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shawa · CNO Joined: 03 Sep 2004 Posts: 2004

The mystery of Litvinenko's death from polonium exposure could be ominous.
Polonium210 used as a trigger for nuclear suitcase bombs? The fact that our FBI is in London working with British tells me that this is terrorist related.
From all that I've read about this case it appears that the players have made numerous trips, smuggling the polonium into Britain.
We have heard reports for some time that al Qaida is planning its next spectacular attack involving suitcase nuclear bombs. Some say they are already in the U.S.
Imagine a network of nuclear suitcases planted in many major cities coordinated to detonate nearly simultaneously. Horrifying!!
Trail of Polonium210, Jihad, suitcase nukes

Lots to read at Strata-Sphere. AJ Strata has been following the developments for the past week.
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FreeFall · LCDR Joined: 13 Aug 2004 Posts: 421

There's more about this over at the Northeast Intelligence Network:
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/Litvinenko

jmckay8497 · Last edited by jmckay8497 on Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:37 am; edited 1 time in total

After reading this article, I intend to listen to the story a little more carefully. This is really frightening stuff if true..
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dusty · Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:36 am Post subject:

Anybody else watching the TV series Jericho?
Aftermath of exactly this scenario.
The Muslim nations would sure be free to move against Israel then. I think all this is written down somewhere.

Dusty
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BuffaloJack · Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:15 pm Post subject:

I must admit, the original intent of the Soviet to use Polonium 210 was a good decision. Using Polonium 210 with a half-life of only 138 days would insure that should the devices fall into the wrong hands that it would be really difficult to keep them viable for any length of time. Without maintenance every 4 to 6 months they would turn into so much radioactive junk. What was Litvinenko's involvement? Was he performing maintenance? Who else was involved? This cannot be a one man operation, it's too complicated. This stuff is not something that you can just keep on a shelf, it's gotta be manufactured fresh and swapped for the decayed stuff. Who are the players? Iran? Al-Qaeda? Syria? North Korea? It's gotta be someone with the facilities to change Bismuth into Polonium.
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Me#1You#10 · Site Admin Joined: 06 May 2004 Posts: 6503

What am I missing here Jack? It just doesn't make any sense, at least to me, to "off" someone using a radioactive subtance.

Why not just a conventional poison of some sort?...or any of a thousand other ways to dispatch someone? I mean, it's not like "they" expected the polonium in his system to go undetected? I think this is arguably much more sinister, with Litvinenko as a conspirator in some plot, easily gone awry, to trigger a "dirty" device somewhere in London.

His Muslim involvement is unsettling at best.

BuffaloJack · Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:14 pm Post subject:

Me#1You#10 · Site Admin Joined: 06 May 2004 Posts: 6503

BuffaloJack · Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 5:15 pm Post subject:

Exactly !!!!!

The big question now is when?
The Polonium is going to decay like physics dictates. By summer it won't be any good any longer. Unfortunately, it all comes back to the use-it or lose-it scenario.

Only one other question comes to mind here. Who do the bad guys hate more? The USA or Israel?
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GenrXr · Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 1:40 am Post subject:

Maybe Chechnya had something to do with this. The spy did recently convert to Islam and the Chechyans hate Putin. Highly doubtful Putin would have anything to do with this. Nuclear materials source reactor can be identified within minutes of discovery as first explained in Tom Clancys book Sum of All Fears and later confirmed by the US govt. What are the positives for Putin versus the negatives? Although Putin is most likely not a good man, he is surely not mad and the negatives must far outweigh the positives in this scenerio.
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Harvuskong · Seaman Joined: 17 Oct 2004 Posts: 174

After reading the above info, I will make following assumptions ( if that is the correct word to use ) below.

1. Moscow are likely a prime target based on the Chechnya - Islam connection and the spy's Islam connection/conversion.

2. Israel is not far behind as a prime target. Hitting Israel would give immediate "instant" gratification needed after a long, long, long drouth of not being able to do major permanet high visibiltiy political damage to that nation.

A hit on Israel would be too much of Islamic morale booster to resist sucessfully.

shawa · CNO Joined: 03 Sep 2004 Posts: 2004

An OP-ED by a nuclear physicist in the New York Times indicates how woefully unprepared we are for a 'Smoky Bomb'.

SBD · Admiral Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 1022

This guy has a theory that it has already happened. According to tests taken from the air after 911, radioactive matter was extremely high after the collaspe. His theory which sounds crazy is that there were 2 underground reactors under the World Trade Center that were built during the secret Manhattan Project, hence the name. He points to the cooling system in the Towers that were way over-capacity and used water from the Hudson River in the process.

The theory is that the first World Trade Center bomb attempt was supposed to destroy the cooling system which would have caused a meltdown. Reports after the first WTC bomb mentioned that an emergency cooling system was built outside the WTC building while the repairs were made to the underground units.

He further claims that this is what caused the towers to collaspe and the aim of the terrorists was to hit the cooling units on the top floors and disrupt the system to cause the meltdown of the reactors. He calls it a Pyroclastic Blast similar to a volcano and shows the tower plume and a volcano plume which look exactly the same.

