NUCLEAR FEAR

Back home after the bar experience, I sat down and made

this sketch of the image I had been shown of the one bomb

that was dug up for photography (Sketch: Aage Myhre). 

 A bar-visit in Vilnius can sometimes offer interesting surprises. Not least was that the case in the early 1990s, when Lithuania's freedom was still new and unfamiliar for many. Western companies and embassies had barely begun to establish themselves, while all kinds of traders, fortune hunters, spies and journalists swarmed around in bars and hotel corridors.

Late one evening in 1992 I talked with two men in their 50s, both with typical grey suits and short neckties. One of them spoke some English, so we got into a sort of dialogue. The second man explained that he was a lawyer and that he had been an adviser in the Kremlin until recently, but now had gone into business and would try to exploit the contacts and experience he had from his time in the Soviet power apparatus.

I expressed my doubt about his story, but then he took out an entire folder from the briefcase he had under the table and picked up Polaroid pictures that allegedly showed one of the bombs. He said that all seven bombs were lying buried in a safe territory in the mentioned former Soviet state, but that they had dug up one in order to bring to the table photo-evidence that the bombs really existed. In addition, he showed a computer disk that potential buyers would be offered to ensure the bombs’ authenticity.

The Polaroid image showed a grey-green spherical container with a diameter of approximately 70 cm, and the man told me that the bomb weighed about 700 kg, whereof 2 kg was enriched plutonium. He also told me that he knew of about 20 different groups throughout the former USSR who all were dealing with bombs or other material that could be used to make nuclear weapons, and he estimated that there were about 100 bombs that had 'come astray' after the Soviet collapse.

So if I could help him to find buyers, I would be well rewarded, he concluded. Price to the end buyers was 250 million U.S. dollars per bomb. But I went home, shaken by what I had gotten to know. The information was almost to verbose to be true, but there was something about the man's appearance and intelligence which made me conclude that he might well have been telling the truth.

Back home after the bar experience, I sat down and drew a sketch of the image I had been shown of the one bomb that was dug up for photography. It is this sketch you can see at the top of this page. The morning after I went straight to the Norwegian Embassy in Vilnius to tell the story directly to the ambassador.

The ambassador got very nervous when I began to talk, and told me immediately to stop. He would like to hear the rest, he said, but asked me to continue outdoors. Well outside he said that he feared the embassy could be tapped, and that he therefore had asked me out for a walk around the block with him instead.

The ambassador sent the same day my story to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo. A few days later came the response, which, in brief, said that the Ministry did not believe the story was true. Instead, the ambassador had gently been asked to find out more about who I was, and how I could have access to such information. Both the ambassador and I reacted with disbelief and surprise, but could do nothing more.

The number of employees at the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius grew remarkably quickly that spring, and it soon became clear that the Americans took the threat of Soviet nuclear material in the wrong hands very seriously. The following article from the Washington Post is one remarkable success story of their search.

I think very few people in the west are aware of how dangerous the 1990s could have become for world balance, and I think we should appreciate having the U.S. as the world's watchdog. Today, Russia's control over its own nuclear store is much better, but still there is, unfortunately, far too much hazardous material that can not be accounted for. 

How the U.S. flew out 600 kg uranium from Kazakhstan 

(Illustration: Aftenposten, Norway)

On a snowy day in December 1993, just months after Andy Weber began his diplomatic job at the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan, he met with a tall, bullet-headed man he knew only as Col. Korbator.

"Andy, let's take a walk," the colonel said. As they strolled through a dim apartment courtyard, Korbator handed Weber a piece of paper. Weber unfolded it. On the paper was written:

600 kilos

Weber did the calculation: 1,322 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough to make about 24 nuclear bombs. He closed the note, put it in his pocket and thanked the colonel. After several months of patient cultivation of his contacts, Weber finally had the answer he had been seeking.

The piece of paper was a glimpse into what had become the most urgent proliferation crisis to follow the collapse of the Soviet Union: the discovery of tons of nuclear materials left behind by the Cold War arms race, much of it unguarded and unaccounted for.

This is the story of Project Sapphire, the code name for an early pioneering mission to secure a portion of those nuclear materials before they could fall into the wrong hands. New documents and interviews provide the fullest account yet of this covert operation to remove the dangerous uranium from Kazakhstan and fly it to the United States. When it was over, the U.S. government paid Kazakhstan about $27 million for the cache.

