Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Form 8-K for STORAGE ENGINE INC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18-Mar-2004
Bankruptcy or Receivership
ITEM 3. BANKRUPTCY OR RECEIVERSHIP.
-
On March 1, 2004 (the "Petition Date"), Storage Engine, Inc. commenced a bankruptcy case by filing a voluntary Chapter 11 petition under the United States Bankruptcy Code (the "Code"), 11 U.S.C.ss.101, et seq. in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. The Case Number of the Chapter 11 proceeding is 04-16727-RTL.
Chapter 11 of the Code allows the Debtor, and under some circumstances, creditors and other parties in interest, to propose a plan of reorganization ("Plan"). The Plan may provide for the Debtor to reorganize by continuing to operate, to liquidate by selling assets of the estate, or a combination of both. Storage Engine, Inc. intends to file a plan of reorganization and will endeavor to remain in business. Storage Engine, Inc. is operating its business as a debtor-in-possession, meaning that its pre-bankruptcy management continues in place and that no trustee or receiver has been appointed by the Bankruptcy Court.
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/040318/seng.ob8-k.html
Scam emails imitate police
FEBRUARY 17, 2004
COMPUTER criminals are using emails claiming to be from federal police to access the files of home internet users, the Australian High Tech Crime Centre warned.
The centre's acting director, Nigel Phair, said false emails claiming to be from federal police were being sent to the public.
The email asks if the receiver is aware they are being investigated by police.
It asks "is that true?" and then "have you really committed such crimes?" before encouraging people to click on two links for further details.
Once the user clicks on those links, their keystrokes may be traced, enabling the sender of the email to record information such as online bank passwords.
Mr Phair said it was the first time the AHTCC had seen such an email claiming to be from a law enforcement agency.
"The AHTCC advises internet users to delete emails of this nature and to avoid clicking on the two sites enclosed," he said in a statement.
Users were also urged to ensure their anti-virus software was up to date.
The centre is investigating the origin of the bogus email.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,8707873^15319^^nbv^15306,00.html
Former ViewSonic network admin faces five years inside for hack
October 07 2003
by Robert Lemos
And then there’d be a fine of $250,000.
A former network administrator for computer monitor maker ViewSonic pleaded guilty on Monday to illegally accessing a company server and deleting critical data two weeks after the firm had fired him, the US Department of Justice has said in a statement.
Andrew Garcia, 38, admitted to a Los Angeles district court that he caused more than $53,000 in damages and clean-up costs when he had shut down a key server and prevented ViewSonic's Taiwan office from accessing the business's data, said Wesley Hsu, an assistant US attorney for the Central District of California.
While ViewSonic had locked his accounts, Garcia had used another employee's account to gain access, Hsu said. "He had, in the course of his employment, obtained other employees’ passwords," he said. Garcia's legal representative wasn't available for comment.
Garcia administered ViewSonic's network at the company's Walnut, California, main office. On 14 April, 2002, two weeks after Garcia was terminated, he logged into the system using another employee's passwords and deleted critical files, causing the server to crash, according to the Justice Department. ViewSonic's Taiwan office was unable to access the server for several days, the Justice Department said in the statement.
Garcia is scheduled to be sentenced in the case on 12 January, 2004. He faces a maximum sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000.
Robert Lemos writes for CNET News.com.
http://www.silicon.com/networks/lans/0,39024663,10006299,00.htm
NAB nabs e-mail scam
Howard Dahdah, PC World
18/02/2004 10:35:45
The National Australia Bank is warning all its customers of an e-mail scam which gleans confidential information from online banking accounts.
The scam, which is the fourth to hit the NAB in the last year, was reported late Tuesday afternoon.
A NAB spokesperson said they are aware of only one customer that has been conned thus far. She said the customer has since been asked to change their password on their online account.
The scam e-mail comes into people's inboxes with the title 'Your National Bank account protection'.
It then states: "As a part of our ongoing commitment to provide the "Best Possible" service to all our Members, we are now requiring each Member to validate their accounts once per month.”
The email asks for bankers to click on a link https://national.com.au/validate.asp. This then takes them to a site that asks them to enter their National ID followed by Internet Banking Password.
The legitimate NAB URL is http://www.national.com.au.
As of Wednesday morning the fake URL has been blocked. Bankers who visit the site today get an error page.
According to the bank spokesperson, the site was hosted in China.
The NAB's first e-mail-based scam occurred in late August 2003. Other leading banks in the past six months have from suffered similar spurious activity.
Customers who have received the e-mail and entered their details are asked to contact the bank on 132 265.
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php?id=1041815809&fp=2&f%20pid=1
The same scam is being run on people with Paypal accounts in the United States
We purchased suitcase bombs"
22/03/2004
Speculation grows that al Qaeda bought nuclear weapons on the black
market in central Asia.
The biographer of Osama bin Laden's second in command quoted Ayman al-
Zawahri during an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Mr al-Zawahri - "the real brain
behind Osama bin Laden" - claimed "smart briefcase bombs" were
readily available on the black market.
Mr Mir pressed the interviewee over the truth of his claims, to wit
Mr al-Zawahri replied: "if you have $30 million, go to the black
market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and
a lot of smart briefcase bombs are available."
Mr Mir quoted al-Zawahri as saying: "They have contacted us, we sent
our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and
they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs."
The Egyptian surgeon was dubbed the "real strategist" of al Qaeda by
Mr Mir. Osama bin Laden was only the "front man."
Mr Mir said he believed Mr al-Zawahri was more dangerous than bin
Laden.
Mr al-Zawahri is believed to be hiding in a remote mountainous region
near the Pakistan-Afghan border where a joint US-Pakistani military
operation is being conducted against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces
http://www.dehavilland.co.uk/webhost.asp?
wci=default&wcp=NationalNewsStoryPage&ItemID=2254089&ServiceID=8&filte
rid=10&searchid=8
There has never been an independent inquiry in the events of 9/11. Despite two years of repeated attempts by the families of the victims of 9/11, there has never been an independent investigation of What Really Happened that day. Is there an OngoingCoverup?
Both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney took extraordinary steps to limit any investigation into the events of 9/11.
The NTSB never held inquiries into any of the 4 plane crashes, as required by law, and the FBI is withholding the data from the airliner's flight recorders.
All of the steel from the Twin Towers was shipped out of the country before any investigation was held.
The media says that bin Laden carried out the 9/11 massacre from the caves of Afghanistan, yet after a supposedly "thorough" investigation, the FBI says they have not uncovered a single piece of paper that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot. Some are starting to ask: OsamaBinAsset?
7 of the supposed "hijackers" turned out to be alive and not even in the US on 9/11.
3 of the "hijackers" listed a US Navy base as their address on their drivers licences.
The Twin Towers didn't collapse, they exploded outwards; parts of the buildings were ejected as far as 70 m. before they began to fall, and the buildings' concrete was reduced to fine dust. What really brought down the TwinTowers?
No steel structured skyscraper in history has collapsed due to fire.
The steel support columns in the sub-basement of the Twin Towers were melted, and five weeks later, were still pools of molten steel.
They say an airliner crashed into the Pentagon, but if so, why isn't there the debris of an airliner crash at the scene of the PentagonAttack?
There's no airliner debris at the Pentagon, and the deep and focused damage to the building could not be from an airliner crash.
The FBI is withholding 2 videos that may show what really hit the Pentagon, and the photos from the DoD Pentagon security camera have been falsified.
The 47 story World Trade Center Building Number 7 was levelled in 8 seconds, seven hours the after the Twin Towers came down. As it hadn't been hit by any plane, nor sustained any significant damage from the "collapse" of Twin Towers earlier two buildings away, why did Building7Collapse?
The photographs show that there was no any major fire in the building at the time.
The videos clearly show that it was a controlled demolition.
The source of the anthrax was the US Military biological weapons program. The anthrax was identified as a strain used by the US government, and the anthrax used was weaponized according to the American process. Are American terrorists behind the AnthraxAttacks?
The anthrax terrorist(s) worked for the US Military or their contractors, and the attacks were planned before 9/11.
The targets of the anthrax attacks were the Senators who opposed the USA Patriot [sic] Act, which was then passed by Congress without it being printed or read.
http://www.911review.org/
Missing The Oil Story
by Nina Burleigh
Recently I attended one of those legendary Washington dinner parties, attended by British cosmopolites and Americans in the know. A few courses in, people were gossiping about the Bush family's close and enduring friendship with the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington. By the end of the evening, everyone was talking about how the unfolding events were going to affect the flow of oil out of Central Asia.
I left wondering whether 6,000 Americans might prove to have died in New York for the royal family of Saud, or oil, or both. But I didn't have much more than insider dinner gossip to go on. I get my analysis from the standard all-American news outlets. And they've been too focused on a) anthrax and smallpox, or b) the intricacies of Muslim fanaticism, to throw any reporters at the murky ways in which international oil politics and its big players have a stake in what's unfolding.
A quick Nexis search brought up a raft of interesting leads that would keep me busy for 10 years if the economics of this war was my beat. But only two articles in the American media since September 11 have tried to describe how Big Oil might benefit from a cleanup of terrorists and other anti-American elements in the Central Asia region. One was by James Ridgeway of the Village Voice. The other was by a Hearst writer based in Paris and it was picked up only in the San Francisco Chronicle.
In other words, only the Left is connecting the dots of what the Russians have called "The Great Game" -- how oil underneath the 'stans' fits into the new world order. Here's just a small slice of what ought to provoke deeper research by American reporters with resources and talent.
Start with father Bush. The former president and ex-CIA director is not unemployed these days. He's been globetrotting as a member of Washington's Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private equity firm which employs a motorcade of former ranking Republicans, including Frank Carlucci, Jim Baker and Richard Darman. George Bush senior and colleagues open doors overseas for The Carlyle Group's "access capitalists."
Bush specializes in Asia and has been in and out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (countries that revere him thanks to the Gulf War) often on business since his presidency. Baker, the pin-striped midwife of 'Election 2000' was working his network in the 'stans' before the ink was dry on Clinton's first inaugural address. The Bin Laden family (presumably the friendly wing) is also invested in Carlyle. Carlyle's portfolio is heavy in defense and telecommunications firms, although it has other holdings including food and bottling companies.
The Carlyle connection means that George Bush Senior is on the payroll from private interests that have defense business before the government, while his son is president. Hmmm. As Charles Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity has put it, "in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. And that to me is a jaw-dropper."
Why can we assume that global businessmen like Bush Senior and Jim Baker care about who runs Afghanistan and NOT just because it's home base for lethal anti-Americans? Because it also happens to be situated in the middle of that perennial vital national interest -- a region with abundant oil. By 2050, Central Asia will account for more than 80 percent of our oil. On September 10, an industry publication, Oil and Gas Journal, reported that Central Asia represents one of the world's last great frontiers for geological survey and analysis, "offering opportunities for investment in the discovery, production, transportation, and refining of enormous quantities of oil and gas resources."
It's assumed we need unimpeded access in the 'stans' for our geologists, construction workers and pipelines if we are going to realize the conservation-free, fossil-fueled future outlined recently by Vice President Cheney. A number of pipeline projects to carry Central Asia's resources west are already under way or have been proposed. They would go through Russia, through the Caucasus or via Turkey and Iran. Each route will be within easy reach of the Taliban's thugs and could be made much safer by an American vanquishment of Muslim terrorism.
There's also lots of oil beneath the turf of our politically precarious newest best friend, Pakistan. "Massive untapped gas reserves are believed to be lying beneath Pakistan's remotest deserts, but they are being held hostage by armed tribal groups demanding a better deal from the central government," reported Agence France Presse just days before September 11.
So many business deals, so much oil, all those big players with powerful connections to the Bush administration. It doesn't add up to a conspiracy theory. But it does mean there is a significant MONEY subtext that the American public ought to know about as "Operation Enduring Freedom" blasts new holes where pipelines might someday be buried.
Nina Burleigh has written for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and New York magazine. As a reporter for TIME, she was among the first American journalists to enter Iraq after the Gulf War.
http://www.carlylegroup.net/#missing
Sharon Edges Closer to World War
By GILAD ATZMON
Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was murdered at daybreak on Monday. Israel Air Force helicopters fired missiles at the car carrying the wheelchair-bound head of the Islamic group as he left a mosque near his house in Gaza City. It also appears Ariel Sharon was in direct command of the assassination operation, not entirely surprising considering his bloody history.
For those who fail to realise, today's barbaric Israeli act is an open call for a world war. It is the final wake up call for every Muslim around the world. It is violent proof that Israel isn't only against the Palestinians but rather against Islam. Israel killed a prime spiritual leader on his way out of the mosque. I have no doubt that this Israeli act won't be forgiven. I also have no doubt that many Israelis will pay with their life for Sharon's act. Moreover I am sure that sooner rather than later many innocent non-Israelis around the world will die just for being near by an Israeli embassy, Israeli consulate, a synagogue or even an American bank...This is the reality Sharon favours the most.
This is exactly what Israel wants: to turn the entire world into a victim of terror. This might help us to realise the main difference between the Israeli left and right. While both believe in the right of the Jews to live in Zion at the expense of the Palestinian people, the Israeli right wing rely on maintaining a bloody struggle, oppressing the Palestinian people (in particular) and humiliating Arabs (in general). While the Israeli left would attempt to come up with some unrealistic righteous suggestions to appease the Palestinian people and the world community (Oslo accord for instance), the right wing Israelis will suggest that the only method to guarantee Israeli security is to maintain the conflict with the Palestinian people and to let it escalate into an international battle.
