Original subtitles

The consequences: deadlier than ever.

The mafia has gone nuclear.

A new syndicate has arisen

from the shadows of the underworld,

a mafia that is completely different than any other.

This criminal organization deals in

the most dangerous contraband ever to be traded

on the black market.

I'm talking about the radioactive materials

used to make nuclear bombs.

Welcome to the dawn of the nuclear mafia,

a mutation of established crime organizations.

Nuclear mafia combines the collaborative efforts

of gangsters, scientists, corrupt businessmen,

and government officials.

Their customers include terrorist groups,

third world countries and hostile nations.

In fact, anyone with the money

and desire for weapons of mass destruction

can acquire the services of the nuclear mafia.

No other contraband has more value

than the elements for the construction of nuclear bombs.

Pound for pound, enriched uranium and plutonium

are hundreds of times more expensive than drugs.

Even material used in warheads and missile systems

can be found on the black market.

The exotic metal beryllium is sold for outrageous sums.

The black market sale of nuclear material

is a major departure from organized crime's

normal means of illegal trade.

Crime bosses used to say that they're in

the business of giving the public what it wants.

When prohibition hit,

the mob provided the bootleg booze

the American people demanded

and an illegal drink was apparently more satisfying.

Alcohol consumption shot up

to record highs during prohibition,

the mafia made a fortune.

By catering to the public's appetite for gambling,

the mob hit the jackpot again.

They were there in the sixties

when America's drug culture came of age.

As flower children got high, the mafia got rich.

The South American drug barons cashed in the same way.

The drug kings of Columbia

get a cut of nearly every gram of coke

sold in North America and Europe.

In the seventies, the godfather of cocaine,

Pablo Escobar became one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Asian crime lords forged empires in a similar manner.

The multitude of opium dens in the Far East

bankrolled the triads in the early 1900s.

Their neighbors, the Yakuza,

took advantage of the Japanese love of gambling.

Now, both are global enterprises

built on the founding principles

of all organized crime:

providing illegal goods and services to the public.

Now, for the first time,

a syndicate product is solely for

a select group of customers

with political agendas and deep pockets,

and the will to use weapons of mass destruction.

With organized crime involvement,

nuclear terrorism could now strike anywhere at any time.

Many say a nuclear mafia

aligned with fanatical and terrorist groups

should have been predicted.

After all, no one is more skilled at smuggling

than organized crime.

Moving a pound of uranium past customs

is a lot easier than sneaking in 500 tons of cocaine.

I believe that regardless of the commodity,

regardless of the crime that's being committed,

people who want to move goods that are contraband--

and regardless of what that is, be it drugs,

be it nuclear material, be it stolen goods,

they'll turn to the organizations

that conduct the transportation

of those goods around the world

and into the country they want it deposited in.

A decade ago,

nuclear smuggling was a rare event-- no longer.

Many experts conclude the demand for nuclear weapons

must be greater than ever.

Recently, there has been a major increase

in the trafficking of nuclear material.

In Romania, police announced

that they're holding two individuals

for attempting to sell stolen radioactive material.

The two had in their possessions,

82 kilograms of radioactive material,

including enriched uranium.

Lithuanian officials have determined

that the 100 kilograms of radioactive material

seized last month from an armed gang is uranium.

The German parliamentary commission

investigating a plutonium smuggling incident

has learned that smugglers offered

to supply 11 kilograms

of Russian origin weapons grade plutonium,

enough to build three nuclear missiles.

According to Italian press reports,

Italian prosecutors have arrested a man

with links to the United States Central Intelligence Agency

and an Italian American mafia,

as part of their investigation

of smuggling radioactive materials.

During a search of a car

at the Polish-Czech border,

Polish border guards discovered

11 cigarette pack sized containers

filled with Strontium 90.

Bulgarian police have broken

an international smuggling ring

involving Russians and Ukrainians.

This just in from Munich,

highly radioactive plutonium was found

on board a commercial flight from Moscow.

German SWAT teams apprehended the smugglers

before the deadly cargo could be sold.

Reportedly, the black market price

of the four kilograms of plutonium

needed to build a nuclear bomb is $350 million.

