Investigators Easily Ran “Dirty Bomb” Sting

A recent U.S. sting to illicitly purchase radioactive materials that could be used in a radiological “dirty bomb” was accomplished with disturbing ease, an investigator told Newsweek (see GSN, July 12).

To test U.S. controls over the sale of equipment containing radioactive substances, the Government Accountability Office conducted an operation in which it successfully received a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license and ordered enough equipment to craft a bomb.

Using a false Social Security number, a team led by investigator Gregory Kutz established fake businesses, used online assistance to receive an NRC safety certification and license, altered the license to allow the sale of even greater quantities of materials, and successfully ordered equipment from two small companies.

“These are small businesses.  They were very excited about our order,” Kutz said.  “From one company we ordered 20 of the machines and they offered us 40.  And they gave us a nice discount.  They were very, very excited about the big order.  And they were very, very crushed when we called and told them it was a sting.”

Altering the NRC license was simple, he said.

“Because you had to fax the license, we could have just done a cut-and-paste with glue and it would have worked.  They accept faxed copies of your license. We did much more elaborate counterfeiting than we actually had to do,” Kutz said, describing how the team had altered its NRC license using common word processing software.

“We just scanned it in and removed two paragraphs that limited how much of the materials we could actually get. We removed those and wrote two paragraphs in that basically gave us more of an unlimited quantity of cesium 137 and americium 241 that we could buy,” he said.

Commission authorities responded quickly when they learned of the GAO sting.

“They haven’t always been quite so responsive.  But this time, right after we told them, I think the same day they suspended the licensing program,” Kutz said.  “They took it very seriously” (Jeffrey Bartholet, Newsweek, July 23).

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