On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 08:36 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:

U.S. agents also sought, without warrant or subpoena, to obtain ABCNEWS field tapes. Two agents showed up at night at the San Diego home of a freelance cameraman, Jeff Freeman, who worked on the project.

"They first identified themselves as FBI agents, which it turns out they weren't," said Freeman. "They wanted to know if I still had the tapes I had shot for ABC and if I could turn them over."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/Primetime/sept11_uranium030910.html

The whole story, ranging from the depleted uranium to the reporters being "concerned" (that it got through), to the "this is very serious...we will look into filing smuggling charges" to the "we want the tapes" nonsense. A bunch of points: * depleted uranium (DU) is essentially pure U-238, with very low specific activity (decay rate); removal of the 2-3% of the higher specific activity U-235 lessens the overall decay rate of the original metal substantially. * it is very easily shielded. True, the gammas are fairly penetrating, but can be shielded in various easy ways. (For example, sailboat keels are often made of lead...simply drill some holes in the keel, put the DU in the holes, cap the holes with lead. And sailboat keels are deep underwater, making even use of a gamma ray spectrometer a chore. For that matter, some high tech keels now use DU. DUh, so to speak.) * the reaction of the reporters to what they did was "Look, we managed to get some dangerous uranium in through one of millions of shipping containers entering the U.S. at Long Beach!" No analysis. * the reaction of the bureaucrats was unsurprising: declare that the crime is being looked into, round up all the parties for questioning, mutter darkly about how the U.S. Attorney may prosecute, natter about national security, flash some phony credentials, detain a few scientists, then move on to the next manufactured hype crisis. All very typical and why the National Security State is such a sick joke. --Tim May