Reporter Finds Bin Laden's Nuclear Secrets

[Gauracandra]

Reporter Finds Bin Laden's Nuclear Secrets

 

KABUL, Afghanistan — Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network held detailed plans for nuclear devices and other terrorist bombs in one of its Kabul headquarters.

 

The Times discovered the partly burnt documents in a hastily abandoned safe house in the Karta Parwan quarter of the city. Written in Arabic, German, Urdu, and English, the notes give detailed designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons. There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction.

 

Both President Bush and British ministers are convinced that bin Laden has access to nuclear material and Bush said earlier this month that Al Qaeda was "seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons."

 

The discovery of the detailed bomb-making instructions, along with studies into chemical and nuclear devices, confirms the West's worst fears and raises the specter of plans for an attack that would far exceed the Sept. 11 atrocities in scale and gravity.

 

Nuclear experts say the design suggests that bin Laden may be working on a fission device, similar to Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. However, they emphasized that it was extremely difficult to build a viable warhead.

 

While the terrorists may not yet have the capability to build such weapons, their hopes of doing so are clear. One set of notes, written on headed notepaper from the Hotel Grand in Peshawar and dated April 26, 1998, says: "Naturally the explosive liquid has a very high mechanical energy which is translated into destructive force. But it can be tamed, controlled and can be used as a useful propulsive fuel if certain methods are applied to it. A supersonic moving missile has a shock wave. That shock wave can be used to contain an external combustion behind the missile ..."

 

The document was one of many found in two of four Al Qaeda houses which had been used by Arabs and Pakistanis and even reportedly by bin Laden himself. The houses — two in the Karta Parwan district and the others further to the east — were abandoned on Monday as Taliban units and their allies fled the city.

 

Attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many documents still remained. They included studies into the development of a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads, external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making smaller bombs.

 

There were also studies into Western special forces' hostage rescue techniques, phone numbers for industrial chemical and synthetic producers, flight manuals, aerodynamic research, and advanced physics and chemistry manuals.

 

The houses were identified by local people. Looters had concentrated on more appetizing objects, ignoring foreign language documents that were of no use to them.

 

Bin Laden sees it as his "religious duty" to obtain a nuclear bomb. In an interview with a Pakistani journalist last week, he threatened: "If America used chemical or nuclear weapons against us then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons as deterrent."

 

Intelligence agencies already have indirect evidence from defectors, middlemen and scientists of bin Laden's obsession with obtaining or producing a nuclear device.

 

Al Qaeda agents are known to have spent more than $1 million trying to obtain enough fissile material to make a "dirty bomb" that, if detonated with TNT in a populous area, could kill thousands and contaminate it for decades.

 

Intelligence sources told The Times last month that bin Laden and Al Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials illegally from Pakistan. And at least ten Pakistani nuclear scientists have been contacted by agents for the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the past two years, according to reports.

 

Fears that bin Laden has components for a nuclear weapon is believed to lie behind the warnings from Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he would commit worse atrocities than the suicide assaults in America if he could. Blair's spokesman said: "Bin Laden would have killed 600,000 people on Sept. 11 if he could have done. This underlines again why he has to be stopped."

[Gauracandra]

In houses in and around Kabul, the Afghan capital, Northern Alliance troops who chased out the Taliban have found terrorist training manuals, bomb-making materials and reportedly even detailed designs of nuclear weapons.

The Times of London reported today that one of its reporters discovered partially burned plans describing how to detonate plutonium and create a nuclear explosion. The documents were found in a former headquarters of al Qaeda, the bin Laden network believed to have been behind the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

 

According to the Times, "attempts had been made to burn the evidence, but many documents still remained. They included studies into the development of a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads, external propulsion missiles, preliminary research on the creation of a thermonuclear device, as well as a multitude of instructions for making smaller bombs."

 

A little more than a week ago, President Bush told a group of Central and Eastern European leaders that bin Laden's attempts to get nuclear arms represented a "threat to every nation; and, eventually, to civilization itself."

