Dirty Bomb

Take radioactive cesium, stolen from a common medical device. Blow it up with 10 pounds of dynamite at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and you could force the abandonment of the U.S. Capitol, Library of Congress and Supreme Court for decades. That scenario, from a study by the Federation of American Scientists, is just one of many possibilities for wreaking havoc with "dirty bombs." The radioactive raw materials are too easy to come by, experts say. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says that it receives an average of 300 reports a year of small amounts of radioactive materials missing from construction sites, hospitals and other users.

LONDON - A British court said Monday that a terror suspect being held at Guantanamo Bay had a credible argument that the United States had illegally spirited him away to Morocco and that he was tortured there. The United States has repeatedly rejected allegations by the suspect, Binyam Mohamed, that he had been sent away and tortured, most recently in a letter to the British government last month. But the British court described the American conclusion as "untenable." It did not discuss the evidence it had seen, but said there was "no good reason" the American government had refused to turn over materials to Mohamed's lawyers that might help him prove his allegations before an American military tribunal.

NEW YORK - Alleged dirty bomb plotter Jose Padilla conferred with his attorneys for more than two hours yesterday, the first meeting the former Chicago gang member has had with them since he was declared an enemy combatant nearly two years ago. But, unlike conventional attorney-client sessions, the meeting at the naval brig in Charleston, S.C., was monitored and recorded by Navy officials. Because of that, Donna Newman and Andrew Patel, Padilla's court-appointed attorneys, said they did not discuss the details of the government's claim that the Muslim convert was plotting to explode a radioactive device when he was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport.

MIAMI -- When federal prosecutors begin to present evidence today against Jose Padilla, who is accused of terrorism, their case is expected to rest heavily on a single document: his alleged application to become an Islamic warrior. The Mujahedeen Data Form reportedly was filled out by Padilla on July 24, 2000, "in preparation for violent jihad training in Afghanistan," according to a federal indictment that alleges that Padilla and two co-defendants sought U.S. recruits and funding for holy wars.

WASHINGTON - When word of a plot involving a radioactive dirty bomb emerged this week, people around the nation's capital were left with many questions but few answers. If such a bomb were to explode at a target such as the White House, what should they do? Should they flee buildings and clear the streets? If so, how far should they go? If they stayed put, what then? State and local officials in the Washington-Baltimore area have yet to tell people how to respond in case of a dirty bomb strike: Officials say they are loath to give the public detailed guidance about a possible attack whose scope, size and likelihood are unknown.

MOSCOW - Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Georgia said yesterday that they had discovered two boxes of highly radioactive material that officials said could have been used to make a "dirty bomb," as well as a container of nerve gas, in a taxicab in the capital, Tbilisi. The announcement appeared to underscore concerns about the vulnerability of the former Soviet Union's vast, crumbling nuclear infrastructure and chemical weapons arsenal to thieves and terrorists. Georgian officials said police were conducting a routine search of the cab on May 31 on the road to Tbilisi's main railway station when they found three boxes, two of which contained Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, both of which are by-products of nuclear fission.

WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities overseas have interrogated a second suspect in the alleged al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive bomb in America, officials said yesterday, as investigators scrambled to determine if other accomplices are in the United States, Switzerland, Egypt or elsewhere. U.S. officials also said the so-called "dirty bomb" plan apparently called for stealing radioactive material from an unidentified American university laboratory. Low-level nuclear isotopes are widely used in medicine, research and other fields.

SOKHUMI, Abkhazia - It's the stuff from which nightmares are made. Ignoring the ominous graffiti scrawled on the rusting steel doors - "Radiation! Danger!! Stop! Cancer!" - three men broke into a masonry bungalow at a medical research institute here in May 2002. They fished seven lead-lined capsules out of a containment pool. The thieves took the containers, shaped like coffee cans, back to a garage, stripped the lead out of at least one, and planned to melt down the metal to make shotgun pellets.

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials announced yesterday that they had arrested an American citizen who was working as an al-Qaida operative and was plotting to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. President Bush ordered the suspect, Abdullah al Muhajir, whose birth name is Jose Padilla, turned over to the Pentagon as an "enemy combatant" who may be held indefinitely. The allegations underscored the Bush administration's frequent warning that al-Qaida remains an active terrorist network that is determined to strike at Americans.

WASHINGTON - American authorities have spotted a recent upsurge in possible terrorist threats and are warning law enforcement officials to be alert to the prospect of al-Qaida attacks in the United States and abroad as early as within several weeks, officials said yesterday. The CIA is concerned that al-Qaida "plans to launch major attacks" against Americans in the United States and in the Middle East "as early as mid-February 2003," law enforcement and intelligence officials were warned by a confidential advisory circulated this week.

