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Want a Dirty Bomb? Just Seal, Stamp, and Send...

As reported on the front pages of today's Washington Post and New York Times, undercover congressional investigators successfully exploited loopholes in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing guidelines to obtain enough radiological material to build a so-called "dirty bomb." Investigators with the Government Accounting Office posing as West Virginia businessmen sent away for a federal permit to purchase radiological materials, which they received just 28 days later. Had the NRC bothered to do any due diligence, it would have discovered that the fictional company had no office location, no website, and no employees. As noted in the Times piece, "its only asset was a postal box."

This was not the first undercover operation to test the NRC's control measures. A similar sting in 2005 also resulted in GAO investigators obtaining small amounts of radioactive materials, for which they created false licensing documents using samples found on the Internet. They then smuggled the material across the U.S. border at two separate locations. Customs and Border Control personnel were unable to identity the forged documents and allowed the shipments to proceed. In this year's operation, investigators employed a similar tactic, counterfeiting the NRC license they received and removing the limit on the amount of radiological material they were allowed to purchase.

Posted by Bruce Falconer on 07/12/07 at 1:42 PM | Comments (1) | Email | Print

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