On the surface it seems bizarre considering Sharon was just recently pretending to suggest a plan of Israeli disengagement from the Gaza strip. Today he gave us a real chance to peep into his mind. The 'disengagement plan' was just another of Sharon's tricks. In fact, Sharon and the Israeli right wing need the Palestinians, they need them oppressed and humiliated, they need their terror. Israeli right wing hegemony is fed by terror. And now there is a new need emerging. Israel is facing a demographic disaster. Within five years there will be a Palestinian majority in the territories controlled by Israel (between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River). This is literally the end of the Zionist dream. Eventually Israel will have to give away its Jewish identity. While the Israeli left remains confused about this reality, the Israeli right wing is fully prepared. For years Israeli warmongers have openly discussed 'transfer': the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Considering the current world affairs and general opposition to Israel it is hard to believe that large scale ethnic cleansing would go ahead unless some colossal catastrophe was in place. Sharon is preparing the ground for such a disaster. He needs a war, a big one, something that will allow him to go wild, to go out of control, to initiate a campaign in which Israeli soldiers will become murderous squads ready massacre against the Palestinian civilians. Sharon wants to re-launch the 1948 Nakba. Sharon fully understands that this is what the Israeli public want. He is very good at reading their innermost desires.
The killing of Sheikh Yassin pushed the violence far beyond any recognisable measure. It is pushing the Palestinian masses towards martyrdom. According to the Israeli military doctrine, Israel would never be defeated by terror. But at the same time every Israeli realises that the Zionist adventure will be categorically defeated by a demographic crisis. The assassination of Sheikh Yassin is there to push the Palestinians towards acts that will allow the Israelis to impose the most murderous measures against the Palestinian civilians. Mr Sharon, a world acclaimed war criminal and serial murderer proved again that at least when blood games are concerned, he is one step ahead of the game.
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of the new novel A Guide to the Perplexed . Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His new CD, Exile, was just named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk
http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon03222004.html
With nuclear proliferation being expanded by all treaty nations, the number of illegal nuclear weapons circulating appears to be on the rise...
"The disturbing thing is that nuclear weapons can be
purchased. This possibility has been especially enhanced since
disintegration of the USSR. A frightening outflow of nuclear
experts, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, and radioactive
materials has been recorded from there."
http://www.fas.org/news/serbia/fbis-jprs-tnd-94-182.htm
Why would Bush declare martial law?
Certainly the CIA has been very busy lately all over the world.
Italy and Isreal are targets as plain as the nose on Bush's red face.
US warns global nuclear safeguards under threat
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 2003(Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Wednesday called for tighter global nuclear safeguards to prevent countries like North Korea and Iran from using treaties as a cover to build atomic weapons.
Abraham addressed a U.N. General Assembly disarmament committee together with Alexander Rumyantsev, Russia's atomic energy minister, to mark the 50th anniversary of former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" vision.
The American secretary accused North Korea and Iran of using the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, for weapons purposes.
"The nonproliferation regime's weaknesses become woefully apparent when a state joins the NPT, professes peaceful intentions and then abuses the treaty by using it as a cover to build up a nuclear weapons capability, which it then publicly declares through abrogation of, or withdrawal from, the treaty," Abraham said.
Abraham proposed measures similar to ones he announced in September at an IAEA meeting. These include letting the agency implement stronger safeguards, coaxing nations to disclose more information on uranium enrichment, tightening constraints on the acquisition of dangerous materials and doing more to prevent trafficking of nuclear materials.
Russia's Rumyantsev agreed, saying, "The growing terrorist threat obliges us to try to prevent even the smallest amount of radioactive material from falling into the hands of terrorists."
Abraham, however, was noncommittal about more radical proposals from IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, although he said they were worth studying.
'OUTSIDE OF THE BOX'
"We would at least commend Mr. ElBaradei for trying to think outside of the box, as they say, and we are also doing that kind of analysis," Abraham told reporters.
ElBaradei on Monday urged the 191-nation General Assembly to consider imposing international controls on the production of nuclear material that could be used in weapons.
Among his proposals was restricting the enrichment of material that could be used in weapons to facilities under international control. He also called for stronger international rules on the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste.
Rumyantsev stressed Moscow's concerns about radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. "More than 200,000 tonnes of spent fuel has accumulated, and that amount is growing each year by another 10,000 tonnes," he said.
"The construction of major international centers to deal with spent fuel, equipped with modern technology and protective devices, under IAEA coordination, could ensure we meet our obligation to ensure nuclear safety," Rumyantsev said.
The 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty was intended to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The five acknowledged nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- were obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vowed to give up atomic weapons for good in return for help with nuclear energy programs.
ElBaradei intends to report this month on whether Iran is building nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies. Iranian envoys say they plan to give the agency a letter soon accepting tougher, short-notice nuclear inspections.
North Korea pulled out of the treaty and barred IAEA inspections after disclosing a clandestine uranium enrichment program a year ago.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05181311.htm
It will be done on foreign soil because the American public does not, cannot, and will not believe that our own government is behind creating the illusion of terrorism and sowing the seeds of global destruction for the monetary gain of the few at the expense of the many:
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html
Congress mostly backs Bush on nuke weapons, waste
By Andrew Clark
WASHINGTON, Nov 5 2003(Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives and Senate negotiators on Wednesday agreed to give President George W. Bush most of the money he had sought to study new types of nuclear weapons, as critics warned the move could spark a new nuclear arms race.
The funds were approved as part of a $27.3 billion bill funding energy and water programs next year, which also includes spending for a controversial nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert that opponents have vowed to block.
Both chambers are expected to clear the spending bill soon and send it to Bush to be signed into law.
The bill would give Bush half of the $15 million he had sought to develop an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead for use against deeply buried bunkers and all of the $6 million he wanted to research small, low-yield nuclear weapons.
Critics argue small nuclear weapons are dangerous because policy-makers may see them as a usable adjunct to conventional arms, heightening risks of nuclear escalation. And they say U.S. moves to develop them may force others to follow suit.
"This is just a horrible message to send to the rest of the world," said North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.
The House initially cut almost all of the funds for the programs. But most were restored at the Senate's insistence.
"We have compromised rather substantially," said New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici.
Congress is scrambling to finish its overdue budget work before it adjourns for the year, and the House later on Wednesday approved the latest in series of stopgap measures to keep the federal government open until Nov. 21.
The spending bill would also provide $580 million for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal project in 2004, around $11 million less than Bush had requested but far above a $425 million limit earlier endorsed by the Senate.
The plan aims to site the first permanent U.S. nuclear waste repository in the desert northwest of Las Vegas and is bitterly opposed by the state of Nevada, whose senators have generally succeeded in capping its funding in past years.
While Congress has given final approval for the repository, scheduled to open in 2010 and hold up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, the state has launched multiple lawsuits seeking to block it on safety grounds.
The spending bill would commit $11 million next year -- around $12 million less than the White House had requested -- to a proposed new factory to make the plutonium "pits" at the heart of U.S. nuclear weapons. The last U.S. facility manufacturing the nuclear triggers closed in 1989.
It also contains nearly $25 million to fund an effort to cut the time it would take to again begin testing U.S. nuclear weapons from three years to two years. The Bush administration has argued that period needs to be cut further, to 18 months.
The United States has observed a nuclear test moratorium since 1992, but officials have said it may need to resume testing at some point to ensure its arsenal is not degrading.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05415782.htm
Its the Bush Doctrine of preemptive nuclear war...
"Obviously, intelligence that helps localize the bomb is the main key to success. Just as obviously, intelligence of such quality is seldom available - as proven on Sept. 11. Such a search could be truly looking for a needle in a haystack, as detection normally would succeed only if the detectors come within a few feet or so of the hidden bomb."
http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagmc125.php
Japan, Russia and China Allies in coming World War IV
We fail to learn the lessons from history as the US begins to stockpile nuclear weapons in Afghanistan.
"The most accessible nuclear device for any terrorist would be a radiological dispersion bomb. This so-called 'dirty bomb' would consist of waste by-products from nuclear reactors wrapped in conventional explosives, which upon detonation would spew deadly radioactive particles into the environment. This is an expedient weapon, in that radioactive waste material is relatively easy to obtain. Radioactive waste is widely found throughout the world, and in general is not as well guarded as actual nuclear weapons. In the United States, radioactive waste is located at more than 70 commercial nuclear power sites in 31 states. Enormous quantities also exist overseas - in Europe and Japan in particular."
http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagmc125.php
It would appear that something is about to happen...it has been quite some time since anyone has been caught with illegal nuclear weapons grade material...
Russian Nuclear Sites
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/maps/russia.html
Are we now predicting the next wave of terrorist attacks or just perceptive enough to know that which is about to happen?
Historically speaking, we go back to 1947, we look at Clark Clifford, who wrote the National Security Act, in 1947. He was a Wall Street banker, and a lawyer from Wall Street. He was the chairman of First American Bancshares that brought BCCI onto US shores in the late 1980s. He was given the design for the CIA by John Foster and Allen Dulles, two brothers: John Foster becoming Secretary of State, Allen becoming director of Central Intelligence, who was fired by John Kennedy. They were partners in what is until this day the most powerful law firm on Wall Street: Sullivan Cromwell. Bill Casey, the legendary CIA director from the Reagan/Iran Contra years, had been chairman of the Securities and Exchange commission under Ronald Reagan. He, in fact, was a Wall Street lawyer and a stockbroker. I've already mentioned Dave Doherty, the Vice President of NYSE [New York Stock Exchange] who is the retired CIA general counsel. George Herbert Walker Bush is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, very influential on Wall Street. "Buzzy" Krongard is there. John Deutsch, the former CIA director, who retired a couple of years ago, a few years ago, is now on the board of Citibanc or Citigroup. And his number three, Nora Slatkin, the Executive Director at CIA is also at Citigroup. And Maurice "Hank" Greenburg, who is the chairman of AIG insurance, which is the third largest investment pool of capital in the world, was up to be the CIA director in 1995 and Bill Clinton declined to nominate him. So there is an inextricable and unavoidable relationship between CIA and Wall Street.
FAULKNER: Michael Ruppert, this is Bonnie Faulkner. Does the CIA itself invest in the stock market?
RUPPERT: That's unknown. What is known, and what was disclosed by hearings chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1976, is that the CIA was known and proven in the Congressional Record to operate proprietary companies, some of which do trade their stock on Wall Street. One of these, Southern Air Transport, excuse me, was at it during the Iran Contra years. There are others: Evergreen Air, which may or may not be a proprietary, but has strong CIA connections; there are tons of these companies out there. It's not known if CIA manipulates markets, although I really believe that they do.
FAULKNER: Is the CIA's budget public knowledge?
RUPPERT: No. By law. Under the National Security Act of 1947 the CIA's budget is hidden in the budgets of all the other departments of government. We've never been able to pin down, because it's a secret, exactly how much money CIA gets. But the best estimates available-and these are from very good sources-are that it's around 30 billion dollars a year.
http://www.carlylegroup.net/#cia
A Saudi Prince owns more than 5% of Citigroup...
It takes money to start and maintain wars and terrorist activities, lots and lots of money...
The question now before the world...how soon will the first limited nuclear weapon be detonated on Isreali soil? Will it be days? Weeks? Or just prior to the November elections?
Isreali intelligence already knows its coming...they just don't know when... and where. There is now no stopping it. They would be wise to start evacuations ahead of time knowing it.
The CIA's Wall Street Connections
Transcript of interview with Michael C. Ruppert
on Guns and Butter:
The Economy Watch with Kellia Ramares
and Bonnie Faulkner
Aired on KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, CA Friday, October 12, 2001
FAULKNER: On September 29, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that investors had yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks. The uncollected money raises suspicions that the unidentified investors had advance knowledge of the attacks. The securities and exchange commission is investigating high levels of short sales and purchases of "put" options, on the stocks of United Airlines and American Airlines in the three business days before the attacks. Short sales and put options are bets that a stock will fall in price.
Meanwhile, the Interdisciplinary Center, a counter-terrorism think tank headed by former Israeli intelligence officers, has issued a report on Osama bin Laden's finances, saying insiders profited by nearly $16 million dollars on transactions involving the two airlines and the investment banking firm Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center. And that report excluded other unusual trading activity involving insurance companies with significant exposure to damage claims resulting from the attacks.
Joining us by phone from Southern California is Michael C. Ruppert. Ruppert is a former Los Angeles Police Department field officer and narcotics investigator whom the CIA twice tried to recruit.
In the course of investigations in the mid 1970s, he came across information the CIA was trading drugs in order to fund covert operations. He was forced out of the LAPD in November 1978 after being shot at and threatened for speaking out about CIA drug activity.
At a Town Hall meeting on November 15, 1996, Ruppert publicly confronted then-CIA director John Deutsch with information about three specific CIA drug operations. The confrontation led to an invitation to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he spoke and presented written evidence concerning the CIA's infiltration of and illegal relationships with a number of police departments throughout the country.
Michael Ruppert publishes "From The Wilderness," a magazine which deals with the effects of illegal covert operations on our society.
He's here today to discuss his latest article for that magazine . . . about the CIA's knowledge of, and connections to, the suspect trading that occurred in the days prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Michael Ruppert, welcome to "Guns and Butter: The Economy Watch."
RUPPERT: Good to be here.
FAULKNER: Good to have you. Do you think the CIA had advance knowledge of the attacks? Did they know a specific attack was coming?
RUPPERT: I am absolutely convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency had complete and perfect foreknowledge of the attacks, down to date, time place and location, yes.
FAULKNER: Tell us how the CIA monitors the stock market.
