September Newsletter - 2004

Books Corner:

Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11
What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You

Paul L. Williams

Prometheus Books

Amherst, NY June 2004

In the call-to-arms entitled “Osama’s Revenge”, author Paul Williams sets out to prove that radicals in the Islamist camp have acquired – and are prepared to use– nuclear weapons against the West. The source of these weapons is said to be the Soviet Union’s (now Russia’s) “suitcase” nuclear weapons, as has been splashed across countless print and television newsmagazines since ex-General Alexander Lebed startled the world (and the US Congress) in the late 1990s by flatly stating that hundreds of these devices had been made and the many dozen were unaccounted for in the aftermath of the vaporization of the Soviet state.

Terrifying, to be sure; but accurate? While no one outside of the Russian nuclear archipelago can say for sure, the reality is probably somewhat less worrisome. The Monterey Institute, reviewing just about all available open source information and applying a bit of reasoned analysis concluded that portable nuclear weapons in the hands of fanatics was a bit, well, fanatical (http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020923.htm). Specifically,

• Russian nuclear weapons are notoriously difficult to maintain. Substantial special training is required to make the weapons operable (assuming that one could bypass the “permissive action links” that rather ingeniously deter tampering and unauthorized use.)
• The KGB was entrusted to oversee over all non-strategic nuclear weapons and probably remained loyal to the changing regimes in the new Russia. The same operatives now run the Russian government (Putin himself was a high-ranking KGB officer and has populated most of his ministries with old colleagues)
• If, indeed, the Soviet Union produced “portable” nuclear weapons, they were likely intended as land mines for use on the border with China and probably weighed in excess of 200 pounds. Compact, certainly, but hardly person-portable and the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies.

Williams is a former FBI agent and clearly has little in the way of scientific training. There are numerous technical errors throughout the book, and he largely derives his conclusions from newspapers instead of primary source documents (indeed, I could find none of the latter in his bibliography).

Where William's is right—though hardly original—is in his characterization of the resolute, unappeasable hostility of radical Islam to the West (and to non-radical Islam, whatever the latter may be). I have little doubt—based on my political judgment, as I have no special knowledge here—that radical Islamic groups will do anything they can and in as large a proportion as they can to kill and to undermine confidence in western governments. The best proof in my view is the enormous wailing over the building of the wall in Israel; the radical Islamists hate it because it works to stop their most effective weapon to date (suicide bombers) and not because of any concern over the welfare of Palestinians who will be inconvenienced or worse by the wall (although I think it is important to note that failure to follow the Green Line during the wall’s construction is a reason for worry about the actual intentions of the current Israeli government). The entire Gaza strip is a testament to radical Islamists' complete disregard for the comfort and prosperity of Palestinians; more international dollars per capita have been poured into that tiny area than anywhere else on earth and the result is only more poverty, disease, and frustration simply because radical Islam needs to have angry people festering on the border with Israel (and possibly as a warning to modern Egyptian governments as well).

So is there little need to worry over “loose nukes”? Would that we were so lucky. Where I truly am concerned about nukes in the hands of radical groups follows from the sordid story of Dr. A. Q. Khan of Pakistan. My reading between the lines of newspaper and other media accounts is that this guy really did try to get enriched uranium (a far, far more likely fissionable material for terrorist use than plutonium) into the hands of al Quaeda. I do not know if he succeeded of course, but if he had, my guess is that some of that material would have found its way to Chechnya, and the fighters there have no compunction about using it against Russia. So, I believe—but certainly cannot prove—that the best evidence we have is that no useable fissionable material has made it out of Pakistan, by far the most likely source of key components of a nuclear weapon.

In the end, William’s book is unsettling, but at least as much for the terror that it illogically induces as for the real terror it describes. No wonder that the author spends most of his time writing for a newspaper in Scranton, PA.

Have a question or comment? Email bioterr@slu.edu