WASHINGTON -- When a state-owned Arab company attempted to take over the management of some U.S. port facilities this year, the result was a bipartisan uproar in Congress and a wave of initiatives aimed at tightening security on the waterfront. Most of the proposals have foundered. But now, with Republicans and Democrats jostling for the upper hand on national security as the November midterm elections near, a port security bill is headed for approval. The measure, which the Senate is expected to pass this week, would, among other things, impose deadlines on background checks for port workers, expand a program to screen for "dirty bombs" and authorize $400 million to help ports bolster anti-terrorism defenses.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court decided yesterday against hearing the case of American-born Jose Padilla, the supposed "dirty bomber," but only because the Bush administration has freed him from military custody. By a 6-3 vote, the justices dismissed an appeal filed on Padilla's behalf because, they said, his case raises only a "hypothetical" claim about unchecked presidential power. The court's action clears the way for Padilla to be tried on lesser criminal charges in a federal court in Miami.

MIAMI -- Terrorism suspect Jose Padilla, held 3 1/2 years by the government without charges, was supposed to get his chance yesterday to answer the felony counts brought against him as an alleged backer of Islamic war overseas. But the judge postponed the procedure until next week. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber rescheduled for Thursday Padilla's plea and the hearing to determine whether he should be freed on bond. The delay is to give newly appointed lawyers from the Miami federal public defender's office time to confer with a New York City attorney who had been representing Padilla.

WASHINGTON -- Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen whose three-year detention in a Navy brig without criminal charges has been a defining legal battle in the Bush administration's war on terror, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami, the Justice Department said yesterday. In an 11-count indictment, Padilla and four co-defendants were accused of operating a terrorist cell in Canada and the United States in the eight years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The indictment, handed up last week and unsealed yesterday, charges the five men with providing and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder people overseas.

WASHINGTON -- Lawyers for Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held as an "enemy combatant," asked the Supreme Court yesterday for the final word on how long the Bush administration can legally hold Americans accused in the war on terrorism without criminal charges or a trial. Padilla has spent more than three years behind bars and has yet to be brought to court. His lawyers said in their petition to the Supreme Court that his predicament was blatantly unconstitutional for a U.S. citizen. Padilla is a native of New York and was arrested in Chicago.

LOOKING FORWARD President Bush meets with India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in Washington. Cooperation in civilian nuclear energy and threats posed by terrorism are expected to be high on the agenda, Indian officials said. Singh has been invited to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. Confessed murderer Eric Rudolph is scheduled to be sentenced in Birmingham, Ala., for the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic. He pleaded guilty in April to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and two other area explosions, after admitting to orchestrating the abortion clinic bombing.

MIAMI -- When federal prosecutors begin to present evidence today against Jose Padilla, who is accused of terrorism, their case is expected to rest heavily on a single document: his alleged application to become an Islamic warrior. The Mujahedeen Data Form reportedly was filled out by Padilla on July 24, 2000, "in preparation for violent jihad training in Afghanistan," according to a federal indictment that alleges that Padilla and two co-defendants sought U.S. recruits and funding for holy wars.

WASHINGTON - A classified Bush administration report has found that the largest counterterrorism exercise conducted by the federal government since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was marred by communications problems, serious shortages of medical supplies and hospital rooms, and confusion over where the residue of a radiological attack would spread, administration officials said yesterday. The five-day exercise in May in Chicago and Seattle, "Topoff 2," tested the response of federal agencies and local governments to nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks using biological agents and a so-called dirty bomb, a crude radiological device.

To come or not to come. That is the question. For all the vacillating about Olympics security, the answer may depend on one's perspective, for Athens, Greece, during the games is either going to be the most dangerous place in the world -- or the safest. While no intelligence agency has picked up any specific threat by al-Qaida or any other group, no one will deny that Athens is a tempting target. But aside from the failure to complete the facilities on time -- a serious shortcoming that will not allow for testing of security measures -- the steps being taken by the Greeks to prevent a terrorist attack are extraordinary, quite probably without equal for a public event.

WASHINGTON - Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, both of modest backgrounds and transient lives, are perhaps the last people most would expect to launch a significant legal challenge to the Bush administration's war on terror. Coupled with hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, though, Padilla and Hamdi have nonetheless presented the first real setback to President Bush's claim of unbridled authority. Yesterday, the detainees, and Padilla and Hamdi, already well-known names among legal scholars and administration officials, achieved a place in history with landmark rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court largely in their favor.