New York Police Expand Dirty Bomb Security

If this is your first time visiting National Terror Alert you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. The National terror Alert feed features breaking news, alerts and bulletins on demand and it's free of charge..
You will only see this message on your first visit to the site. Thanks for visiting!

Thousands of additional law enforcement officers within 50 miles of New York City will have access to radiation detectors for dirty bombs and nuclear devices, New York police said on Wednesday.

The detectors, including cell phone-sized devices that officers wear on their belts, could help uncover a dirty bomb that might be assembled outside New York and smuggled in, police said at a security conference. New York Police Department officers have used such devices for several years.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said thousands of law enforcement officers would be using the devices in areas surrounding New York City, including state police and sheriff’s departments in New Jersey and Connecticut.

The increase in officers and equipment was being funded by a federal program called “Securing the Cities” that had been allocated $54 million in the past three years, Browne said.

Nearly eight years after the September 11 attacks in 2001, New York remains the top target for groups like al Qaeda planning attacks on the United States, police and lawmakers said, and the possibility of a radiological attack on a public transport system remained high.

“We know that terrorists come here and we know that they are surveying here,” said Captain Michael Riggio of the NYPD counterterrorism division.

The belt devices, which buzz when they detect radiation, are the “first line of defense” against a possible dirty bomb or a small-scale nuclear device, he said.

Read Full Article

Nuclear Terror Would Strain Bomb Sleuths

If the unthinkable happened, would we be left on the day after, as radioactive dust settled, with the unknowable?

If a terrorist nuclear bomb destroyed the heart of a great city, how would we know who did it, with what? Mideast fanatics with a device improvised from stolen uranium? A weapon smuggled in by a rogue regime? A hijacked U.S. bomb?

Where do you strike back?  How do you head off another attack?

President Barack Obama calls nuclear terrorism “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” It’s an unthinkable that’s being thought about daily in classified corners of world capitals.

But knowledgeable scientists and the investigators behind a new U.S. government report say the American nuclear establishment needs more specialists and more background data on possible bomb sources to do the detective job that awaits on that day after.

“I don’t believe the intelligence community is ready for the challenge,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who worked for years as a U.S. intelligence leader on weapons of mass destruction.

Read Article

NYC Tests Ability To Detect Dirty Bomb

A New York City test of its response to a so-called dirty bomb involved 700 FBI agents and city police officers and a radiation device created for the drill.

The radiation device, while safe, had the same radioactive signature as a dirty bomb, WPIX-TV reported. Dirty bombs add nuclear material to explosives to spread radiation over a wide area.

The drill tested the ability to detect a radioactive device concealed in a vehicle on the Clearview Expressway in Queens. Other drivers participated in the test without knowing it.

But communities in the area were notified a drill would be conducted between 9 p.m. Tuesday and 2 a.m. Wednesday so they would not be caught off-guard. A recent low-altitude flight by a presidential jet over lower Manhattan sparked panic, including hundreds of phone calls to 911 from witnesses who thought they were seeing another attack like the one on Sept. 11, 2001.

Source

Empire 09 – Capital Region Practices For Dirty Bomb Scenario

Imagine a “dirty bomb” exploding in downtown Albany.

Now envision two going off only blocks apart.

That very possibility was simulated Tuesday as hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement officials manned would-be command posts on Albany-Shaker Road to prepare for the potentially catastrophic event.

The mock reaction, part of a three-day exercise called “Empire 09,” was staged around a hockey facility near Albany International Airport. It featured radiation screenings, officials in white “space suit”-type outfits and aircraft to surveil contaminated areas from the sky.

The exercise, hosted by the New York State Disaster Preparedness Commission, was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. It comes only weeks after the FBI arrested four alleged conspirators in a plot to blow up two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at Stewart Airforce Base in Newburgh.

“Our enemies are patient and they are ruthless,” said Mary Kavaney, assistant secretary for public safety in Gov. David Paterson. “We can’t let our guard down and this exercise shows we will not let our guard down.”

The “attack” showed the aftermath of two radiactive dirty bombs going off during the workday – one at Eagle and State streets, the other at Eagle and Madison Avenue. Projected maps show evacuations, from mandatory to voluntary, would stretch from a wide range of downtown Albany across the Hudson River to the city of Rensselaer.

Source

Man Had Enough Uranium For Dirty Bomb – Melbourne

A Victorian man who was arrested and charged last month with serious drug offences held enough uranium at a storage facility to make a “dirty bomb”.

The Melbourne Magistrates Court heard yesterday that investigators found the uranium oxide powder at Harcourt, outside Castlemaine, along with drug equipment and a confidential police document.

It was alleged by a detective that Andrew John McNaughton, 45, became a target of the police Petra taskforce in December after “intelligence indicated that he was involved in police corruption by way of sourcing and distributing restricted confidential Victoria Police information”.

