Deep Politics Forum

Nuclear Forensics Skill Is Declining in U.S., Report Says

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: July 29, 2010



The nation’s ability to identify the source of a nuclear weapon used in a terrorist attack is fragile and eroding, according to a report released Thursday by the National Research Council.
Such highly specialized detective work, known as nuclear attribution, seeks to study clues from fallout and radioactive debris as a way to throw light on the identity of the attacker and the maker of the weapon. In recent years, federal officials have sought to improve such analytic skills, arguing that nuclear terrorism is a grave, long-term threat to the nation.
The major goals of the federal efforts are to clarify options for retaliation and to deter terrorists by letting them know that nuclear devices have fingerprints that atomic specialists can find and trace.
The report, “Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk,” was made public by the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. It summarizes a secret version completed in January. Three federal agencies — the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Energy Department — requested the study.
The public report says that a series of factors threaten to undermine the nation’s ability to conduct nuclear investigations intended to learn the provenance of an explosive device, whether it is a true atomic weapon or a so-called dirty bomb that uses conventional explosives to spew radioactivity.
“Although U.S. nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, underresourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,” the report warns. “Without strong leadership, careful planning and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.”
Much of the forensic expertise is in the laboratories that maintain the nation’s nuclear arsenal. They had their heyday during the cold war and are now struggling to attract personnel, finance projects and carve out new identities.
The study was done by a dozen nuclear specialists from academia, industry, the military and the nuclear laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was led by Albert Carnesale, a nuclear engineer and chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Los Angeles, who during the cold war represented the United States in atomic negotiations.
The panel sharply criticized the federal government’s management of the forensic endeavor, saying several agencies shared responsibility for investigations but did so “without central authority and with no consensus on strategic requirements to guide the program.” The organizational complexity, the panel said, “hampers the program and could prove to be a major hindrance operationally.”
In addition, the panel cited a lack of skilled personnel, the use of outdated instruments and the existence of old facilities in need of upgrading. For general support, the forensics work depends on the nation’s program for maintaining its nuclear arsenal, the report noted, adding, however, that its “funds are declining.”
The report calls on the federal government to take steps to strengthen its forensic capabilities. It argues for the necessity of better planning, more robust budgets, clearer lines of authority and more realistic exercises.
In a preface to the report, Dr. Carnesale noted that the federal government had worked hard to improve the situation since the classified version of the report was issued in January, and that it had appeared to make progress.
“Much work,” he added, “remains to be done.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 30, 2010, on page A11 of the New York edition.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/30nuke.html?_r=2


############

GORDON DUFF: FALSE FLAG NUKE ATTACK ON U.S. JUSTIFIED….”KING’S TORAH”

