Ho letto il libro di Stanislav Lunev , un colonnello del KGB che ha disertato anni fa e che ora è nel programma di protezione federale americano. Qui di seguito un intervista di ieri a Lunev che da un idea del tipo di cose che si possono trovare se si legge quello che dicono gli ex ufficiali russi usciti dalla Russia. La sostanza è che ci sono da diversi anni negli USA una serie di bombe atomiche tattiche, cioè del genere che sta in una valigia, 40 chili circa e sono state portate dai sovietici come arma secondaria, ma che può venire utile perchè possono essere detonate da chiunque con un timer Questo è il dato di fatto. Poi ci sono diverse speculazioni su come e da chi possono essere usate ------------------ intervista a Stan Lunev --- DAN RATHER: Tonight's Eye on America is the first in a series of hard news reports this week assessing possible terror threats facing the U.S. There are many fears and many scenarios, but what are the real risks? Tonight's focus: the threat of nuclear terror. CBS's Jerry Bowen brings you the facts. JERRY BOWEN: The country's Customs agents have something fairly new in the fight against nuclear terrorism: hidden radiation detectors that go off if anyone tries to smuggle in any radioactive material. But if some of America's one-time enemies are correct, the threat may already be here. COL. LUNEV (former Soviet military intelligence officer): So unfortunately, some of these devices are still located on American soil. BOWEN: Stanislav Lunev is a former Soviet military intelligence officer, a defector who's now in the federal Witness Protection Program. He claims that before the Cold War ended a decade ago, Soviet agents planted so-called 'suitcase nuclear bombs' – similar to this mock-up – in the United States and other Western countries; nuclear bombs that could be triggered if war broke out. LUNEV: They were designed to destroy extremely highly protected American targets. BOWEN: Lunev, his identity protected, told the same story to Congress, and a former Soviet general told CBS's "60 Minutes" that the suitcase bombs existed. But many U.S. defense analysts are convinced Russia actually retrieved and dismantled all the small nuclear devices. MICHAEL O'HANLON (Brookings Institution): My own view is that's not a major worry. Those kinds of weapons, if they ever existed, were under the clear control of the Russian or Soviet state, and I don't think they would have been available to terrorists. BOWEN: But the Soviets weren't the only ones to create a so-called suitcase nuke. This recently declassified film shows how the United States had them in its arsenal in the early '60s. Defense experts dismiss the possibility that terrorists can build one themselves. JOHN LEPINGWELL (Center for Nonproliferation Studies): And certainly, to do something like that in the mountains of Afghanistan would be extraordinarily difficult. BOWEN: But four years ago, Osama bin Laden was named in a federal indictment for attempting to buy enriched uranium, nuclear material which experts say can be used in a conventional explosive; the poor man's way to spread radioactive fallout. (Excerpt from terrorist training video) LEPINGWELL: But it's difficult to get that much radioactive material into the bomb and then disperse it around an area in such a way as to cause major casualties. BOWEN: But might bin Laden have obtained some larger nuclear warheads with outside help? LUNEV: I know from intelligence estimations that he obtained several devices from former Soviet Union, tactical nuclear devices. BOWEN: Reports like this are unsubstantiated. And whether al-Qaeda could handle and smuggle such things is thought to be highly improbable. Still, U.S. Customs agents are training border guards from countries surrounding Afghanistan to detect nuclear material, one more small front in a very different kind of war where nothing is being taken for granted. In Los Angeles, this is Jerry Bowen for Eye on America. Edited by - gzibordi on 11/7/2001 1:24:22