Re: US may fabricate discovery of WMD
On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 11:10 AM, stuart wrote: From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: ...AS OTHERS LAUNCH PREEMPTIVE INFORMATION STRIKE AGAINST U.S. The United States might fabricate the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or create evidence that Baghdad has been operating prohibited weapons programs, an unidentified Russian military expert was quoted by RIA-Novosti as saying on 24 March. Academician Yevgenii Velikhov, director of the Kurchatov Nuclear Center, told strana.ru on 24 March that if the United States finds no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it is possible they will drum up proof of their existence. Velikhov noted that it is very difficult to determine the origin of some nuclear-weapons components such as uranium-235, particularly because they are prepared under the supervision of the security services. VY http://www.rferl.org/newsline/fulltext.asp Funny, we just mentioned that. Not just this, as it's a point obvious to a lot of people (*), but we can quite easily use Pu-239 and other radioisotopes that are unambiguously traceable to a French nuclear reactor, thus killing two birds with one stone. (* Anyone who knows about flaps and seals (cr. Kahn's The Codebreakers and Bamford's The Puzzle Palace) knows that all major intelligence agencies have entire departments devoted to forging documents, faking evidence, creating false legends, and spreading disinformation. The American CIA, DIA, FBI, ONI, and other groups are quite capable of producing fake cargo manifest, fake credentials, fakes of all other kinds, and of planting faked evidence. For those who don't read, the television show The Agency has the generation of faked evidence as a plot element almost every week, and the CIA has endorsed the show as being helpful to the Coalition of the Willing cause.) --Tim May Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat. --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
Re: US may fabricate discovery of WMD
On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Ken Brown wrote: In the unlikely event that the North Koreans wanted to send a nuke to the USA, they might not need an ICBM. Just bribe or otherwise subvert a It would be a shipment running some risk of detection, especially given a hot warhead, which is difficult to shield. IIRC there's been recently some false alarm raised by a contaminated scrap metal shipment in the US (scrap metal is usually contaminated by medical and industrial Co 60 sources processed by mistake, this batch must have been particularly hot). few shipping clerks in South Korea or China and get them shipped over in a container of tractor parts. (Or as Tim said a few months ago, send them with the regular shipments of cocaine - though that would involve first getting them from North Korea to somewhere that actually has an agriculture)
Re: US may fabricate discovery of WMD
Tim May wrote: [...] The American CIA, DIA, FBI, ONI, and other groups are quite capable of producing fake cargo manifest, fake credentials, fakes of all other kinds, and of planting faked evidence. The kind of people who sell foreign foods to corner shops and ethnic restaurants are capable of faking most of that. I have it on reliable authority (from people who have used the service) that at least one well-known Japanese shipping company you'll probably have heard of will fake bills of lading for 25 dollars. The people I met who used this service also (quite legally) faked EU origin for goods of axis-of-evil origin for import into the USA by landing them in Britain or Holland, and repacking in a new container. So that explains why so much Asian-style food seems to come from the Netherlands - and there I was thinking it was down to the Dutch skill at high-tech intensive agriculture :-) I'd guess that a few transactions like that in series could hide pretty well anything in a sort of real-world mixmaster. It would be traceable by a determined effort, but probably not by the effort most journalists, or even small-country police forces would be able to put in, especially if the the paper trail or the real route went through some pairs of states that don't want to be seen talking to each other in public. In the unlikely event that the North Koreans wanted to send a nuke to the USA, they might not need an ICBM. Just bribe or otherwise subvert a few shipping clerks in South Korea or China and get them shipped over in a container of tractor parts. (Or as Tim said a few months ago, send them with the regular shipments of cocaine - though that would involve first getting them from North Korea to somewhere that actually has an agriculture)
Re: US may fabricate discovery of WMD
On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 05:08 AM, Ken Brown wrote: In the unlikely event that the North Koreans wanted to send a nuke to the USA, they might not need an ICBM. Just bribe or otherwise subvert a few shipping clerks in South Korea or China and get them shipped over in a container of tractor parts. (Or as Tim said a few months ago, send them with the regular shipments of cocaine - though that would involve first getting them from North Korea to somewhere that actually has an agriculture) I no doubt said this, but so have many others. I remember hearing many years ago that if hundreds of tons of marijuana cross U.S. borders each year undetected, how can software and crypto be blocked? The entry of nukes through shipping ports is a well-known threat, and is a place where supposedly gamma ray spectrometers are placed to look for signatures of fissionables. BTW, a small nuke detonated just offshore from Kuwait City would do a real number both on Kuwait, on the world oil price, and on resupply lines for COW forces in Iraq. --Tim May As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later convinces himself. -- David Friedman
Re: US may fabricate discovery of WMD
At 09:01 AM 3/26/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: I no doubt said this, but so have many others. I remember hearing many years ago that if hundreds of tons of marijuana cross U.S. borders each year undetected, how can software and crypto be blocked? Even post 911 you can fly a copter from Quebec and drop 200 lb bales into Vermont: http://www.cannabisclub.ca/Montreal_Gazette_030503.html If you can't find a tunnel from Mexico, that is. Vulnerable giants should be humble.
Re: US may fabricate discovery of WMD
On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 05:46 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Ken Brown wrote: In the unlikely event that the North Koreans wanted to send a nuke to the USA, they might not need an ICBM. Just bribe or otherwise subvert a It would be a shipment running some risk of detection, especially given a hot warhead, which is difficult to shield. IIRC there's been recently some false alarm raised by a contaminated scrap metal shipment in the US (scrap metal is usually contaminated by medical and industrial Co 60 sources processed by mistake, this batch must have been particularly hot). Seems dubious to me. A gamma ray spectrometer is neeeded anyway, to pull a very weak signal out of background, so the GRS would very clearly be able to distinguish between gammas from Pu-239 and other bomb radioisotopes and gammas from medical and industrial products. Several weeks ago I speculated on misc.survivalism that the light planes being seen circling slowly and repeatedly over several U.S. cities, especially some near universities, were N.E.S.T. (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) planes using gamma ray spectrometers to look for radioisotopes. Possibly mapping known locations (*) in university and industrial labs, so that differences in locations could later be spotted. (GPS plus GRS makes for nice Pete Shipley-style nuke driving mapper.) --Tim May To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists. --John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General