The court heard that an explosives expert found that the uranium could be used in the “construction” of a dirty bomb and that other chemicals for drug manufacture could in combination make an “incendiary device”.

Detective Sergeant Peter Kos said in evidence that the uranium was “depleted” and only dangerous if ingested.

He agreed with defence lawyer Rob Stary that it “effectively has no use at all” except as a measure to determine radioactivity.

But Sergeant Kos, who said the maximum penalty in Victoria for possessing uranium was about a $15,000 fine, said its other possible use was for a dirty bomb.

Mr Stary told magistrate Peter Lauritsen that while its presence might cause “disquiet”, there was no suggestion by police the uranium was for “any other sinister purpose”.

Prosecutor Stephen Payne said police opposed bail for McNaughton on grounds that included that he was an unacceptable risk of reoffending and endangering the public.

Man had ‘enough uranium for bomb’ | theage.com.au.

3 Held Over Radioactive Material

The three men were arrested in the western Ternopil region last Thursday when they tried to sell a container of radioactive material for $10m, the SBU said in a statement.

The men – identified as a member of the Ternopil regional parliament and two businessmen – believed they were selling 3 672kg of radioactive plutonium-239, the statement said.

The material “could have been used for terrorist purposes for the creation of a dirty bomb”, the SBU said, referring to a kind of weapon combining radioactive material with conventional explosives.

Authorities were seeking to determine what substance was in the container, but the SBU said its radioactivity level was 250 times greater than normal background radiation.

The SBU said the substance had been produced on Russian territory in the Soviet era and could have been transferred to Ukraine from a neighbouring state, without providing further details.

The men have been charged with illegal handling of radioactive material and face from eight to 15 years in prison.

Source

UK – Terrorists Could Launch Dirty Bomb Attack

It is becoming “more realistic” that terrorists could get hold of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to attack the United Kingdom, the British Home Office said today. The warning was included in an updated counter-terrorism strategy designed to tackle what Home Office officials called an evolving terrorist threat.

Rather than acquiring a nuclear warhead, British officials worry more that terrorists could gather radioactive material to build a so-called “dirty-bomb.” That risk has existed for some time, but it’s increased due to the security situation in several failed states as well as a growing market in radioactive materials.

In an off-camera press briefing this morning for a handful of journalists, British officials said they continue to track a large number of British nationals of Pakistani origin who are traveling to Pakistan for terror training, and to fight in the insurgency, or both. However, they said there are some hopeful signs from Pakistan’s new government.

Read Full Article

Report: Dirty Bomb Materials Found In Slain Mans Home

James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.”

According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9.

The report posted on the WikiLeaks Web site states that “On 9 December 2008, radiological dispersal device components and literature, and radioactive materials, were discovered at the Maine residence of an identified deceased [person] James Cummings.”

The section referring to Cummings can be read here.

It says that four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were found in the home.

Also found was literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups. This would seem to confirm observations by local tradesmen who worked at the Cummings home that he was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a collection of Nazi memorabilia around the house, including a prominently displayed flag with swastika. Cummings claimed to have pieces of Hitler’s personal silverware and place settings, painter Mike Robbins said a few days after the shooting.

Read Full Article

Plutonium From Manhatten Project Discovered In Landfill – Hanford Site

One of the most dangerous substances known to man has been found unguarded — in a garbage dump.

Workers cleaning up the Hanford Site, a huge decommissioned nuclear research facility in southeastern Washington state, came across an old safe buried in a pit.

Cracking it open, they found a glass bottle — which turned out to contain plutonium made for the Manhattan Project in 1945.

Plutonium is extremely radioactive, and even a tiny amount could cause lung cancer in a human who breathed it in. But this wasn’t just any plutonium — this was an extremely pure sample of the fissile isotope plutonium-239, used to make atomic bombs such as the one dropped on Nagasaki.

In fact, it now turns out that except for a tiny sample stored at the Smithsonian, the 400 milliliters from the bottle is the oldest batch of plutonium-239 in existence. It’s not enough to make a nuclear weapon, but it’d be plenty for terrorist to manufacture a “dirty bomb” with.

All the other sizable samples of plutonium-239 from 1945 went into the Nagasaki bomb or the Trinity nuclear-test bomb that preceded it. It’s not clear why this batch was left out — or how it came to end up in a sealed safe abandoned in a landfill.

Is WMD Attack Inevitable?

