Jeffrey T. Richelson - Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America’s Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad

ALSO BY JEFFREY T. RICHELSON

Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea

The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA s Directorate of Science and Technology

Americas Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security

A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century

Americas Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program

CONTENTS

Extortion Letter to Fred Hartley

Map of Northwest Territories

Search Sectors for Morning Light

NEST Deployments 19751989

Damage to New York City from Ten-Kiloton Weapon

Pakistani Nuclear Sites

National Special Security Events 19982007

IN 1961, and again in 1965, a British Vulcan bomber carrying two nuclear weapons was hijacked during a NATO training exercise. Eventually, the hijacker landed the plane at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Nassau in the Bahamas. The plot originated with an international criminal organization, which then attempted to extort a huge ransom in diamonds from the American and British governmentsthreatening to detonate the bombs in one American city (Miami, as it turned out) and one British city (presumably London) if its demand was not met. But a heroic British agent identified the location of the bombs, and after the leader of the criminal effort escaped during a raid on the undersea location where the bombs were hidden, taking one of the bombs with him, the agent prevented that nuclear device from reaching Miami.

Of course, the international criminal organization was the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion (SPECTRE), and the British agent was James Bond. And those events occurred not in the real world but first in the pages of Ian Flemings 1961 novel Thunderball and then, beginning in late 1965, on movie screens throughout the world. Essentially the same plot would be repeated in Never Say Never Again , the 1983 remake of Thunderball. But James Bonds 1965 confrontation with SPECTRE was not the first encounter British filmgoers had had with nuclear extortion.

About fifteen years earlier, in August 1950, Seven Days to Noon appeared in British cinemas. As in Thunderball , a nuclear weapon is stolen, and its new owner threatens to detonate the device if his demands are not met. But the thief is not some elaborate criminal organization but rather a lone individual. Professor Willingdon, a British nuclear scientist, is not looking for a huge payoff, at least not one measured in dollars or diamonds. Instead, he threatens to detonate the stolen weapon in London unless his government halts its production of nuclear weapons. In a final similarity to Thunderball, it all ends badly for the extortionist. The British cabinet refuses to negotiate, and Scotland Yards Special Branch initiates a huge manhunt for Willingdon, ending with his being gunned down with only seconds (but probably not 007 seconds) to spare before the bomb would have been detonated.1

Stolen nuclear weapons have figured prominently in other films and one television series, although the objectives of those in possession of the deadly devices have varied considerably. In 1996s Broken Arrow , a renegade Air Force major, played by John Travolta, seizes control of his B-3 bomber, steals its two nuclear weapons, and threatens to destroy a city unless he receives a payoff. The next year, in The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, a Yugoslav seeking revenge for the death of his wife and daughter, and blaming the United Nations for not protecting them, tries and fails to detonate a stolen nuclear device at UN headquarters.2 Then, in Season 6 (2007) of , Islamic terrorists buy suitcase bombs from a rogue Russian general and manage to detonate one on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

While theft is one way to get hold of a nuclear weapon, an alternative for a prospective nuclear terrorist is to build one, or to have someone else build oneeven if that requires threatening to kill the scientist or his loved ones should he refuse to cooperate. With the help of American physicist Peter Zimmerman, Nicolas Freeling, the detective novelist best known for his Inspector Van der Valk mysteries, produced Gadget , published in 1977. The central character of the book is Jim Hawkins, a physicist who works at a nuclear research facility in Hamburg. After a traffic accident he wakes up to find himself, as well as his wife and two daughters, the prisoner of Herr Doktor, a terrorist who demands that he use his expertise to build a nuclear device. Before the novel concludes, the reader witnesses Hawkins going through the process, involving both theoretical calculations and industrial work, to produce the gadget. This time things end badly for the city of Geneva and the group of international leaders who had assembled there for a UN conference.3

Probably the best-known novel involving a nuclear device built on behalf of a terrorist, The Fifth Horseman , appeared in 1980, coauthored by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, renowned for their collaboration on the nonfiction work Is Paris Burning? In the novel the terrorist is Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi, who threatens to detonate a three-megaton device in New York City unless an autonomous Palestinian state is established. Unlike Herr Doktor, Qaddafis first preference is not to detonate the device but to attain a political objective. And, unfortunately for the fictional version of the Libyan dictator, like the extortionists in Thunderball , neither his first nor his second objectives are accomplished. No Palestinian state is established and New York survives unscathed.4

Sometimes, terrorists just get lucky and virtually have a nuclear weapon handed to them. That was a premise of 1991s The Sum of All Fears , the work of best-selling author Tom Clancy. In the inevitable techno-thriller prologue, which is set during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, an Israeli A-4 warplane carrying a nuclear bomb is shot down. Years later it is recovered and eventually winds up in the hands of Muslim extremists, who succeed in detonating it in Denver during (and at) the Super Bowl.5

In one film there was nothing virtual about the villain being handed a nuclear weapon. In 1964s Goldfinger , the third James Bond film, as part of a plot to destroy the value of the U.S. gold supply, the Peoples Republic of China provides the appropriately named Auric Goldfinger with a nuclear device to be detonated within the chambers of Fort Knox. Of course, as unlikely as it was that such a plot would be hatched or succeed in the real world, it was even less likely to be successful in a James Bond film.

On television, terrorists have attempted to do radioactive harm on a lesser scale than the terrorists in Clancys book or . In 2005, BBC and HBO viewers had the opportunity to watch Dirty War , which featured Islamic terrorists detonating a dirty bombin which radioactive material, such as cesium-137 or cobalt-60, is combined with conventional explosives. There are two effects of such a bomb. One is the damage done by conventional explosives. The second is the dispersal of the radioactivity. Such a bomb need not, and unless cleverly designed will not, produce mass casualties, since individuals can quickly escape the scene. But it does have the ability to contaminate the immobile buildings and structures for a significant area around ground zero and make them uninhabitable for years to come. In the 2006 Showtime series Sleeper Cell , Islamic terrorists attempt but, thanks to an undercover FBI agent, fail to do the same to Los Angeles.