Abstract
Osama's Revenge: The Next 9/11–What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You By Paul L. Williams, Prometheus Books, 2004, 261 pages; $25
In Osama's Revenge, Paul L. Williams asserts not only that Al Qaeda bought “suitcase bombs”–small nuclear weapons–between 1996 and 2001, but also that terrorists will detonate one of them in the United States. Williams bases his claims largely on secondary sources, relying particularly heavily on questionable sources like the Israeli news site debka.com, which mixes anonymous tips and unsubstantiated rumors with factual stories. Williams's dubious informants for some of his “information about the nuclear suitcases that are meant to destroy the United States of America” are two drug dealers from New York City's Little Odessa neighborhood who don't even know the source of the drugs they peddle. The book ignores counterarguments and any evidence contrary to the author's claims, and readers may find it difficult to discern when he turns to wild speculation.
Williams's frightening scenario is badly flawed. His tale, however, brings up the critical question of how America can protect itself from nuclear terrorism–what Williams calls “the coming nightmare.”
The alleged Al Qaeda purchase of so-called Soviet suitcase nukes has been widely reported in the press. Some reports say that Chechen fighters acquired the weapons in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, or Ukraine after the Soviet Union disintegrated. Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev even declared that he had acquired suitcase nukes in 1994 and later sold them to Al Qaeda.
The Soviet Union did build small tactical nuclear devices, called “nuclear backpacks,” that were developed for the Ministry of Defense Special Forces (Spetsnaz). There were two versions of the weapons–one for the army and an underwater version for the navy. A single operator could reportedly arm one of these devices, which weigh about 66 pounds, in just 10 minutes. Recent Russian reports indicate that these devices, which had a yield of .5-2 kilotons, were kept at two secret storage facilities and were never released to troops (see “Suitcase Nukes: Permanently Lost Luggage,” by Nikolai Sokov, on the Center for Nonproliferation Studies web site for more details).
The weapons were designed in such a way that they could not remain in ready-to-use status for more than six months; certain components had to be periodically replaced by experts. Williams's assertion that U.S. tactical nuclear weapons can be stored without maintenance for a far longer period, even if true, hardly proves that the Soviets used similar designs. And contrary to what Williams claims, Russian experts say that the weapons used “permissive action links” and other measures that would make it impossible to detonate the weapons if attempts were made to forcibly remove their electronic locks.
In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev promised to destroy all of the nuclear backpacks, but in 2002 Moscow announced that it was extending destruction deadlines to 2004 due to insufficient funds. There has been no official update on the status of this work since. While some of these weapons might still exist, there is convincing evidence that Russia withdrew all of them from the other former Soviet republics by May 1992. Furthermore, Russian officials recently acknowledged that a special commission charged with accounting for the portable nuclear devices, established in 1996 by Gen. Alexander Lebed, was able to account for each individual device. In 1997, Lebed commented that the commission was not yet done with its work and had yet to establish the location of some 100 devices. This statement is the origin of many stories about “missing” tactical nuclear devices; the fact that the commission concluded in the end that no devices were missing should put this story to rest.
While there is no reason to believe Al Qaeda has Soviet suitcase bombs, Williams does quote a good number of Al Qaeda statements indicating that Osama bin Laden wants nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, Williams confuses nuclear weapons with radiological weapons, which are devices that use conventional explosives to spread radiation but do not result in a nuclear explosion. In one of the more interesting parts of Osama's Revenge, Williams relates that bin Laden considers himself the Mahdi, the messiah figure whose expected return will bring about a sort of final judgment–perhaps with the help of nuclear weapons.
If bin Laden has not yet acquired the know-how to build nuclear weapons, he is likely to do so in the near future–especially if scientists from the A. Q. Khan laboratory have been helping him, as Pakistani intelligence has alleged. But obtaining fissile material is far more difficult. Instead of digging up American farmland to search for phantom bombs supposedly buried during the Cold War, as Williams says has been done, the United States would make nuclear terrorism much less likely if it worked harder to secure the huge global stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium.