Nation states, not only terrorist organizations, consider dirty bombs

it is an Army memo dated 16 December 1948, and labeled secret, describes a crash program to develop a variety of military uses for radioactive materials. Work on a “subversive weapon for attack of individuals or small groups” was listed as a secondary priority, to be confined to feasibility studies and experiments. The top priorities listed were:

1. Weapons to contaminate “populated or otherwise critical areas for long periods of time.”

2. Munitions combining high explosives with radioactive material “to accomplish physical damage and radioactive contamination simultaneously.”

3. Air and-or surface weapons that would spread contamination across an area to be evacuated, thereby rendering it unusable by enemy forces.

The stated goal was to produce a prototype for the No. 1 and No. 2 priority weapons by 31 December 1950. The 4th ranked priority was “munitions for attack on individuals” using radioactive agents for which there is “no means of therapy.” Tom Bielefeld, a Harvard physicist who has studied radiological weapons issues, said that while he had never heard of this project, its technical aims sounded feasible. Bielefeld noted that polonium, the radioactive agent used to kill Litvinenko in November 2006, has just the kind of features that would be suitable for the lethal mission described in the 16 December memo.

Which brings us back to Syria — but also to issues pertaining to Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. Six decades ago the United States considered, then rejected, including radiological weapons in its arsenal. One of the more troubling aspects of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs is that of nuclear leakage — nuclear leakage which already occurred in Pakistan in the form of the “illicit” nuclear smuglling network operated by Pakistan’s chief nuclear scientist, Ayub Khan (we place “illicit” in quotation makrs becasue Khan was assisted in his activities by many inside the Pakistani military-scientific establishment). It is a certainty that as the number of countries mastering the ability to enrich uranium and separate plutonium from spent uranium rods increases, so will the spread of radiological materials sutiable for building dirty bombs. As the United States fashions a policy on slowing the pace of nuclear weapon proliferation, it should also be mindful of the need to monitor and stop the proliferation of dirty-bomb materials. The Israeli attack in Syria was one way of doing it, but it would be better and more productive to have more, and more nuanced, tools in the U.S. national security tool box.