RUPPERT: Well, I have written several stories about this over the years. One of the primary functions of the Central Intelligence Agency by virtue of its long and very close history of relationships with Wall Street, I mean to the point where the current executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange is a retired CIA general counsel, has had a mandate to track, monitor, all financial markets worldwide, to look for anomalous trades, indicative of either economic warfare, or insider currency trading or speculation which might affect the US Treasury, or , as in the case of the September 11 attacks, to look for trades which indicated foreknowledge of attacks like we saw.
One of the vehicles that they use to do this is a software called Promis software, which was developed in the 1980s, actually 1979, by Bill Hamilton and a firm called INSLAW, in [the] Washington D.C. area. And Promis is very unique for two reasons: first of all, it had the ability to integrate a wide range of databases using different computer languages and to make them all into one readable format. And secondly, in the years since, Promis has been mated with artificial intelligence to even predict moves in markets and to detect trades that are anomalous, as a result of those projections. So, as recently as last year, I met with members of the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] national security staff, who came down to Los Angeles where I am, who are investigating stolen applications of Promis software and its applications, and we reconfirmed at that time that, not only the US, but Israel, Canada, and many other countries use Promis-like software to track real-time trades in the stock markets to warn them of these events.
The rest of the story:
http://www.carlylegroup.net/#cia
Why doesn't the SEC investigate UDI?
Is Spitzer covert CIA?
See confessions of a dangerous mind?
Market Scams not going away any time soon?
On the Hot Trail of Nuclear Arms Smugglers::::
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/maps/trail01.html
DR. DAVID KAY is the former head of the evaluation section of the International Atomic Energy Agency. After the Persian Gulf War, he served as the deputy leader of the Iraqi Action Team of the IAEA which investigated Saddam Hussein's secret nuclear weapon program. He led three inspection missions to Iraq and located the major Iraqi center for nuclear weapons assembly. Dr. Kay has testified before Congress on what the lessons of Iraq can teach about current proliferation threats.
This interview was conducted in 1996.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: A question that I have been asked repeatedly from people who I would say are characterized mostly as indifferent is, why should Americans care about this? Okay, the Russians have a problem, but why should we be concerned at all?
MR. KAY: I think there are two answers to that. We're like tarantulas in a bottle in one sense. What happens in the boundaries of Russia, the former Soviet Union as a larger whole really does affect us and can affect us.
We're talking about the ability to smuggle something that is not that huge. If you look at how much comes across our border, both legally and illegally in terms of drugs, you'd have to be, I think, extremely foolish to say it could never happen here.
Q: If something does get smuggled out, what are the chances that we could detect it at our borders?
MR. KAY: I think you have to say--it's a two-part answer. If you have no clue that it's missing, that is, the Russians don't pick it up, someone in the group involved doesn't talk and it just simple comes in blindly, there's almost a zero chance that you will pick it up.
If on the other hand, the Russians know so you have a long lead time to set up your guard, to try to look, pick up patterns of movement, then there's a greater chance. But it's still, in my view, right now a very low chance. That's something we ought to be working at seriously.
The rest of the story...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/interviews/kay.html
The map of nuclear proliferation color key:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/maps/np01.html
China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States: All have declared their nuclear status and are recognized under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nuclear-weapon states because each detonated a nuclear test prior to Jan. 1, 1967.
Estimated Nuclear Stockpiles:
Strategic Tactical
U.S. 8.500 7,000
Russia 7,200 6,000 Ò 13,000
United Kingdom 100 100
France 482 0
China 284 150
The Iraqis intended to use calutrons as part of a two-stage enrichment process in which centrifuges were used to bring calutron-enriched uranium from levels of a few percent U-235 to over 90 percent. See David Albright and Mark Hibbs, "Iraq's Nuclear Hide-and-Seek," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1991, pp. 14-23.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/readings/appendixb.html
Shock and Awe...ironicly
Chapter excerpt from Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/readings/appendixb.html
When was the last time illegal nuclear weapons were discovered?
Isreal according to some intelligence sources is a prime target of these basket carrying suicide bombers who appear to be in possession of suitcase sized limited nuclear weapons containing 1 Kiloton explosive capability.
Interesting subject:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2660748
There is definitely a problem out there that this firm is apparently trying to solve but do they have the resources and support of the government?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2660555
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nukes/timeline/tl11.html
I'm wondering how long it would last if started...a limited nuclear war?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2660555
Doesn't look like they have any money to do much:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=NSOL.OB&annual
Interesting chart and volume today...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NSOL.OB
Nuclear Solutions Statement: No Connection with E-Mail Spam Site - Cites "Internet News Bug"
Friday February 13, 12:37 pm ET
WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 13, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Nuclear Solutions, Inc., (OTC BB:NSOL.OB - News) issued the following statement:
It has come to our attention that a news story with the headline ``'Do Not E-Mail' Site a Scam, U.S. Officials Say'' is ERRONEOUSLY linked to our stock ticker symbol NSOL.
Nuclear Solutions has nothing to do with the web site in question, which is accused of ``spamming'' e-mail.
``We are in the nuclear technology business, specifically Nanotechnology, Defense, and the Environment. We do not engage in any business activities related to e-mail or spam. We are far too busy developing things like nuclear micro-batteries and methods to detect shielded nuclear materials,'' said CEO, Patrick Herda.
``The mistake stems from the fact that our ticker symbol (NSOL) is the same one that Network Solutions used years ago. Reuters erroneously issued the news story containing our ticker symbol (NSOL). Internet news providers like Yahoo, AOL and others automatically linked the story to Nuclear Solutions even though our name is not mentioned in the body of the story,'' he continued.
``It's what I would call an internet bug. Unfortunately, it exposes some of the issues that content providers have yet to deal with. We have contacted Reuters and are working on correcting this issue now and in the future,'' concluded Herda.
About Nuclear Solutions, Inc.
Nuclear Solutions, Inc. (OTC BB:NSOL.OB - News) is dedicated to developing proprietary product technologies responding to the needs and opportunities of the 21st century in the areas of:
- Nanotechnology: Development of long-lived nuclear micro-power
sources, based on three U.S. Patents, to power applications in the
emerging field of Nanotechnology, Micro-Electro-Mechanical
Systems, and the new generation of low power microelectronics.
- Homeland Security & Defense: Development of new technologies and
services to detect shielded nuclear materials and "loose nukes."
- Environmental Technology: Development of a process to remediate
tritiated water.
Our goal is to provide the underlying technologies that will enable partner companies to offer new and improved products in these areas.
More information about Nuclear Solutions, Inc. may be found on its website: http://www.nuclearsolutions.com .
Contact:
Nuclear Solutions, Inc.
(202) 787-1951
info@nuclearsolutions.com
Nuclear Solutions Developing Advanced Portable Nuclear Weapons Detection Technology
Friday March 12, 9:15 am ET
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 12, 2004--Nuclear Solutions, Inc., (OTCBB: NSOL - News) announced that it is developing an advanced detection device to detect and localize the presence of portable nuclear weapons and shielded nuclear materials.
"We are developing a new and unique technology to be integrated into a passive primary portal system that would screen trucks and shipping containers in real time for the presence of nuclear weapons useable materials such as Uranium(U-235) and Plutonium (Pu-239)." said, Patrick Herda, company CEO.
The radiation emitted from weapons grade Uranium and Plutonium is relatively weak and easy to shield. This makes identification with conventional radiation detectors unreliable and in some cases not possible at all.
The company is working on funding the prototype construction of a highly sensitive, portable, low cost and ruggedized detection device that responds to minute gravitational gradient anomalies. These disturbances are produced by high density nuclear materials such as Uranium and Plutonium. Unlike radiation, the force of gravity cannot be shielded and is a unique new concept for the detection of shielded nuclear weapons. The company is unaware of any other device with similar target price/performance and size.
In order to engage government support for this project, the company has submitted a white paper to the newly formed Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) and plans to submit a full proposal in response to their solicitation titled "Detection Systems for Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasure" (DSRNC BAA04-02) (More information available at http://www.hsarpabaa.com)
Disclaimer: A limited amount of funding is available under the HSARPA DSRNC program and is awarded on a competitive basis. There is no guarantee that we will receive funding for this program and that the program will be successful. The matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of the Company could differ significantly from those statements. Factors that could adversely affect actual results and performance include, among others, the Company's limited operating history, dependence on key management, financing requirements, technical difficulties commercializing any projects, government regulation, technological change and competition. In any event, undue reliance should not be placed on any forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this press release. Accordingly, reference should be made to the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
About Nuclear Solutions, Inc:
Nuclear Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB: NSOL - News) is dedicated to developing proprietary product technologies responding to the needs and opportunities of the 21st century in the areas of:
Nanotechnology:
Development of long-lived nuclear micro-power sources, based on three U.S. Patents, to power applications in the emerging field of Nanotechnology, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, and the new generation of low power microelectronics.
Homeland Security & Defense:
Development of new technologies and services to detect shielded nuclear materials and nuclear devices.
Environmental Technology:
Development of a process to remediate tritiated water
Our goal is to provide the underlying technologies that will enable partner companies to offer new and improved products in these areas.
More information about Nuclear Solutions, Inc. may be found on its website, www.nuclearsolutions.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
Nuclear Solutions, Inc.
Patrick Herda, 202-787-1951
info@nuclearsolutions.com
Nuclear Solutions are definitely needed but does this company have them? Really?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2660590
Should we create a new board called "Nuclear Issues?"
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2660590
I don't see one here at IHUB...
Do foreign terrorists now have nuclear weapons in their possession?
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=2660555
Do foreign terrorists now have nuclear weapons?
National security includes the defense of the United States of America, protection of our constitutional system of government, and the advancement of United States interests around the globe. National security also depends on America's opportunity to prosper in the world economy. The National Security Act of 1947, as amended, established the National Security Council to advise the President with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to national security. That remains its purpose. The NSC shall advise and assist me in integrating all aspects of national security policy as it affects the United States - domestic, foreign, military, intelligence, and economics (in conjunction with the National Economic Council (NEC)). The National Security Council system is a process to coordinate executive departments and agencies in the effective development and implementation of those national security policies.
From:
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm
National Security is front page news daily, yet we are now faced with a global security breakdown. If one compares these links to each other, the threat of a global meltdown is more ominious today than at any other time in human history combined:
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030528.htm
"According to the NRDC Nuclear Weapons Databook, a standard reference work on American nuclear forces published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the United States did deploy a low-yield Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), based on the W-54 warhead. The SADM could be transported in a shipping case not too much larger than ....(89x66x66cm), and is reported to have weighed “less than 163 pounds” (74 kg). In its operational form it may have weighed quite a bit less, and been considerably smaller than the shipping case noted above, since the same warhead was used in the now-retired Davy Crockett system, which used a recoilless rifle to launch a nuclear-armed projectile. The Davy Crockett projectile was only 65 cm long and had a maximum diameter of 28 cm, which would very nearly fit inside a suitcase. It also weighed 51 pounds (23 kg), a weight which would be transportable by one person. Other sources have reported that the version of the W-54 used in the SADM weighed about 58 pounds.29
MK 54 WARHEAD
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html
Unclassified sources report that the W-54 warhead was developed from 1960-1963, and initial deployment began in 1964. It had a variable yield of .01-1 kT. The Davy Crockett warhead was tested twice in July 1962, with yields of 22 and 18 tons (TNT equivalent), or .022 and .018 kT.30 About 300 SADMs were deployed by the United States, and Army and Marine Corps commando units were trained to use the munitions, as were the special forces of several US allies, including Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. The SADM was intended for use behind enemy lines to disrupt communications and logistics, a mission similar to that ascribed by Lebed to the Soviet “suitcase” bombs.31 The Davy Crockett was removed from service in 1972, but the SADM apparently remained deployed until at least the mid-1980s, and may only have been withdrawn from forward deployment following the 1991 Bush-Gorbachev unilateral initiatives.
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/lebedlg.htm
http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm
Secretary of State Colin Powell summed up the nuclear use dilemma when he said, "The thought of a nuclear conflict in the year 2002, with what that would mean with respect to the loss of life, what that would mean with respect to the condemnation -- the worldwide condemnation -- that would come down on whatever nation chose to take that course of action, would be such that I can see very little military, political, or any other kind of justification for the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons in this day and age may serve some deterrent effect, and so be it, but to think of using them as just another weapon in what might start out as a conventional conflict in this day and age seems to me to be something that no side should be contemplating."
The question now becomes, "Do the global terrorists have access to these small limited nuclear weapons that can be carried around by a single suicide bomber and what will that do to international security?"
Some Additional References for research and study:
[1] Dr. Peter D. Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist, served as the Chief Scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from August 2001 to January 2003. The views expressed here are his own.
[2] Carl Hulse, "Senate Votes to Lift Ban on Producing Nuclear Arms," New York Times, May 21, 2003.
[3] Helen Dewar, "Nuclear Weapons Development Tied to Hill Approval," Washington Post, May 22, 2003, p. A5.
[4] "Prohibition on Research and Development of Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons," Section 3136, P.L. 103-160, FY94 Defense Authorization Act.
[5] David Wright, "The Spratt-Furse Law on Mini-Nuke Development," Backgrounder, Union of Concerned Scientists, May 11, 2003, provides an excellent summary of the phases of nuclear weapons research and development as well as the provision of the Spratt-Furse law.
[6] Carl Hulse, "Both Houses Back More Military Spending," New York Times, May 23, 2003.
[7] Vicki Allen, "Rumsfeld Pushes for New Nuclear Weapons Study," Reuters, May 20, 2003.
