Undercover agents got easy access to dirty-bomb tools

WASHINGTON — Congressional investigators set up a bogus company with only a postal box and within a month obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that allowed them to buy enough radioactive material for a small "dirty bomb."

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who will ask the NRC about the incident at a Senate hearing today, said the sting operation raises concerns about terrorists obtaining such material just as easily.

NRC officials approved the request with a minimal background check that included no face-to-face interview or visit to the purported company to ensure that it was legitimate and complied with safety rules, the investigators said.

A dirty bomb is designed to use conventional explosives to spread radioactive material, causing immediate injury to people nearby and also creating a long-lasting threat by contaminating a wider area.

The NRC acknowledged that more checking is needed in such licensing and said that since being told of the sting operation conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), it has tightened licensing procedures.

"We've fixed the problem," NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan said Wednesday. He said that such licenses now will require visits to the company or, in some cases, company officials will have to come to NRC offices.

The license that was obtained allowed for the purchase of up to five portable moisture-density gauges widely used at construction sites to analyze the properties of soil, water and pavement. The gauges contain small amounts of cesium-137 and americium-241, two highly radioactive isotopes.

Individually, these devices pose little threat because of the small amount of radioactive material, radiation experts say. Still, the devices require an NRC license to be purchased and must be closely safeguarded by companies that use them to avoid theft.

But the investigators from the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, found a way to purchase as many as 45 of the gauges and could have bought many more because they made counterfeit copies of the NRC-issued license and removed the restrictions on the amount that could be purchased.

"With patience and the proper financial resources, we could have accumulated from other suppliers substantially more radioactive source material than what the two suppliers initially agreed to ship to us," the GAO says in a report prepared for today's hearing.

Coleman, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee, said the NRC "still has this good-faith assumption. The problem is there are bad-faith people out there."

He said "there is no question" the investigators could have obtained enough radioactive material to make a dirty bomb because the GAO was able to duplicate the certificate and no one checked on the company or whether the counterfeit license was legitimate.

McGaffigan said Wednesday that the agency, while concerned about any security weakness, has had to allocate finite resources to what it believes are the biggest potential threats to public safety. He said terrorists so far have looked for relatively simple ways to cause massive death and damage. Devices such as the moisture gauges, he said, pose a relatively low-level risk because they require vast amounts of work to fashion into a dangerous weapon.

"My sole concern, our sole concern, has been the safety of the American people," he said.

The GAO said that investigators operated the sting from their Washington office, although they provided a postal box in West Virginia. At one point, an NRC license examiner called them to caution that the gauges are subject to special security at the construction site.

The GAO said that it contacted two suppliers of the gauges and that one "offered to provide twice as many machines as we requested and offered a discount for volume purchases." The investigators also were told that the supplier does not check with NRC to confirm the terms on the license, a copy of which was sent to the supplier along with the purchase order.

The investigators never finished the deal because they didn't have the money to buy the machines, which cost about $5,000 apiece, and also didn't have anyplace to safely store them.

The study is the latest of several government reports after the Sept. 11 attacks to warn of serious security gaps in NRC licensing procedures. A year ago, undercover GAO officials bought enough radioactive material abroad to make two dirty bombs and smuggled them into the United States at two points, one on the Canadian border and one on the border with Mexico.