August 2, 2010 posted by Gordon Duff · 23 Comments

Share

ISRAEL TO USE IRANIAN AND PAKISTANI DUPES IN DIRTY NUKE PLOY

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
This week, the last piece fell into place. The National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Science, heavy on politics and light on science, announced that America was no longer able to track nukes threatening our shores. Their report titled Nuclear Forensics: A Capability at Risk, released last week, outlines the details of a secret study requested by the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense and Energy, specifically the National Nuclear Security Administration. The gist of the story is easy, if a nuke goes off in America, dirty nuke in Times Square, one in a container at a port, anywhere, America won’t be able to tell who made it. Not a word of the report is true. It is wild speculation and disinformation written in broad language with no hard science, written for a reason.
A powerful group within the United States, one with influence over the press and the ability to derail an investigation as was done with 9/11, has been “tasked” with laying the groundwork for a terrorist attack on America, one using nuclear material. This report, unneeded, and highly inaccurate was printed in the New York Times to provide “cover.” It isn’t just this report, the pieces are falling together around the world. The Wiki-Leaks story, pre staging Pakistan’s ISI as a terrorist organization, a story built out of almost no information but fleshed out with massive speculation by “operatives” in the press is part of the process.
The Defense Authorization Act of 2006 allows, “in case of a terrorist attack” for the president to declare marshal law, disband congress and rule by executive decree. With the suspension of habeas corpus by the Military Commissions act, also in 2006, America as we know it officially comes to an end the second a weapon of mass destruction in used. Only then will America learn who has been pulling the strings all along, who is scripting Wolf Blitzer and Glen Beck.
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s attacks on Pakistan, made from New Delhi last week, seen by most as a serious political blunder, are part of the narrative. We will get to more background on a younger David Cameron later.
Another piece of the puzzle involved a federal task force, Defense, Energy, FBI, descending on a warehouse in Greenfield, Indiana under the guise of a “records search.” This “Waco style” assault on a facility storing furniture for college dorm rooms was much more than it seemed. No case, criminal or civil, provided any underlying reason for the search.
Further, the bizarre tale of rumored missing nukes, illegally transported on a B-52 from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, a major Defense Department scandal, is meant to create, not only fear and doubt, but “plausible deniability” if a weapon is exploded inside the US. These, however, are not, by far, the only missing nuclear weapons America has to fear as we will get into later.
Two recent attacks, the “Times Square Fizzler” and the Detroit “Crotch Bomber” were both amateurish affairs except for a couple of things. Both perpetrators had strong ties to Israeli organizations, one actually employed by an Israeli-American financial firm, the other the son of Israel’s primary partner in their defense industry complex in Nigeria. None of this was reported or investigated once discovered. It was shoved under the rug immediately. When cursory investigations of both suspects showed travel histories only possible with significant help from an intelligence agency, both stories disappeared from the news entirely. It is as though everyone involved vanished from the face of the earth like the second person arrested in Detroit or the “well dressed Indian” who aided the “Crotch Bomber” onto the plane in Amsterdam.
LEGAL JUSTIFICATION FOR ATTACKS ON GENTILES
Conservative interpretations of Jewish law, currently being used to justify resettlement of Palestinians and even total removal of all non-Jews from greater Palestine and adjacent areas have long been used to justify acts such as the attack on the USS Liberty, bombings of US facilities in Egypt and, less openly, “false flag” terror attacks attributed to Muslims but performed by Israeli security forces. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, seen as the ethical conscience behind the Netanyahu government have taken the following position as reported by Jonathan Cook:
This rationale allows deadly force to be used against Christians if their deaths advance the cause of Israeli security even if only through economic profit. Thus, if an attack such as 9/11 were to lead to America fighting wars against enemies of Israel or if, as in Afghanistan, Israeli companies were to profit from weapons or narcotics sales, any deaths of gentiles, no matter how innocent, would be justified by Jewish law as stated in the Torah.
Were an attack on the United States to bring that country to war against Iran, even if that attack were perpetrated by Israelis, it would be legal according to Israeli law, the same law being relied upon for justice in the attack on the Mavi Marmara.
More often however, attacks on Israel itself are believed to have been staged, not only to instill the population with fear and rage but to continue the “holocaust” tradition of Jewish victimhood as a justification for policies that have led to 62 vetoes in the United Nations by the US, vetoes against sanctions imposed against Israel for violations of international law.
We expect increased attacks on Israel, quickly tied to Hezbollah and Iran, attacks that will either involve no casualties or the deaths of either foreign workers or Russian emigres. This pattern has been used repeatedly, such as the March 18 “attack” killing a lone Thai ”guest” worker time to coincide with the visit of the European Union’s high commissioner for security, Catherine Ashton, a critic of Israel’s apartheid policy in Gaza.
On a side note, 400 children of “guest workers” are being expelled from Israel this week. Eventually all will be expelled, guilty of destroying “the Jewish character” through lack of “racial purity.”
When the US and Israel released Sharam Amiri, alleged Iranian nuclear scientist, we learned one thing. There is an inventory of Muslims, perhaps arrested, perhaps kidnapped, maybe lured into custody, rendition, imprisonment or “cold storage,” whatever you want to call it. Each one has an elaborate “legend” built around them, describing them as a “lone gunman” or “terrorist mastermind.” This is the group that will supply the names and photographs we will see after the next terror attack.
As Wayne Madsen described to us this week, this was the process the CIA and Mossad used to create Osama bin Laden from nothing. The organization we know of as Al Qaeda is, in itself, a false creation, an invention initially to serve as terrorist when we needed them and as enemies when we needed them too:
A pattern of evidence is emerging that “cold storage” dupes and CIA/Mossad nurtured organizations may have had a hand in, not only the Mumbai attacks but the London and Madrid bombings as well. Additional trails are leading to attacks on American troops inside Iraq and Afghanistan and against security forces inside Pakistan, particularly against Pakistan’s ISI, primary target of press stories on the recent Wiki-Leak.
AMERICA AND THE “TORY NUKES”
VELA satellites: Detect signatures of nuclear explosions

