Scores of nuclear scientists scoured five U.S. citiesBy John Mintz and Susan Schmidt
Updated: 9:46 a.m. ET Jan. 07, 2004WASHINGTON - With huge New Year's Eve celebrations and college football bowl games only days away, the U.S. government last month dispatched scores of casually dressed nuclear scientists with sophisticated radiation detection equipment hidden in briefcases and golf bags to scour five major U.S. cities for radiological, or "dirty," bombs, according to officials involved in the emergency effort.
The call-up of Department of Energy radiation experts to Washington, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Baltimore was the first since the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was conducted in secrecy, in contrast with the very public cancellation of 15 commercial flights into this country from France, Britain and Mexico -- the other major counterterrorism response of the holiday season.
The new details of the government's search for a dirty bomb help explain why officials have used dire terms to describe the reasons for the nation's fifth "code orange" alert, issued on Dec. 21 by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. U.S. officials said they remain worried today -- in many cases, more concerned than much of the American public realizes -- that their countermeasures would fall short.
"Government officials are surprised that people [in the United States] aren't more hyped about all this," said one source familiar with counterterrorism preparations.
'Circular' information
Even now, hundreds of nuclear and bioweapons scientists remain on high alert at several military bases around the country, ready to fly to any trouble spot. Pharmaceutical stockpiles for responding to biological attacks are on transportable trucks at key U.S. military bases.
Officials said intelligence can be misleading, and some in law enforcement acknowledged that there is no way to know the actual urgency of the threats. Officials said one of their key challenges is determining whether al Qaeda is planting provocative but false clues as a diversion or as deliberate disinformation to test the U.S. response. Some foreign governments have voiced concerns that the United States is overreacting.
In recent days, intelligence has become even more difficult to sort through, officials said yesterday, because of what one described as "circular" repeating of information that has been made public.
The attention to a potential dirty bomb, for example, resulted not from specific recent information indicating such an attack but from the belief among officials that al Qaeda is sparing no effort to try to detonate one.
The terrorism crisis began late on Dec. 19, when analysts assembled what they described as extremely specific intelligence, including electronic intercepts of al Qaeda operatives' telephone calls or e-mails. One fear was that al Qaeda would hijack and crash an overseas flight into a U.S. city or the ocean. Another was that terrorists would shoot down an airliner with a shoulder-fired missile.
U.S. officials also became concerned that a large, open-air New Year's Eve celebration might be targeted. While the perimeters of football stadiums can generally be secured, outdoor celebrations are much more vulnerable, they said.
Covert readings
One of the U.S. officials' main fears was of a dirty bomb, in which a conventional bomb is detonated and spews radioactive material and radiation across a small area. Security specialists say such a weapon is unlikely to cause mass casualties but could cause panic and devastate a local economy.
On the same day that Ridge raised the national threat level to orange ("high") from yellow ("elevated"), the Homeland Security Department sent out large fixed radiation detectors and hundreds of pager-size radiation monitors for use by police in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Detroit.
A radiological dispersion bomb, or ?dirty bomb,? consists of easy to obtain radioactive material wrapped in conventional explosives like dynamite or C-4. When detonated, the bomb emits deadly radioactive gamma rays into the environment, killing or sickening target populations and rendering target areas uninhabitable.
Bomb-makers have a wide variety of radioactive material to choose from. Weapons-grade plutonium or uranium and spent nuclear fuel would be the most deadly material, but are hard to acquire and handle. Sources for weaker radioactive material include medical equipment used for cancer treatments and X-ray machines, food irradiation facilities that use cobalt and mechanical devices that use cesium.
Building the actual weapon could be more difficult than securing material, however. To shield its deadly contents during construction and transportation, the bomb makers would have to construct a shield so heavy that the bomb would be near impossible to move. Building a thinner shield could mean a quick death for anyone involved with the bomb construction.
U.S. officials tell NBC News that even prior to September 11 there were reports that al-Qaida planned to use a dirty bomb against the U.S. Capitol. One high-ranking Clinton administration official told NBC News earlier this year that intelligence about such an attack led to increased security at the Capitol in 2000. Obtaining the necessary radioactive material in the United States could be relatively easy, considering that of the tens of thousands of sources of industrial radiation in the country, few are guarded.
In the United States the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recorded over 1,700 instances in which radioactive materials have been lost or stolen since 1986. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, documented almost 400 cases of illicit sales of nuclear or radiological materials since 1993.
The Department of Energy?s Nuclear Emergency Search Teams are trained to descend upon the threatened area to find and disable additional nuclear devices. In the case of an explosion, NEST would test people for radioactive exposure and provide medical treatment.
The lethality of a "dirty bomb" is dependent on a number of factors, including the type of radioactive material, wind conditions and the speed with which the target area is evacuated. A small bomb could kill no one, but render an area uninhabitable for years. Whatever the lethality, a ?dirty bomb? would create panic.
A September 1987 incident from Brazil demonstrates the destructive power of a 20-gram sample of Cesium-137. Stolen from an abandoned radiological clinic, the sample was cut into pieces by workers at a local junkyard. Over the following weeks, four died and an additional 249 were contaminated. To decontaminate the area, 125,000 drums and 1,470 boxes were filled with contaminated clothing, furniture, dirt and other materials; 85 houses had to be destroyed.
................................................................................
Source: MSNBC Research; Robert Windrem/NBC News; International Atomic Energy Agency ? Printable version
Homeland Security also ordered the dispatch of scores of Energy Department radiation experts to cities planning large public events. One of them was Baltimore, where Coast Guard and Energy Department personnel patrolled the waterfront with sophisticated radiation detectors in preparation for a New Year's Eve party at the Inner Harbor.
Dozens of others fanned out in Manhattan, where, on New Year's Eve, up to 1 million people were scheduled to gather in Times Square. Still others converged on Las Vegas, home of a huge yearly New Year's Eve party on the Strip, and around Los Angeles, where the Rose Bowl parade on New Year's Day draws as many as 1 million people.
The Energy Department scientists proceeded to their assigned locations to take covert readings with their disguised radiological equipment in a variety of settings.
"Our guys can fit in a sports stadium, a construction site or on Fifth Avenue," one Energy Department official said. "Their equipment is configured to look like anybody else's luggage or briefcase."