[8] House Policy Committee, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, "Differentiation and Defense" An Agenda for the Nuclear Weapons Program," U.S. House of Representatives, February 2003, p. 6, http://wilson.house.gov/Media/Photos/NuclearReport.pdf.
[9] Linton F. Brooks, Prepared Testimony before the Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, April 10, 2003.
[10] Stephen Schwartz, editor, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1998), p. 79.
[11] Yevgenia Borisova, "U.S. Restarts Its Nuclear Machine," The Moscow Times.com, April 24, 2003, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/04/24/001-print.html.
[12] Excerpts from the Nuclear Posture Review are available at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.
[13] For more on the details of these options, see Charles D. Ferguson, "Mini-Nuclear Weapons and the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review," Research Story of the Week, CNS, April 8, 2002, http://www.cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020408.htm.
[14] Sidney Drell, James Goodby, Raymond Jeanloz, and Robert Peurifoy, "A Strategic Choice: New Bunker Busters Versus Nonproliferation," Arms Control Today (March 2003), http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_03/drelletal_mar03.asp.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Stephen M. Younger, "Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century," LAUR-00-2850, Los Alamos National Laboratory, June 27, 2000, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/doe/younger.htm.
[17] Thomas B. Cochran, William Arkin and Milton Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Vol. 1: U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1984), p. 58.
[18] NRDC Nuclear Notebook, "U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2002," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May/June 2002).
[19] The United States had a large arsenal of low-yield nuclear artillery shells and nuclear demolition mines intended for battlefield use until President George H. W. Bush decided to dismantle them in an arms control deal with Mikhail Gorbachev intended to remove tactical nuclear weapons from both stockpiles when both leaders concluded that tactical nuclear weapons served no valid purpose.
[20] Christopher E. Paine and Matthew G. McKinzie, "Does the U.S. Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program Pose a Proliferation Threat?" Natural Resources Defense Council, 1998, http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/athreat.asp.
[21] Hisham Zerriffi and Arjun Makhijani, "Pure Fusion Weapons?" Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, October 1998, http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-6/fusion.html; Suzanne L. Jones and Frank von Hippel, "The Question of Pure Fusion Experiments Under the CTBT," Science and Global Security, Vol. 7, 1998, pp. 129-150, http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eglobsec/publications/pdf/7_2Jones.pdf.
[22] Walter Pincus, "Future of U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Debated," Washington Post, May 4, 2003, p. A6.
[23] Micheal A. Levi, "The Case against New Nuclear Weapons," Issues in Science and Technology (Spring 2003), pp. 63-68.
[24] Robert W. Nelson, "Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons," Science and Global Security, Vol. 10, 2002, pp. 1-20, http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eglobsec/publications/pdf/10_1Nelson.pdf.
[25] Rose Gottemoeller, "On Nukes, We Need to Talk," Washington Post, April 2, 2002.
[26] Dan Stober, "Administration Moves Ahead on Nuclear 'Bunker Busters'," Mercury News, April 23, 2003.
[27] Michael May and Zachary Haldeman, "Effectiveness of Nuclear Weapons against Buried Biological Agents Targets," Center for Security and International Cooperation, Updated April 15, 2003, http://cisac.stanford.edu/research/inprogress/mayhaldeman.html.
[28] Michael A. Levi, "Fire in the Hole: Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Options for Counter-Proliferation," Working Papers, Number 31, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2002, http://www.ceip.org/files/pdf/wp31.pdf.
[29] Christopher E. Paine with Thomas B. Cochran, Matthew G. McKinzie, and Robert S. Norris, "Countering Proliferation or Compounding It?: The Bush Administration's Quest for Earth-Penetrating and Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons," Natural Resources Defense Council, May 2003, http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/bush/abb.pdf.
[30] James Heagy and Peter Zimmerman, unpublished study for the Institute for Defense Analyses.
[31] Steven Lee Myers, "Putin Tells Russians of Clouds with Reform-Plan Lining," New York Times, May 17, 2003.
[32] James Sterngold, "Putin's Arms Talk Sounds the Alarm: Russia Suggests it is Creating New Types of Weapons," San Francisco Chronicle, May 17, 2003.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Interview on the Lehrer Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Washington, DC, May 30, 2002, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2002/10599.htm.
The Bubble of American Supremacy
A prominent financier argues that the heedless assertion of American power in the world resembles a financial bubble—and the moment of truth may be here
by George Soros
.....
t is generally agreed that September 11, 2001, changed the course of history. But we must ask ourselves why that should be so. How could a single event, even one involving 3,000 civilian casualties, have such a far-reaching effect? The answer lies not so much in the event itself as in the way the United States, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, responded to it.
Admittedly, the terrorist attack was historic in its own right. Hijacking fully fueled airliners and using them as suicide bombs was an audacious idea, and its execution could not have been more spectacular. The destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center made a symbolic statement that reverberated around the world, and the fact that people could watch the event on their television sets endowed it with an emotional impact that no terrorist act had ever achieved before. The aim of terrorism is to terrorize, and the attack of September 11 fully accomplished this objective.
Even so, September 11 could not have changed the course of history to the extent that it has if President Bush had not responded to it the way he did. He declared war on terrorism, and under that guise implemented a radical foreign-policy agenda whose underlying principles predated the tragedy. Those principles can be summed up as follows: International relations are relations of power, not law; power prevails and law legitimizes what prevails. The United States is unquestionably the dominant power in the post-Cold War world; it is therefore in a position to impose its views, interests, and values. The world would benefit from adopting those values, because the American model has demonstrated its superiority. The Clinton and first Bush Administrations failed to use the full potential of American power. This must be corrected; the United States must find a way to assert its supremacy in the world.
This foreign policy is part of a comprehensive ideology customarily referred to as neoconservatism, though I prefer to describe it as a crude form of social Darwinism. I call it crude because it ignores the role of cooperation in the survival of the fittest, and puts all the emphasis on competition. In economic matters the competition is between firms; in international relations it is between states. In economic matters social Darwinism takes the form of market fundamentalism; in international relations it is now leading to the pursuit of American supremacy.
Not all the members of the Bush Administration subscribe to this ideology, but neoconservatives form an influential group within it. They publicly called for the invasion of Iraq as early as 1998. Their ideas originated in the Cold War and were further elaborated in the post-Cold War era. Before September 11 the ideologues were hindered in implementing their strategy by two considerations: George W. Bush did not have a clear mandate (he became President by virtue of a single vote in the Supreme Court), and America did not have a clearly defined enemy that would have justified a dramatic increase in military spending.
September 11 removed both obstacles. President Bush declared war on terrorism, and the nation lined up behind its President. Then the Bush Administration proceeded to exploit the terrorist attack for its own purposes. It fostered the fear that has gripped the country in order to keep the nation united behind the President, and it used the war on terrorism to execute an agenda of American supremacy. That is how September 11 changed the course of history.
Exploiting an event to further an agenda is not in itself reprehensible. It is the task of the President to provide leadership, and it is only natural for politicians to exploit or manipulate events so as to promote their policies. The cause for concern lies in the policies that Bush is promoting, and in the way he is going about imposing them on the United States and the world. He is leading us in a very dangerous direction.
he supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."
The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.
The Bush doctrine, first enunciated in a presidential speech at West Point in June of 2002, and incorporated into the National Security Strategy three months later, is built on two pillars: the United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy; and the United States arrogates the right to pre-emptive action. In effect, the doctrine establishes two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations; and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the will of the United States. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
To be sure, the Bush doctrine is not stated so starkly; it is shrouded in doublespeak. The doublespeak is needed because of the contradiction between the Bush Administration's concept of freedom and democracy and the actual principles and requirements of freedom and democracy. Talk of spreading democracy looms large in the National Security Strategy. But when President Bush says, as he does frequently, that freedom will prevail, he means that America will prevail. In a free and open society, people are supposed to decide for themselves what they mean by freedom and democracy, and not simply follow America's lead. The contradiction is especially apparent in the case of Iraq, and the occupation of Iraq has brought the issue home. We came as liberators, bringing freedom and democracy, but that is not how we are perceived by a large part of the population.
It is ironic that the government of the most successful open society in the world should have fallen into the hands of people who ignore the first principles of open society. At home Attorney General John Ashcroft has used the war on terrorism to curtail civil liberties. Abroad the United States is trying to impose its views and interests through the use of military force. The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the Bush doctrine, and it has turned out to be counterproductive. A chasm has opened between America and the rest of the world.
The size of the chasm is impressive. On September 12, 2001, a special meeting of the North Atlantic Council invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty for the first time in the alliance's history, calling on all member states to treat the terrorist attack on the United States as an attack upon their own soil. The United Nations promptly endorsed punitive U.S. action against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. A little more than a year later the United States could not secure a UN resolution to endorse the invasion of Iraq. Gerhard Schröder won re-election in Germany by refusing to cooperate with the United States. In South Korea an underdog candidate was elected to the presidency because he was considered the least friendly to the United States; many South Koreans regard the United States as a greater danger to their security than North Korea. A large majority throughout the world opposed the war on Iraq.
eptember 11 introduced a discontinuity into American foreign policy. Violations of American standards of behavior that would have been considered objectionable in ordinary times became accepted as appropriate to the circumstances. The abnormal, the radical, and the extreme have been redefined as normal. The advocates of continuity have been pursuing a rearguard action ever since.
To explain the significance of the transition, I should like to draw on my experience in the financial markets. Stock markets often give rise to a boom-bust process, or bubble. Bubbles do not grow out of thin air. They have a basis in reality—but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.
Exactly when the boom-bust process enters far-from-equilibrium territory can be established only in retrospect. During the self-reinforcing phase participants are under the spell of the prevailing bias. Events seem to confirm their beliefs, strengthening their misconceptions. This widens the gap and sets the stage for a moment of truth and an eventual reversal. When that reversal comes, it is liable to have devastating consequences. This course of events seems to have an inexorable quality, but a boom-bust process can be aborted at any stage, and the adverse effects can be reduced or avoided altogether. Few bubbles reach the extremes of the information-technology boom that ended in 2000. The sooner the process is aborted, the better.
The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position.
Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce the trend.
Whatever the justification for removing Saddam Hussein, there can be no doubt that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over the opinions of our allies. The gap between the Administration's expectations and the actual state of affairs could not be wider. It is difficult to think of a recent military operation that has gone so wrong. Our soldiers have been forced to do police duty in combat gear, and they continue to be killed. We have put at risk not only our soldiers' lives but the combat effectiveness of our armed forces. Their morale is impaired, and we are no longer in a position to properly project our power. Yet there are more places than ever before where we might have legitimate need to project that power. North Korea is openly building nuclear weapons, and Iran is clandestinely doing so. The Taliban is regrouping in Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war are weighing heavily on our economy, and we are failing to address many festering problems—domestic and global. If we ever needed proof that the dream of American supremacy is misconceived, the occupation of Iraq has provided it. If we fail to heed the evidence, we will have to pay a heavier price in the future.
eanwhile, largely as a result of our preoccupation with supremacy, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the war on terrorism. Indeed, war is a false metaphor in this context. Terrorists do pose a threat to our national and personal security, and we must protect ourselves. Many of the measures we have taken are necessary and proper. It can even be argued that not enough has been done to prevent future attacks. But the war being waged has little to do with ending terrorism or enhancing homeland security; on the contrary, it endangers our security by engendering a vicious circle of escalating violence.
The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action. Protection against terrorism requires precautionary measures, awareness, and intelligence gathering—all of which ultimately depend on the support of the populations among which the terrorists operate. Imagine for a moment that September 11 had been treated as a crime. We would not have invaded Iraq, and we would not have our military struggling to perform police work and getting shot at.
Declaring war on terrorism better suited the purposes of the Bush Administration, because it invoked military might; but this is the wrong way to deal with the problem. Military action requires an identifiable target, preferably a state. As a result the war on terrorism has been directed primarily against states harboring terrorists. Yet terrorists are by definition non-state actors, even if they are often sponsored by states.
The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy. That pursuit, in turn, will continue to generate resistance. Further, by turning the hunt for terrorists into a war, we are bound to create innocent victims. The more innocent victims there are, the greater the resentment and the better the chances that some victims will turn into perpetrators.
The terrorist threat must be seen in proper perspective. Terrorism is not new. It was an important factor in nineteenth-century Russia, and it had a great influence on the character of the czarist regime, enhancing the importance of secret police and justifying authoritarianism. More recently several European countries—Italy, Germany, Great Britain—had to contend with terrorist gangs, and it took those countries a decade or more to root them out. But those countries did not live under the spell of terrorism during all that time. Granted, using hijacked planes for suicide attacks is something new, and so is the prospect of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. To come to terms with these threats will take some adjustment; but the threats cannot be allowed to dominate our existence. Exaggerating them will only make them worse. The most powerful country on earth cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world. Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists' hands. They are setting our priorities.
recent Council on Foreign Relations publication sketches out three alternative national-security strategies. The first calls for the pursuit of American supremacy through the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action. It is advocated by neoconservatives. The second seeks the continuation of our earlier policy of deterrence and containment. It is advocated by Colin Powell and other moderates, who may be associated with either political party. The third would have the United States lead a cooperative effort to improve the world by engaging in preventive actions of a constructive character. It is not advocated by any group of significance, although President Bush pays lip service to it. That is the policy I stand for.
