Newsweek - 15 nov 2001
 http://www.msnbc.com/news/658345.asp?cp1=1

Duck and Cover
There are real reasons for Americans to fear a nuclear attack. Why aren’t we doing more to stop it?
 
 
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
 
 
      Nov. 15 —  As a regular panelist on “The McLaughlin Group,” I am used to hearing things said that shock and disturb me. But they usually relate to partisan politics, not life and death. Last week’s show was different.

 IN A SEGMENT ON the nuclear threat facing Americans, Tony Blankley said that Vice President Dick Cheney is kept at an undisclosed location five miles from Washington because of fear that terrorists could explode a suitcase nuclear bomb in the city. The radius of such a bomb is four miles, Blankley explained. I found this piece of intelligence rather unsettling and sought out my fellow panelist after the taping to learn more. Tony was Newt Gingrich’s spokesman on Capitol Hill, and he has good sources. He said this was something he heard from a source in the intelligence community, and while he didn’t know absolutely that it was true, he found it quite plausible.
        Not since I was a child in elementary school in Queens, N.Y., at the height of the cold war has the threat of a nuclear explosion seemed so personal. Then we were issued dog tags with our blood type and taught in numerous practice drills how to dive under our desks with our faces away from the window to avoid flying glass. I remember my mother assuring me this was just a precaution, that we were safe in Queens. The real target was Washington.
        I am not an alarmist. When the “McLaughlin Group” producer called to say that we would be talking about loose nukes and suitcase bombs, I was prepared to dismiss most of the discussion as Hollywood B-movie science fiction. Then I did my research. (I know many viewers think pundits don’t consult anything except our own opinions, but that’s not typically the case.) In reading up on the nuclear threat, I came across Lloyd Cutler’s name. A prominent Washington lawyer, he was an advisor to President Carter and served as President Clinton’s White House counsel. This past January, Cutler and another luminary, Howard Baker, the former senator from Tennessee who is now ambassador to Japan, issued a report to Congress on the various nonproliferation programs underway with Russia.
 Not since I was a child in elementary school in Queens, N.Y., at the height of the cold war has the threat of a nuclear explosion seemed so personal.

         Their conclusion: “The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-useable material in Russia could be stolen, sold to terrorists or hostile nation states, and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home.”
        Cutler and Baker are Washington wise men who have seen it all, and are not easily rattled. Their words must be taken seriously. I phoned Cutler, who laid out in dispassionate detail what he had learned. He began with the speculation that America’s terrorist enemies could get hold of and use a missile. He regards that as the least likely scenario, since there would be instant reprisals and the nuclear cloud would bury friend and foe alike. An attack on a nuclear plant is more likely in Cutler’s view. He explained that spent fuel rods are stored in pools of water and have a radioactive life of ten thousand years. If those pools were bombed and drained of water, the rods would heat up and start a fire almost immediately, spreading deadly radioactivity. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has staged mock raids to see if storage facilities in this country are properly guarded, and in almost all instances they are not.
        Then there is the suitcase bomb, or the so-called “dirty bomb,” a weapon laced with radioactive material. “If the bin Ladens of the world had one, and nobody knows if they do, it could be carried in a lead-shielded suitcase,” Cutler said. “You can’t discount anything.” The Russians built suitcase bombs during the cold war, which has led to concern about loose nukes and whether they’ve fallen into terrorist hands. Cutler and Baker documented a dozen or so cases where there was an effort by a security guard or disgruntled scientist to smuggle weapons-grade uranium out of the former Soviet states. When he and Baker toured the region, they were aghast at the lack of security. They found nuclear materials stored in wooden warehouses surrounded by fences that were broken down and with nothing but padlocks on the door.
        The dramatic reductions in the nuclear arsenals announced this week by President Bush and Russian President Putin only make the problem worse. An assembled missile with a radioactive warhead is hard to steal and carry off. When these weapons are disassembled it is easier for terrorists to get at the sophisticated parts they need. Yet the Bush administration has inexplicably has cut funding for programs dealing with nonproliferation. When Howard Baker testified on Capitol Hill in March, he said, “It really boggles my mind that there could be 40,000 nuclear weapons, or maybe 80,000, in the former Soviet Union, poorly controlled and poorly stored, and that the world isn’t in a near state of hysteria about the danger.”
We should be spending a fortune to buy up weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. They are the materials that the terrorists seek, and they’re hard to make. You need a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium and a substantial facility like the one we have at Oak Ridge, Tenn., to weaponize uranium. But Bush’s minions on Capitol Hill are arguing that it is more important to stay under the president’s spending cap than to fully fund the nonproliferation programs that began in 1992 under the senior Bush’s administration and were expanded by Clinton. “Everybody argues this is a very worthwhile thing,” says Cutler. “Forgive me, but it’s where you get the best bang for the buck.”
        The wrangling continues on Capitol Hill as lawmakers wrestle with the mounting needs of homeland security in the context of a dramatically slowed economy. “Since September 11, the threat gets more lip service, but it doesn’t get more money,” says South Carolina Rep. John Spratt, one of several Democrats who have taken the lead in pushing for increased funding. So far the Bush administration has not relented. Budget director Mitch Daniels says these programs are “meritorious” but not urgent.
        The only thing that’s free is fear. If the vice president doesn’t come home to Washington soon, the rest of us may soon give serious thought to stocking bomb shelters with tuna fish and bottled water—just like we did a half century ago.
 
       © 2001 Newsweek, Inc.