See, it doesn't make any difference

if the kilogram of plutonium

that shows up in a terrorist device

comes from China, or from Russia, or from Kazakhstan.

If it shows up, it's bad news.

There have been hundreds of attempts

to steal nuclear materials in Russia.

Often, the thefts can be traced to workers

employed at nuclear facilities or research centers.

Even live nuclear warheads have gone missing

from weapons assembly plants.

The stolen nuclear goods can then

be fenced to organize crime.

In the late nineties,

the secret workings of a nuclear mafia

first came to the surface

with a discovery of a smuggling operation

that was being run through a seaport in Lithuania.

It started out as just a routine investigation

by a tough cop.

The case file read like the usual gang war,

but to Detective Joseph Rimkevicius,

the violence and killings just didn't add up.

The port of Klaipeda,

Lithuania's gateway to the world.

Unfortunately, it has also become

the crossroads for smugglers of all kinds.

My caseload is the usual: drug running,

black market liquor, cigarette smuggling.

But this case, contract killings,

bombed vehicles, shootouts.

It didn't make sense.

But then I got the break I needed.

I didn't know it was from a dead woman.

They said to give you this.

Not again, Lola.

Person's got to earn a living.

In the new Lithuania, there are jobs for everybody.

Ha!

This doesn't look good.

We've got you on hooking and possession.

It was consensual, and the dope wasn't mine.

You work the docks, don't you?

Tricks for all those hard ups sailors?

They are my boyfriends, all of them.

There is some unusual activity

on the port these days.

Lola knows nothing.

I am a good girl.

I have a hunch

that there is a smuggling operation in the works.

Something important.

I'll go easy on you.

I tell you anything, I walk.

Done.

I know something.

The important people wouldn't like me talking.

Trust me, Lola.

It turned out a Russian thug was one of her Johns.

He told her everything.

How a Russian crime gang was bringing in

a special shipment through Klaipeda

and our local gangs were fighting

for a piece of the action,

but the Russians weren't about to roll over

and make any payoffs.

Too bad about Lola, but her tip was right on the money.

The chief detective of Lithuania's port city

had not a clue to what triggered the gang war,

but a police informer told him

about a mysterious shipment from Russia;

something of great value to important people.

Too bad about Lola,

but her tip was right on the money.

Whatever it was, was stashed right under our nose;

the Lithuanian bank.

To clear the bank, I used the cover of a bomb threat.

I didn't know how close to the truth that was.

They had turned the power off, crazy bureaucrats.

Captain, captain!

What is it?

Yuri, find something.

Pry it open.

Check them all, open all the crates!

Open them all, all of them!

It's radioactive.

It's radioactive!

Out of here, everyone!

Shipping invoices stuffed in the crates were from Minatom,

the Ministry of Atomic Energy in Russia.

It has factories in Sverdlovsk.

Interestingly, many consider Sverdlovsk

the gangster capital of Russia.

Its industries rely on mineral resources

and military industrial complexes.

But now, Russia hasn't enough money

to pay its nuclear scientists and engineers.

A prescription for corruption by the nuclear mafia.

May I have cigarette?

I found out how easy it was

when I talked to the head of the nuclear materials division.

Detective, I tell you, I did nothing illegal!

As chief of the department,

I know what surplus materials

we have at our nuclear facilities.

I heard that a facility in

was storing extra beryllium

and if the you would take the time

to review our confusing government policies,

you would see that I am allowed to trade materials

that are not on a special control list!

Then talk me through the process.

I simply had to get order form

from headquarters in Moscow.

Minatom has a branch in Moscow.

From the printing press,

I got papers without the Minatom letterhead on it

and that's how it started.

You know, we deal and--

Who supplied the financing?

A businessman I know from Sverdlovsk.

He now lives in Moscow, Boris Dimitriev.

Where did he get his money?

His money?

I'm scientist, I don't know.

Karate clubs?

Karate clubs, my ass.

That gentleman operates in the gray zone

between the legal world and the underworld.

One way that Russian organized crime makes money

is through the buying and selling of commodities.

Buy the materials in rubles,

sell them outside the country for dollars.

