THE HIROSHIMIC IMPOSTURE

So many of you have asked me about an alleged Al Qaeda plan called “American Hiroshima” – the multiple detonation of nukes smuggled in to the US – that I must respond, even though some very good friends of mine for whom I have high regard have been taken in by the fellow who’s making the claim.

That would be Paul L. Williams, who has been peddling this stuff for a long time. His book, Osama’s Revenge , has been out for over a year, since June 2004. He’s a sensationalist writer who wrote an attack on the Catholic Church (The Vatican Exposed), and a cut-and-paste hack job pilfering Internet articles on Al Qaeda (Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror).

He bills himself as an “former FBI consultant,” which means he never worked for the FBI – do you know how many “consultants” there are in Washington? – and has no credibility or credentials on national security or military technology.

The funniest example is Williams’ claim that “documents captured in Afghanistan show that Al Qaeda had plans to assemble nuclear weapons with fissile material purchased on the black market.” A nuclear scientist friend of mine with all the requisite Pentagon security clearances could not stop laughing when I discussed this with him.

“I’ve seen those documents,” he told me, “and believe it or not, they are copied from an article in a science humor magazine called The Journal of Irreproducible Results. It was entitled “How to Build an Atom Bomb,” and these Al Qaeda-Taliban idiots didn’t know it was a put-on. It’s full of physics jargon and seems impressive – but when the article instructs you to make the shock wave focusing lens out of Playdough, you’ve got to be a retard not to get the gag. Living in an Afghan cave can do that to you.”

Or let’s take Williams’ description of Soviet suitcase nukes, which he claims Al Qaeda has smuggled into the US:

“Each suitcase weighed between 50 and 80 kilograms (approximately 110 to 176 pounds) and contained enough fissionable plutonium and uranium to produce an explosive yield in excess of two kilotons. One suitcase bore the serial number 9999 and the Russian manufacturing date of 1988. The design of the weapons is simple. The plutonium and uranium are kept in separate compartments that are linked to a triggering mechanism that can be activated by a clock or a call from the cell phone.”

This is utter nonsense. There are no separate compartments. The triggering mechanism fires an incredibly precise series of detonations of high density explosives around a hollow sphere of plutonium (90%+ P-239) about the size of an orange, imploding it with the force necessary to initiate fission. Uranium could only be used as a casing around this explosive apparatus to increase the yield – but that would be done more effectively (and save weight) with more explosives.

Oh, one more thing: there were no cell phones in 1988.

The fabrications multiply. Williams, who never talked to then-CIA Director George Tenet, claims Tenet told Bush about the suitcase nukes, who responded not by sealing the Mexican border but ordering “underground bunkers” built for government personnel after the attack. We’ve had such bunkers since the early 1950s.

Or, the Chechens sold nukes to Al Qaeda. Right. If the Chechens had them, they’d blow up Moscow, not give or sell them away. One main point to grasp is that Williams has been peddling his sensationalist paranoia of “thousands of Al Qaeda sleeper agents” and “dozens of smuggled nukes” for over a year – with no evidence, before or since. But when did evidence ever stop sensationalism?

So don’t let this stuff keep you up at night. Think instead of what keeps the Al Qaeda boys up at night. Maybe, just maybe, they have or could get their hands on a small nuke or two. We have 10,000. Not good odds.

We have numerous hardened facilities built to withstand Soviet ICBM strikes. They have the turbans on their heads and a prayer to Allah, who won’t be listening if GW pushes the button.

My intel friends tell me that it’s dawning on the Al Qaeda boys that the retaliation for any sort of “American Hiroshima” would be a Moslem Nuclear Armageddon that would be truly Biblical – or Koranic. If they want to go back to the Seventh Century – we can oblige. Yes, indeed, Osama is having second thoughts.