The recent news article regarding the almost accidental nuclear explosion during JFK's watch - instigated me to call attention to this article that I posted a few years ago - one of my first blog articles that I think stands up pretty well a few years down the line.
WMD
IN MY BACKYARD –
By
William Kelly
The search for weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) in Iraq may have come up empty, but from where I’m sitting in
the middle of New Jersey, it seems that there’s plenty of WMD right here in my
backyard. It seems that I don’t have to go far to find such WMD as missing mice
infected with biological warfare diseases, unaccounted for vials of liquid
anthrax, nuke missile meltdowns and nuclear warheads missing offshore. It’s all
right here. I couldn’t make this up, and we don’t need no terrorist to do it to
us, it seems we shoot ourselves in the foot.
Just recently, as detailed in the
local news, vials of anthrax are missing, along with three bubonic plague
infested mice. Then there’s the BOMARC missile meltdown, complete with nuclear
warheads, what they call a “Broken Arrow” incident that occurred at Fort
Dix/McGuire AFB, which polluted the nearby ground and water.
Know any terrorists looking for some
nuclear warheads? There’s two in the water a few miles off Cape May, New
Jersey, jetsoned during an emergency from a military plane out of Dover AFB in
Delaware, and never recovered. Just like Ian Fleming’s fictional 007 adventure
“Thunderball,” in which two nuclear bombs are hijacked by the terrorist
organization SPECTRE – Special Executive for Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion,
for blackmail purposes.
Missing mice and anthrax, missile
meltdown, nuke warheads lost offshore, we got it all. And each case study is a
lesson in accidents that can get out of control. The most recent are the
stories of the missing mice and anthrax.
MISSING
INFECTED MICE AND ANTHRAX
Three bubonic plague infested mice went
missing from a government lab in Newark in September, 2005, and not long after
two-two inch tubes of liquid anthrax bacteria were reported unaccounted for at
the New Jersey Public Health Environmental Laboratory in Trenton.
According to the Associated Press
(Wayne Parry, Aril 26, 2006), “The mice were never located, and officials said
the rodents might have been stolen, eaten by other lab animals or just
misplaced in a paperwork error.” The three toxic mice were absent from their
Newark lab affiliated with the University of Medicine and Denistry, where a
scandal even more pressing than the missing mice forced the resignation of the
director and sparked a federal financial probe.
“The Newark lab that lost track of
the plague-infested mice conducts bioterrorism research for the federal
government,” Wayne Parry Reported. “After the incident, the facility improved
its video surveillance and stopped using contracted animal handlers. Before the
incident, the center relied on a single security guard.”
The anthrax, kept at a more secure
facility, was discovered missing during an inventory of more than 19,000
samples stored in a state laboratory, prior to their being relocated to an even
more secure facility. 350 of 352 positive anthrax samples are accounted for.
According to Lauren O. Kidd of the Gannett newspapers, “The state is obliged by
the FBI to store the positive samples as potential evidence if a suspect is
charged in connection to the unsolved anthrax attacks that killed five and
harmed at least 17 in October 2001. The U.S. Postal Service requires the state
to store the thousands of negative samples as well, officials said.”
“In both cases, authorities say they
think the items in question weren’t actually lost, but were simply unaccounted
for due to clerical errors,” wrote Parry.
“It is likely that the discrepancy is an
inventory or clerical error and not truly missing samples,” said state
epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz.
Rutgers University microbiologist Richard
Ebright said, “The fact that they don’t know the answer means they’re not
running a properly secured facility. The odds are that it was an accounting
error, but it is very possible that one of the persons with access to the lab
has removed the material.”
Of the 300 institutions in the
country capable of safely handling such materials, 16,500 individuals are
certified and cleared to handle and possess deadly bio-agents, and only eleven
people have such clearance at the Trenton lab where the anthrax was stored. All
were questioned and cleared.
“The Trenton lab has multiple levels
of security,” writes Parry, “including a padlocked containment area requiring
two different sets of identification for access,…video monitoring and 24-hour
security guards.”
“Samples of anthrax have been stored
at a Trenton lab since shortly after the October 2001 anthrax mailings that
went through a Hamilton (N.J.) post office, killing four people across the
country and sickening 17.”
“The chance that these two positive specimens
are somewhere outside of the laboratory is very small,” said Bresnitz, noting the
missing anthrax is, “not in a mode that we think could be used as weapons. The
spores would have to be put into an aerosol form to be used as a weapon, which
would take a high level of technical sophistication.”
