{"id":174623,"date":"2016-08-06T21:20:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-07T03:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=174623"},"modified":"2016-08-06T21:20:42","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T03:20:42","slug":"a-secret-group-easily-bought-the-raw-ingredients-for-a-dirty-bomb-here-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/08\/a-secret-group-easily-bought-the-raw-ingredients-for-a-dirty-bomb-here-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"A secret group easily bought the raw ingredients for a dirty bomb \u2013 here in America"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_174630\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-174630\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dirtybombdrill-771x516.jpg\" alt=\"Dirty bomb drill\" width=\"771\" height=\"516\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dirtybombdrill-771x516.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dirtybombdrill-336x225.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dirtybombdrill-768x514.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dirtybombdrill-1170x783.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Dirtybombdrill.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Capt. Will Martin \/ Army National Guard<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Soldiers and airmen from the California National Guard\u2019s 49th Military Police Brigade and the FEMA Region IX Homeland Response Force joined first responders in a drill simulating a radioactive dirty bomb attack at the Richmond Fire Training Center in northern California on April 11, 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The clandestine group\u2019s goal was clear: Obtain the building blocks of a so-called radioactive \u201cdirty bomb\u201d \u2013 capable of poisoning a major city for a year or more \u2013 by openly purchasing the raw ingredients from authorized sellers inside the United States.<\/p>\n<p>It should have been hard. The purchase of lethal radioactive materials \u2013 even modestly dangerous ones \u2013 requires a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a measure meant to keep them away from terrorists. Applicants must demonstrate they have a legitimate need and understand the NRC\u2019s safety standards, and pass an on-site inspection of their equipment and storage.<\/p>\n<p>But this secret group of fewer than 10 people \u2013 formed in April 2014 in North Dakota, Texas, and Michigan \u2013 discovered that getting a license and then ordering enough materials to make a \u201cdirty bomb\u201d was strikingly simple in one of their three tries. Sellers were preparing shipments that together were enough to poison a city center when the operation was shut down.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This story comes from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2016\/08\/04\/20028\/secret-group-easily-bought-raw-ingredients-dirty-bomb-here-america\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Public Integrity<\/a>, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative media organization in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The team\u2019s members could have been anyone \u2013 a terrorist outfit, emissaries of a rival government, domestic extremists. In fact, they were undercover bureaucrats with the investigative arm of Congress. And they\u2019d pulled off the same stunt nine years before. Their fresh success has set off new alarms among some lawmakers and officials in Washington about risks that terrorists inside the United States could undertake a \u201cdirty bomb\u201d attack.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how they did it: In Dallas, Texas, they incorporated a shell company they never intended to run and rented office space in a nondescript industrial park, merely to create an address for the license application. In a spot on the form where they were supposed to identify their safety officer, they made up a name and attached a fake r\u00e9sum\u00e9. They claimed to need the material to power an industrial gauge used in oil and gas exploration.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, their application was sent not to Washington but to Texas regulators, who had been deputized by the NRC to grant licenses without federal review. When the state\u2019s inspector visited the fake office, he saw it was empty and had no security precautions. But members of the group assured him that once they had a license, they would be able to make the security and safety improvements.<\/p>\n<p>So the inspector, who always carried licenses with him, handed them one on the spot.<\/p>\n<p>The two-page Texas document authorized the company to buy the sealed radioactive material in an amount smaller than needed for any nefarious purpose. But no copies were required to be kept in a readily-accessible, government database. So after using the license to place one order, the team simply made a digital copy and changed the permitted quantities, enabling it to place a new order with another seller for twice the original amount.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t call what we did very sophisticated,\u201d Ned Woodward, the mastermind of the Government Accountability Office\u2019s plot, said in a phone interview with\u00a0the Center for Public Integrity.\u00a0\u201cThere was nothing we had done to improve that site to make it appear as if it were an ongoing business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, Woodward\u2019s colleagues in the GAO similarly set up fake businesses, got licenses to purchase low-level radioactive material and altered them to buy larger quantities. The NRC promised \u201cimmediate action to address the weaknesses we identified,\u201d according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gao.gov\/new.items\/d071038t.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">GAO\u2019s report<\/a> on that incident.<\/p>\n<p>The auditors\u2019 aim this time around was to see if the government had cleaned up its act, and taken steps to close some simple gateways to obtaining the ingredients for a dirty bomb.<\/p>\n<p>It turns out, the government had not.<\/p>\n<p>While the purchases that Woodward\u2019s team set in motion were never completed, if they had been, his group would have had enough radioactive material to create the type of dangerous dirty bomb that terrorists may seek, according to David Trimble, director of Natural Resources and Environment at the GAO and Woodward\u2019s boss. It would have been within the group\u2019s reach to spread cancer-causing\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/emergency.cdc.gov\/radiation\/isotopes\/americium.asp\" target=\"_blank\">americium<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atsdr.cdc.gov\/csem\/beryllium\/docs\/beryllium.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">beryllium<\/a> dust over many blocks, threatening the health of anyone who breathed it.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The quantity each seller could have sent was dangerous, and together the quantity was \u201csignificantly dangerous,\u201d Trimble said in a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gao.gov\/multimedia\/podcast\/678369\" target=\"_blank\">GAO podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Trimble said that he is confident his investigators could have altered the license again and again, allowing them to amass an even larger quantity. \u201cIt\u2019s a back door,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cWe walked through it and we showed the door was still open. We could have kept doing it. If you can forge [a license] once, there\u2019s no reason you can\u2019t forge it again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Texas nuclear regulatory officials have responded by quietly firing two managers and organizing new training efforts.<\/p>\n<p>NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran, an attorney and former House of Representatives staff member, wrote a swift <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/docs\/ML1619\/ML16197A229.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">letter<\/a> to the two other current NRC commissioners (two positions are vacant) stating that even if Texas changed its procedures, \u201cGAO\u2019s covert testing identified a regulatory gap.\u201d He urged his colleagues to consider creating a system for tracking licenses and sales of low-level radioactive materials \u2013 an idea that its members rejected seven years ago under heavy state and industry pressure.<\/p>\n<p>The GAO\u2019s July 15 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gao.gov\/assets\/680\/678170.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">report<\/a> on the episode, which described the bare bones of its scam without naming any of the states involved or identifying the precise materials that were improperly ordered, similarly said that the NRC and state regulators aren\u2019t doing enough to keep such materials out of terrorists\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n<p>It criticized the state regulator for granting the licenses, but also said the commission needs to act to block license alterations and track sales and shipments of lower-level radiological materials, using measures like those already in place for the sale of more hazardous fissile materials.<\/p>\n<h3>Billions of dollars in potential economic harm<\/h3>\n<p>Unlike a nuclear detonation, which could destroy a large city, the explosion of a dirty bomb would provoke more chaos than immediate fatalities, according to a 2007 <a href=\"http:\/\/research.create.usc.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&amp;context=published_papers\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA terrorist attack using a dirty bomb in the United States is possible, perhaps even moderately likely, but would not kill many people,\u201d two professors at the University of Southern California wrote in the study, which was conducted with advice from government scientific and counterintelligence experts. \u201cInstead, such an attack primarily would result in economic and psychological consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The explosion could be lethal to someone nearby or to the first emergency personnel to arrive. But cleaning up the contaminated area would cost billions of dollars and take about a year in the scenario examined by the study\u2019s authors \u2013 a dirty bomb targeting the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together constitute the third busiest in the world. At its worst, the resulting economic harm could exceed $250 billion.<\/p>\n<p>One key to keeping the ingredients out of terrorists\u2019 hands, the authors concluded, is \u201cbeing more proactive in controlling and protecting the original sources of radioactive material.\u201d But they also warned that \u201can attack that involves relatively low-level radioactive material from a U.S. facility\u201d \u2013 the precise scenario tested by the GAO \u2013 is more likely to be successful than an attack using imported material, because the chances of detection are so much less.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy bother smuggling it if you can just order it with a fake license?\u201d said\u00a0Trimble, in the podcast.<\/p>\n<p>Radioactive materials considered useful in a dirty bomb are widely present in U.S. and international commerce, used legitimately for medical and industrial purposes in more than 70,000 high-risk devices located at 13,000 buildings, according to a 2013 Energy Department estimate. These include machinery that irradiates food or blood products or is used to diagnose illness. In the United States alone, roughly 21,000 licenses for the purchase of these materials are active \u2013 and in some states they are reviewed by regulators only once a decade.<\/p>\n<p>The Obama administration highlighted the dangers associated with loose radioactive materials at international summits in 2010, 2012, 2014, and this March. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nss2016.org\/news\/2016\/4\/5\/highlights-from-national-progress-reports-nuclear-security-summit\" target=\"_blank\">summits inspired<\/a> more than a dozen countries to adopt stronger physical security standards at sites that house radioactive materials and during their transportation, while others held special exercises for law enforcement and health workers who\u2019d likely respond to a dirty bomb. Still others installed radiation detectors to prevent smuggling, or pledged money to other countries to help them develop stronger safety and security standards for radiological materials.