was first described in 1964 not by a psychologist but by Herman Kahn, the great theorist of mutual assured destruction. Kahn described PTF syndrome as "an expression of apathy or fatalism often found among those who believe that their city or location would constitute a prime target in the event of nuclear attack." Fear of chemical and biological attack can also trigger the syndrome.

PTF syndrome has a characteristic suite of diagnostics. If you keep cellophane-wrapped iodine pills in your wallet, maintain an extensive mental playbook of escape plans or harbor fantasies of a bomb shelter in your basement, you may be a fellow sufferer. Those of us with the syndrome tend to have trouble pushing depressing facts to the periphery of our thoughts -- such as the fact that in 1997 Russian general Alexander Lebed told "60 Minutes" that more than 100 Soviet suitcase nukes are missing, or the fact that the CIA once intercepted al Qaeda chatter about an American "Hiroshima."

In his recent book "Nuclear Terrorism," Graham Allison writes, "In my own considered judgment, on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not." Former secretary of defense William Perry reportedly puts even odds on an attack in the next six years.

Those kinds of educated predictions can keep a PTF sufferer up at night wondering whether we're all nuts to live in Washington. Even assuming that Allison and Perry have overestimated the risk by an order of magnitude, wouldn't it be rational for us all to follow Dayton's lead and leave town? Humans are notoriously risk-averse creatures. A 50 percent chance of rain is usually all it takes to make us cancel a tee time.

And yet we Washingtonians (like our counterparts in New York) seem to be in chronic denial of the fact that we're living on the side of a volcano. The D.C. real estate market is one of the hottest in the world. People are moving back downtown in droves.
It's impossible, of course, to say whether there's a greater risk of a nuclear attack on Washington today than at the height of the Cold War, but this much is certain: Depending on where you live, you have a much better chance of surviving an Osama bin Laden bomb than you did of surviving one heaven-sent from Nikita Khrushchev. You could run but you couldn't hide from multi-megaton thermonuclear war. The suburbs were no safer than the cities. In contrast, today you can hide from nuclear terrorism. Most experts believe that terrorists would have a tough time getting their hands on a bomb any bigger than 10 kilotons -- smaller than the primitive nuke that was dropped on Hiroshima.

The damage from such an attack would be utterly catastrophic, to be sure, but not inescapable for those of us who don't live and work in center city. PTF sufferers such as Dayton shouldn't have to flee Washington to feel safe; all they've got to do is keep their distance from downtown.

I visited the promotional Web site for Allison's book on nuclear terrorism, where you can interactively map the effects of a 10-kiloton nuclear explosion at your ground zero of choice. Plug in 20500, the Zip code for the White House, and a bull's-eye appears on the screen. The Post's offices, several blocks north of the White House, sit squarely inside the red "1/3 Mile 100 percent fatality" inner ring. Three-quarters of a mile out, at Dupont Circle, people who happened to be outside would suffer fatal radiation doses and most buildings would be reduced to rubble. Farther afield in Georgetown, there'd be fires and radiation exposure. Keep pushing out and you eventually get to my own home and place of work, about 6 miles away in upper Northwest. I'm reassured to learn that even though things would be highly unpleasant for me, I'd almost certainly survive unharmed. As a sufferer of prime-target-fixation syndrome, that ought to make me at least marginally less anxious. Maybe I should invite Dayton to reopen his offices in my basement.

Joshua Foer is a Washington writer.

The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com)

[al-Canine]

Five months ago....

The Last Warning to the American People

There Will Be Two Operations in the U.S.

Bush and His Clan are Incapable of Protecting You

We are Awaiting Orders from Our Commander Osama Ben Laden

"The operations are ready to go, we are just waiting for orders from the commander in chief, Osama Ben Laden (may Allah preserve him). He will decide whether to strike or to hold. We swear by Allah that there are so many tricks and tactical maneuvers that will make your heads spin, by the grace of Allah. You will be brought to your knees, but not until you lose more loved ones and experience significant destruction."
read the whole thing (http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP111206)




Michael Scheuer 11/14/04: "One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community, and especially the counterterrorism community, is to assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's because he can't or because we've defeated him. Bin Laden has consistently shown himself to be immune to outside pressure. When he wants to do something, he does it on his own schedule."

