"Looking for a Needle in a Haystack of Needles"

In 1975, after an extortionist threatened to detonate a nuclear device unless he received $200,000, the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) was created, enlisting volunteers from the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear weapons complex to train to respond to nuclear terrorist threats. The concept of NEST actually dates to the late 1960s, when teams of laboratory personnel responded to accidents such as the one over Thule, Greenland, in January 1968 (see chapter 5). Since its creation, NEST has been alerted to 110 terrorist threats and responded to about 30; to date, all have been false alarms.

NEST's expertise resides in scientists at the three national nuclear weapons laboratories and an even larger number of volunteers from throughout the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex. In 1996, there were more than 1,000 personnel connected to NEST. Some design homemade nuclear devices using off-the-shelf components and then practice disassembling them. Others await the call to leave their regular jobs and join teams of unobtrusive searchers, using sophisticated hand-held radiation detectors (hidden inside backpacks, luggage and even beer coolers) to detect a nuclear device hidden in a city (assumed by the FBI and CIA to be the target of choice in order to cause large numbers of casualties). Because of the large amounts of naturally occurring background radiation in urban areas — emitted by everything from granite and ceramic tiles to cancer therapy machines — locating a bomb's radioactive signature in such settings, "is like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles," according to one NEST searcher.

NEST also maintains a computer database that reportedly contains everything publicly available about making a nuclear weapon. Blackmail notes are compared to this database to ascertain the validity and seriousness of such threats. Once a bomb is located, various means are available to disarm it, ranging from freezing it with liquid nitrogen (to disable electronic components) to blowing it up in a way that prevents a nuclear detonation. Should a bomb actually go off, the Methodist Medical Center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, maintains the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center (REAC), "the only ER in the country dedicated solely to treating nuclear-radiation patients."²

NEST conducts regular small-scale exercises annually, participating in full-scale interagency tests less frequently. The last such test, run by the FBI and code-named MIRAGE GOLD, involved between 800 and 1,000 personnel and took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from October 16-21, 1994 (the previous full scale exercise was in 1986). The premise of MIRAGE GOLD concerned a fictitious domestic terrorist group — the Patriots for National Unity — which assembled and threatened to detonate nuclear weapons within the United States. Postexercise evaluation reports were highly critical of the FBI's management of the drill, noting that the agency had neglected to involve any state or local officials, and operated "in an imperial fashion" by failing to communicate with the other involved federal agencies (DOD, DOE, FEMA).³ The DOE, in particular, condemned the FBI for utterly failing to take into account how to notify and protect people should a bomb actually go off. "It is a drastic mistake to assume that NEST technology and procedures will always succeed, resulting in zero nuclear yield," wrote the DOE in its after action report (according to the heavily excised FBI after-action report on the drill, the exercise simulated the actual detonation of a device but no provision was apparently made to simulate fallout from such an event). The DOE also complained that "security procedures for protecting classified materials.... unnecessarily hampered interagency cooperation."⁴ For example, the FBI did not recognize clearances issued by the DOD or the Office of Personnel Management and thus would not share information critical to the successful outcome of the exercise. This problem was first recognized in the mid-1980s, but as of early 1996 it had still not been resolved

A 1996 Senate investigation into U.S. capabilities to address nuclear terrorism uncovered other problems: NEST exercises allegedly had been conducted "in a manner to 'stack the deck' in favor of unrealistic success."⁵ They were said to have allowed "significantly more time to resolve the situation than would be available under realistic conditions," while NEST's ability to respond rapidly to changing situations was inhibited by its bureaucracy. It was also revealed that "some information was inappropriately leaked" to exercise participants, such as "device location [and] type of source" and that "pre-deployment of communications capabilities created optimistic and unrealistic results," allowing pre-staged equipment to be set up "before it could have realistically arrived."⁶ Although recent changes made in response to an internal review should improve the program's effectiveness, funding remains low, and many operations, particularly full-scale mobilization exercises, are not yet trouble-free.⁷

From 1980 through 1996, NEST expenditures totaled $443 million. If it is assumed from historical data that an additional $40 million was spent during its first five years of operation, total costs attributable to NEST are about $483 million. In 1997 NEST's budget was $33.9 million.⁸ The costs of antinuclear terrorism operations of the FBI, DOD, and FEMA were not made available to this study. Neither were the costs of other agencies involved in preventing proliferation by monitoring the export of selected materials and technologies.⁹ These include the U.S. Customs Service (part of the Treasury Department), the Bureau of Export Administration (Department of Commerce), the Center for Defense Trade at the State Department, various offices within the DOD and DOE, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Notes:

² Waller, "Nuclear Ninjas," p. 40. [Back]

³ Interestingly, the GAO reported in 1987 that the Navy had not involved local officials in its emergency planning activities because the "Navy believes that the prohibition against either confirming or denying the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at a specific location precludes, in practice, any open communication or planning with state or local governments." General Accounting Office, Nuclear Weapons, p. 30. Even concluding a mutual support agreement in the event of an accident "would confirm the existence of such weapons," according to the Navy. The Army's position was similar to the Navy's, though it did coordinate with a selected number of local officials in planning for conventional munitions accidents. Given the small number of Army installations handling nuclear weapons, officials believed that security would be jeopardized by doing anything to publicly identify their classified functions (p. 33). The Air Force, by contrast, acknowledged that all its missile and air bases were nuclear capable and not only recommended a nuclear accident response plan for each one, but maintained joint agreements with local officials and shared (unclassified) information with them and allowed them to participate in accident response exercises (pp. 28-29). [Back]

⁴ Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Hearings, p. 9. [Back]

⁵ Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Hearings, p. 142. [Back]

⁶ Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Hearings, p. 9. [Back]

⁷ In May 1997 the DOE conducted "Digit Pace," the largest nuclear weapons emergency response exercise (a simulated transportation accident) in its history, at Kirkland Air Force Base, New Mexico. The exercise involved some 1,500 military and civilian personnel from federal, state, and local agencies and cost more than $9 million. Chris Roberts, "DOE Stages Fake Nuclear Accident," Albuquerque Journal, May 21, 1997, p. 02. [Back]

⁸ Data provided by Ed Lasley, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Stockpile and Facility Transition Programs (DP-41), April 14, 1997. [Back]

⁹ For a list of dual-use items whose export is controlled under 1992 guidelines approved by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, see U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction, Background Paper ISC-115 (GPO, 1993), pp. 191-195. [Back]