The evidence shows the first option to be extremely dangerous, and I believe that the second is no longer practical. The Bush Administration has done too much damage to our standing in the world to permit a return to the status quo. Moreover, the policies pursued before September 11 were clearly inadequate for dealing with the problems of globalization. Those problems require collective action. The United States is uniquely positioned to lead the effort. We cannot just do anything we want, as the Iraqi situation demonstrates, but nothing much can be done in the way of international cooperation without the leadership—or at least the participation—of the United States.
Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states. What goes on within individual states can be of vital interest to the rest of the world, but the principle of sovereignty militates against interfering in their internal affairs. How to deal with failed states and oppressive, corrupt, and inept regimes? How to get rid of the likes of Saddam? There are too many such regimes to wage war against every one. This is the great unresolved problem confronting us today.
I propose replacing the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action with preventive action of a constructive and affirmative nature. Increased foreign aid or better and fairer trade rules, for example, would not violate the sovereignty of the recipients. Military action should remain a last resort. The United States is currently preoccupied with issues of security, and rightly so. But the framework within which to think about security is collective security. Neither nuclear proliferation nor international terrorism can be successfully addressed without international cooperation. The world is looking to us for leadership. We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/12/soros.htm
Hungarian-Born Billionaire Soros Presses Anti-Bush Effort
By Susan Milligan, The Boston Globe Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 22--CHICAGO - There were gingerbread houses on the tables and lights on the Christmas trees at the White House holiday reception last December, but George W. Bush was haunted by the ghost of a Hungarian-born billionaire.
It was right before the US Supreme Court upheld the campaign finance overhaul law, and Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Lowell and a chief sponsor of the package, gently taunted the president, telling him, "Mr. President, the Supreme Court is going to rule soon on the law you and I made together."
The president, Meehan recalled, responded dryly, "Is it going to be OK for George to spend all that money?"
Bush -- whose campaign has already raised $170 million -- wasn't talking about himself. He was referring to George Soros, the 73-year-old financier who has spent some $5 billion to promote democratic principles around the world and who now says he will spend what it takes to elect a Democratic candidate in his new home country.
Soros, whose condemnations of Bush are as lavish as his bankroll, could bridge a critical fund-raising gap between the GOP and the Democrats. To Republicans, Soros is a meddler and a megalomaniac who imagines his wealth gives him the right to tinker with politics from Albania to Washington.
They are eagerly awaiting new regulations from the Federal Election Commission that might stop Soros from funding certain anti-Bush groups.
"I have made the rejection of the Bush doctrine the central project of my life for the next year . . . and that is why I am ready to put my money where my mouth is," Soros said in an interview, describing Bush as a unilateralist who has bungled the Iraq situation, alienated foreign leaders, and used the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as a "pretext to pursue a dream of American supremacy that is neither attainable nor desirable."
Soros, who experienced Nazi and Soviet repression in Eastern Europe, now warns that Bush's policies will alienate the world and choke off civil liberties.
Born in Budapest, Soros left in 1947 for England, where he attended the London School of Economics, and then moved in 1956 to the United States, where he made billions as a financier and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC.
For the last 15 years, Soros divided his time between making pots of money and giving it away, funding democracy-enhancing projects abroad through his Open Society Institute.
Amassing a fortune through clever -- some would say ruthless -- capitalist ventures, including bold currency speculations, Soros has enraged free-marketeers with his criticism of capitalism itself and of Bush's foreign policy doctrine.
Soros's most recent book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power," is an attack on Bush's preemptive military action against Iraq.
The pledge to spend millions to defeat Bush has rattled many conservatives.
Some have warned that Soros might use his investing prowess to tamper with the US financial markets right before the election to damage Bush's prospects, a charge Soros's associates dismiss as an absurd conspiracy theory. Others have accused him of comparing Bush directly to the Nazis -- a charge Soros says is based on a misinterpretation of his statements about tolerance of critical thought here -- and some Republicans charge that he is skirting the campaign-finance laws he claims to support.
For his part, Soros said he was honoring both the letter and the spirit of the law, which seeks to remove special interests from campaigns.
A Jew who lived in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Soros compares what he calls the administration's "Orwellian double-speak" to more repressive regimes.
"This development does remind me of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Communist regime," Soros said, echoing earlier comments that enrage some of his opponents.
"Comparing the actions of the president of the United States, any president, Democrat or Republican, to the Third Reich, to the Nazis, is quite troubling," said Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress. "If one is going to become a leader in our political process, you would hope that he would share the values of our democratic system and not make these ridiculous, outlandish comments."
Soros said his comments have been misused.
"My position has been distorted . . . [by people saying] that I called Bush a Nazi, which I didn't do, I wouldn't do, because I know the difference," Soros said.
Soros gets hate mail, and the Republican National Committee has sent letters to supporters warning of the threat posed by Soros's fortune.
Republicans, too, have wealthy benefactors who contribute to conservative causes, Soros notes.
So why does one rich liberal provoke such animosity?
Perhaps, Soros's admirers say, it is because Soros acts against type. He made his money through sophisticated investments and yet has been highly critical of the system that enabled him to make so much money.
"Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat," Soros wrote in The Atlantic in 1997.
And Soros gives away a great deal of his money, financing the New York-based Open Society Institute and Open Society foundations and organizations in more than 50 countries.
"To the conservatives, it's one thing if you're a highly identified liberal like Ted Turner -- it's a completely different thing if you're a captain of industry and you're saying to the public, 'This is a very dangerous agenda," " said Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. "It's a hard thing, I think, for conservatives to see someone like them against George Bush."
Soros has "taken a lot of grief from the Republicans for doing what he thinks is right," said Steve Rosenthal, chief executive officer of Americans Coming Together, or ACT, which has received what Rosenthal called a "critical" $10 million commitment from Soros.
In Central and Eastern Europe, the financier is regarded with gratitude and some suspicion.
The Central European University Soros established in downtown Budapest has given many in the region an opportunity to go to college.
But some in the region are not sure of Soros's motivation.
"The typical skepticism around the region is that he's just doing it to save on taxes. People don't believe in philanthropy that much," said Nicholas Sevari, an international business consultant in Budapest.
The Hungarian ambassador to the United States, Andras Simonyi, said he admires Soros's work but disagrees with him about Iraq. The Hungarian government was an early supporter of the Iraq war and has committed soldiers there.
In the United States, Bush's supporters are hoping Soros can be thwarted by a stricter interpretation of campaign finance laws.
While Soros is restricted under the McCain-Feingold Act from making unlimited contributions to political parties or candidates, he has been allowed to commit millions to organizations that run ads critical of the administration.
"I would be definitely willing to spend more. I probably will spend more, because there is such a disparity [between Democrats and Republicans] in the amount of money available for the media campaign now," Soros said. While he was "very keen on [former Vermont governor Howard] Dean," Soros said he was "delighted' to see Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts emerge as the Democrats' pick and said he would be willing to hold a fund-raiser for Kerry.
Soros has already given at least $15 million to several left-leaning groups, including the aggressively anti-Bush Moveon.org, ACT, and the Center for American Progress. He faces a challenge from those who want to limit the activities of so-called "527" organizations Soros is helping to fund; the Federal Election Commission may issue rules governing 527 groups in May.
Such organizations are not subject to the same contribution limits imposed on campaign and party committees. But Soros, who backed the campaign finance law, said he is not violating the spirit of the act.
"The purpose of campaign finance reform was primarily to remove special interests from influence, from access, and supporting 527s doesn't give me or anyone else access," Soros said. "I think I am justified in what I am doing."
-----
To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe
© 2004, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8248908.htm
The technology definitely has existed for a number of years:
according to the NRDC Nuclear Weapons Databook, a standard reference work on American nuclear forces published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the United States did deploy a low-yield Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), based on the W-54 warhead. The SADM could be transported in a shipping case not too much larger than that described by Lebed (89x66x66cm), and is reported to have weighed “less than 163 pounds” (74 kg). In its operational form it may have weighed quite a bit less, and been considerably smaller than the shipping case noted above, since the same warhead was used in the now-retired Davy Crockett system, which used a recoilless rifle to launch a nuclear-armed projectile. The Davy Crockett projectile was only 65 cm long and had a maximum diameter of 28 cm, which would very nearly fit inside Lebed’s suitcase. It also weighed 51 pounds (23 kg), a weight which would be transportable by one person. Other sources have reported that the version of the W-54 used in the SADM weighed about 58 pounds.29
Unclassified sources report that the W-54 warhead was developed from 1960-1963, and initial deployment began in 1964. It had a variable yield of .01-1 kT. The Davy Crockett warhead was tested twice in July 1962, with yields of 22 and 18 tons (TNT equivalent), or .022 and .018 kT.30 About 300 SADMs were deployed by the United States, and Army and Marine Corps commando units were trained to use the munitions, as were the special forces of several US allies, including Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. The SADM was intended for use behind enemy lines to disrupt communications and logistics, a mission similar to that ascribed by Lebed to the Soviet “suitcase” bombs.31 The Davy Crockett was removed from service in 1972, but the SADM apparently remained deployed until at least the mid-1980s, and may only have been withdrawn from forward deployment following the 1991 Bush-Gorbachev unilateral initiatives.
Taken from the links at the previous post.
It is contradictory, but Iran selling LNG to China could have something to do with the attack. Isreal's allegience to China is waning and relations are surely strained. The bigger issue is how swiftly retaliation will come in the form of hidden nukes aimed at Isreal by suicide bombers carrying strange looking briefcases:
Are Suitcase Nukes on the Loose?
The Story Behind the Controversy
By Scott Parrish
November 1997
A summary version is linked here:
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/lebedst.htm
Former Russian Security Council Secretary Aleksandr Lebed has stirred controversy in both Russia and the United States with his allegations that the Russian government is currently unable to account for some eighty small atomic demolition munitions (ADMs) which were manufactured in the USSR during the Cold War. Lebed originally made the allegations in a closed meeting with a US congressional delegation in May 1997. His charges generated public controversy three months later when he repeated them in an interview with the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes, which was broadcast on 7 September 1997.1 Russian officials initially dismissed Lebed’s charges, saying all of the country’s nuclear weapons were accounted for and under strict control. Top-ranking Russian defense officials later went further and denied that any such weapons had ever been built by the USSR, claiming that they would be too expensive to maintain and too heavy for practical use. Lebed has stood by his statement, however, and his charges have been backed by a former advisor to President Yeltsin, Aleksey Yablokov, who told a US Congressional subcommittee on 2 October 1997 that he was “absolutely sure” that such ADMs had been ordered in the 1970s by the KGB.
Despite a coordinated campaign by Russian officials designed to discredit Lebed and Yablokov, technical inaccuracies and inconsistencies undermine the credibility of the official Russian denials that Soviet ADMs were never manufactured. In addition, the current controversy is not the first public discussion of whether former Soviet ADMs are under adequate control in Russia. During 1995, a flurry of Russian media reports claimed that Chechen separatist fighters had obtained such weapons. And in January 1996, long before the current media furor, the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies received information from a Russian presidential advisor that an unspecified number of small ADMs had been had been manufactured in the 1970s for use by the KGB.2 This evidence does not corroborate Lebed’s claims that ADMs have “gone missing,” but it does strongly suggest that the Russian government is not being completely candid in its discussion of the issue.
LEBED'S CHARGES
In the interview broadcast on “60 Minutes,” and in a follow-up interview on 8 September with Interfax, Lebed alleged that during the Cold War, small atomic demolition munitions had been manufactured for use by the special forces brigades of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the USSR General Staff. The munitions were designed to be used in sabotage operations behind enemy lines. Lebed said he had received information about the existence of these ADMs, which could be carried in a case approximately 60x40x20 cm, in September and October 1996, when he was serving as secretary of the Russian Security Council. Since the ADMs, which have an explosive yield of around one kiloton (TNT equivalent), could be “activated by one person” and are “easy to transport,” Lebed concluded they were “an ideal weapon for nuclear terror.”3 The ADMs also reportedly lacked the safety systems to prevent unauthorized use—usually electronic combination locks—that were built into most Soviet tactical nuclear weapons. Lebed therefore ordered an inventory taken to determine whether all of them were accounted for.4
While he did manage to confirm that such weapons existed, Lebed said he “did not have time to find out how many such nuclear warheads there were” prior to his dismissal by President Yeltsin on 18 October 1996. He argued that “a very thorough investigation is necessary,” because the majority of the GRU special forces brigades had been based along the USSR's borders and that some of the ADMs may have been left behind in the former Soviet republics after the Soviet Union collapsed. Lebed concluded that the question was, “how many such ‘cases’ remained on the territory of Russian and other CIS member states?”5
OFFICIAL DENIALS AND REBUTTALS: DO THEY RING TRUE?
