Gordon Thomas & David Dastych -

Deadly Germs
British counterintelligence (MI5) has recently identified 32 spies of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), operating under the cover of diplomatic immunity. They maintain communications with former secret KGB agents, who during the Cold War concealed, in the English countryside, biological weapons for use in a preemptive attack against British cities.

After the purge carried out in the KGB in the 1990s, which former CIA Director George Tenet called a game of appearances, agents dismissed from the service offered their extensive knowledge about the United Kingdom to whoever paid the most. An internal MI5 document prepared for Director Eliza Manningham Buller, maintains: "There is a great probability that certain (KGB -- editor's note) agents were recruited by al-Qa'ida." The MI5 has identified the license plate numbers of all the cars used by Russian spies. Several weeks ago a car with a number beginning with the digits 248D was noticed nearby an RAF base in Lyenam in the county of Wiltshire. The car was being driven by a middle-aged man.

The car was headed towards the road leading to Marlborough. An MI5 informant confirmed that in the opinion of the British services, part of the mission of the Russian spies is to make sure that the containers of biological weapons have not been found. Until recently, knowledge about the deadly bacteria concealed in the United Kingdom was highly confidential, even Eliza Manningham Buller and her specialists on Russian intelligence had no idea about their existence.

Kuzminov's Revelations
It was only Aleksandr Kuzminov, a former commander of KGB spies, who disclosed that his agents had hidden these containers in the British countryside. It was he who suggested that certain spies operating in the United Kingdom were supposed to make sure that the deadly bacteria remained hidden. Kuzminov was chief of a super-secret KGB unit -- Department 12 of Directorate S. "We were involved in biological espionage, planning and preparing attacks using biological weapons, sabotage, and biological warfare," Kuzminov disclosed. From his home in New Zealand, neighboring the home of former MI5 officer Peter Wright, Kuzminov announced: "Great efforts were made and vast money was spent (...). It would be naive to think that our people were dismissed from the service merely because Russia is participating in talks on biological disarmament in Geneva."

In his book Biological Espionage, Kuzminov expresses his hope that this publication "will turn the attention of intelligence services." His revelations have shocked the MI5. Even the highest-ranking defectors from the USSR from the Cold War period, such as Oleg Gordiyevskiy and Vasiliy Mitrokhin, had no idea about the operations of Department 12. The deadly bacteria were bred by Russian scientists employed at the Soviet biological weapons program "Biopreparat."

They received the objective of "producing bacteria against which Great Britain would be unable to defend itself." The bacteria were produced after the USSR signed the biological weapons convention in 1972. Scientists from Porton Down, the British biological defense center, are afraid that this may involve plague or even smallpox germs. "Biopreperat was actively involved in producing weapons of this sort," confirms Ken Alibek, former director of the program, who defected to the United States. Kuzminov stresses that by disclosing the sensational revelations of how his department left a collection of deadly bacteria in the English countryside, "I had no intention of exerting political pressure on any state or its policy." Ten years after leaving Department 12 and coming to reside with his wife in New Zealand, Kuzminov continues to refuse to enter the question of whether he knows where the deadly germs are concealed.

Usama's Suitcase Bombs
On September 12, 2001, one day after the attack against the World Trade Center, an intensive search was launched for nuclear charges allegedly concealed at the New York port. Signals about the possibility of terrorists utilizing former Soviet "suitcase bombs" came from US intelligence agencies.

Warnings had been received by the CIA
from other countries as well, including from Poland and the Czech Republic. Nuclear weapons were not then found, but the situation remains current five years later. Recent reports by US and UK intelligence point out mistakes in the reconnaissance of al-Qa'ida's ability to employ weapons of mass destruction, and the ties between terrorists and the agents of former Soviet and current Russian intelligence.

A book by Paul L. Williams, Osama's Revenge: The Next 9/11: What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You, recently came out in the United States. Williams is an experienced investigative reporter, and was also an FBI consultant on fighting terrorism and the organized crime. He maintains that credible intelligence sources indicate that nuclear explosive charges ("suitcase bombs") may already lie hidden by "sleeping" al-Qa'ida agents in the US cities: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Miami, Washington, and... Rappahannock in the state of Virginia. Why there? Because there is an underground bunker nearby, the command center of the US Government in the event of war.

Williams describes in detail how al-Qa'ida may have obtained miniature post-Soviet nuclear weapons and what threat they may pose to the United States. "The Chechen mafia sold 20 suitcase nuclear charges to representatives of Usama Bin Ladin in Groznyy in 1996. Bin Ladin paid $30 million for them, and also threw in two tons of heroin." Perhaps 10 suitcase bombs are already in al-Qa'ida's hands. In the opinion of outstanding US physicist Theodore Taylor, who miniaturized the atomic bomb, the suitcase bomb "emits intensive heat radiation, generating a ball of fire more than 100 meters across. The core of the ball reaches a temperature of 10 million degrees Celsius." The temperature that brought about the collapse of the WTC on 11 September 2001 was 5,000 degrees Celsius. Nuclear suitcase bombs, much more dangerous than "dirty" radiological bombs, could immediately kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, while millions of people would die from radiation sickness

Attack Before the End of the Year?
"We can expect an attack to occur before the end of 2006," Williams told us. US intelligence and counterintelligence is not ignoring the danger.