For businessmen like him,

this was an easy way to make a fortune.

His rise to wealth and power began

when he defied the communists

and opened a string of video shops

that were outlets for black market pornography

smuggled from Europe and America.

He emerged after the fall of communism

as one of the new breed of Soviet businessmen

who worked both sides of the law.

In the early nineties,

he opened up a chain of karate clubs.

These so-called sports clubs

are actually training grounds for thugs

hired as security to protect mafia bosses.

I told Dimitriev that I knew a man in Switzerland

who knew a man in North Korea,

who's willing to buy beryllium for $24 million,

but he had to supply the muscle and the financing for it.

Very simple, case closed. Can I go?

Nyet. One more time.

So Igor arranged for Dimitri's men to smuggle

the beryllium into Switzerland by way of Lithuania.

I tell you, I did nothing illegal.

The Russian authorities never arrested anyone

for smuggling radioactive materials.

We seized the beryllium, but couldn't arrest anyone.

What's illegal in one country

is obviously legal in another.

As long as the present laws remain on the books

and corruption plagues the officials

running these facilities,

the nuclear mafia will always have the upper hand.

The beryllium was bound for North Korea.

It is believed the mafia was tracking

that nation's attempt to develop

nuclear weapons for years.

Now with widespread corruption in Russia

and the reduction of their nuclear security,

many concluded it won't be long

before North Korea possesses a nuclear arsenal.

The Soviet Union that was once called "the Evil Empire,"

is long dead.

The systems that once prevented

the theft of nuclear weapons died with it.

The Cold War is over

and nuclear weapons development has diminished,

but the stockpiles remain.

With an underworld organization specializing

in the theft of nuclear materials,

the prospect of nuclear devastation is greater now

than any time in the history of nuclear arms,

which began over five decades ago.

In August of 1945, the atom was cracked

and a horrible new weapon brought World War II

to a swift and decisive end.

The atom had been harnessed for ground warfare

and a new chapter in ordinance had been written

in the now familiar towering, billowing

and sinister mushroom cloud;

trademark of the atomic explosion.

But the nuclear genie was out

and soon the arms race was on.

Throughout the next three decades,

the weapons labs in the Soviet Union

and the United States were going full tilt.

Many fear the two superpowers were racing to see

who could blow up the world the most times.

This is the terror

that once again casts its eerie shadow

over the face of the earth.

The hydrogen bomb,

the bomb that Khrushchev announces

will once again undergo--

At the height of the Cold War,

the combined arsenal of the two superpowers

was over 100,000 nuclear warheads.

The entire world lived on the edge of an abyss.

It was predicted the ash from a nuclear war

would blot out the sun.

Nuclear winter would descend on the world,

and a final, lifeless dark age would begin.

With the fall of the Soviet Union,

the world stepped back from the brink of a nuclear war

but the threat from nuclear weapons is worse than ever.

Decades of testing and research

have unraveled the complexities

of nuclear bomb construction.

Against land,

air, sea, and undersea targets.

The Navy also has a submarine.

The power of mass communication

has made the secrets

to nuclear weapons development well known.

The supply of army fired atomic weapons

from the is a function

of specially trained ordinance.

Radioactive ingredients for bomb making

appear to be flowing through a vast nuclear underground.

Advanced early warning systems, Star Wars defense,

all that high tech stuff can't prevent

a nuclear attack by suicidal terrorists.

Plant a few of the most

primitive atomic bombs in large cities,

and you could bring a country to its knees.

God forbid, if we do have a nuclear accident--

a nuclear event in Washington, DC,

where you know, not a hundred people,

but thousands of people are killed.

Our whole culture is destroyed.

Our arts, all the things that make us a nation,

we won't recognize ourselves

on the other side of that event.

In the mid 1980s, Russia's nuclear arsenal

amounted to over 45,000 weapons.

Today, estimates put the total in the range of 3000.

People in the know say,

we can't count on the security

of Russia's remaining arsenal.

There was no more central control

on all the weapons that the Soviet Union possessed.

Now, they were individually controlled

in the geography where they were deposited,

and all those individual countries

held the keys to those depositories.

