(Washington Times) Neil Doyle - It is now a working assumption in security circles that al Qaeda does have a secret nuclear stash. U.S. officials said that during Christmas, enough low-grade uranium-238 was discovered in tunnels near a former al Qaeda base in Kandahar to make one "dirty" radiological bomb. That the retreating fighters from al Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban regime chose to leave this behind when they took to the mountains fueled suspicion that their nuclear crown jewels went with them. One former Soviet military intelligence agent says that Israeli intelligence "reported that bin Laden bought tactical nuclear weapons from some former Soviet republics. They are not the suitcase-type bombs that people often refer to, but more the warhead-type munitions. These are the payloads of short-range missiles, torpedoes, and the like." One senior Western intelligence contact is adamant that the terrorists have a number of these weapons - nine, to be precise. The price on the deal is put at $30 million, plus 2 tons of opium per nuke.
2002-10-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive