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http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/sept11_uranium020911.htmlABCNEWS' Brian Ross traveled across Europe by train, transporting a suitcase packed with 15 pounds of depleted uranium. The suitcase was never inspected. (ABCNEWS.com) How Safe Are
Our Borders?
Customs Fails to Detect Depleted Uranium Transported From Europe to U.S.
By Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz
Sept. 11 — On July 4, in a train station in Europe, a suitcase containing 15 pounds of depleted uranium, shielded by a steel pipe with a lead lining, began a secret, 25-day, seven-country journey. Its destination was the United States.
It was the kind of uranium that — if highly enriched — would, by some estimates, provide about half the material required for a crude nuclear device and more than enough for a so-called dirty bomb, the nightmare scenario for American authorities.
"I would say that the single largest, most urgent threat to Americans today is the threat of nuclear terrorism," said Graham Allison, the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and an expert on nuclear terrorism.
15 pounds of depleted uranium, shielded by a steel pipe with a lead lining, was packed in a suitcase that sailed through Customs. (ABCNEWS.com)
This suitcase's journey was not that of a terrorist, but of an ABCNEWS investigation into whether American authorities could, in fact, stop a shipment of radioactive material, which, to the human eye or to an X-ray scanner, would give the same signature and would look no different than weapons-grade uranium.
But this particular uranium was depleted and not highly enriched, therefore not dangerous — but similar in many other key respects.
"It is a perfect mockup," said Thomas Cochran, a nuclear weapons expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that loaned the depleted uranium to ABCNEWS for the investigation. "It replicates everything but the capability to explode."
At 2 a.m. on July 29, 2002, the ship carrying this suitcase mixed in with ornamental vases and Turkish horse carts within a shipping container, cleared the Verrazano Bridge and entered the New York City harbor.
Smooth Sailing
This scenario was too close for comfort for Graham Allison, who explains that this kind of weapon could be armed and ready to fire — and the ship could be the delivery device.
"The ship, I think, is one of the most dangerous delivery devices," said Allison. "A weapon or material in the belly of a ship has been one of the nightmare scenarios for people that think about how nuclear weapons might arrive in the U.S."
The ship carrying the container was tied up at the Staten Island dock, where U.S. Customs says it has a state-of-the-art system in place to detect any radioactive material.
"The inspector should see [that] even if it's something small, [of] unusual density, unusual something ... would lead us to strip that container and look," explained U.S. Customs inspector Kevin McCabe, the chief of the contraband enforcement team, who, at that time, did not know about the test when he demonstrated the security to ABCNEWS. "If we can't tell exactly what is in that container by those screenings, we're going to get into that container and find out for ourselves."
Yet the suitcase left the port without ever being opened by U.S. Customs. It had been targeted for special screening, but after being X-rayed by the state-of-the-art system, it was cleared right through.
And a few days after its arrival in the U.S., from a place known for its connection to the nuclear black market, Istanbul, the container was on the back of a truck headed for New York City.
The U.S. Customs commissioner Robert Bonner says that his inspectors correctly singled out the container for screening and would have detected anything truly serious.
But since the material in the container had left Austria, 25 days and seven countries ago, it had gone entirely undetected, even after going through the most rigorous screening U.S. Customs says it has.