Well, we know who has a high level
of technical sophistication. As Rutgers professor Ebright says, “If an
adversary of the United States, such as al-Quada, wanted to obtain this
material, the most effective, simple procedure to do so is to plant a person in
one of those numerous institutions that the administration has put in place
working with this material. Because the number of those institutions has
increased and because it happened without an increase in effective security,
the risk to the United States has dramatically increased.”
Not rare in New Jersey, we
apparently have an abundance of anthrax, as New Jersey’s Homeland Security
director Richard Canas said, “I think the genesis was that they were inundated
with samples. What I would like to see is bringing this number down. Let’s at least
cull these down into something more manageable.”
Indeed. And if you see three lose
mice running around that glow in the dark, please notify the office of Homeland
Security that you found their missing rodents.
Then there’s the nuke missile
meltdown, a “Broken Arrow” event.
BOMARC
Missle Meltdown. June 7, 1960
The United States was in the mist of
the Cold War in early June, 1960, when major cities and military bases were
surrounded by batteries of anti-missile missiles, poised to be launched to defend
the country against jet bomber or missile attack with thermonuclear weapons.
The BOMARC – was one such
anti-missile system, and a battery of them were set up on the east edge of
McGuire Air Force base in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Surrounded by scub pine
forests, a public nature preserve was just across the two lane blacktop highway
from the line of missiles nestled in the woods. The idea behind shooting a
nuclear warhead as a defensive weapon depended upon an advance notice being
given to launch the anti-missiles so they could detonate high in the atmosphere
and take out the incoming bombers and missiles with them.
Set to be launched on two minutes
notice, the BOMARC missiles were poised skyward, set in a row a few hundred
yards apart. On June 7, 1960, a helium tank under high pressure exploded,
rupturing the fuel tank that caught fire.
It is what they call a “Broken
Arrow” event, or “any accidental or unauthorized incident involving a possible
detonation of a nuclear weapon by U.S. Forces (other than war risk); the
non-nuclear detonation or burning of a nuclear weapon; radioactive
contamination; the seizure, theft or loss of a nuclear weapon or component
(including jettisoning); Public hazard, actual or implied.”
While McGuire AFB is now the home
base to the state of New Jersey’s nuclear response strike team, they were a
little less sophisticated in 1960.
The local, mainly volunteer fire and
rescue squads from nearby town of New Egypt, in Ocean County, responded to the
explosion, and fought the fire with traditional firefighting weapons – high
pressure water.
With the rocket’s fuel feeding the
fire, which burned out of control for awhile, the nuclear tipped missile burned
completely, and while there was no nuclear explosion, the fire melted the
nuclear materials, which combined with the water runoff and contaminated the
ground and the ground water below, which fed into a local creek.
One
official report reads: Table 5-1: U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents, 1950-1980
June
7, 1960 / BOMARC / McGuire AFB, New Jersey
“A
BOMARC air defense missile in ready storage condition (permitting launch in two
minutes) was destroyed by explosion and fire after a high-pressure helium tank
exploded and ruptured the missile’s fuel tanks. The warhead was also destroyed
by the fire although the high explosives did not detonate. Nuclear safety
devices acted as designed. Contamination was restricted to an area immediately
beneath the weapon and an adjacent elongated area approximately 100 feet long,
caused by drain off of firefighting water.’
(p.
228).
Another
source is: U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History, by Chuck Hansen (Orion
Books, New York, N.Y., 10003, 1988.
Also
see: “The Greenpeace Book of the Nuclear Age: The Hidden History, The Human Cost”
by John May, (Pantheon Books, NY, NY, 1989)
While
the event took place in 1960, on July 29, 1999 it was announced from McGuire
AFB that, “Officials at McGure AFB say they have hired a South Carolina firm to
clean up radioacative plutonium that leaked during a 1960 fire at a nuclear
missile site. The Trentonian reported that the cleanup was announced a day
after federal authorities added other McGuire dump areas to the Superfund
list….but not the missile site in Plumstead Township, which was abandoned in
1972.”
Under
“Completed Actions,” the DOD report notes that, “Following the explosion that
occurred in 1960, paint was applied to the shelter and concrete was poured over
the most heavily plutonium-contaminated portions of the asphalt apron and floor
area of the shelter. An asphalt cover was placed in the drainage ditch that
leads from the shelter to the nearby stream to impede erosion of contaminated
soil. Access to the accident area is restricted by a 6 foot chain link fence
topped with barb wire.”