<\/p>\n<p>But on March 31, Obama\u2019s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes warned reporters at a press <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2016\/03\/31\/press-briefing-senior-administration-officials-nuclear-security-summit\" target=\"_blank\">briefing<\/a> that while terrorists would have a hard time building or stealing a working nuclear weapon and delivering it, making a \u201cmore rudimentary dirty bomb\u201d would be less challenging.<\/p>\n<p>Coordinated suicide bombings in Brussels nine days earlier had stoked special anxiety about dirty bombs, because two perpetrators had secretly surveilled a senior researcher in a Belgian radioactive isotope program as he came and went from his home. The resulting videos, which police seized, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicintegrity.org\/2016\/02\/29\/19376\/terrorist-group-s-plot-create-radioactive-dirty-bomb\" target=\"_blank\">prompted worries<\/a> that the terrorists wanted to kidnap the man to force a handover of radioactive materials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Belgium example \u2013 I think it reinforces what we\u2019ve seen for many years, which is that we have seen indications, both through their public statements and through their actions, that terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and ISIL have an interest in getting their hands on these types of materials,\u201d Rhodes said at the summit press briefing. \u201cThey want to do as much damage as possible. That was al Qaeda\u2019s position for many years; we have no reason to doubt that that is ISIL\u2019s position as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Obama administration\u2019s ambition in convening the summits, Rhodes said, was to \u201cbring the standard up around the world so that it is at the level that we see certainly here in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That level, it turns out, isn\u2019t so high.<\/p>\n<h3>Tighter regulation rejected in 2009<\/h3>\n<p>In a written <a href=\"http:\/\/democrats-homeland.house.gov\/news\/reports\/nrc-must-do-better-regulating-sales-radioactive-materials\" target=\"_blank\">statement<\/a> about the report, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, who asked for the GAO\u2019s investigation, said, \u201cradiological and nuclear terrorism remains a threat to our nation\u2019s security,\u201d and the GAO\u2019s scam showed how easy it is to exploit gaps in the NRC\u2019s oversight that should have been fixed years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe NRC should re-evaluate its licensing requirements to ensure those who want to do us harm cannot obtain a license to purchase radioactive materials as easily as covert testers did,\u201d Thompson said.<\/p>\n<p>Similar demands were made, but refused, after the GAO\u2019s sting operation in 2007 exposed the same weaknesses. Then, NRC staff <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/reading-rm\/doc-collections\/commission\/secys\/2009\/secy2009-0086\/2009-0086scy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">proposed<\/a> requiring that all licensing and sales involving so-called Category 3 radioactive materials \u2013 those in types or quantities considered less dangerous than others \u2013 be tracked in a single national database, as they already were for higher-risk Category 1 and 2 materials. Otherwise, it said, these Category 3 materials might be accumulated surreptitiously \u2013 through the process the GAO used \u2013 \u201cfor potential malevolent use.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The NRC staff estimated that such a system would cost between $11 million and $14 million over a decade, with the federal government bearing 47 percent of the cost, licensees paying 39 percent and state regulators shouldering 14 percent. But companies that sell radiological materials complained in response that they couldn\u2019t even begin to guess how burdensome an expanded tracking system might be for them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do not consider that the supposed benefits of the expansion \u2026\u00a0 justify this potential expenditure,\u201d Hugh Evans, secretary and treasurer of the Council on Radionuclides and Radiopharmaceuticals, a trade association that lobbies on behalf of companies that sell radioactive materials, wrote in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/docs\/ML0813\/ML081350693.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">letter to the NRC<\/a> on May 9, 2008. The co-chair of the Nuclear Sector Coordinating Council for Radioisotopes \u2013 an industry task force recognized by the government as a partner in combatting radiological terrorism \u2013 sent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/docs\/ML0813\/ML081350716.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a separate letter<\/a> with some wording identical to that in Evans\u2019s letter, suggesting a well-organized campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Regulators in 24 of the states that had been deputized by the NRC to issue licenses also registered their opposition to the expanded tracking, partly because the system for tracking more dangerous quantities was then not working well.<\/p>\n<p>Only Minnesota <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/3003428-MN-Letter.html\" target=\"_blank\">supported<\/a> the proposal, calling it one of several \u201cessential steps\u201d that were \u201clong overdue.\u201d Then-NRC member Peter Lyons, a former official at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, similarly argued at the time that expanded tracking \u201cwill further reduce the potential for aggregating sources\u201d to a dangerous level. But Commissioner Kristine Svinicki, a nuclear engineer who had worked on the civilian side of the Energy Department, said she thought the on-site inspections would be enough to stop thefts or diversions.<\/p>\n<p>In June 2009, the radioactive material sellers and state regulators got their way. The NRC rejected on the plan with a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/reading-rm\/doc-collections\/commission\/cvr\/2009\/2009-0086vtr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">2-2 tie vote<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Egregious behavior didn\u2019t stop a Texas license<\/h3>\n<p>That left in place regulations for keeping low-level radioactive materials out of terrorists\u2019 hands that were written in 1978. While the NRC is technically responsible for overseeing these rules, in practice it has granted only 13 percent of the active purchase licenses, relying instead on inspectors in 37 states to oversee the rest. They are supposed to get NRC training, and to follow the NRC\u2019s 14-point checklist rules for inspections.