Official Russian reaction to media reports about Lebed’s allegations was dismissive. On 5 September 1997, before the 60 Minutes interview had even been aired, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin responded to reports of Lebed’s charges by terming them “absolute absurdity.” Chernomyrdin asserted that all Russian nuclear weapons were accounted for and under strict control, and said it was “absolutely impossible” that any nuclear weapons had been left behind in any of the former Soviet republics.6 The official government newspaper, Rossiyskaya gazeta, went even further saying that “such superfantasies can only be the product of a diseased imagination.”7 On 10 September 1997, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy also dismissed Lebed’s claims, saying that “the Russian system of nuclear weapons safety keeps nuclear warheads under full control and makes any unauthorized transportation of them impossible.”8 Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s press secretary, Sergey Yastrzhembskiy, who also coordinates the foreign policy work of the presidential staff, suggested that Lebed was simply trying to attract attention to himself by making controversial statements. “Lebed is looking for pretexts to remind people of his existence,” Yastrzhembskiy concluded.9
A number of less authoritative sources in Moscow were also quick to heap scorn on Lebed’s allegations. In an interview with ITAR-TASS, the director of the Institute of Strategic Assessments, Sergey Oznobischev, termed Lebed’s charges “devoid of logic and sense,” saying that as a paratroop commander, Lebed had “never been familiar with the situation in the area of nuclear weapons of the USSR or Russia.” Repeating the commonly accepted Russian explanation of Lebed’s accusations, Oznobischev called them a “purely political move,” suggesting that Lebed was merely trying to attract attention by starting a scandal.10
On 10 September 1997, the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya gazeta quoted an anonymous “high-ranking” source in the Operational Intelligence Directorate of the GRU as flatly denying the existence of “any 60x40x20cm briefcases containing nuclear charges.” The source said that while special GRU detachments are tasked with conducting sabotage operations behind enemy lines, “they never use nuclear munitions to do so,” relying instead on conventional explosives. The anonymous officer claimed that US special forces also did not use nuclear explosives. “We are not suicide squads,” the anonymous Russian officer concluded.11 The insistence of this anonymous GRU officer that the USSR had not possessed ADMs was unusual at this stage of the controversy. Official Russian government statements refuting Lebed’s charges had not denied that such weapons existed, but had merely said that all Russian nuclear weapons were under strict control.
While official Russian reaction was skeptical or derisory, Lebed's claims received a more open and positive reception in Washington. Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA), Chairman of the US House Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, pointed out that Lebed had originally made the charges in a private May 1997 meeting in Moscow with a US Congressional delegation led by Weldon. Weldon has argued that had Lebed wanted to create a stir he would have gone public with the information at that time, but that instead he quietly communicated it to the Congressional delegation. Indeed, Weldon told The Washington Post that he sees “no reason why [Lebed] would make this story up.”12 At the time, Lebed informed the delegation that he was able to confirm the production of 132 ADMs, but could only account for 48. When asked about the whereabouts of the other 84, said Weldon, Lebed replied “I have no idea.” A State Department cable sent to Washington summarizing the same meeting cites 100 as the number of ADMs Lebed said were produced, but otherwise agrees with Weldon’s account.13 This does not, however, square with Lebed's later statements that he does not know how many ADMs were produced.
At a hearing held by the Subcommittee to investigate Lebed's charges, Weldon said that the delegation, not Lebed, had requested the meeting, and that "nuclear suitcases" was only one of several topics discussed. According to Weldon, the story became public only after the delegation published a report on the meeting, which then prompted the press to cover the issue. “This was not an attempt to have an international story appear,” the Congressman insisted.14
Lebed is not a political novice, however, and he could have decided that it was to his advantage to raise the issue in a subtler manner than simply issuing a press release. Consequently, Weldon’s account does not completely exclude the possibility that Lebed’s story is politically motivated. Congressman Weldon is an outspoken critic of the Clinton Administration’s policy toward Russia, and has criticized the president for using “the bully pulpit of the presidency to create some false impression of stability in Russia.” He also has criticized the Russian government for issuing “absolute denials of what we know to be fact,” indicating that he gives some credence to Lebed’s account.15 Clinton administration officials, by contrast, have indicated that they accept Moscow’s assurances that the Russian nuclear arsenal is under tight control.16 The issue is highly politicized in both Moscow and Washington, which greatly complicates the interpretation of the available evidence.
A FORMER COLLEAGUE SUPPORTS LEBED'S STORY
There was some partial corroboration of Lebed’s story, however. One of his former deputies on the security council, Vladimir Denisov, told Interfax on 13 September that he had served as head of the special commission formed by Lebed to ascertain the disposition of former Soviet ADMs. Denisov said that the commission had been formed on 23 July 1996 in response to reports that separatist Chechen fighters had possibly gained access to these weapons. Denisov’s commission was to ascertain whether the “nuclear suitcases” were in the active arsenal of the Russian armed forces, interview specialists trained to use them, and determine if similar munitions could be manufactured illegally.
By September 1996, Denisov’s commission had concluded that no Russian military units had any of the “suitcases” in their arsenals, and that all such bombs were kept at “appropriate” storage facilities. Denisov’s comment suggests that like most land-based tactical nuclear weapons, the small ADMs had been withdrawn to central storage facilities. However, Denisov added that “it was impossible to say the same about former Soviet military units which remained on the territory of the other states in the CIS.” But he did not provide any concrete evidence suggesting that ADMs had “gone missing” in the former Soviet republics, saying only that there “was no certainty that no low-yield nuclear ammunition remained on the territory of Ukraine, Georgia or [the] Baltic states or that such weapons had not appeared in Chechnya.”17
However, Denisov's comments cannot be regarded as providing independent confirmation of Lebed’s account, given his close ties to Lebed. Denisov was appointed Lebed's deputy on 25 June 1996 as part of a personnel shakeup after Lebed became Security Council Secretary, but after President Yeltsin dismissed Lebed in October 1996, Denisov was also ousted.18 Denisov’s comments could therefore be political cover for his former boss.
PARALLEL ALLEGATIONS
Just as the furor over Lebed’s statements was beginning to abate, another former Yeltsin advisor came forward with a similar story. Aleksey Yablokov, who had formerly served as an advisor on the environment to the Russian president, published a letter in the Moscow paper Novaya gazeta on 22 September 1997 in which he said he had met the scientists who had designed “suitcase” nuclear weapons, confirming that such systems did exist. In the letter and a subsequent television interview, Yablokov said that the “suitcases” were not made for use by the military’s special forces, but rather were intended for the Soviet secret police, the KGB. He added that since they were made for the KGB, the suitcase bombs were “not recorded on Defense Ministry records,” and “so this might have taken a different turn, they may not be taken into account at all in our general nuclear arsenal, but were—and are now—somewhere else.” Yablokov noted that the United States had built similar weapons, called “backpack bombs” during the Cold War. Based on this evidence, Yablokov concluded that Lebed’s statement “is apparently far from ‘wild ravings.’”19
Yablokov's statement, which corresponds closely to the to charges reported to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in January 1996, appears to confirm some aspects of Lebed’s earlier claims, but it also differs from them in several key respects. While Lebed said the “suitcase” bombs were built for use by military special forces, Yablokov said they were intended for the KGB. To this extent the two accounts do not fully support one another. But as Yablokov has no obvious connection with Lebed, and no clear political motive, his statement was not so easy to dismiss as Denisov's. Nevertheless, Yablokov’s letter provoked a coordinated denial campaign by a wide range of Russian government officials.
AN ORCHESTRATED CAMPAIGN OF DENIALS?
The day after Yablokov's letter appeared, Russian government spokesman Igor Shabdurasulov reiterated that reports of uncontrolled nuclear materials or “nuclear suitcases” were “absolutely groundless.” Shabdurasulov stated that all nuclear materials were under the control of either the military or the Ministry of Atomic Energy. Shabdurasulov also suggested that those who were raising the issue of nuclear security in such a sensational manner were probably seeking to undermine Russia’s negotiating position in the just-opened ninth session of the Gore-Chernomyrdin commission, which often deals with nuclear security issues.20
In its 24 September issue, the pro-Communist Moscow daily Pravda-pyat published an article ridiculing the claims of both Lebed and Yablokov. The article cited Georgiy Kaurov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Atomic Energy as refuting the claims of both men. Kaurov admitted that small nuclear weapons were technically feasible, and he agreed with Yablokov that the United States had produced them. But Kaurov dismissed Yablokov and Lebed’s allegations as “designed to attract attention to themselves,” and reiterated that all Russian nuclear warheads were under strict control. He disdainfully described Yablokov as a “narrow specialist,” who was only “an expert in marine mammals” and had no business issuing statements about nuclear weapons. Kaurov mockingly concluded that Yablokov should “stick to what he knows about—ecology—which has fallen into a sorry state under his supervision.”21
The Defense Ministry issued the most detailed refutation of Lebed and Yablokov’s charges on 25 September. Lieutenant General Igor Valynkin, the head of the ministry’s Twelfth Main Directorate, which is responsible for the storage and security of nuclear weapons, attempted to reassure journalists about the safety of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Valynkin asserted that absolutely all nuclear weapons in the Russian armed forces are currently in the custody of his directorate, which ensures their “state acceptance at the factory, storage in arsenals, servicing, and their transport to the troops.” Valynkin said that because of concerns about the “criminal situation” in Russia, at the beginning of the 1990s all Russian tactical nuclear weapons, including nuclear mines and artillery shells, were removed from the arsenals of individual military units and transferred to special storage sites under the control of the Twelfth Directorate. This step was taken in order to prevent terrorists from gaining access to the weapons, as the arsenals at individual units are much less secure than the central storage sites.
Valynkin explained that at these storage sites, the weapons are guarded by specially screened Twelfth Directorate personnel. Only officers and warrant officers are permitted to work with nuclear weapons, and current regulations allow the weapons to be moved only on the personal orders of the head of the Twelfth Directorate, and even then only if his orders are confirmed by the head of the Russian General Staff. The weapons storage areas themselves can be opened only in the presence of the commander of the storage site, together with two other officers. Any work with the weapons is strictly regulated and careful records are maintained. As a result of these procedures, said Valynkin, it was impossible for any nuclear weapons to disappear unnoticed, and he described the idea that any of the weapons could be lost or stolen as “unrealistic.” He reinforced this claim by noting that in the 50 years since the establishment of the Twelfth Directorate, there had not been a single accident involving Soviet or Russian nuclear weapons. He compared this unblemished record favorably with that of the United States, which he said had experienced at least two accidents with nuclear weapons.22
Referring directly to the issue of the “suitcase” bombs, Valynkin admitted that is technically possible to build a small low-yield nuclear warhead. However, he denied that the USSR or Russia had ever manufactured such small nuclear weapons. Valynkin noted that such a small nuclear weapon would be too expensive to be practical, since its “nuclear core” would need to be “recharged” every three months in order to retain its effectiveness.23 Even the United States, said Valynkin, could not afford such weapons.24 He concluded by reiterating that those smaller tactical nuclear weapons which Russia does possess, principally artillery shells and land mines, are under strict control in the storage depots of the Twelfth Directorate, and their “planned destruction is being carried out.” He added that in any event, the size and weight of these systems were not comparable with “small carrying cases,” which made their theft highly improbable.
Responding to Yablokov’s claim that the “suitcase” weapons were made for the KGB, Valynkin insisted that all nuclear weapons produced in the USSR and Russia were delivered to the Twelfth Directorate directly from the production lines. He added that it was impossible for “parallel” production lines for nuclear weapons to have been established for KGB use. He stated that other federal agencies like the Federal Security Service (the domestic successor to the KGB) and the Interior Ministry did not have access to nuclear weapons, but were only involved in guarding those in the custody of the Defense Ministry. 25
Following Valynkin’s press conference, which was heavily covered by Russian media, a string of former and current Russian government officials issued their own denials of Lebed and Yablokov’s claims in what appeared to be a coordinated campaign. Tatyana Samolis, spokesperson for the Foreign Intelligence Service (another KGB successor agency), declared that her agency “had no information” about the alleged “suitcase bombs.” Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the KGB, termed the allegations “complete nonsense,” saying there had never been any need for the KGB to have nuclear weapons. Lieutenant-General Vyacheslav Romanov, the head of the National Center for the Reduction of Nuclear Danger, asserted that small nuclear weapons “are a myth.” Romanov, whose organization is a department of the Russian General Staff responsible for monitoring the implementation of, and compliance with, arms control agreements, claimed that the “minimum weight of a device would be about 200 kg.” He said it was “absurd” to claim that one person could carry a nuclear bomb to a target and detonate it.26
That same day, Ivan Rybkin, Lebed’s successor at the Security Council, announced that a search of the council’s records had produced “no documents” related to ADMs. Rybkin said the council and its staff “know nothing” about the existence of small nuclear weapons used by Russian special forces.27 In an interview on Russian Public Television (ORT), Minister of Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhailov said, “I can tell you unequivocally that they never existed, and do not exist.” Boris Kostenko, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (FSB), told the network that “the Federal Security Service has no information about the USSR KGB possessing nuclear ammunition of this kind—that is, super-small charges in the form of nuclear cases.”28
INCONSISTENT DENIALS AND INACCURACIES
If these denials represented a coordinated government attempt to refute the charges, they were less than totally convincing. There were several inconsistencies and inaccuracies in these statements that suggest that the Russian government is being less than candid in its discussion of Lebed’s allegations. General Valynkin’s detailed discussion of the technical problems with small nuclear weapons, for example, is inconsistent with unclassified information about the US nuclear weapons stockpile. Valynkin said that the United States could not afford to make small nuclear weapons of the type described by Lebed. In the strictest, sense, he is correct that the US did not make nuclear weapons that would fit in a 60x40x20 cm suitcase. However, according to the NRDC Nuclear Weapons Databook, a standard reference work on American nuclear forces published by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the United States did deploy a low-yield Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM), based on the W-54 warhead. The SADM could be transported in a shipping case not too much larger than that described by Lebed (89x66x66cm), and is reported to have weighed “less than 163 pounds” (74 kg). In its operational form it may have weighed quite a bit less, and been considerably smaller than the shipping case noted above, since the same warhead was used in the now-retired Davy Crockett system, which used a recoilless rifle to launch a nuclear-armed projectile. The Davy Crockett projectile was only 65 cm long and had a maximum diameter of 28 cm, which would very nearly fit inside Lebed’s suitcase. It also weighed 51 pounds (23 kg), a weight which would be transportable by one person. Other sources have reported that the version of the W-54 used in the SADM weighed about 58 pounds.29
Unclassified sources report that the W-54 warhead was developed from 1960-1963, and initial deployment began in 1964. It had a variable yield of .01-1 kT. The Davy Crockett warhead was tested twice in July 1962, with yields of 22 and 18 tons (TNT equivalent), or .022 and .018 kT.30 About 300 SADMs were deployed by the United States, and Army and Marine Corps commando units were trained to use the munitions, as were the special forces of several US allies, including Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. The SADM was intended for use behind enemy lines to disrupt communications and logistics, a mission similar to that ascribed by Lebed to the Soviet “suitcase” bombs.31 The Davy Crockett was removed from service in 1972, but the SADM apparently remained deployed until at least the mid-1980s, and may only have been withdrawn from forward deployment following the 1991 Bush-Gorbachev unilateral initiatives.