There are two reasons to attack America’s “forensic capabilities” when it comes to nuclear weapons. A leak the press chose not to cover, one bringing Israel under scrutiny for egregious violations of international treaties on Nuclear Proliferation, treaties Israel has never signed, were brought to the surface recently. Back on September 22 1979, Israel and South Africa tested a nuclear device, an 18.2 kiloton bomb. This test in a remote area of the Indian Ocean was detected by America’s VELA satellite system and confirmed by acoustic sensors. A forensic signature of this weapon was developed, not only through optics but through particle emissions. When an identical weapon was detonated by North Korea on May 25, 2009, a question was raised. How did a nuclear weapon built by Armscor, an Israel company operating in South Africa, end up in North Korea?
This is the story of the “Tory nukes,” nuclear weapons purchased by Margaret Thatcher in 1991 from South Africa under a secret authorization describing the weapons as “cylinders.” Those involved in putting this bombs into special containers, transporting them to Durban and then off to a container storage facility in Oman from which they disappeared are now filling volumes. When the weapons containers which had laid unguarded for months in a container yard in Oman were forwarded to the United States for dis-assembly in accordance with treaty requirements, only concrete blocks were found. The disappearance has been directly tied to two arms traders who ran illegal trafficking for Israel and South Africa during the Iran-Iraq War.
The accused were business partners in the “Ollie North era” Reagan hijinks known as Iran Contra. The “thieves” were connected to the highest levels of, not only Israeli intelligence but the CIA as well.
Israel says Saddam stole the weapons.
As late as 2003, Tony Blair used this “tale” to back what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg calls “the illegal invasion of Iraq.” Blair had financial incentives to back the invasion, several million of them, as secret letters leaked to the press but never printed have shown.
PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON, DR. DAVID KELLY AND ARMSCORE
Back in 1990, a very young David Cameron, later to become Prime Minister David Cameron, was offered a free trip to South Africa, paid for by Israeli owned Armscor, a nuclear weapons manufacturer. Cameron was supposedly working with Dr. David Kelly investigating weapons of mass destruction in South Africa. In fact something much different was going on. On January 16, 2005, Tim Shipman, Defense Editor of the Sunday Express released the following story, one never reported in US papers. Today, Dr. David Kelly is dead, clearly murdered because of what he knew and David Cameron is in India carefully reading from a script written in Tel Aviv. This is the 2005 story from the Express:
While British and American troops stormed across Iraq in 2003, searching for these missing nukes, defense experts now fear they had been in Israeli hands all along, a secret Dr. David Kelly was no longer willing to keep, one that led to his death. The missing containers may easily have been transferred to the Netherlands, Nigeria or even the United States, perhaps even Indiana or Toledo as is now rumored. British police have raided the homes of many involved in the missing weapons, seizing computers, personal papers and “frightening the hell out of people.” Some of those terrorized are scheduled witnesses for the Iraq War inquiry.
ONLY AMERICAN DEAD CAN PRE-STAGE THE IRAN ATTACK
This summer, Turkey and Brazil negotiated a deal with Iran to remove any nuclear fuel that could be used for weapons development. It was exactly what everyone had been asking for. President Obama ignored it and pushed for sanctions demanded by Israel. Russia cancelled the sale of an S300 air defense system to Iran and voted to back sanctions against its ally, Iran also. The relationship between Tel Aviv and the Russian oligarchs, seen so clearly during the Jonathan Pollard spy scandal, had reappeared for public again though no news organization picked any of this up.
With secret Israeli bases, believed used for transit of narcotics from Afghanistan, ringing Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and other nations in the region, and US supplies and munitions in place or being delivered through Black Sea ports, only American public opinion is holding up an attack on Iran, despite the fact that Iran’s president Ahmadinejad has requested an immediate conference with President Obama to “settle outstanding issues.”
UPSTAGING 9/11
Even though Iran is isolated, even from its Islamic neighbors, it has a substantial defensive capability. Iran can quickly destroy all gulf region oil production facilities and close off shipping to that region, an act likely to collapse all western economies in days. Militarily, however, Iran is unable to defend itself against the vast technological superiority of the United States. However, after a decade of wars with Iraq remaining, not only unstable but increasingly so, and the United States facing defeat in Afghanistan, the American people are unlikely to want to begin a new conflict, especially with an adversary much more powerful than either Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel as the only ally, a country the United States has no mutual defense treaty with and no ability to sustain conflict beyond its own immediate borders for more than 48 hours.
Earlier this year, Israeli military historian Dr. Martin Van Creveld announced Israel’s “King Torah” policy toward the “gentile nations:”
The legal justification for a nuclear attack is in place, part of Israeli law. The will to do so is there if such an attack can be pulled off and few doubt Israel’s ability who have seen the power of the Israeli lobby in Washington and have spoken of their control of the press, such as with the recent media castration of director Oliver Stone.
The tools are in place. Israel is believed to possess two Hiroshima sized nuclear weapons, weapons that can be used freely because the media is ready to claim them to be “stolen” by Muslims if told to do so. The third weapon was exploded by North Korea with the media blackout leaving Israel as the only possible source for this weapon. No nation has the power to black out a leak like that one, not a leak that exposes Israel as a rogue arms dealer, first to apartheid South Africa, then Libya and both Iraq and Iran during their war and finally North Korea.
The ground is prepared, America is now stripped of “forensic” ability to track nuclear explosions, so the cover story tells us. Israel still threatens the world with the missing nukes, weapons reason tells us they control. Any container in any port, any truck, any warehouse could hide these weapons, anywhere in the United States.
When it happens, the vast majority of Americans will find the trail left, Pakistanis, Iranians, all as planned. They will immediately call for the destruction of the Islamic world as is intended by Israel. The internet will be shut down, congress sent home and anyone mentioning that only Israel profits and that only Israel could have done it will be imprisoned, as intended.
They learned from 9/11. Too many questions were asked. They won’t make the same mistake again.


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/02/...ing-torah/