And depending upon where they were

and the strength of the criminal organizations

within those countries,

the threat of that material being stolen,

removed or paid for and distributed

to some terrorist organization or a rogue country

that would distribute to a terrorist organization

increased a hundred fold.

In 1996, a meeting on nuclear safety

was held in Moscow.

Russian scientists attending

announced it could take a decade

to be certain the nearly 100 facilities

are safe from theft.

Nuclear materials smuggled out of Russia

follow two principle routes:

Interpol identifies a route running west

through eastern European countries like Poland

and continuing into countries such as Germany,

Austria, and Switzerland.

Interpol has targeted Germany

as a central hub of the underworlds nuclear network.

Another path uses the same smuggling route

that narcotics traffickers use

to move heroin out of central Asia.

The flow of immigrants and tourists

through Russia's border crossings

makes the use of nuclear detection equipment impractical.

Stolen nuclear material can pass unnoticed.

A treaty agreement has eliminated border controls

between Russia and former soviet republics.

Without border controls,

smugglers can traffic nuclear goods

with little threat of arrest.

If they are picked up, they'll simply resort to payoffs.

The problem is that there are limits on coordination

because law enforcement personnel

are being paid off by organized crime not to cooperate.

Sometimes organized crime

feeds erroneous information into Interpol

just to prevent enforcements,

so that there are all kinds of problems in cooperation.

But without cooperation,

one can't address the problem.

The smuggling of nuclear material

is an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

Criminals who move radioactive cargo

have no concern for ecology,

no understanding of the extreme toxic nature

of radioactive elements.

If stolen plutonium or enriched uranium enter the ecosystem,

it could contaminate the environment for centuries.

There isn't an international law enforcement effort

that is capable of addressing this problem.

The best defense against the nuclear black market

is an ironclad security system

of safeguards for nuclear weapons and materials.

The ultimate customer of black market nuclear commodities

is likely to be a government, a terrorist group,

or a political entity without laws or boundaries.

Customs in the last 20 years

has defended the United States

against terrorist organizations

and the smuggling of toxic substances

such as nerve gas, biochemical weaponry.

Rogue nations like Iraq and Iran

have both-- many times,

tried to either gain that type of weaponry

from within the United States

or bring it into the United States.

There are organized crime strike forces

that exist throughout the United States

with personnel who are just dedicated

to studying this problem.

In different parts of the country,

for example in Miami and California,

there's special inter-agency government working groups

that combine law enforcement from customs, INS, IRS;

all the different agencies to work together

to try and address this in a coordinated fashion.

In addition to the strike force,

the nuclear emergency search team, or NEST,

employs several scientists and technicians.

Headquartered in a top secret facility in Nevada,

the NEST team is on 24 hour standby.

When a nuclear threat is detected,

the FBI acts as a SWAT team

and NEST supplies the technicians trained

to find and diffuse a nuclear device.

There are times

when I wish the communists would make a comeback,

the good old fashioned Bolsheviks,

and take over because they were far more secure a time

than as of today.

Sam Cohen was part of the Manhattan Project,

the team of scientists that first produced the atom bomb.

In the fifties, he worked for the Rand Corporation

on the problem of nuclear proliferation.

Decades later, he's still concerned

with the spread of the bomb,

but now it's due to

a mysterious substance called Red Mercury.

With all this black marketeering and smuggling

that's come out of the Soviet Union,

via the mafia and and other nefarious elements and so on,

the proliferation problem has gotten ever so much scary.

But the component of nuclear proliferation

that worries me most of all,

by far and away, are Red Mercury devices.

For years, rumors have circulated

throughout intelligence communities

about a chemical called Red Mercury.

Some say Red Mercury could be

the most expensive commodity on the black market.

Supposedly, the mysterious substance can be used

to build inexpensive nuclear bombs,

small enough to fit in a suitcase.

Reportedly, Red Mercury was first developed

in the Soviet Union during the late sixties

for industrial purposes.

It was later discovered that the chemical

could be used in nuclear weapons.

Some ingenious Soviet scientists

figured out a way of treating

the ordinary harmless Red Mercury

and turning it into a compound

with a tremendous energy content.

Purportedly, Red Mercury shrinks

the size of the radioactive core in the bomb.

When you mix Red Mercury with plutonium,

the bomb can be reduced in size.

A conventional nuclear weapon

weighs in the range of 350 pounds

to around two tons for a fifty megaton monster.

Some estimates say Red Mercury could shrink

the size of a nuclear bomb by 80%

and with no loss of its destructive force.

This is why third world nations and terrorists

are willing to spend millions to acquire Red Mercury.

This makes a chemical highly attractive

to the nuclear mafia,

especially since currently there are no laws

to control the sales of Red Mercury.

They know a very profitable area when they see one.

And the government, it's not powerless to prevent this,

but it would be extremely difficult to control these people.

To date, international authorities

have never confiscated pure Red Mercury.

This has led many world governments

to dismiss the Red Mercury threat

as nothing more than a 21st century snake oil scam.

Just crooks conning crooks,

swindling customers who wouldn't know

Red Mercury from Cherry Cola.

Part of what of which they pedaled was phony.

You know, as PT Barn at once said,

"There's a sucker born every minute."

But Cohen and others believe

the phony deals conceal a global

Red Mercury production and distribution network.

It's certainly being produced in Russia.

It may or may not be produced

in a number of other countries such as Israel,

which has the most logical need for

a battlefield of Red Mercury weapons imaginable.

South Africa has dealt with Red Mercury weapons,

but I'm more inclined to believe

that they received their Red Mercury via smugglers,

rather than actually producing it to themselves.

It'll go from one peddler to another,

and it gets highly competitive,

and some of these guys,

they'll kill each other off in the most grizzly fashion

as exemplified by one horrendous killing in South Africa.

It was just awful.

The murder took place

in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The victim worked for a chemical company.

The company did business in the Middle East.

Initial autopsy on an Alan Kidger.

sales director

for the international firm of Thor Chemicals.

Citizenship, British born,

residing in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Kidger was last seen by his wife.

She reported Kidger had seemed worried,

on edge for days.

He never said why.

Yeah?

Yeah Kidger here.

Yeah. - Kidger mumbled

something to the caller,

then said he had to go meet someone;

that he wouldn't belong.

Kidger never returned.

A stolen vehicle was found a few days later.

Kidger was discovered in the trunk,

body parts wrapped in plastic.

I can see no defensive injuries.

I therefore believe Kidger must have known the attacker.

The swelling at the base of the skull

indicates that Kidger suffered a severe blow to the head.

It is my opinion that this was not a fatal injury.

They then covered the body in this red oily substance.

Due to a lack of blood pooling in extremities,

Kidger must have been alive when they began dismemberment.

They severed the arms, legs, gluteus and head.

Judging from the jagged cracks in these bones,

it looks like they used a consumer grade saw.

Preliminary tests on this red, oily substance,

show it contains heavy amounts of mercury.

Curious.

The investigation suggested

the chemical salesman might have been selling

product with military applications.

Due to the nature of the killing

and the fact the body was coated in red,

some speculate the murder was a warning

to stay away from Red Mercury.

This theory gained credibility two years later,

when another South African man was found dead.

Initial autopsy on a Don Lang.

Import-export business.

South African.

Cause of death: suicide.

Lang had been arrested

for possession of radioactive materials,

around the same time as that of the Kidger case.

The police persuaded Lang

to participate in a sting operation,

resulting in the arrest of two men

who were reportedly selling Red Mercury.

A few days later, police find Lang dead.

There was a suicide note.

Supposedly, Red Mercury is

the most expensive commodity in the world.

Also, the deadliest.

The chemical reduces the quantity

of plutonium required for nuclear weapons. Hmm.

The Red Mercury could then enable

the manufacturing of small nuclear bombs,

ideal terrorist weapons,

and Lang exported chemicals to the Middle East;

so did Kidger.

Initial examination agrees with case detectives

and death by asphyxiation.

However, I do note there is bruising

on the neck and left arm.

These marks on the neck are most likely from the rope used.

I don't believe Lang could have tied it off

with sufficient force to leave these neck abrasions.

I think the suicide was faked.

These bruises could be the result

of a person or persons holding Lang against his will.

A person or persons pulled a plastic bag

over the head of the deceased.

The bruises on the hands and wrist

are consistent with defensive blows.

They then sealed off the trachea with a rope.

Opinion of medical examiner:

probable cause of death,

Homicide.

Probable motive:

Red Mercury.

Despite of buddy trail of dead bodies

with links to Red Mercury,

the United States government refuses

to recognize the danger posed by Red Mercury.

Some believe this could be a policy

we will all one day regret.

What they were afraid of

is that someday that these pure fusion weapons

might become feasible.

And in which case,

then you would have a golden hoard of plenty

for these awful terrorist weapons.

And the United States did not want

to admit to that possibility.

Utilizing nuclear elements and technology

supplied by organized crime,

an attack on US soil by a terrorist group

may not only be a rising possibility,

but the weapon could be more horrifying

than one can imagine.

The ultimate terrorist weapon

would be cheap, small and easily smuggled.

It would be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people,

but without harming structures.

This sounds like science fiction,

but actually, a nuclear weapon does exist

that has the ability to kill but not destroy;

and a prime ingredient

in this ideal terrorist weapon is Red Mercury.

What I realized is that that substance,

if properly treated,

can be transformed into a very strange kind of explosion

which is capable of making a nuclear explosion

without benefit of plutonium or uranium;

a so-called pure fusion device.

A nuclear bomb generates

most of its destructive force and tremendous heat,

and a massive shockwave.

Only a small portion of the bomb's power

is released in the form of radioactive particles,

but a fusion bomb transmits nearly all its energy

in the form of particles called neutrons.

A bomb works like a monstrous X-ray gun,

killing people with a single zap of neutrons,

but leaving banks, roads, telecommunications,

and power systems untouched.

And by comparison,

with a blast and heat effects

that come out of such a device,

the neutrons are all dominating

and they also happen to be people killers;

but they're able to kill people without destroying.

While working with a defense establishment,

Sam Cohen invented a pure fusion device.

It was called the neutron bomb.

The device can be so light and so small,

that it could be roughly the size of a baseball.

Now it'll weigh more,

may weigh as much as seven, eight,

10 pounds or something like that.

But from a terrorist standpoint,

here is not a suitcase bomb,

here is a bowling ball bag bomb, practically.

You could almost carry it in your pocket.

If you had the same material in Europe,

nuclear material that's in Europe,

and you want it to get it to the United States,

the easiest path is the path of least resistance.

Bring it across the Mexican border

and use the organizations in Mexico

that bring everything else

into this country that is contraband.

One pint sized neutron bomb

is capable of annihilating the population

of a downtown district or government facility.

A few suitcase sized neutron bombs

smuggled in by the mafia for a terrorist group

would be enough to hold a city hostage.

They have no conscience about what crosses our border,

they'll bring it.

And they've never shown a conscience about that.

So the prospect of nuclear material

entering the United States

through the southern border is highly probable.

I think the simplest way to smuggle

that kind of material in the United States

is to label it for what it is

and bring it in as in legitimate commercial shipments

such as medical materials that are radioactive.

We're running ahead, hopefully,

of the terrorists that's trying

to acquire these nuclear materials.

We know our systems have been in place.

We know that they have prevented and detected

attempted diversions of nuclear materials.

Could produce an awful lot of damage

as a terrorist weapon,

or as a battlefield.

But what worries me most of all is terrorism.

The development and manufacture,

and perforation of such device

is perfectly legal in terms of

the nuclear arms control agreements.

We feel like that we were doing a very good job,

the best job we can,

of making sure that those materials

don't find their way into the hands

of a terrorist organization.

The aspect of finding that

without specific information,

and the odds of finding it just on happenstance,

are astronomical.

If a improvised nuclear device

is ever used in this country,

or in Paris or London,

that it will fundamentally change Western civilization

in ways that we cannot even anticipate.

Civilization may be able

to withstand a certain amount

of drug smuggling and black market trade,

but if a nuclear warhead fell into

the hands of criminal terrorists,

it would be a cataclysmic threat

to both the public and the world peace.

I'm Robert Stack, thanks for joining us.