CBS News: "You've written no one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States," says Kroft. "You believe that's going to happen?"

"I don't believe in inevitability. But I think it's pretty close to being inevitable," says Scheuer.

CBS News: A nuclear weapon?

"A nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device," says Scheuer. "Yes, I think it's probably a near thing."

CBS News: What evidence is there that bin Laden's actually working to do this?

"He's told us it. Bin Laden is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn't like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions," says Scheuer. "He's told us that, 'We are going to acquire a weapon of mass destruction, and if we acquire it, we will use it.'"

After Sept. 11, Scheuer says bin Laden was criticized by Muslim clerics for launching such a serious attack without sufficient warning. That has now been given. And he says bin Laden has even obtained a fatwa, or Islamic decree, justifying a nuclear attack against the United States on religious grounds.

"He secured from a Saudi sheik named Hamid bin Fahd a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans. Specifically, nuclear weapons," says Scheuer. "And the treatise found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans."

Scheuer says the fatwa was issued in May 2003, "and that's another thing that doesn't come to the attention of the American people."

read the whole thing (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/12/60minutes/main655407.shtml)

[Casey]

'The American Hiroshima: Osama's Plan for a Nuclear Attack, and One Man's Attempt to Warn America'

NEW YORK, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Two thirds of Americans believe that Osama bin Laden will strike America again and this time it will be nuclear. Dr. Hugh Cort agrees and writes about the warning signs in his book, "The American Hiroshima: Osama's Plan for a Nuclear Attack, and One Man's Attempt to Warn America" (published by iUniverse). Dr. Cort also contends that the attack could occur in the very near future with Osama bin Laden planning to blow up several American cities.

"The American Hiroshima" provides evidence that Iran has been assisting Osama bin Laden in his plan, including how the British Intelligence, MI6, reported to other intelligence agencies, that six Pakistani nuclear scientists who helped Pakistan develop its nuclear bomb, have been in Iran for the past three years helping Iran develop its nuclear bomb, and that occasionally Ahmadinejad sends them to help Al Qaeda with their nuclear bomb. In addition, top Pakistani journalist, Hamid Mir, told the author that in an interview with Osama, the terrorist said he had acquired suitcase nuclear bombs that were stolen from the former Soviet Union and purchased on the black market.

Because America may be attacked soon, Dr. Cort, who has a wealth of information from intensive research, wrote his book in three months, eager to get the warning out to the American people. The 9/11 Commission said that if the FBI had shared the warning signs it had about 9/11 with the media and the public prior to 9/11, we may have been able to stop it from happening. In order to hinder another more devastating attack, Dr. Cort is attempting to notify the country. If we cannot prevent Osama's horrific plans, Dr. Cort's book also provides information on how to survive a nuclear attack. The questions are, will we be ready for the next 9/11? Or do we want to take a complacent chance and ignore the signs?

About the Author

Dr. Hugh Cort is the President of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit counter-terrorism think tank. General Tom McInerney, CNN and Fox News military analyst, is an honorary board member. Dr. Cort has been researching counter-terrorism issues ever since 9/11. He is the author of "Saddam's Attacks on America." Dr. Cort ran as a presidential candidate in the 2008 Republican Presidential Primary in order to get the warning out about Osama bin Laden's plans for a nuclear attack on America. He is a psychiatrist practicing in Alabama. "The American Hiroshima" is the author's attempt to warn America before it is too late. Find out more about Osama's coming attack at http://www.AFCPR.org. Dr. Cort is available for interview.

ISBN: 978-1440186479 - Paperback - 132 pages - $18.95

iUniverse offers a variety of publishing services to help individuals publish, market and sell fiction, poetry and nonfiction books. The company utilizes print-on-demand technology, and is one of the largest self-publishing companies in the U.S. iUniverse is based in Bloomington, Indiana.


Contact: Carol Hoenig
Personal Media Publicist
Carolhoenig@carolhoenig.com
516-435-7545

This release was issued through eReleases(TM). For more information, visit http://www.ereleases.com.


SOURCE iUniverse

Related:

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=749880&highlight=American+Hiroshima#post749880

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1047155&highlight=American+Hiroshima#post1047155

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=818278&highlight=American+Hiroshima#post818278

http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=765479

[SmokedYourDSM]

Dunno how accurate the part about Zawahiri saying "NO" to a chemical attack in 2003 is... in my opinion if they had the option then, they would have done it. But just putting this out there.


