Nexus - 0215 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

place on the Richter scale in just over a year. This bomb and others in London, Bombay, and the New York World Trade Center all shared three common features: each megabomb was exploded in a known financial centre, each left few if any scorch marks, and the resulting shock blast on every occasion exceeded the normal explosive-skills and logistic capabilities of any existing, known ‘terrorist’ organisation. The major media recently suggested the World Trade Center bomb was "home-made" and placed in an underground car park by an Islamic militant from New Jersey. The claim was ludicrous, as the shock blast needed to rip through seven floors of reinforced concrete car park cannot be generated by components purchased over the counter from a chemical ware- house. On 23 March Tom Valentine, of Radio Free America, interviewed veteran nuclear physi- cist Galen Winsor who agreed the blast was not caused by a low-yield conventional explo- sive charge. Galen Winsor went much further: "T'm sure it was just exactly what John McPhee predicted 20 years ago in his book, The Curve of Binding Energy, where he quoted Theodore B. Taylor, a theoretical physicist out of Los Alamos, who said that someone someday was going to blow up the World Trade Center with a small nuclear device, the size of a stick of gum.” "Mc Phee's book was published in 1975, although the prediction first appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1973. Taylor worked in the area of the micronisation of nuclear weapons—in other words, raking nuclear weapons small enough so the Israelis could carry them around in a briefcase." At first glance, the thought of micronised nuclear weapons being used against western financial centres seems absurd, but there is now considerable evidence indicating strongly that small nuclear devices were also responsible for the two massive London blasts and at least one other in Bombay. In London, both megabombs were detonated in the street but still generated massive shock blasts. Here the finger was pointed at the IRA, but the propaganda value of the isolated bomb blasts is questionable. The IRA has no record of bombing world financial centres. Media use of IRA code-words to ‘authenticate’ both megabomb blasts means nothing—the major media in London can whistle up five or more IRA code-words in a matter of seconds if the mood takes it. There is another drawback where the IRA is concemed, and that is its ability to obtain and import huge volumes of high explosive to the British mainland. If the media is to be believed, the IRA, normally incapable of smuggling guns to the mainland, apparently imported at least two tons of explosive in less than 18 months. Sniffer dogs at UK ports are famous for their ability to detect marijuana in quantities as low as two ounces. The same dogs are also trained to sniff for explosives... When the first London bomb exploded on the night of the British general election in April 1992, the police were lured away from the site by a ‘known' IRA code-word. There is no IRA record of such deception. Traditionally the IRA provides an accurate warning, or it provides no warning at all. Further, the IRA does not normally waste vast quantities of explosive where it will cause virtually no injuries. Backing up the non-IRA sequence of events were eyewitness reports from a range of more than three miles, which were chilling: “The ground shook under our feet. There was a brilliant white flash and a tall vertical col- umn of smoke.” Powerful, modern high-explosives do not flash “brilliant white" at all, but nuclear devices certainly do. Nuclear devices also send out near-instantaneous seismic shock waves that rip- ple underground for miles, shaking the ground severely. In what might have been the greatest Freudian slip of the nineties, the British government claimed the weight of the bomb was "45 kilograms"—a puny weight in conventional explo- sive terms, but the exact weight of the small nuclear shell fired by the British army's 155 mm FH-70 L/39 long-range gun-howitzer, Two Australian nuclear physicists confirmed that the 155 mm core nuclear device would measure no more than three inches in diameter. Those physicists’ April 1992 opinions were considerably reinforced during March 1993 by Galen Winsor on the Radio Free America Te megablast in the City of London last month was the fourth to warrant a permanent The bomb blasts in the New York World Trade Center, Bombay and London were reported as unconnected incidents. But they all had several things in common ... But they all had several things in common ... By Joe Vialls joe Vialls is a Western Australia-based freelance journalist with thirty years' direct experience of international mili- tary and oilfield operations. 38¢NEXUS AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1993