Earlier this week Vice President elect Joseph Biden was briefed on the just released study by the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism that a WMD attack was likely sooner than later and that the supposed “margin of safety” was narrowing. The “top line” of the report is that while terrorist groups with al Qaeda still being the prime concern and suspect lacked the technical capabilities to actually make the weapon, the ability to find cooperating scientists could enable such an attack is increasing. Further, the Commission warned that all roads lead to Pakistan when it comes to weaponizing a WMD. Specifically, the Mumbai attacks last week, of necessity, raise the specter of an attack being planned and launched from inside of Pakistan, and more specifically, from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

In a sense, the release of this new government report, is new, but it is not necessarily news. The warnings about bio-terrorism have been a part of a clarion call since November 3, 2003 when an unclassified CIA Report discussed the risks inherent in the super-accelerated biotechnology sector. The earlier report, “The Darker Bioweapons Future” went just so far. If told us that the fear was the proliferation of weapons, of labs going research and of the growing number of people engaged in the science of developing new “bugs” so that countermeasures could be developed. They talked about the development of elixirs of combinations of a mild pathogen with its antidote a virulent mixture; or of designer pathogens designed to challenge existing antidotes to force the development of new ones; or most scary, a stealth virus that could lie dormant until triggered. What “The Darker Bioweapons Future” did not cover was the possibility of scientists becoming turncoats and offering weapons skills and capabilities to terrorists, and that the origin of the threat might be in Pakistan. Frankly, it took the passage of a few years and some history to conclude that the threat might be real, and that the enemy might lie in the guise of a lab coat. In 2003, no one really considered the possibility that a scientist might “go to the dark side.”

Some of the highlights and recommendations of the report to take away from the report were:

- Nuclear and biological weapons are proliferating: Yes, indeed, they are. The question of course relates to their availability to access of terrorists organizations to them. The statement that as proliferation continues that more countries come into possession the more likely a nefarious end occurs, is obviously true.

Source

Read more

Al-Qaeda Increases Efforts To Obtain Dirty Bomb

MI6 has issued a global priority warning to all security services that Islamic terrorists are now closer to obtaining material to create a “dirty bomb” to launch against Western targets.

Osama bin Laden has long made this a priority and reinforced it with regular messages from his mountain redoubt in the north-west province of Pakistan. He has repeatedly said every “true Muslim must make it his duty to assist in all ways possible to find the next powerful weapon to destroy our enemies”.

After the election of the new Pakistani president, the controversial Asif Ali Zardari, who has served a nine-year jail term on corruption charges he has strongly denied, MI6 fear there will be little ability to provide strong leadership against the new wave of Islamic extremism that al-Qaeda has launched across the country.

Groups such as the newly formed Pakistan Taliban have proclaimed it is focussing on creating a “dirty bomb”.

MI6 agents based in Islamabad fear the mounting instability in Pakistan will make it easier for them to do so.

While Pakistan is the only Muslim country with a nuclear arsenal, it has in the past provided its expertise to Iran.

Pakistan’s Islam bomb was developed in the 1990s by the rogue scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. He sold them to pariah states like North Korea and Libya. He was placed under house arrest by Pervez Musharraf.

But since Musharraf was forced to resign, restrictions on Khan’s detention have been virtually lifted–a decision that has alarmed Western diplomats in Pakistan.

While Musharraf readily agreed for the US to place stringent security around Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, there are serious concern that President Zardari will not be able to resist the rampant pressure al-Qaeda is mounting from its terrorist infrastructure base in Waziristan province in the north-west of the country.

A senior U.S. security official in Islamabad said: “Our concern is the sudden rise in intelligence which strongly indicates that al-Qaeda has renewed plans to gain access to nuclear material that could form a primitive nuclear device, one perhaps that a suicide truck bomber could use”.

In a “dirty bomb”, conventional explosives are surrounded with radioactive material.

The MI6 priority alert says such a device, while having a limited effect as a nuclear weapon, would create widespread panic.

An indication of how the threat has increased has been the number of terrorist-related websites which contain details of how to create a “dirty bomb”. As soon as the sites are discovered, they are e

Source

Terror Groups Developing Dirty Bomb

Islamist terrorists have stepped up their efforts to develop a ‘dirty’ bomb for use against Western targets.

They are exploiting the political chaos in Pakistan in a bid to acquire nuclear material for a ’spectacular’ attack. Read more

A Ticking Radioactive Time Bomb

Since the end of the cold war, the United Nations has logged more than 800 incidents in which radioactive material has gone missing, often from poorly guarded sites. Who is taking it – and should we be worried?

A little before dawn on a recent summer morning, a convoy of three large blue lorries, a handful of police cars and a bus rumbled along the dual carriageway heading north out of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. Even if it had not been so early, the motorcade would probably not have drawn much attention. The lorries were unmarked, the bus carrying a few sleepy policemen was old and scruffy, while the lumbering shipment was big and slow enough to explain the escort and its flashing blue lights. Read more

Aafia Siddiqui – Terror Suspect May Have Been Planning Mass Casualty Attack

The capture of Aafia Siddiqui, most likely saved many innocent lives however; the information she may be able to provide authorities may prove even more valuable in the long run.

Handwritten notes about a “mass casualty attack” that listed New York City landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty were found on Siddiqui, prosecutors said Tuesday. Read more

Next Page »