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"Congressional investigators testing U.S. port security smuggled enough radioactive material into the United States last year to make two radiological "dirty" bombs," reported the Washington Post Tuesday nightreported the Washington Post Tuesday night.
Last December, undercover agents from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) "carried small amounts of cesium-137 -- a radioactive material used for cancer therapy, industrial gauges and well logging -- in the trunks of rental cars" through checkpoints at the US's borders with Mexico (in Texas) and Canada (in Washington state).
The material "triggered radiation alarms, but the smugglers used false documents to persuade U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors to let them through with it." The documents used were forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, made from copies of documents found on the internet.
"These are documents my 20-year-old son could easily develop with a simple Internet search," Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), the chairman of hearings into covert nuclear threats, said before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee yesterday. "It is a problem when it is tougher to buy cold medicine than it is to acquire enough material to construct a dirty bomb."
Jayson P. Ahern, an "assistant commissioner for field operations for Customs and Border Protection, said U.S. customs officers were unable to confirm the validity of counterfeit Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses presented by testers, but a system will be in place within 30 days to do so.
"All our systems worked, and officers appeared to follow our protocols," Ahern said. "But the bottom line is the material was allowed in with questionable documents."
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