The existence of the W-54 and the SADM derived from it undermines the credibility of Valynkin’s denials that the USSR built similar systems, especially since he justified his claims by arguing that even the United States could not afford such small nuclear weapons. Apparently, the United States could afford them, since it had several hundred in its stockpile during the Cold War.
The existence of the W-54 and SADM undermines Valynkin’s claim that small nuclear weapons would be prohibitively expensive to maintain. Valynkin claimed that a small nuclear weapon would need to be disassembled every three months for its “nuclear core” to be recharged. However, American physicists familiar with nuclear weapons design consulted by the author have dismissed Valynkin’s argument. A small weapon would probably be a uranium or plutonium implosion device, possibly boosted with tritium to compensate for the reduced amount of conventional explosive used to compress the fissile core in the compact device. Neither the uranium nor plutonium metals used in the fissile core of such a bomb would need such frequent maintenance, and even tritium, which has a half-life of 12.3 years, and must be recharged periodically, would not need replenishing so frequently. While we do not know the details of Soviet weapons design, there is no obvious technical constraint that can account for Valynkin’s claim that small ADMs would require frequent and expensive maintenance. Since the United States maintained a stockpile of several hundred such systems for at least twenty years, it seems unlikely that the maintenance cost for such systems is so high as to have been prohibitive for the USSR.
The Russian official denials are also inconsistent and contradictory. While Valynkin denied that the US or USSR had built such weapons, other Russian spokesmen—like Georgiy Kaurov of the Ministry of Atomic Energy—admitted the existence of equivalent US weapons. General Romanov, of the National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, tried to discredit Lebed’s allegations by implausibly arguing that any nuclear warhead would need to weigh at least 200 kg, while others, like Valynkin, admitted that lighter, more compact weapons were technically feasible. Although ignorance or incompetence could account for both these inconsistencies and the glaring factual inaccuracies that mar the official denials, the pattern suggests a poorly designed “cover story.” So many of the official arguments explaining why the USSR did not construct ADMs are based on obviously false premises that one is led to wonder whether the denials are false as well. This circumstantial reasoning does not support the claim that such ADMs are currently unaccounted for, but it does suggest that Soviet ADMs may have existed and that the issue of their current disposition is a real one.
Most Russian media accepted the official denials without closely examining their specifics. Thus Komsomolskaya pravda published General Romanov’s claim that a nuclear weapon would have a minimum weight of 200 kg without comment. The most notable exception was the 51% state-owned ORT network, which broadcast a special report on the “suitcase” bomb controversy on 27 September. The broadcast said that information it had uncovered suggested that small nuclear weapons had been manufactured by the USSR, but that although “the Defense Ministry knows this, it prefers to be insincere.” The program reported that some small nuclear devices were built by the Soviet Union for use in geological prospecting and oil exploration. Consistent with the statement by Valynkin, the program said these systems had a “service life” of only a few months, after which they would cease to function.32 Some support for the existence of small peaceful nuclear explosives (PNEs) is contained in a recently-published official history of Russian the nuclear testing program. The history reports that several low-yield PNEs were detonated at a site in Kazakstan during the mid-1970s for "industrial" purposes. The yields in these tests ranged from .01 kT (10 tons) to .35 kT (350 tons).33 While the report does not indicate if these low-yield devices were small in size, it does provide some indirect support for the ORT report and hints at the existence of similar low-yield military systems.
The ORT report added that other small nuclear weapons were developed for use by military special forces, which would use them for such missions as blocking mountain passes to enemy tank armies. The program insisted that the weapons were not developed for “terrorist purposes,” were not issued to the KGB, and if they had been deployed outside the USSR, had been returned to Russia in the early 1990s. The program also assured its viewers that like similar devices in the United States, the Soviet ADMs “always remained under official control.”34 While rebutting most of Lebed and Yablokov’s charges, the program did break with the official explanation that ADMs were never manufactured.
A CHECHEN CONNECTION?
An interesting aspect of the controversy is the role played by reports that the Chechen separatist forces led by Dzhokhar Dudayev may have acquired tactical nuclear weapons. According to Denisov and Lebed, reports that Chechen fighters had obtained some of the "suitcase" weapons triggered the original Security Council inquiry.35 Indeed, at several points during the Chechen conflict, reports appeared in the Russian press suggesting that Chechen fighters had acquired nuclear weapons. According to an unattributed account in the book One Point Safe, the Chechen government of Dzhokar Dudayev reportedly warned the US government in the summer of 1994 that it had two tactical nuclear weapons and that they would transfer them to Libya if the United States did not recognize Chechnya's independence. Dudayev reportedly provided sufficiently convincing technical details that the United States (with Russian acquiescence) sent an undercover team to visit Chechnya, where they were to be shown the weapons. After the weapons failed to materialize, however, the team departed. If this account is accurate it clearly indicates US government concern over possible warhead theft, and foreshadowed subsequent reports of a "Chechen bomb."36
One of the most detailed such reports appeared in the extremist newspaper Zavtra in October 1995, which published an interview with an alleged former Chechen intelligence agent who claimed to have purchased two “portable” nuclear weapons in Estonia in 1992.37 This account, and others like it, is not very credible, since the Chechen fighters do not appear to have publicly announced that they had a nuclear weapon, which would seem strange given the extreme methods which were used by both sides during the conflict. Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev did threaten to use radioactive isotopes as a radiological weapon, and even buried a container of cesium-137 in a Moscow park in November 1995 as a demonstration of this capability.38 Basayev and other Chechen commanders also threatened to attack Russian nuclear power plants. While these threats could be regarded as "nuclear terrorism," they did not involve nuclear weapons. In fact, in a July 1995 interview with the Moscow daily Segodnya, Basayev explicitly denied having nuclear weapons.39
Appended to the October 1995 account in Zavtra was a “commentary” by the newspaper’s “security service,” that described in detail two designs for “portable” nuclear weapons. At first glance, this commentary is somewhat more credible than the body of the article, since Zavtra is believed by some analysts to have well-developed contacts in the Russian security services. One of the two designs was a uranium gun-type weapon that reportedly required three people to transport. The other design, however, was a uranium implosion device with the shape of a small barrel 16 inches (40 cm) in diameter and 24 inches (60 cm) high that weighed 42 pounds (19 kg). The device was reported to use barium as a neutron initiator, and TNT as the explosive that would squeeze the core to criticality. It was said to be “fully autonomous,” and easily transported by one person, although two operators were required to detonate it. In size and weight, this design again approximates the dimensions mentioned by Lebed. Although the paper did not say specifically that the designs mentioned were for Soviet ADMs, the context strongly suggested that they were.40
A close examination of this purported design, however, undermines the credibility of the report in several respects. First, available open sources indicate that barium is not used as a neutron initiator in a nuclear weapon. Initiators described in the open literature consist of two elements that are combined to generate neutrons at the moment the weapon begins detonating. The Zavtra report mentions only one element in the initiator, which is supposedly coated in gold—an implausible design in terms of basic physics. Indeed, one possibility is that the Zavtra report was based on a poorly translated US source, with barium confused with beryllium, which is present in nuclear weapons. The use of TNT as the explosive to produce the implosion is also highly improbable, since even early US implosion weapons used more energetic conventional explosives. The description of the weapon thus appears to have been written by someone with a very incomplete knowledge of nuclear weapons design, suggesting a hoax.
In addition to being technically implausible, the design mentioned in this article is identical to one cited in an August 1995 article in Moskovskiy komsomolets.41 This article was another of the many Russian press reports in 1995 suggesting that Chechen fighters might have acquired a small nuclear device. As indirect evidence for this proposition, the article included a description of a US atomic demolition munition taken from the Russian-language edition of Soldier of Fortune magazine (Soldat udachy). This same Soldier of Fortune account, which claimed that several ex-Soviet military intelligence officers had been arrested in Lithuania and charged with selling former Soviet tactical nuclear weapons, was also the basis for a similar July 1995 article in the Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya gazeta.42 This one Soldier of Fortune article thus appears to have spawned a series of questionable reports that Chechen fighters had acquired former Soviet ADMs. Given the reputation of Soldier of Fortune, these reports must be regarded as of dubious reliability.
Zavtra published two follow-up articles to its original October 1995 report. In the first of these reports, the paper claimed that the reporter who had written the original article had been abducted by four gunmen who “brutally beat him up,” and threatened that “if you’ll be digging for nuclear arms, we’ll kill you!”43 However, two issues later the paper concluded that the original story had been planted by Chechen agents, who, after feeding Zavtra the material, beat up the reporter in order to attract attention to the story. The paper alleged that the goal of this Chechen "operation" was to increase the separatists’ leverage in ongoing negotiations with the Russian federal government.
After admitting that the story recounted in the original article was a “bluff,” the paper went on to say that officials at the Federal Security Service (FSB) denied that the Soviet Union had built ADMs. However, it added that anonymous sources at the agency "close" to the paper admitted that the USSR had made ADMs. These sources told Zavtra that the ADMs had been removed to special central storage facilities before the collapse of the USSR. The paper added that while its sources believed these arsenals to be secure, they did not rule out that “elements” of the ADMs and “production techniques” could have been stolen from the plants where they were manufactured. The article concluded that the Russian military and intelligence agencies should devote more efforts to dealing with “this acute and dangerous problem.”44
The overall credibility of this series of reports in Zavtra is questionable, since the paper is known for its sensationalistic and biased reporting. The paper’s harsh stance on the Chechen issue gave it ample motivation to publish unfounded reports suggesting that Chechen fighters had access to nuclear weapons. Although it cannot be proven that the Chechens did not acquire a nuclear device, the available evidence suggests that they did not. Nevertheless, the paper’s reportedly close ties with Russian intelligence agencies give its claim that ADMs were made by the Soviet Union some residual plausibility. The story, and the others like it cited above, demonstrate that the issue of the current disposition of Soviet ADMs was not invented by Lebed, but has been repeatedly raised by other sources over the past few years.
LEBED AND YABLOKOV STAND FIRM
As for Lebed and Yablokov, neither has retracted the substance of their allegations in the face of almost universal condemnation by Russian officials. In an interview with MSNBC on 2 October, Lebed insisted that “compact nuclear devices are possible and they have been made.” He reiterated his earlier claims that the commission he had formed in 1996 to study the issue had concluded that “so called ‘backpack’ or ‘suitcase’ nuclear devices were in the possession of the Soviet armed forces.” Lebed used the well-documented case of US and Soviet 155mm and 152 mm nuclear artillery shells to underline his point that small nuclear bombs were feasible. He repeated that he had been unable to account for all such devices before his dismissal, and said he considered doing so “a matter of principal importance.” He did backtrack somewhat on the number of ADMs that he believed had been manufactured by the USSR, saying “As for their number, I can’t say…maybe 100, maybe 500.”45
Even this interview attracted a riposte in the Russian press, with the well-known military analyst for the Moscow daily Segodnya, Pavel Felgengauer, misleadingly claiming on 7 October that in the interview Lebed had retracted his claims that ADMs had been stolen. In fact, Lebed simply reiterated his earlier claims that the weapons exist, but cannot currently be accounted for. Felgengauer also ridiculed Lebed’s use of 155mm and 152mm nuclear artillery shells as evidence that “compact” nuclear bombs are possible. These shells, said Felgengauer, naming the US W-48 warhead for the 155mm artillery shell, weigh “well over 100 kg (220 lbs),” making them all but impossible for a single person to carry. He also argued that “portable” nuclear devices are “senseless” from a military point of view.46 But Felgengauer’s arguments are based on inaccurate information. According to the NRDC Nuclear Weapons Databook, the 155mm projectile containing the W-48 warhead weighs 128 pounds (58 kg), still heavy for a suitcase, but not as impossible for one person to carry as Felgengauer would have his readers believe.47 The warhead separate from the projectile would weigh even less. And if portable nuclear weapons are militarily senseless, then why did the United States and NATO deploy over 300 of them during the Cold War? Felgengauer, who has close ties to the Russian Defense Ministry, thus continued the pattern of using arguments based on false premises to rebut Lebed's charges.
At an international conference in Berlin on 6 October, Lebed again reiterated that he remained “convinced” that small Soviet ADMs had been built, and repeated that he had been unable to establish their current whereabouts while he was in office. In an apparent reference to the W-54 warhead discussed above, Lebed argued that the United States had built such weapons “about 30 years ago, and at that time, the USSR did not lag behind America in anything.”48
Yablokov also stands by his story. In testimony before the US House Subcommittee on Military Research and Development on 2 October, Yablokov stated that he was “absolutely certain” that suitcase-sized nuclear weapons had been manufactured for use by the KGB during the 1970s. He reiterated his earlier assertion that he had met with scientists who designed these weapons, which he said would not have been included on any “official list” of Soviet nuclear weapons. But he added, “nobody knows” how many such weapons were made, and expressed the opinion that they might not exist any longer. Yablokov estimated that the bombs would have required two major overhauls in the over twenty years since they had been manufactured, which he doubted would have been carried out, especially during the last decade. Yablokov chastised Russian officials for not telling the truth about the issue, and said the controversy over the suitcase bombs was “connected” with the larger problem of nuclear security in Russia.49 On 31 October 1997, Yablokov went one step further, threatening to release the technical details of the “nuclear suitcases” if President Yeltsin does not reply to a letter Yablokov sent to him on 27 October. According to Yablokov, the letter warns that Russia has “a whole class of nuclear weapons, not immediately controlled by the President.”50 Rather than backing down from the controversy, Yablokov has upped the ante, placing the onus on the Russian government to reveal what it knows about the subject.
