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| HDBAY military consultant Bill Chastka explained the potency of this type of weapon. "A 'backpack' nuke shouldn't be marginalized because of it's seemingly petty moniker," he said. "It's size allows it to be used almost anywhere. If detonated in an urban area, it can instantly kill hundreds of thousands of people and leave several hundred thousand others exposed to lethal radiation." Efforts are now under way to guard against the use of a backpack nuclear device. The Rand Corporation currently leads the planning, after an all-night meeting session Saturday. In addition to increased use of metal detectors and geiger counters, Rand representative Julia Gugliotta explains another method. "Our research indicates that a backpack nuke is relatively heavy, considering the load of such a device compared to the weight of a child," she said. "If the nuke weighed 60 pounds, then the child may even be outweighed by the device. There should be a noticeable oddity about the child's gait or the way he or she would lean." School officials are hesitant to rely only on weight to pinpoint a backpack nuke. Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Roy Romer spoke about the variety of objects inside students' knapsacks. "There's no way to tell what can be in a kids pack. Some kids are smart, they've got books. Some kids sell drugs. Some kids have weapons. There's absolutely no way to tell if a kid has 60 pounds of Uzi and ammo or 60 pounds of nuclear incindiary device." Romer backs a method of vigilance currently illegal. "I've been in this business so long, I can take one look and know whether he's a terrorist threat," he said. "It's called racial profiling, and it's illegal, but if I could do it, then I might as well be working with Tom Ridge." Los Angeles Unified teacher Mary Wu says this new threat will not affect her job. She has taught within the district for seven years and says she has dealt with several threats. "Yellow, green, red, orange-- the threat levels are all the same to me. What really alarms me is that some kids don't finish their homework even if I say I'm going to tell their parents." |
| New Terrorist Warning |
| BACKPACK-(bin)LADEN KIDS RECRUITED BY AL-QAIDA |
| December 15-- Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida network acquisition of 20 "backpack" nuclear devices has Homeland Security officials scrambling to protect schools from terror attacks. In the book "Al-Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror", author Paul L. Williams writes that the terrorist group purchased the weapons from former KGB agents in 1998. The weapons resided in the hands of Chechen Mafia leaders prior to their sale to Al-Qaida for $30 million. The Office of Homeland Security is ready to issue warnings to school administrators across the nation to watch for young Al-Qaida operatives set to engage in suicide bombings in elementary and junior high schools. Homeland security officials did not reveal their sources for this concern, but expressed the new information as a "credible threat." |
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| One solution: Clear backpacks |