Not that I necessarily agree with this guy, but it is better than the theory of a demolishion by our government. Time will tell if this is accurate as the cancer rate in Manhattan continues to grow which it appears to be happening already.

BuffaloJack · Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:46 am Post subject:

William Tahil must be some kind of conspriacy theorist fruitcake. The Manhattan Project never produced sufficient materials for the Trinity bomb and bombs dropped on H & N. Those materials came from a German submarine that surrendered to a US destroyer a few days after Germany surrendered. The Germans had the materials but not a working bomb design. The Japanese had a working bomb design but no materials. Germany was transferring the stuff to Japan in the last days of the war aboard the sub. Immediately after the surrender, the U-boat Captain with the nuke cargo decided he's rather have the Americans have it than the Japanese. He sought out the closest US ship, a destroyer, got escorted to a US port and transferred his cargo to the US in New London, CT. The first 3 bombs were American in design but German in materials.

The waste from the Manhattan Project was collected up and sealed in a concrete bunker near Lake Erie less than 10 miles from where I live. It's still there. Every ten or fifteen years or so some local politician makes a stink about when the Feds will get around to moving it to a permanent location elsewhere. It hasn't happened yet.

Speculation about a couple of reactors below the twin towers is just William Tahil's vivid imagination. The guy probably also believes that space aliens killed Kennedy.

The info regarding the source of nuclear materials used for the Trinity, H & N bombs became declassified on its 50th anniversary and wasn't actually re-discovered until a couple years later. The history channel did a story on it 2 or 3 years ago.
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FreeFall · LCDR Joined: 13 Aug 2004 Posts: 421

I found some more info about this subject, pretty interesting:

http://counterterrorismblog.org/

Polonium: The Terrorists' Perfect WMD? Possibly (Part 2)
By Andrew Cochran

Last week, I posted on the possibility that terrorists could use polonium 210, the radioactive substance which killed former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, as a weapon of mass destruction. I asked for comments and subsequently received more e-mails than I've ever received about a single post. Here are excerpts from some of the best:

On the substance itself, Philip Henika sent this link to the World Health Organization's "Polonium-210: basic facts and questions" page with this: "Po-210 represents a radiation hazard only if taken into the body – by inhalation, ingestion, or getting into a wound... The toxicity of Po-210 is much higher than that of cyanides, for example. Nevertheless it does not represent a risk to human health as long as it remains outside the body." He also sent a link to this piece in the St. Petersburg (Russia) Times in which the author wrote, "Since the 19th century it has been customary for blood enemies in the Caucasus to poison each other with polonium-210." (UPDATE: That last statement cannot be true; the Global Security website on polonium notes, "Prior to 1944, polonium had not been isolated in pure form or in any appreciable quantity" (tip to Brian Kramer). Larry Johnson, former CT Blog Contributing Expert, wrote that the agents of the old Soviet Union used polonium often to poison enemies fo the state. So I assume some of them would know how to process and handle significant amounts of polonium.

Christopher Dickey, the Paris bureau chief and veteran reporter at Newsweek, sent me this link to his blog, in which he debunked claims that you can easily buy polonium through the internet.

As far as its potential as a WMD, polonium is already carried through smoke in common cigarettes. A polonium FAQ on "USA Today" states that "Polonium occurs in nature at very low levels... And a cigarette contains less than a billionth of the amount of polonium implicated in Litvinenko's death, according to a 1996 study in the journal Radiologic Technology... elevated readings of polonium could be explained away as the effects of heavy smoking..." And a professor wrote in an op-ed that "I suspect that even some of our more enlightened smokers will be surprised to learn that cigarette smoke is radioactive."

Jeffrey Melton, a "radiation safety buff" and industrial hygeine graduate student at the Universty of Illinois at Chicago, wrote the following:

"Polonium is most certainly dangerous, but it is far from an ideal WMD. Yes, polonium-210 is made by neutron bombardment of bismuth inside of a research reactor, but it is still imbedded in the bismuth metal. Bismuth is a rather non-toxic metal, and extracting polonium is fairly challenging. In all likelihood, you will not have much polonium to work with. This is compounded by how fast polonium decays. Half of your source is going to be gone in 138 days, starting as soon as it is made. Undetectable? Polonium is VERY easy to detect... This is also why polonium is showing up everywhere - the detection limit is very, very low. Polonium-210 emits alpha radiation, which is nasty inside of you, but it lacks penetrating power. It quite literally cannot go through the outermost layer of your skin, a piece of paper, or even a small amount of air. A good quality dust mask and decent hygeine would keep you safe. Disposable coveralls and a lead or asbestos approved respirator would allow you to work in the area just fine."

UPDATE: Just saw this on the UPI wire by a Russian journalist with a physicist describing the Litvinenko murder as "a rehearsal for a dirty bomb" and claiming "The incident shows that something dangerous is cooking in the terrorist kitchen, with menacing ideas and plans that can generally be described as a crime."

CONCLUSION: A terrorist (or group) with patience, explosives training and the assistance of knowledgeable agents (and I'm told there are numerous "rogue" ex-KGBers out there) could weaponize polonium into an inhalable mixture for a deadly but brief attack in an urban area. Whether a terrorist group would go through the exercise is a topic for another discussion.