Ironically, on 6 October 1997, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a set of amendments to the Russian Federation Law on State Secrets, which effectively classified virtually all information about military nuclear facilities.51 The amendments, which have been attacked by Russian environmentalists and human rights activists as designed to restrict public access to information about the Russian nuclear complex, are likely to have a chilling effect on public discussion of issues such as warhead storage and security.52 And just one day after General Valynkin denounced Lebed’s allegations, his boss, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, and other top military officers discussed the safety and security of warhead storage at a 26 September session of the ministry’s collegium. While the session reportedly emphasized the reliability of the current system of safeguards, Sergeyev pointed out that it was necessary to speed up the introduction of new automated systems to make storage sites even more secure.53 So while Lebed and Yablokov’s allegations may already have begun to fade from the public eye, the underlying issues they have illuminated will not go away so easily.
Conclusion
What conclusions can we draw from this controversy? First, given the secrecy surrounding Soviet nuclear weapons, it is impossible to reach any definitive conclusion about the veracity of Lebed’s claims. There is no convincing evidence that any former Soviet nuclear warheads have been lost, stolen, or misplaced. But since both the Russian and US governments would have powerful incentives to keep any such evidence confidential, and we have very little information about the number of nuclear weapons in the Russian stockpile and the location of the depots where they are stored, we also have no way to disprove Lebed’s claim that some weapons are unaccounted for.
Although there is no conclusive evidence to support Lebed’s charges about the diversion of ADMs, there is a good deal of evidence that small nuclear devices, analogous to known US systems, were produced in the Soviet Union. Internally contradictory official Russian denials that such systems were ever made raise the question of how candid the Russian government is being in response to Lebed’s charges. If small ADMs were made by the USSR, why does the Russian government deny it? Are the denials designed to allow the government to avoid having to answer questions about the disposition of the current stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons? Although it is impossible to answer these questions on the basis of currently available information, they do point out the need for greater transparency of nuclear stockpiles in both the United States and the USSR. Although Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton agreed at their March 1997 summit in Helsinki that the planned START III treaty would address such issues, the controversy over Lebed’s comments underlines how far the two countries still have to go in this respect.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) The contents of the interview were leaked to the press prior to the broadcast, meaning that initial media coverage and official reaction to the charges began before 7 September 1997.
(2) William Potter, “‘The Peacemaker’ Is a Warning to All,” The Los Angeles Times, 29 September 1997.
(3) Interfax, 8 September 1997; in “Lebed Says Individual Warheads in CIS Pose Danger,” FBIS-TAC-97-251.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Interfax, 5 September 1997; in “Chernomyrdin Denies Lebed Claim on Nuclear Warheads,” FBIS-SOV-97-248.
(7) Valdimir Klimov, “Khvatay meshki, vokzal otkhodit!” Rossiyskaya gazeta, 6 September 1997, p. 2.
(8) “Minatom oprovergayet zayavleniye Aleksandra Lebedya o propazhe okolo sotni yadernykh zaryadov Rossii,” ITAR-TASS, 10 September 1997.
(9) ITAR-TASS, 10 September 1997; in “Moscow Denies Lebed’s Claims on Nuclear Charges,” FBIS-SOV-97-253.
(10) ITAR-TASS, 11 September 1997; in “Lebed Statement on Missing Nuclear Warheads Dismissed,” FBIS-UMA-97-254.
(11) Aleksandr Shaburkin, “Voyennyye oprovergayut zayavleniye Lebedya,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 10 September 1997, p. 2.
(12) R. Jeffery Smith and David Hoffman, “No Support Found for Report of Lost Suitcase-Size Nuclear Weapons,” The Washington Post, 5 September 1997, p. 19.
(13) Ibid.
(14) U.S. House, Committee on National Security, Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, Testimony of Alexei Yablokov at a Hearing on Russian Nuclear Materials, 2 October 1997 (unofficial transcript by Federal News Service), pp. 41-43.
(15) Ibid., p. 40.
(16) See for example, “Transcript: State Department Noon Briefing, September 5, 1997,” available from the USIA Washington File web page at http://www.usia.gov/products/washfile.htm.
(17) Interfax, 13 September 1997; in “Further on Possible Nuclear Arms in Former Soviet Republics,” FBIS-TAC-97-256; Michael Hoffman, “Suitcase Nuclear Weapons Safely Kept, Russian Says,” The Washington Post, 14 September 1997, p. A23.
(18) Interfax, 25 June 1996; in “Yeltsin Dismisses Two Deputy Security Council Secretaries,” FBIS-SOV-96-123; and ITAR-TASS, 30 October 1996, in “Rybkin to Meet with Two New Aides Soon,” FBIS-SOV-96-211.
(19) Yuriy Shchekochikhin, “Znamenityy uchenyy utverzhdaet: vozmozhno, my vse sidim na chemodanakh. Yadernykh,” Novaya gazeta, 22 September 1997, pp. 1-2; and “Segodnya,” NTV, 22 September 1997; in “Scientist Confirms Missing Suitcase Nuclear Bombs Exist,” FBIS-UMA-97-265.
(20)“Rassuzhdeniya o beskontrolnosti v khranenii yadernykh materialov v Rossii bespochvenny, zayavil ofitsialnyy predstavitel pravitelstva,” RIA-Novosti, 23 September 1997.
(21)Vyacheslav Zalomov, “Yaderniy detektiv k priyezdu Gora,” Pravda-pyat, 24 September 1997, pp. 1-2.
(22) Aleksandr Bondarenko, “Yadernoye oruzhiye my nikogda ne teryali,” Krasnaya zvezda, 26 September 1997, p. 1.
(23) Vladimir Zaynetdinov, “Ministerstvo oborony klyanetsya, chto yadernykh chemodanchikov ne bylo i net,” Izvestiya, 26 September 1997, p.
(24) “Vse yadernye zaryady rossiyskikh vooruzhennykh sil nakhodyatsya na meste, zayavil vysokopostavlennyi predstavitel minoborony,” RIA-Novosti, 25 September 1997.
(25) Bondarenko, “Yadernoye oruzhie,” p. 1.
(26) Viktor Sokirko, “A chto u vas, rebyata, v ryukzakakh?” Komsomolskaya pravda, 26 September 1997, p. 2.
(27) Interfax, 25 September 1997; in “Rybkin Denies Knowledge of Small Nuclear Weapons,” FBIS-SOV-97-268.
(28) “Vremya,” ORT, 27 September 1997; in “Russian TV Discusses Contradictory Views on Nuclear Charges,” FBIS-TAC-97-270.
(29)Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, and Milton M. Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume 1: U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1984), p. 60.
(30) For a summary of the Davy Crockett system, see the web pages of The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project of the Brookings Institution, at HTTP://WWW.BROOK.EDU/FP/projects/nucwcost/davyc.HTM.
(31) Cochran, Arkin, Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume 1: U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, pp. 60, 89, 91, 96, 281.
(32)Vremya, ORT, 27 September 1997; in “TV Examines History of Nuclear Suitcase Bombs,” FBIS-SOV-UMA-97-270.
(33)Viktor Mikhailov, et. al., Yadernye ispytaniya SSSR: obshchiye kharakteristiki, tseli, organizatsiya yadernykh ispytaniy SSSR, (Moscow: Izdat, 1997), pp. 116, 162, 164-166.
(34) “Vremya,” ORT, 27 September 1997; in “TV Examines History of Nuclear Suitcase Bombs,” FBIS-SOV-UMA-97-270.
(35)“Is Lebed Russia’s Loosest Cannon?” MSNBC Interview with Aleksandr Lebed, 2 October 1997, available at http://www.msnbc.com.
(36) This story is told in detail in Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, One Point Safe, (Washington, DC: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 101-103.
(37) Aleksey Andreyev, “Yadernaya bomba dlya…Chechni,” Zavtra, no. 40, (October 1995), pp. 1,5.
(38) OMRI Daily Digest, 27 November 1995.
(39) H. Eismont “Basaev Doesn’t Sound Interested in Having Any Nuclear Weapons in His Weapons Chest Now,” Segodnya, 27 July 1995, p. 2.
(40) Andreyev, “Yadernaya bomba,” p. 5.
(41) Alekdsandr Pgonchenkov, “A Nuclear Bomb in Basayev’s Hands: Myth or Reality?” Moskovskiy komsomolets, 22 August 1995, p. 2.
(42) V. Kucherenko, “Basayev Threatens Russia with Nuclear Terror,” Rossiyskaya gazeta, 15 July 1995, p. 4; Dzhim Morris, "On ne pustobrekh--on geroy," Soldat udachy, no. 6, 1996, pp. 12-15, 57.
(43) “Terrorist Act Against Zavtra Correspondent,” Zavtra, #41, October 1995, p. 1.
(44) “Is There a Backpack Nuclear Bomb?” Zavtra, #43, October 1995, p. 1.
(45) “Is Lebed Russia’s Loosest Cannon?” MSNBC Interview with Aleksandr Lebed, 2 October 1997, available at http//:www.msnbc.com
(46) Pavel Felgengauer, “Lebed otreksya ot yadernykh chemodanchikov,” Segondya, 7 October 1997.
(47) Cochran, Arkin, Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume 1: U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, pp. 54-55, 308.
(48) Konstantin Eggert, “General Lebed nameren nayti ‘yadernye chemodanchiki,” Izvestiya, 7 October 1997.
(49) U.S. House, Committee on National Security, Subcommittee on Military Research and Development, Testimony of Alexei Yablokov at a Hearing on Russian Nuclear Materials, 2 October 1997 (unofficial transcript by Federal News Service), pp. 34-36.
(50) Interfax, 31 October 1997; in FBIS-TAC-97-304.
(51) “Federalnyy zakon o vnesenii izmeneniy i dopolneniy v zakon Rossiyskoy Federatsii ‘o gosudarstvennoy tayne,” Rossiyskaya gazeta, 9 October 1997, p. 4.
(52) Anna Badkhen and Charles Digges, “New Secrets Law ‘Aimed’ at Nikitin,” The St. Petersburg Times, 20-26 October 1997
(53) RIA-Novosti, 26 September 1997; in “Sergeyev to Establish Reliable Control Over Nuclear Sites,” FBIS-TAC-97-289.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, please call Scott Parrish at (831) 647-6679 or John Lepingwell at (831) 647-3584. E-mail: sparrish@miis.edu. or jlepingwell@miis.edu
Return to the CNS Reports index.
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/lebedlg.htm
My understanding is that only US Citizens are allowed to vote provided they have not been convicted of a felony. Assuming that there are 300 million residents, 3 million or 1% of whom are incarcerated, and another 50 million are legal aliens, with another 100 million under legal voting age, leaving about half the population eligible to vote. There may be as many as 20 million illegal immigrants living in the US who do not vote with ballots but with their pocketbooks and work in the underground US economy.
This might shed some light on the subject:
"149,476,705 active registered voters for the 2000 federal general election." from the following link:
http://www.fec.gov/pages/nvrareport2000/nvrareport2000.htm
This link breaks it down state by state:
http://www.fec.gov/pages/nvrareport2000/2000table_1.htm
Being they are published by the government their accuracy might be suspect, but it could be a fair estimate.
There is much debate on the subject as this link will show:
http://policy.com/askme/Percentage_voting.htm
Middle East braces for Beginnings of World War Four-Revised
GAZA CITY
THE Middle East was bracing for a new wave of violence last night after the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in the Gaza Strip.
Sheikh Yassin was killed instantly when an Israeli helicopter launched three missiles at him as he was leaving a mosque after morning prayers. All that remained at the scene was Sheikh Yassin's bloodied wheelchair.
http://thewest.com.au/20040323/news/general/tw-news-general-home-sto121943.html
"Intelligence officials are rushing around the planet trying to find limited nuclear weapons which are now aimed at Isreal in a preemptive effort to avoid the destruction of various cities in that embroiled nation", said one intelligence expert.
There is no link to the above quote because it came from a classified confidential source that is protected under the 1st Amendment. Hopefully it does not break the rules at this Board, but it is important enough to pass on.
The following links might be helpful in determining middle eastern nuclear weapons capabilities:
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0702/ijpe/cordesman.htm
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm
http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm
And this old article:
"Former Russian Security Council Secretary Aleksandr Lebed has stirred controversy in both Russia and the United States with his allegations that the Russian government is currently unable to account for some eighty small atomic demolition munitions (ADMs) which were manufactured in the USSR during the Cold War."
From this link:
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/lebedlg.htm
Not to defend slick willies immoral behaviour while in office, but at least that administration didn't accelerate global terrorism with the contrarian christian faith doublespeak. If we had turned the other cheek, would we now have this mounting global war embroiling every nation on earth? It will not end till the US gets out of Iraq, but even then, the seeds of global destruction have been sown. It's as if the Christians are praying for Armageddon and doing everything in their power to bring it about. I consider the Jews part of Christendom