<\/p>\n<p>This is what the GAO sought to verify: \u201cWe designed our test to fail\u201d through egregious behavior during on-site visits, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>In its latest investigation, the GAO deliberately focused on two states \u2013 North Dakota and Texas \u2013 with robust oil and gas extraction industries, which issue many licenses for well-logging equipment, including gauges powered by radioactive americium combined with a lightweight, cancer-causing metal, beryllium, that are plunged into the ground to predict whether a prospective drill site would be productive.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014, the GAO <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gao.gov\/assets\/670\/663917.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> that it had caught companies licensed to use well-logging equipment storing large quantities of radioactive materials that auditors said could have been easily stolen. Officials from the NRC and state regulators told the GAO \u201cthe security controls are adequate.\u201d But an official from the Department of Energy\u2019s National Nuclear Security Administration determined \u201cthe security measures employed by some well loggers could put the sources at risk.\u201d No policies have been changed, however.<\/p>\n<p>The NRC had previously judged North Dakota\u2019s on-site inspections deficient. With high staff turnover fueled by higher-paying jobs in the state\u2019s booming oil and gas industry, the NRC decided in 2011 to put its radiation protection office into a remedial \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/scp.nrc.gov\/reviews\/11nd_imp.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">heightened oversight<\/a>\u201d program. But the GAO\u2019s experiment failed there, showing the state had turned around.<\/p>\n<p>The applicants\u2019 facility was unsuited for the kind of work they said they intended to do. They \u201ccouldn\u2019t even get a well-logging truck through the door of this building they\u2019d rented,\u201d said Dale Patrick, manager of the radiation program at the North Dakota Department of Health, in a telephone interview. Similar concerns arose during a second GAO licensing application attempt in Michigan, where NRC regional inspectors from Illinois also blocked the GAO\u2019s scam.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike North Dakota, Texas was considered a strong performer. In 2014, an NRC audit of its licensing declared it \u201cadequate to protect public health and safety,\u201d according to an 82-page <a href=\"https:\/\/scp.nrc.gov\/reviews\/14tx_imp.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">assessment<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But Texas failed the GAO\u2019s test last year because its inspector didn\u2019t follow agreed procedures \u201cto make sure this unknown entity was a legitimate company and did not question that the applicant was not a registered business with the Texas Secretary of State,\u201d according to Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.<\/p>\n<p>Texas\u2019s on-site inspectors routinely carried licenses with them and commonly handed them to applicants on the spot without consulting anyone else about what they\u2019d observed. The practice meant that a single person, operating in the field and without independent scrutiny, functioned as the sole obstruction to improper sales.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, that did happen but we no longer allow that to occur,\u201d Mann said.<\/p>\n<p>The GAO\u2019s sting spurred change in Texas. The state fired two managers and sent letters of reprimand to two members of its licensing staff, according to Mann. The radiation control department retrained its personnel, and altered its procedures to require supervisory reviews of all licenses. A new NRC\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/scp.nrc.gov\/reviews\/tx_periodic160210.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">review<\/a> last February, however, noted that the division still had \u201cbudgetary shortfalls\u201d because the state was using its regulatory fees to raise revenues that it then spent for other purposes. It had 42 personnel to oversee more than 1,570 licensees and shippers and thousands of transactions each year.<\/p>\n<p>After being briefed by the GAO on what had happened, the NRC immediately revoked the license Texas had granted the GAO\u2019s shell company and told the vendors to cancel the orders. The NRC also asked all its state-level partners and regional NRC offices to review their licensing practices and updated its training courses to emphasize the need for heightened scrutiny. But unnamed NRC officials told the GAO that \u201cNRC had no current plans to take action\u201d to enact stricter regulations, because the issue had been considered and rejected in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>After the report\u2019s release, however, Duncan White, a senior health physicist at the NRC, wrote in an <a href=\"https:\/\/public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov\/2016\/07\/15\/gao-and-the-fake-licensees\/\" target=\"_blank\">official blog post<\/a> that NRC staff will restudy the issue and discuss it further with the commission later this year. A spokeswoman for the NRC, Maureen Conley, declined to add to what the blog said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re encouraged that NRC appears to be looking closely at this issue and considering the merits of the recommendation that we made,\u201d Trimble said, \u201cwhich we believe is on point.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An undercover congressional operation exposes gaps in U.S. regulations and undermines Washington\u2019s claim to be the best in the world at blocking this potential terrorist threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2235,201,116],"class_list":["post-174623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-national-security","tag-terrorism","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}