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Can We Stop Osama bin Laden's "American Hiroshima" Plan?

Osama bin Laden, contrary to the wishful and erroneous thinking of many complacent Americans, is not dead, nor is he impotent, unable to plan attacks, or broke, with no money, and without communications to his followers. Osama is alive and well, and spends his time in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan (the Taliban controls 12 of the 20 provinces in Afghanistan, and much of the lawless tribal areas of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border). He has plenty of money, because our Congress, at the bequest of Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, voted against spraying the poppy fields, so that now Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's supply of opium for heroin, and a huge cut of that opium trade goes to the Taliban and Osama and Al Qaeda.

So Osama has plenty of money to continue his life work, which he started planning in 1993, long before he started planning 9/11. What is that life work? It is Osama's "American Hiroshima" plan, to blow up seven to ten American cities (and probably some European cities like Rome, London, Paris, and perhaps even Copenhagen as well) with nuclear devices like we blew up Hiroshima.

I am the President of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research. My good friend, General Tom McInerney, is an honorary member of the board. I have done a lot of counter-terrorism research in the past 6 years. I have interviewed in person Hamid Mir, the top Pakistani journalist, who interviews Condi Rice, Tony Blair, and President Musharraf. Hamid Mir has also interviewed Osama bin Laden three times, and is the only man who has interviewed Osama after 9/11.

Hamid Mir told me that Osama told him he had acquired 20 "suitcase" nuclear bombs from the former Soviet Union, and that he has a plan, "The American Hiroshima", where he plans to blow up 7-10 American cities with nuclear devices like we blew up Hiroshima. There is a lot of evidence that Osama has already had his men smuggle these bombs into America, and they are here, waiting for Osama to give the order to detonate. I recently spoke with Hamid Mir, and he told me that Taliban chieftans in Afghanistan have told him they believe Osama will do the American Hiroshima attack this year, in 2008!

When I first heard of Osama bin Laden's "American Hiroshima" plan, in Paul Williams' landmark book "Osama's Revenge:The Next 9/11", it sounded like science fiction, but when I checked with Yossef Bodansky, who was Director of Congress's Task Force on Terrorism for 16 years, he told me, Yes, Osama did acquire 20 suitcase nukes when the Soviet Union broke up, and that he also hired 20 Soviet SPESNAZ Special Forces soldiers whose job it had been in the Soviet Union to maintain and service the suitcase nukes for the KGB, to maintain the nukes for Osama! And Yossef reported this to a Congressional Committee. He wrote about it in his new book, just out, "Chechen Jihad".

I told Chris Ruddy, editor of NewsMax.com, about Osama's "American Hiroshima" plan, and he was naturally skeptical. However when he interviewed Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI, he was shocked when Robert Mueller said Yes, he was very concerned about Osama's plan for nuclear attacks on U.S. cities, and he has trouble sleeping at night for worrying about it! Chris Ruddy published the interview in 2007 in NewsMax.com.

And Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Osama's master planner for 9/11, confessed to the CIA and the Pakistani Intelligence, and this was on his computer as well, that Osama bin Laden was planning a "nuclear hellstorm" for America, and that he had targeted seven cities, and three more possible "alternate" cities. These ten cities are New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and the Valdez oil terminal in Alaska (the biggest oil terminal in the U.S.).

The FBI is so concerned about this that they have surrounded the mosques in these ten cities, and also traffic "chokepoints" in New York and Washington, with nuclear radiation detectors. However, as Steve Coll points out in the March 12, 2007 New Yorker magazine lead story, "The Loose Nuke Shield", these nuclear radiation detectors cannot detect highly enriched uranium that is shielded in lead! And of course, if the terrorists have nuclear suitcase bombs, they will have them in lead containers! So here is the FBI, running around like the Keystone Cops on the outside of the mosques with radiation detectors that don't work, but refusing to search inside the mosques, because "they don't want to violate the Constitutional rights of the Muslims". Ten million Americans, or more, could die in Osama's "American Hiroshima", and the FBI doesn't want to search inside mosques? We need to pressure the FBI to do their job and search inside the mosques in the ten cities Osama has targeted to see if Osama has any suitcase nukes in there!

I believe Osama already has the bombs here in America, and, in fact, was very close to detonating them this past September/October. Hamid Mir told me he thinks Osama will detonate the bombs when we or Israel attacks Iran's nuclear sites, or there is some attack on Muslims in the Palestinian area or Lebanon, that would give him justification for killing millions of Americans. It appeared that President Bush was close to ordering military airstrikes on Iran's 24 nuclear sites this past September/October, when the Administration was saying Iran's Revolutionary Guard Qods Force was in Iraq training terrorists to attack our troops (which they were), and at one point we had three airforce carrier strike groups off the coast of Iran, which would have been enough to do the air strikes on the Iranian nuclear sites.