The enormous transports, operating in total secrecy, flew 20 hours straight through to Dover with several aerial refuelling, the longest C-5 flights in U.S. history. Once on the ground in Delaware, the uranium was loaded into large, unmarked trucks specially outfitted to protect nuclear materials during the drive to Oak Ridge.

On Nov. 23, the Clinton administration announced at a Washington news conference that it had removed the uranium. Defence Secretary William J. Perry called it "defence by other means, in a big way" and added: "We have put this bomb-grade nuclear material forever out of the reach of potential black marketers, terrorists or a new nuclear regime."

With imagination and daring, Project Sapphire underscored what could be done with the cooperation of another government. But the methods used in that mission could not be replicated in Russia, where there was far more uranium and plutonium, and much more suspicion.

In late 1994, the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee prepared a report about the extent of the Russian nuclear materials crisis. The top-secret document concluded that not a single facility storing highly enriched uranium or plutonium in the former Soviet Union had safeguards up to Western standards.

Not one.

By David E. Hoffman

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002881.html

Still a risk of nuclear ‘export’ through the Baltic region?

Was the 'Arctic Sea’s' real purpose to check the effectiveness

of Western Europe's sea route control systems?

What exactly happened to the cargo ship ‘Arctic Sea’ that so strangely disappeared from the Baltic Sea last summer after allegedly having been ‘hijacked by pirates’?

I’ve been fascinated by both the rumour mill and lack of a credible story surrounding the disappearance of this ship at the end of July 2009, and Russia’s announcement on the 18^th of August that it had captured the ship and arrested eight men for hijacking it. While I’m hoping that some fearless media will throw serious resources behind this story and get to the bottom of it, I’m amazed it didn’t grab more attention last year.

The mystery surrounding the ship still stands unresolved. How on earth could it be that a ship with a cargo of timber on the way from Finland to Algeria was 'kidnapped by pirates’ right in front of both the Finnish and Swedish Coast Guard? How could it happen that the ship was able to pass Polish, Swedish, Danish and German observation posts and coast guards on its way out of the Baltic Sea without being noticed? And how could the ship pass through the English Channel without being stopped, despite the fact that it, at this point, was internationally sought? Why was a Russian journalist called in the middle of the night and warned that he could be killed if he continued to investigate what had happened to the ship? And why was Israel suddenly involved? Why did such a flurry of diplomatic activity between Russia and Israel follow? Why did President Shimon Peres, unannounced, visit Moscow the same day the ship was finally found, west of Cape Verde in Africa?  Why did Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, make a secret trip to the Kremlin a few days later?

Normally I don’t think much on conspiracy theories, but in this case there are simply too many strange events in a row to make me trust the official explanations. My personal theory is that the 'Arctic Sea' was supposed to test how effective Western Europe's control systems of its surrounding sea areas and straits are in reality. To me, the experiment showed that the control systems of our European waters are frighteningly deficient.

If there were people or organizations with criminal intentions behind them, they now realize that they can do almost whatever they want with regard to reaching even the most prized European sea port without being noticed.

What if a ship like the 'Arctic Sea' is loaded with a few ‘dirty’ nuclear bombs like those I have described above, in addition to lots of dynamite or other explosive devices? What if such a ship comes up the Thames towards London or up the Hudson River to New York? A ship with such a load blown up near one of these cities would in reality mean that the city would be laid waste for the foreseeable future, not to mention all the hundreds of thousands who would perish in an almost unimaginably horrible way.

In 2005, the director of the CIA, Porter Goss gave a chilling assessment of the dangers posed by nuclear material that is missing from nuclear storage sites in Russia. Responding to a question from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., about materials missing from Russian nuclear facilities, Goss said: "There is sufficient material unaccounted for, so that it would be possible for those with know-how to construct a nuclear weapon." Goss said he could not assure the American people that the missing nuclear material had not found its way into terrorists' hands.

Today's difficult economic times in the Baltic States is likely contributing to cases with officials within the police and customs services now more than ever open to 'suggestions' that gives them some additional income, and I consider therefore that the horror scenarios described above may well be more imminent than ever.

We already know that there are people and organizations along Russia's southern border that are more than willing to take human lives for their causes.

Editor