AP INVESTIGATION: Nuclear black market seeks IS extremists

[leveymg]

CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) — In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, The Associated Press has learned. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium — enough to contaminate several city blocks — and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group.

Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB's successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.

Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with the AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the nuclear black market has become. They say the breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia's vast store of radioactive materials — an unknown quantity of which has leached into the black market. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6fd1d202f40c4bb4939bd99c3f80ac2b/ap-investigation-nuclear-smugglers-sought-terrorist-buyers?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRohuKrIZKXonjHpfsX54uQsW6%2Bg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YQBRcd0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D

For those who don't think there's a good reason for the US and Russia to cooperate on ISIS, this is it. Both countries are prime targets for dirty bomb attacks.

[Octafish]

1. Shocking stuff, in that AP story.

This is the kind of stuff news organizations don't do enough of anymore -- investigate what the People need to know to operate in a democracy:

The most serious case began in the spring of 2011, with the investigation of a group led by a shadowy Russian named Alexandr Agheenco, "the colonel" to his cohorts, whom Moldovan authorities believe to be an officer with the Russian FSB, previously known as the KGB. A middle man working for the colonel was recorded arranging the sale of bomb-grade uranium, U-235, and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a man from Sudan, according to several officials. The blueprints were discovered in a raid of the middleman's home, according to police and court documents.

Wiretapped conversations repeatedly exposed plots targeting the United States, the Moldovan officials said. At one point the middleman told an informant posing as a buyer that it was essential that the smuggled uranium go to Arabs.

"He said to the informant on a wire: 'I really want an Islamic buyer because they will bomb the Americans,'" said Malic, the investigator.

As in the other cases, investigators arrested mostly mid-level players after an early exchange of cash and samples of radioactive goods.

The ringleader, the colonel, got away. Police cannot determine whether he had more nuclear material. His partner, who wanted to "annihilate America," is out of prison.

Thank you for the heads-up, leveymg!

Counter Nuclear Proliferation was Valerie Plame's speciality. Wish she was still on the case, too.

[leveymg]

2. Two years before 9/11, AQ blew up several large apartment houses in Russia. Killed hundreds.

While there was no direct evidence released that the US had a supporting role in those particular attacks in September 1999, the CIA worked with AQ and its predecessors to target the Russians as well as the Serbs, along with Moscow allies in Chechnya, the TransCaucasus and across the Caspian oil region of the former southern Soviet Union.

Of course, the Russians knew who was doing what, and who was helping and encouraging acts of terrorism sponsored by the Saudis, but at time was unable to do anything directly about it.

I am more than a little worried about payback time.

[Octafish]

3. I remember the rush to pin that on Chechen extremists...It changed 'everything.'

But the case got a lot more complicated.

Berezovsky, who fled to London in 2000 after a falling-out with Putin, was at the time, according to Dunlop, the mastermind of a plan to destabilize Russia (although not necessarily by using bombs to kill innocent people). He paid huge ransoms to extremist Chechen separatists to gain the release of Russian hostages, thereby undermining the more moderate political forces in Chechnya and encouraging an invasion of the neighboring republic of Dagestan, in August 1999, by Chechen rebel forces. According to Dunlop’s evidence, the Kremlin sponsored the incursion into Dagestan in order to provoke a conflict with Chechnya. This would provide an excuse to declare a state of emergency and postpone the elections. As numerous firsthand reports attested, the rebels were allowed into and out of Dagestan without hindrance. -- Amy Knight

SOURCE: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/22/finally-we-know-about-moscow-bombings/

By the hangnails of Rev Moon and all the blow in Bolivia, these are darn interesting times. The book in the above article reads like a PNAC primer.

[leveymg]

4. So many regimes to change, so little time.