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Experts now cast doubt on earlier talk of Osama Bin Laden�s �suitcase bombs�
Yael Haran
Israeli and Western observers are casting doubt on earlier assessments that Osama Bin Laden�s arsenal includes �suitcase bombs� � Soviet-made miniaturized nuclear devices.
The portable bombs have an explosive power of 1 kiloton of TNT, less than 10 percent of the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, and can be detonated by remote control.
�It�s much tougher to get that kind of device and make it work than people think,� Herb Krosney, a Jerusalem-based independent TV producer and author who specializes in non-conventional warfare, told The Jerusalem Report. �A strike using nuclear weapons is more likely to be done by a state than by a terror group.�
William Potter, a non-proliferation expert at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, a think tank operating out of California, Washington, D.C. and Almaty, Kazakhstan, says he �does not give much credence to stories about the suitcases.�
Even possession of the suitcase bombs wouldn�t mean that terrorists were able to use them, adds Rose Gottemoeller, an expert on Russian weaponry at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. There are several components in these bombs that require special codes to activate, Gottemoeller told The Report. If the bombs were stolen, there�s no guarantee that the codes were as well.
Nor are Islamic terrorists likely to have access to portable A-bombs in secret caches pre-positioned by the former Soviet Union in the West during the Cold War, as has been suggested by Stanislav Lunev, a senior defector from Soviet military intelligence. British historian Christopher Andrew, who revealed the existence of such caches in his 1999 book �The Sword and the Shield,� told The Report that he is �skeptical of the existence� of atomic weapons in the small arsenals, located in Western Europe and the U.S., which include tactical weapons, maps and communications equipment.
But there are those who don�t discount the possibility that some of the 300-odd suitcase bombs developed by the former Soviet Union have gone astray. During a 1997 visit to Washington Gen. Alexander Lebed, chairman of the Russian State Security Council, told Congress that 132 of the devices could not be accounted for. And in a recent interview with CBS-TV, defector Lunev said that some of the missing bombs �are still located on American soil,� adding that Bin Laden had obtained several of the Soviet devices.
In his 1999 book on Bin Laden, Yosef Bodansky, the Israeli-born head of the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, wrote that �there is no longer doubt that Bin Laden has finally succeeded in the quest for nuclear suitcase bombs.� Bodansky asserted that the devices were acquired through the Chechen mafia, for $30 million in cash and two tons of Afghan heroin.
On October 14, United Press International reported from Washington that Israeli security forces had arrested a Pakistani linked to Bin Laden near Ramallah, who was trying to sneak into Israel a �radioactive backpack bomb� with a �small core of conventional explosives encased in radioactive material.� Such a device would not produce a nuclear explosion, but would spread a great deal of radioactivity if detonated, Peter Probst, a former Pentagon terror specialist, told UPI. Other rumors say the backpack contained �components of a nuclear suitcase.�
The Army Spokesman�s Office would say only that it was �studying� the report. But it has been treated with skepticism by Israeli experts. �It would take a lot of special protection for those who were handling such a device, and a lot of sophistication to operate it, observes Krosney. �Still,� he adds, �everything is possible.�
To guard against the possibility of terrorist nuclear attack, Gottemoeller notes, American NEST (Nuclear Emergency Search Teams) have been extremely active in recent weeks. These teams, she says, �work on the basis of intelligence to respond to tactical warnings.�
Potter of the Monterey Institute finds much more serious things to worry about � including components of weapons from the Pakistani nuclear arsenal falling into the hand of Bin Laden�s Al-Qu�aeda network. Those fears have been reinforced by Pakistan�s recent detention of two senior atomic scientists who had visited Afghanistan and advised the Taliban government �on scientific matters.�
December 3, 2001
Reporter
Israel gives intelligence briefings to alleged smugglers of Mig engines to Saddam
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