Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America’s Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad

324 Pages·2009·3.12 MB·English

by  Jeffrey T. Richelson

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 America’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National
Security A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century America’s
Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program

CONTENTS
List of Letters, Maps, Figures, and Tables
Preface
1. “Bye-Bye Boston”
2. Nuclear Extortion
3. Morning Light
4. A Low-Profile Decade
5. Tarnished Gold
6. People, Paper, and Machines
7. New Enemies
8. Danger and Response
9. A New Urgency
10. NEST after 9/11
11. Foreign Travel
12. Challenges Ahead
Appendix: U.S. Nuclear Extortion Threats Event List: 1970–1993
Abbreviations and Acronyms
Terminology
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Notes
Index
LIST OF LETTERS, MAPS, FIGURES, AND
TABLES
Extortion Letter to Fred Hartley
Map of Northwest Territories
Search Sectors for Morning Light
NEST Deployments 1975–1989
Damage to New York City from Ten-Kiloton Weapon
Pakistani Nuclear Sites
National Special Security Events 1998–2007
PREFACE
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 governments—threatening 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 Fleming’s 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 Bond’s 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 Yard’s
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 1996’s 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 24, 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 one—
even 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,
Qaddafi’s 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 1991’s 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 1964’s Goldfinger, the third James Bond film, as part of a plot to
destroy the value of the U.S. gold supply, the People’s 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 Clancy’s book or 24. In 2005, BBC and HBO viewers
had the opportunity to watch Dirty War, which featured Islamic terrorists
detonating a “dirty bomb”—in 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.
Decades earlier, in the 1961 novel The Removers, secret agent Matt Helm
halts a Soviet operation that involved smuggling “very ingenious” sabotage
devices into the United States. The devices consisted of radioactive wastes
packed into a shielded container with a small explosive charge that “would
distribute the radioactive material over a fairly wide area.”6
A step below detonating anything is stealing radioactive material that can be
employed in a dirty bomb or nuclear device. Novelists and scriptwriters have not
neglected this possibility. Michael Connelly’s The Overlook, featuring his now-
legendary detective Harry Bosch, involved the theft of medical radioactive
sources that were feared at first to be earmarked for use in a dirty bomb. In the