In August of 2007, when it looked like an American attack on Iran's nuclear site was brewing, the As Sahab Al Qaeda website came out with an ad showing the White House in flames, and the Arabic inscription said, "Wait for the Big Surprise! Soon God willing, Soon God willing, Soon, God willing." A month later, in September 2007, Osama came out with his first videotape in three years, and soon after a second videotape (he had previously said after his last videotape three years ago he would not do any more videotapes, only audiotapes, until such time as he was ready to attack the United States). His beard was died black, which is very significant, since in the strict Salafist sect of Islam to which Osama belongs, a man is only allowed to die his beard just before he goes into battle. And on the videotape he says, "Let us now join the caravan of martyrs. Now it is our turn." I believe he was referring to the fact that he knows when he does his "American Hiroshima" nuclear attack, we will come looking for him, and this time we will not stop at the border of Pakistan, and we will get him and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But then Bush backed off, and withdrew two of the aircraft carrier strike groups off the coast of Iran, and shortly after, in December 2007, the National Intelligence Estimate came out saying (erroneously, I believe) that Iran won't have nuclear weapons for at least 3-5 years, giving Bush an excuse to not take out Iran's nuclear sites, but to "kick the can down the road" and pass the Iran nuclear problem along to the next President. Then, ten days after the National Intelligence Estimate, Russia began shipments of enriched uranium to Iran for their "peaceful" nuclear program, and in January of this year, 2008, completed the entire shipment of 132 tons of enriched uranium to Iran, enogh to make 4,800 Hiroshima-size nuclear bombs (it only takes 55 pounds of uranium to make a Hiroshima-size 13 kiloton yield nuclear bomb).

Iran has declared 3,000 centrifuges, which can turn out a nuclear bomb in a year. And recently Iran said they are adding 6,000 more centrifuges, ones that can enrich uranium much faster than the older ones. And we know that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, many years ago helped Iran get 30,000 centrifuges when he helped Iran develop the Bushehr and Natanz and Arak nuclear facilities. Iran has at least 24 nuclear sites, many of which are hidden deep underground, and they cheated on their nuclear program for sixteen years before the clueless CIA even realized they had a program, so it is very probable they have many centrifuges spinning right now we don't even know about, and they may have an entire nuclear arsenal ready before our next President is even sworn in!

I think Osama has possibly been told by Iran to back off the "American Hiroshima" attack until Iran has more time to develop their nuclear arsenal. However Iran may want him to attack before they do their first nuclear test, so that Iran will not be blamed for the attack on America. So, perhaps a good time for Iran would be ten months from now, say at the Inauguration of the new American President. Or, Osama and Iran may want to hold off until such time as Bush, or the next President after him, attacks Iran's nuclear facilities.

So Osama may pull the trigger on the "American Hiroshima" in ten months or less, or in the next two years. But he is going to do it for sure, sooner or later. And a posting by Rakan Ben Williams, an English convert to Islam, on a terrorist website indicates Osama may have a "failsafe" plan--the website says if the American government finds out about the bombs, it will just make them go off sooner-- so apparently, the bombers in the ten cities may have orders to go ahead and detonate their bombs if one of the bombers is discovered.

So what do we do? We need to warn the American people about Osama's coming attack. If we can get this out in the media, we have a chance to stop Osama's attack. But if we leave it up to the FBI alone, I believe they will fail to stop the attack, just as they failed in 9/11. The 9/11 Commission said that had the FBI shared with the media that they had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui (the "twentieth hijacker" who was arrested a month before 9/11 because he wanted to learn to fly airplanes in midair, but did not want to learn how to take off or land), that it is possible 9/11 could have been prevented, because some terrorists indicated the 9/11 plan would have been called off because of too much publicity, and also it is possible that flight instructors around the country would have reported the other Middle Eastern males that were taking flight training.

And 300 million Americans and 37 million Canadians can spot Adnan Shukrijumah, the man the FBI calls "the next Mohammed Atta", the leader of Osama's "American Hiroshima" plan, a lot better than the limited number (about 15,000) of FBI agents that we have. And if they are alerted about Osama's plan, moderate Muslims may be able to spot suspicious characters in the mosques and report them to the FBI (this is how the plan to explode bombs in ten airplanes flying from England to America was discovered, by a Muslim informant).

And we need to make Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Director, prepare America for how to cope if, God forbid, terrorists detonate a nuclear device. The media asked Chertoff, "What should we do if a ten kiloton suitcase nuke were to go off in Washington, D.C.?" Chertoff said, "There's nothing you can do once it goes off-- everyone would be killed." Well, that is not true. A study has been done showing that if a ten kiloton suitcase nuke (Hiroshima was 13 kilotons) went off in Washington, D.C., yes, most everyone in the 64 square miles of the District would be killed. But 99% of the 5 million people in the suburbs of Washington would survive the initial blast.
Now what is important is how to survive the radiation-- remember, many more people were killed by radiation at Hiroshima than were killed by the initial blast. It is very simple-- stay inside your house for three days, in the basement if you have one, and use couches or turn over tables to make a shelter in your home to shield against the gamma rays coming from the radioactive dust outside your home (see www.ki4u.com to learn more about how to survive a nuclear attack, and to order potassium iodide pills (KI pills) to prevent thyroid cancer)--then, after the three days, the radiation subsides and you can go outside for a ten minute trip once a day. After two weeks you can go outside all the time. But anyone who goes outside before the three days, even for a short trip to get their child at school, will immediately get a fatal dose of radiation and will die a horrible death over the next month or two from radiation sickness.

So if Michael Chertoff would just say this, millions of lives could be saved in the event of a nuclear attack by terrorists.

Please help us make Michael Chertoff do his job and adequately prepare the American people! And please help us get this out to the media, and warn the American people! To learn more, see our website www.afcpr.org.

Thank you for your consideration of this most important topic.

Sincerely,

Dr. Hugh Cort, President

American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research