Word: kiloton
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...even more horrific than 9/11--was about to come true. In October an intelligence alert went out to a small number of government agencies, including the Energy Department's top-secret Nuclear Emergency Search Team, based in Nevada. The report said that terrorists were thought to have obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal and planned to smuggle it into New York City. The source of the report was a mercurial agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, who intelligence officials believed was of "undetermined" reliability. But DRAGONFIRE's claim tracked with a report from a Russian general who believed...
...U.S.S. Cole—it never seemed more than a remote threat. Sadly, America is in a new era, and the government must plan ahead. For instance, according to recent press reports, the intelligence community believed for a number of weeks last October that terrorists had obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear device and planned to smuggle it into New York City. Washington, of course, also faces a very high threat of being targeted with weapons of mass destruction...
...uranium 235, plutonium oxide and uranium oxide). It would take about a year to complete the job. "There's little question that the only remaining obstacle is the acquisition of the material," says Paul Leventhal, the institute's president. Less than 110 kg of active ingredients could yield 10 kilotons of explosive power--a Hiroshima-size weapon. Even if the terrorists didn't get the recipe quite right, a 1-kiloton yield could still devastate a city. And forget the suitcase: a truck will do, or a container ship to float the bomb into an American port...
Even had they known more, could officials ever have contemplated the scale of this thing? The blasts were so powerful that counterterrorism teams have begun asking the airlines for fuel loads on the plane; aviation experts have been asked to calculate the explosive yield of each blast--in kiloton terms. The reason? Washington wants to see if the planes amounted to weapons of mass destruction. "What we want people to realize is they've crossed a line here," said a U.S. intelligence official. In fact, some senior Administration officials are considering drafting a declaration of war, although the State Department...
...Even had they known more, could officials ever have contemplated the scale of this thing? The blasts were so powerful that counterterrorism teams have begun asking the airlines for fuel loads on the plane; aviation experts have been asked to calculate the explosive yield of each blast--in kiloton terms. The reason? Washington wants to see if the planes amounted to weapons of mass destruction. "What we want people to realize is they've crossed a line here," said a U.S. intelligence official. In fact, some senior Administration officials are considering drafting a declaration of war, although the State Department...