Feds Work Over Homeless Guy In Radiation Scare
from Washington Post

On Dec. 29 in Las Vegas, the searchers got their first and only radiation "spike," at a rented storage facility near downtown. The finding sent a jolt of tension through the nation's security apparatus; the White House was notified. The experts rechecked the reading with a more precise machine that told them that inside the cinderblock storage unit was radium, a radioactive material used in medical equipment and on watch dials.

As a rare snow fell on the city that early morning, FBI agents secured the industrial neighborhood around the site, and a small army of agents and scientists converged on the business. Soon the renter of the storage closet in question, a homeless man, happened on the odd scene, and asked officers not to cut his padlock. He supplied the key.

The scientists sent in a robot to snag a duffel bag in which the man had been storing a cigar-sized radium pellet -- which is used to treat uterine cancer -- since he found the shiny stainless steel object three years before. Not knowing what it was, he had wrapped it in his pillow, but officials said he has not exhibited any signs of ill health yet. The man, whose name could not be learned, was released. Five tense hours after their radiation detectors had spiked, officials knew there was no security crisis in the storage unit.

Reminds me of the first scene in Snow Crash. How pissed was the homeless guy when his lucky charm turned out to be a radioactive uterus rock? Anyway, the article details what actions the Department of Vaterland Homeland Security are taking to secure us against dirty homeless guys bombs.

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New Year's threats keep feds busy


By John Mintz and Susan Schmidt
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- With huge New Year's Eve celebrations and college football bowl games only days away, the U.S. government last month dispatched scores of casually dressed nuclear scientists with sophisticated radiation-detection equipment hidden in briefcases and golf bags to scour five major U.S. cities for radiological or "dirty bombs," according to officials involved in the emergency effort.
The call-up of Department of Energy radiation experts to Washington, New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Baltimore was the first since the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was conducted in secrecy, in contrast to the very public cancellation of 15 commercial flights into this country from France, Britain and Mexico, the other major counterterror response of the holiday season.
The new details of the government's search for a dirty bomb help explain why officials have used such dire terms to describe the reasons for the nation's fifth "code orange" alert, issued Dec. 21 by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. U.S. officials said they remain worried today -- in many cases, more concerned than much of the American public realizes -- that their countermeasures would fall short.
Even now, hundreds of nuclear and bioweapons scientists remain on high alert at several military bases around the country, ready to fly to any trouble spot. Pharmaceutical stockpiles to treat biological attacks were loaded on transportable trucks at key U.S. military bases.
Officials said that intelligence can be be misleading, and some in law enforcement acknowledged that there is no way to know the actual urgency of the threats.
The terror crisis began late Dec.19, when analysts assembled what they described as extremely specific intelligence, including electronic intercepts of al-Qaida operatives' telephone calls or e-mails. One fear was that al-Qaida would hijack and crash an overseas flight into a U.S. city or the ocean. Another was that terrorists would shoot down an airliner with a shoulder-fired missile.
U.S. officials also became concerned that a large, open-air New Year's Eve celebration might be targeted. While the perimeters of football stadiums can generally be secured, outdoor celebrations are much more vulnerable, they said.
One of the U.S. officials' main fears was of a dirty bomb, in which a conventional bomb is detonated and spews radioactive material and radiation across a small area. Security specialists say such weapons are unlikely to cause mass casualties, but could cause panic and devastate a local economy.
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On the same day that Ridge raised the national threat level to orange or "high," from yellow or "elevated," the Homeland Security Department sent large fixed radiation detectors, and hundreds of pager-sized radiation monitors for use by police in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Detroit.
Homeland Security also ordered scores of Energy Department radiation experts dispatched to cities planning large public events. One of them was Baltimore, where Coast Guard and Energy personnel patrolled the waterfront with sophisticated radiation detectors in preparation for a New Year's Eve party at the Inner Harbor.
Dozens of others fanned out in Manhattan, where, on New Year's Eve, up to 1 million people were scheduled to gather in Times Square. Still others converged on Las Vegas, home of a huge yearly New Year's Eve party on the Strip, and to Los Angeles, where the Rose Bowl parade on New Year's Day draws as many as 1 million people.
The Energy scientists arrived at their assignments to take covert readings on their disguised radiological equipment in a variety of settings.
On Dec. 29 in Las Vegas, the searchers got their first and only radiation "spike," at a rented storage facility near downtown. The finding sent a jolt of tension through the nation's security apparatus; the White House was notified. The experts rechecked the reading with a more precise machine that told them that inside the cinderblock storage unit was radium, a radioactive material used in medical equipment and on watch dials.
As a rare snow fell on the city that early morning, FBI agents secured the industrial neighborhood around the site, and a small army of agents and scientists converged on the business. Soon the renter of the storage closet in question, a homeless man, happened on the odd scene, and asked officers not to cut his padlock. He supplied the key.
The scientists sent in a robot to snag a duffel bag in which the man had been storing a cigar-sized radium pellet -- which is used to treat uterine cancer -- since he found the shiny stainless steel object three years before. Not knowing what it was, he had wrapped it in his pillow, but officials said he has not exhibited any signs of ill health yet. The man, whose name could not be learned, was released. Five tense hours after their radiation detectors had spiked, officials knew there was no security crisis in the storage unit.

posted by prof_booty | 11:18 AM