Report: Al-Qaeda aims to hit U.S. with WMDs

Huge attack is top strategic goal, not ‘empty rhetoric,’ ex-CIA official says

By Joby Warrick
updated 2:31 a.m. ET, Tues., Jan. 26, 2010



When al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off a planned chemical attack on New York's subway system in 2003, he offered a chilling explanation: The plot to unleash poison gas on New Yorkers was being dropped for "something better," Zawahiri said in a message intercepted by U.S. eavesdroppers.



The meaning of Zawahiri's cryptic threat remains unclear more than six years later, but a new report warns that al-Qaeda has not abandoned its goal of attacking the United States with a chemical, biological or even nuclear weapon.



The report, by a former senior CIA official who led the agency's hunt for weapons of mass destruction, portrays al-Qaeda's leaders as determined and patient, willing to wait for years to acquire the kind of weapons that could inflict widespread casualties.



The former official, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, draws on his knowledge of classified case files to argue that al-Qaeda has been far more sophisticated in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction than is commonly believed, pursuing parallel paths to acquiring weapons and forging alliances with groups that can offer resources and expertise.
"If Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants had been interested in . . . small-scale attacks, there is little doubt they could have done so now," Mowatt-Larssen writes in a report released Monday by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.



Deadly strains of anthrax
The report comes as a panel on weapons of mass destruction appointed by Congress prepares to release a new assessment of the federal government's preparedness for such an attack. The review by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism is particularly critical of the Obama administration's actions so far in hardening the country's defenses against bioterrorism, according to two former government officials who have seen drafts of the report.



The commission's initial report in December 2008 warned that a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction was likely by 2013.
Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year CIA veteran, led the agency's internal task force on al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and later was named director of intelligence and counterintelligence for the Energy Department. His report warns that bin Laden's threat to attack the West with weapons of mass destruction is not "empty rhetoric" but a top strategic goal for an organization that seeks the economic ruin of the United States and its allies to hasten the overthrow of pro-Western governments in the Islamic world.



He cites patterns in al-Qaeda's 15-year pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that reflect a deliberateness and sophistication in assembling the needed expertise and equipment. He describes how Zawahiri hired two scientists -- a Pakistani microbiologist sympathetic to al-Qaeda and a Malaysian army captain trained in the United States -- to work separately on efforts to build a biological weapons lab and acquire deadly strains of anthrax bacteria. Al-Qaeda achieved both goals before September 2001 but apparently had not successfully weaponized the anthrax spores when the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan forced the scientists to flee, Mowatt-Larssen said.



"This was far from run-of-the-mill terrorism," he said in an interview. "The program was highly compartmentalized, at the highest level of the organization. It was methodical, and it was professional."



'Not just trying to scare people'
Mowatt-Larssen said he has seen no evidence linking al-Qaeda's program with the anthrax attacks on U.S. politicians and news outlets in 2001. Zawahiri's plan was aimed at mass casualties and "not just trying to scare people with a few letters," he said.



Evidence from al-Qaeda documents and interrogations suggests that terrorists leaders had settled on anthrax as the weapon of choice and believed that the tools for a major biological attack were within their grasp, the former CIA official said. Al-Qaeda remained interested in nuclear weapons as well but understood that the odds of success were much longer.



"They realized they needed a lucky break," Mowatt-Larssen said. "That meant buying or stealing fissile material or acquiring a stolen bomb."
Bush administration officials feared that bin Laden was close to obtaining nuclear weapons in 2003 after U.S. spies picked up a cryptic message by a Saudi affiliate of al-Qaeda referring to plans to obtain three stolen Russian nuclear devices. The intercepts prompted the U.S. and Saudi governments to go on alert and later led to an aggressive Saudi crackdown that resulted in the arrest or killing of dozens of suspected al-Qaeda associates.
After that, terrorists' chatter about a possible nuclear acquisition halted abruptly, but U.S. officials were never certain whether the plot was dismantled or simply pushed deeper underground.
"The crackdown was so successful," Mowatt-Larssen said, "that intelligence about the program basically dried up."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35072269/ns/us_news-washington_post/