 

Bin Laden's men made their first move in their quest for nuclear weapons in Khartoum, Sudan, in the mid-1990s. But the man allegedly sent on the mission, key bin Laden lieutenant Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (who is now being held in New York awaiting trial in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa), was apparently cheated by Russian mobsters.

 

Charles Adler, the American lawyer who once represented Salim, said "there was an effort to buy enriched uranium" but the Russian Mafia tried to fool Salim.

 

"I think it just wasn't what it was purported to be," Adler said. "But there was nothing that would indicate that they wouldn't continue to try."

 

Bin Laden has boasted he has nuclear weapons, but U.S. surveillance flights over Afghanistan training camps have not detected any evidence of such arms.

[valaya]

Never fear, tarun and paul108 will defend us!

[Gauracandra]

Thanks Tarun and Paul108

 

[gHari]

Fierce as these fellas are, I sill have some fear about these psychotics on camels.

 

I had to seek refuge in my not being physically in the U.S. for a while.

 

I was very angered when I read that America has actually financed the creation of a lot of the bunkers now occupied by Bingo's Boys now.

 

Why can't we just be nice guys? Seems maybe we just reap what we sow. All rah-rah America's number one bull aside, can we expect not to be dealt the same cards we deal out? I'm sick about it all.

[Gauracandra]

Here is the thing, it is very easy to look back and say "Why did the U.S. support so and so? Look what bad guys they are..." But you have to remember that the greatest evil in the world was communism, and our goal was to prevent its sweeping across the globe. Make no mistake about it - communism was pure evil. Because of this, the Cold War made strange bedfellows. People we didn't particularly like became allies because they worked with us to combat a common enemy.

 

For instance, right now we are working with the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban. We are giving the Northern Alliance weapons and training in order to fight a common enemy - Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Now suppose in 10 years the Northern Alliance turns around and becomes a problem for us. It would be completely stupid then to say "Oh you Americans were such fools for helping the Northern Alliance yada yada yada". When you have a current problem you work to solve that situation as best you can. If that means you work with some unsavory individuals, well you just do the best you can. No government can know the future and say for certain what will happen. So you make the best situation out of a bad bargain. Thats the world we live in. Its complicated, messy, and dangerous. To think otherwise is naive.

 

Gauracandra

[gHari]

Yes. Of course I know the circle game of "Let's you and him fight. Here's a stick".

 

I just wish we weren't all so messed up in our quest for more and control. Hitler, Reds, KKK, skinheads, yata-yata-yata, Sodamn Insane.

 

At fifteen, I wrote grown-ups off when I found out that they created a bomb that could blow us all up. As I get older, I find nothing to suggest I have been wrong. They're all nuts. Except of course for you, Gauracandra Prabhu. And maybe me.

[Gauracandra]

Theres a lot of truth in what you say

 

Gauracandra

[paul108]

Originally posted by valaya:

Never fear, tarun and paul108 will defend us!

 

Lilamrita, Let There Be a Temple, p.11.

 

Prabhupada: "Those who are Krishna conscious are not afraid of bomb. When they see a bomb coming, they think that Krishna desired the bomb to come. A Krishna conscious person is never afraid of anything. Bhayam dvitiyabhinivesatah syat. One who has the conception that something can exist outside of Krishna is afraid. On the other hand, one who knows that everything is coming from Krishna has no reason to be afraid. The bomb is coming -- he says, `Ah, Krishna is coming.' That is the vision of the devotee. He think, `Krishna wants to kill me with a bomb. That is all right. I will be killed.' That is Krishna consciousness."

 

'When the reporter asked if the Vaishnava would die without fighting, Prabhupada said that the Vaishnava would fight, but only under the direction of Krishna, and he cited Arjuna and Hanuman as examples. He continued to explain Krishna consciousness as the only solution.'

[Tarun]

If I thought we needed more oil & drugs, I'd support Bushwick blindly.

Ashcan too.

Turns out I don't need either one. Neither do you.

Gas Stations are so outdated. Pathetically archaic.

gHariji referred to "Divide & Rule".

Valayaji: know the karmik rxn for "Divide & Rule" policy?

Want a share of Bushala's vikarma-phalam? Et tu, Gaurji?