The
nearby Colliers Mill Wildlife Management Area, a nature park just across the
highway from the accident site, is a popular public camping and recreational
park.
From
what I understand, having talked with residents of the area, a local piney with
a truck was hired to haul some of the contaminated dirt away from the site.
An
extensive Public Health Assessment by the Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research
Center – of the “Broken Arrow” event at the McGuire Missile, New Egypt, Ocean
County, New Jersey, concluded, “No apparent health hazards are associated with
an explosion and fire at the BOMARC site in 1960, which released radionuclides
to the environment via smoke, dust and water runoff from fire-fighting efforts.
Workers responding to the accident, downwind at the time of the accident, or
involved in cleanup may have breathed in alpha radiation when they inhaled
radionuclides, primarily plutonium, carried on smoke or attached to resuspended
soil, or they could have been exposed to small amounts of external gamma
radiation.”
The report continues, “Given the
lack of information about the exposure conditions at the time of the accident,
it is challenging to accurately assess workers intake and does. Conservative
estimates, however, suggest that radiation dose received during or after the
accident are not expected to cause harmful long term effects or cancer.”
NUKE
WARHEADS MISSING OFFSHORE
On
my seventh birthday, I had no idea that this was happening.
JULY
28, 1957 – C-124 Globemaster Jettisons Cargo – 2 Plutonium-239 atomic warheads
– within an area 100 miles southeast of the Naval Air Station, Pomona.
The Department of Defense has
officially reported thirty-two serious accidents involving nuclear weapons,
three of which occurred while transporting weapons from one place to another,
using the C-124 “Globemaster” transport.
Destination Europe, the C-124 with
three weapons aboard took off from Dover AFB in Delaware, but immediately began
experiencing engine trouble. In order to avoid crashing into the water, the
crew jettisoned two of the weapons into the water.
According to a 1981 report by the
Center for Defense Information [ Washington, D.C. #0195-6450 The Defense
Monitor (Vol. X. Number 5) U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accidents: Danger In Our Midst
– republished by MILNET – http://www.milnet.com/cdiart.htm ]
“On
July 28, 1957, a C-124 jettisoned two weapons from a C-124 aircraft. There were
three weapons and one nuclear capsule on board the aircraft, though nuclear
components were not installed in the weapons. Enroute from Dover Air Force
Base, Delaware, “a loss of power from number one and number two engines [of
four a major problem for this aircraft when carrying extremely heavy atomic
bombs of this era ] was experienced. Maximum power was applied to the remaining
engines; however, level flight could not be maintained. At this point, the
decision was made to jettison cargo in the interest of safety of the aircraft
and crew. The first weapon was jettisoned at approximately 2,500 feet altitude.
No detonation occurred from either weapon. Both weapons are presumed to have
been damaged from impact with the ocean surface. Both weapons are presumed to
have submerged almost instantly. The ocean varies in depth in the area of the
jettisonings. The C-124 landed at an airfield in the vicinity of Atlantic City,
New Jersey, with the remaining weapon and the nuclear capsule aboard. A search
for the weapons or debris had negative results.”
“The weapons were jettisoned within
an area 100 miles southeast of the Naval Air Station, Pomona, N.J., where the
aircraft landed,” the MILNET report notes. “The two weapons are still
presumably in the area, somewhere east of Rehobeth Beach Delaware, Cape May and
Wildwood, N.J.”
Even though this incident took place
in 1957, you can be sure that bombs are still there. “Plutonium-239, an isotope
used to fuel atomic bombs,” the report dryly notes, “has a half-life of 24,400
years and remains poisonous for at least half a million years.”
The problem is – who is looking for
these lost nukes? Nobody. If we don’t keep looking for them until they are
found, then the terrorists will one day most certainly go looking for them.
Nor do we know what long-term
effects of these nuclear accidents if we don’t find out what happened to them
and monitor the affected environment.
Under the DOD definition of a
nuclear accident, the jettisoning of nuclear warheads is a “Broken Arrow” event
#4 – “Seizure, theft, or loss of a nuclear weapon or component (including
jettisoning);” a “Public hazard,” whether “actual or implied.”
The DOD report on nuclear weapons
accidents concludes “the increased numbers of nuclear weapons suggest that more
accidents and perhaps more serious accidents will occur in the future.”
William Kelly -
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