Radioactive Smuggling

Terence Jeffery column discussing the GAO report on the Border Security failures with Radioactive materials. I'm disturbed that they found it so easy to dupe the Border Guards.

"They are really not weapons of mass destruction, they are weapons of mass disruption," Gregory Kutz, managing director of special investigations for the Government Accountability Office told me. "They wouldn't necessarily have enough radiation to kill anyone, but they could require the shutdown of potentially large parts of the city."

Kutz was describing the sort of device terrorists could construct if they got their hands on the same type and volume of radioactive material that two sets of GAO agents working at Kutz's direction smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders in a covert test conducted on Dec. 14.

The two groups, Kutz told a Senate subcommittee in written testimony this week, each smuggled what the National Institutes of Standards and Technology determined was enough radioactive material to construct one "dirty bomb" apiece.

I suppose this is upsetting to lots of people. Though the Jeffery's source, Kurtz, seems put off that someone in Washinton D.C. could purchase a small radioactive source.

To demonstrate how easily terrorists could purchase the material to make these bombs, Kutz's investigators created a fictitious company based in Washington, D.C. The company ordered a portion -- but not all -- of the radioactive material needed for a bomb from a U.S. supplier over the telephone. They told the supplier they wanted the material to test personal-radiation-detection pagers (like those used by the U.S. Border Patrol). The supplier dropped the radioactive material in the mail.

"We did it just once to show that we could do it," Kutz told me. "We could have done it multiple times."

I asked Kutz: Where exactly in our capital city was the radioactive material mailed? "I can't tell you," he said. "I can just tell you that it was an address in Washington, D.C."

I've made a small effort to find the amount of CS-137 that doesn't require a license, but I'm certain from previous experience that the amount is quite small. But, with the knowledge and understanding of radioactive material in this country, I'm certain that the public will flip out even if the amount is negligible. Imagine if they had access to really powerful sources.

The border security issue is disturbing in that the guards couldn't verify the documents that they were shown were real. Worse, instead of stopping and waiting for the verification they just let them move on. In this scenario, the system should have failed shut, not open.

The monitors worked, and the CBP personnel did their jobs by the book. But then they fell for the ruse: The GAO agents produced counterfeit NRC documents indicating they were authorized to bring the material across the border. The customs agents did not have the means to check the authenticity of the documents.

There also is a touch of curiosity, on my part, to know if the border security guards let the material pass due to uneasiness with the fact that the material was radioactive. With this age of information, you'd think that the Government could have a database of such things that is open for security use. They don't, but what do you expect for a $9,000,000,000 budget?

The Dirty Bomb issue isn't really helping either. As soon as you say bomb, people freak. If I were a terrorist, I wouldn't use a bomb at all. Though I won't go into details of how I would do it. I'm not certain I want to attract that type of attention. Think about subtle ways of attacking and how to push mass hysteria and you can probably come up with some sick ideas of your own.