Fatherland Security agents above the law?

[Tim May]

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