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November 15, 2004

On the flipside

From ABC News via Mathew Gross:

Evidence mounts of possible global warming and the news brings with it dire circumstances. But on the flip side, it also means an abundance of calamari, according to scientists.

This just in:

Al Qaeda probably possesses nuclear suitcase bombs stolen from Russia, and plans to smuggle them across the border from Mexico where thousands of immigrants cross illegally each day. But on the flip side, experts say a nuclear attack could reverse the trend of skyrocketing property values, particularly along the eastern seaboard.

Don't believe me?

Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004

A key al-Qaeda operative seized in Pakistan recently offered an alarming account of the group's potential plans to target the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction, senior U.S. security officials tell TIME. Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.

Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.," according to the report, parts of which were read to TIME. Masri says his family, seeking refuge from al-Qaeda hunters, is now in Iran.

Masri's account, though unproved, has added to already heightened U.S. concerns about Mexico. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met publicly with top Mexican officials last week to discuss border security and smuggling rings that could be used to slip al-Qaeda terrorists into the country. Weeks prior to Ridge's lightning visit, U.S. and Mexican intelligence conferred about reports from several al-Qaeda detainees indicating the potential use of Mexico as a staging area "to acquire end-stage chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear material."

Then there's this:

December 14, 2002

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been warned Osama bin Laden has 20 suitcase nuclear weapons obtained for cash from former KGB agents, the London Sunday Express reports.

Last October, WorldNetDaily broke the story of bin Laden’s suitcase nukes, detailed in a new book by an FBI consultant on international terrorism.

The book,''Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror,'' by Paul L. Williams, says bin Laden purchased 20 suitcase nuclear weapons in 1998 from former KGB agents for $30 million. The deal is reportedly one of three in the last decade in which al-Qaida purchased small nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear uranium.

Williams says bin Laden's search for nuclear weapons began in 1988 when he hired a team of five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan. These were former employees at the atomic reactor in Iraq before it was destroyed by Israel, Williams says. The team's project was the development of a nuclear reactor that could be used ''to transform a very small amount of material that could be placed in a package smaller than a backpack.''

''By 1990 bin Laden had hired hundreds of atomic scientists from the former Soviet Union for $2,000 a month – an amount far greater that their wages in the former Soviet republics,'' Williams writes. ''They worked in a highly sophisticated and well-fortified laboratory in Kandahar, Afghanistan.''

This work continued throughout the 1990s, the author says.

In 1993, according to the book, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a bin Laden agent who turned into a Central Intelligence Agency source, purchased for al-Qaida a cylinder of weapons-grade uranium from a former Sudanese government minister who represented businessmen from South Africa. The purchase price was $1.5 million and the uranium was tested in Cyprus and transported to Afghanistan.

Al-Fadl reported that, at the time of this transfer, al-Qaida was already working on a deal for suitcase nukes developed for the KGB.

Williams says the Russian Mafia made another mysterious deal with ''Afghani Arabs'' in search of nuclear weapons in 1996. The Russians who sold the material now live in New York.

Then again in 1998, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim was arrested in Munich and charged with acting as an al-Qaida agent to purchase highly enriched uranium from a German laboratory.

That same year, according to Williams, bin Laden succeeded in buying the 20 suitcase nukes from Chechen Mafia figures, including former KGB agents. The $30 million deal was partly cash and partly heroin with a street value of $700 million.

Posted by Mike at November 15, 2004 12:43 PM

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