Letter from Congressman Ed Pastor , dated May 12, 2004 confirming reports that there has been dozens of attempts by terrorists to acquire nuclear materials from Russia.
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union numerous “suitcase nukes” disappeared.
Today U.S. intelligence has yet to locate even one of these missing weapons.
According to some reports Al-Qaeda operatives may have purchased at least one of these weapons for $30 million dollars and Iran may have purchased as many as three or more for $300 million dollars five years ago.
Of course there is no way to otherwise confirm this information with U.S. intelligence officials, who tell me basically that “I have no right to know this information as an American citizen?”
At the same time the experts tell me the risk of a devastating nuclear strike against the United States is greater now than it has ever been during the cold war…
According to the government your odds of dying in a nuclear attack are 33% percent, your odds of being killed by the radiation alone are about 1 in 25, and your odds of being physically unaffected are about 50% depending on where you live and how far you are from the blast when it occurs.
In 2011 President Obama was calling for $708 billion dollars in defense spending, which is an insane amount – at the same time there was not one red cent budgeted for the the kind of civil defense programs that could keep Americans alive in the event of what experts say is a probable attack from terrorists.
Today the situation is, I regret to say no better.