Porter J. Gross, director of the CIA, told the special Senate intelligence committee: "A decision by al-Qa'ida or another group to use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons may be only a matter of time." Robert S. Miller III, director of the FBI, recently announced: "I am very concerned at the growing number (...) of reports clearly pointing to the intentions of al-Qa'ida, which is striving to obtain chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons as well as high-energy explosive materials, and to use them against America." The expectation of an attack by terrorists is confirmed by Lowell Jacoby, director of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). Information being exchanged between al-Qa'ida cells, such as over the Internet (constantly being intercepted by NSA electronic intelligence) indicates that there still exists a threat of an attack similar to the strikes of 9/11/2001.

Will "sleeping" Soviet (now Russian) agents, who are watching over the hiding places of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, take part in it? This cannot be ruled out. So far, secret stores of these weapons have not been found. This is extremely difficult in view of their small size and the vast territory in which they may have been concealed. The troubles could grow even greater: the next generation of Russian weapons is even more miniaturized, and hard to detect.

A Grenade That Kills Thousands
Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, has given Wprost weekly several important pieces of information that confirm his observations and experience from many years of monitoring the development of Soviet, and then Russian nuclear weapons. The Russians were the world leaders in the field of high-pressure technologies, leading to the production of so-called red mercury (RM 20/20, chemical formula Sb2O7Hg2), the basic material for producing cheap, miniaturized neutron bombs. Red mercury is a kind of highly thick gel. It serves as the detonator for a small amount of tritium (super-heavy hydrogen), which when exploding produces a wave of pulsing neutrons. In February 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed secret directive no. 75-RPS permitting the Russian company Promekologia to produce and sell (including abroad) up to 10 tons of RM 20/20 per year. In the early 90s, the price of a kilogram of RM 20/20 exceeded $400,000. Difficulties in obtaining the mysterious substance caused numerous frauds, which the Russian mafia specialized in.

After 11 September 2001, both the demand for RM 20/20 and the price suddenly went up. On 24 September 2004, the British police arrested four individuals suspected of an attempt at purchasing a "radioactive substance, a material of great explosive potential, originally produced in Russia, known by the name of red mercury." The four suspects are said to have offered $541,000 for a kilogram on behalf of a Saudi Arabian (described as supporter of Islamic fundamentalists). Individuals suspected of trading in red mercury were also arrested in Italy. In one interview, the inventor of neutron weapons describes the properties of this extraordinary explosive material: "Most worrisome is the ease with which in a neutron bombs can be constructed using red mercury. This substance is a compound containing mercury that has been exposed to radiation. When it explodes, it generates a high temperature and pressure -- sufficient for detonating a thermonuclear charge."

Cohen maintains that the Americans have not managed to produce nuclear weapons using RM 20/20, despite attempts. In the USSR and then in Russia, on the other hand, research on these weapons was (and is) constantly being perfected. In 2004, Cohen confirmed for us the chemical composition and other technical parameters of RM 20/20 on the basis of a technical certification presented to him, coming from one of Russia's secret laboratories. As early as in 1993, Russian General Negin publicly admitted that Russia was working on nuclear weapons with a very low radiation level, whereby a twofold explosive force had been achieved while halving the weight of the charge, as compared to existing types of such weapons. Describing its more specific parameters, another Russian specialist, Yevgeniy Kerolev, went on to say that red mercury has such a strong explosive force that a bomb the size of a grenade could sweep a ship from the surface of the sea.

An ideal terrorist weapon
Cohen pointed out that these neutron weapons are ideal for terrorists: cheap (without expensive uranium or plutonium), almost indetectable (a low level of radiation), and miniature (the size of a hand grenade). Furthermore, without destroying buildings, they send out a powerful stream of pulsing neutron radiation that penetrates the walls of bunkers. Such radiation kills all living organisms within a radius of half a kilometer. Detonated in a large city, it will kill thousands of people. There are increasing indications to confirm the suspicion that Putin's Russia considers only the Chechens to be terrorists, and the brain of the world campaign of terrorists against the free world is Russian military intelligence (GRU).

Note: This article was first published on the 17th of July 2005, by a best-selling Polish weekly "Wprost". In spite of the lapse of time, the information contained in it is actual. With North Korea testing its first nuclear charge on Monday, October 9, 2006 and being the largest in the world producer of biological weapons, with Iran developing its nuclear capability, and al-Qaeda threatening the United States with a nuclear terrorist attack ("American Hiroshima"), the public opinion should be aware of these dangers.

About the authors: Gordon Thomas is a famous British journalist and writer, specializing in intelligence matters. His updated bestseller, "Gideon's Spies. The Secret History of the Mossad", will be soon re-published in the U.S.A., France, Spain, Poland and other countries in 2006/2007. David Dastych is an international journalist, and a former covert intelligence operative, specializing in the monitoring of the nuclear proliferation.