Are Russia’s Portable Nuclear devices in terrorist hands?

Original Post Date: 2001-12-21 Time: 23:58:16  Posted By: Jan

This is a most interesting news article. What it serves to show is the
growing evidence that Russia did indeed produce hundreds of portable,
suit-case-sized nuclear bombs which would be used as terrorist devices in
America in the event of a nuclear attack.

Perhaps one or two are in terrorist hands? If so, it would surely cause a
huge and unprecedented panic if ever detonated inside the USA (no matter
how few casualties).

But it does show the kind of technology the Russians had even then. If
100 could go missing, then how many did the Russians produce since then?
Hundreds? Thousands? These are deadly weapons indeed, and even deadlier
in the hands of Russian commandos.

Recently Russia produced the fastest, deepest diving and quietest nuclear
submarine in the world.

China, it has turned out, has been helping Bin Laden after 11th
September. All this goes to show that Russia and China are still big and
deadly players making this world unsafe and bringing threats to America.

China has very close ties with South Africa, and we are firmly in the
communist sphere of influence.

Global communism remains a threat for all of us.

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By Nicholas Horrock
Senior White House Correspondent
Published 12/21/2001 4:03 PM

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 tons
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.”

Copyright 2001 United Press International

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