How to evaluate claims regarding the threat of “dirty bomb” use in the Ukraine war? Beginning below is one analysis, by a retired U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer and former United Nations arms inspector, and author of the new book Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union. — MCM
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Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ scare
By Scott Ritter | Consortium News
In the span of a few hours on Sunday, the senior-most Russian defense authorities — Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and General Gennady Gerasimov — called their counterparts in the U.S., U.K., France, and Turkey, with the same message — Ukraine is preparing to detonate a so-called “dirty bomb”— high explosive-wrapped radiological material, designed to contaminate large areas with deadly radioactive isotopes.
Russia is not only concerned about the immediate impact of Ukraine detonating such a devise in terms of the harm that would be done to people and the environment, but also about the potential for such an event to be used by Ukraine’s western allies to directly intervene militarily in the ongoing conflict, similar to what occurred in Syria when allegations about the use of Sarin nerve agent by the Syrian government against civilians were used by the U.S., U.K., and France to justify an attack on Syrian military and infrastructure targets. (It turned out that the allegations of Sarin use were false; the jury is still out about the use of commercial chlorine as a weapon.)
Russia is to raise the matter at the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
In return, Western governments on Monday accused Russia of plans to deploy a dirty bomb. “We’ve been very clear with the Russians … about the severe consequences that would result from nuclear use,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price. “There would be consequences for Russia whether it uses a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb.”
Ukraine is requesting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) send a team to Ukraine to investigate.
For all the press attention that has been given to the possibility of a “dirty bomb” being used in Ukraine, history shows that despite the hype, a “dirty bomb” is not a weapon that is either easily produced or procured or causes the kind of mass casualties its proponents hope for.
The current “dirty bomb” scare isn’t Russia’s first encounter with the concept. In November 1995 a “dirty bomb” comprised of high explosives and cesium was uncovered in Moscow’s Ismailovsky Park, and in December 1998 another cache of radioactive material was found attached to an explosive charge near a railroad track in Chechnya. Both devices were disarmed by Russian security forces.
In May 2002 F.B.I. agents arrested Jose Padilla, an American citizen who converted to Islam, as he returned to the United States from a trip that took him to Egypt, Pakistan, and eventually Afghanistan, where, sometime in 1999-2000, he allegedly met with Abu Zubaydah, Osama Bin Laden’s operations chief. According to Zubaydeh, he and Padilla discussed the possibility of Padilla building and detonating a “dirty bomb” inside the U.S.
While Al Qaeda had apparently drafted plans for such a weapon — and in fact had accumulated radioactive medical isotopes for use in a “dirty bomb” (these materials were seized by the U.N. in 2002) — none of this information was shared with Padilla, who arrived in the U.S. with neither a weapon design nor means to accomplish the task. He was tried and convicted, nonetheless.
The closest the world has come to the actual production and employment of an actual “dirty bomb” came in 1987, when Iraq built and tested . . . READ MORE . . .