- A former chief of the Strategic Air Command predicted
today that it is inevitable that the United States will someday face a
terrorist attack using such weapons as a small nuclear bomb.
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- Retired Gen. Eugene E. Habiger outlined a chilling scenario
in which terrorists detonate a 2-kiloton nuclear bomb that kills and injures
thousands, cripples the federal government and sows panic across America.
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- The little bomb in the trunk of a car "is easy to
make, is easy to detonate and can cause a lot of damage," said Habiger,
who retired from the military in 1998.
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- "I think it's not a matter of if, it's when,"
he told the San Antonio Express-News. "It could be anyplace."
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- Habiger, president of the San Antonio Water System, offered
that grim assessment during a luncheon at Fiesta TechNet 2002, an information
technology conference that wrapped up today.
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- His suitcase nuke scenario is unlike any attack yet on
the nation, even last fall's strike against the World Trade Center, and
it drew quick reaction from a surprised Bush administration official, who
said, "I don't know why he would say it."
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- The White House National Office of Homeland Security
wouldn't say if the government could prevent the detonation of a suitcase
nuke or a "dirty" bomb - one in which conventional explosives
distribute radioactive material.
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- "We are working to prevent that from happening,"
agency spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
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- In Habiger's vision the small bomb kills tens of thousands
in the Washington area. Fallout most likely spreads south from the District
of Columbia. Intense fires from the blast leave thousands more within a
2-mile radius of the center with second-degree burns, and cuts and abrasions
due to glass and building damage.
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- All six of the district's Potomac River bridges would
be damaged, cutting the city off from Virginia, preventing emergency vehicles
from reaching the dead and injured.
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- Power outages, gas line explosions, water cutoffs, disruption
of public transit systems and the federal government itself - including
the Pentagon and White House - would ensue, as well as mass panic around
the United States.
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- "The thing that you didn't see in the World Trade
Center tower event were thousands of people lying dead in the streets,
and with a nuclear device of some kind you're going to see that,"
he predicted after his speech. "It's going to become much more personal."
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- sigc@express-news.net
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- 04/24/2002
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- http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=
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