Customs Fails to Detect Depleted
Uranium Carried From Europe to U.S.

On July 4, in a train station in Europe, a suitcase containing 15 pounds of depleted uranium, shielded by a steel pipe with a lead lining, began a secret 25-day, seven-country journey. Its destination was the United States.

It was the kind of uranium that — if highly enriched — would, by some estimates, provide about half the material required for a crude nuclear device and more than enough for a so-called dirty bomb — a nightmare scenario for U.S. authorities.

"I would say that the single largest, most urgent threat to Americans today is the threat of nuclear terrorism," said Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear terrorism. Allison is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a former assistant secretary of defense.

This suitcase's journey was not part of a terrorist plot, but rather part of an ABCNEWS investigation into whether American authorities could, in fact, stop a shipment of radioactive material. The depleted uranium packed in the suitcase was not highly enriched and therefore not dangerous, but similar in many other key respects.

In other words, to the to the human eye or to an X-ray scanner, the depleted uranium would look the same as an actual radioactive shipment.

And

And while the shipping container holding ABCNEWS' suitcase was selected by customs for this kind of screening, it sailed right through the inspection and left the port without ever being opened by customs inspectors. And a few days after its arrival in the United States, the container was on the back of a truck headed for New York City.

I hope everybody realizes the gravity of this. The Bush administration has invaded two countries, indefinitely incarcerated thousands of people, rolled back numerous cherished civil rights, spent billions of dollars for "homeland security," and utterly failed to make our nation even one bit safer from terrorists. This really pisses me off. This really scares me, too.

There could be a nuke in your city right now ticking away. What the hell is going on?

For the entire article, click here (and you'd better click quickly: my buddy, Matt, who sent me the link, fears that this article may be buried soon--apparently it's already come and gone in under 24 hours at Drudge, and was hard to find on the ABC site).

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