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Some simple security steps

By Michael Levi
December 5, 2007

The revelation last week that Slovak and Hungarian police arrested three men suspected of selling uranium powder is sure to spark an investigation into how security at the source of those materials failed. It would be wise, though, to study not only how defenses failed but also how authorities succeeded in breaking up the plot.

As the United States pours billions of dollars into technologies designed to detect nuclear materials, this latest episode is a firm reminder find that dull and old-fashioned police work, rather than new and exciting science, is central to a smart defense against nuclear terrorism.

A fixation on technological solutions to sophisticated security challenges pervades the nuclear sphere. During the Cold War, the shining example was "star wars," an understandable but flawed attempt to find a technical solution to the strategic problem of preventing nuclear war. In the fight against nuclear terrorism, it has manifested itself as a drive to find new technologies that would defeat nuclear smuggling.

Since the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office was created in 2005, spending on detection technology has sharply increased. The office is requesting $562 million for next year, a 17 percent increase over the previous year — and more than fivefold what was spent before the office was set up in 2005. Its focus has been on developing a system of detectors that would dramatically increase the odds of catching terrorists who attempted to smuggle nuclear weapons or materials into the United States; most of its money has been spent on developing and deploying sophisticated and pricey technology. Some of that is important and useful. But it would be tragic if it were to blind us to other equally, if not more, powerful tools.

Indeed experience beyond the Slovak case suggests a different model. Take the case of Ahmed Ressam, convicted in 2005 of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles airport the night of the millennium New Year. As he drove his car off a ferry that had carried him from Canada to Washington state, a border official saw him behaving nervously. He was detained and pulled over for inspection. Authorities later found bomb-making materials in the trunk of his car, foiling the plot. But neither explosives detectors nor trained bomb-sniffing dogs played a critical role in that defensive success.

What if Ressam had been carrying pure weapons-usable uranium rather than nitroglycerin? Sophisticated detectors of the type deployed with price tags in the hundreds of thousands of dollars might have failed to detect the material, which emits little radiation and can be hidden with relative ease.

But customs officers equipped with simple detectors designed to be used in careful human searches might have found the material after the car was pulled aside for other, more mundane, reasons. Had they been taught how to spot other material or tools that a would-be nuclear terrorist might have — again during an investigation triggered by human alarm — that would have further upped the odds of foiling the terrorist plot.

These experiences suggest a different approach to embedding nuclear detection into a broader counterterrorism scheme. A smart strategy would put people at its core while equipping them with tools to enhance their effectiveness on nuclear plots. Instead of focusing mainly on exotic systems that would scan everything that moves through ports, it would emphasize at least as much providing customs officials basic tools to investigate those vehicles whose drivers behave peculiarly. Rather than try to blanket vast stretches of remote border with long-range radiation sensors, such a strategy could give Border Patrol officers simple and robust instruments they could use to examine individuals caught by traditional means.

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