- 7/10/2025
How weapons-grade plutonium and uranium in the former Soviet Union has become vulnerable to theft.
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TVTranscript
00:00There were places so secret, they were not marked on any maps.
00:11One was even buried 800 feet beneath a mountain, accessible only by special train.
00:21In these secret cities, spread across the vastness of the Soviet Union,
00:27the essential ingredients of its nuclear arsenal.
00:31Twice as much plutonium as the United States, half again as much highly enriched uranium.
00:39And then the unimaginable happened. The Soviet Union simply ceased to exist.
00:44In the collapse, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and 1,400 tons of nuclear materials were put at risk.
00:51Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons.
00:56And the information needed is publicly available.
01:02The only thing that stands between us and another nuclear explosion is the availability of these nuclear materials.
01:14A small nuclear explosion, even a terrorist bomb, would be on the order of a thousand tons of TNT.
01:19And that would mean that the area around that explosion in Oklahoma City was affected, would be a hundred times larger.
01:26Finding a needle in a haystack would be more likely than finding a nuclear device hidden by a terrorist in an American city.
01:33Smuggled drugs are easier to detect.
01:37And you're talking about really handfuls of size of quantities of material in terms of uranium bowling ball sizes to smuggle.
01:45You'd have to be, I think, extremely foolish to say it could never happen here.
01:51The diversion threat is real.
01:53There are serious customers for strategic nuclear materials who are up to no good.
01:59The United States has committed more than $450 million next year on what the CIA calls a major threat to our national security.
02:08But is it enough? Can it work?
02:11Tonight, a year-long Frontline investigation tracks how nuclear material is being smuggled out of Russia.
02:23Funding for Frontline is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
02:30And by annual financial support from viewers like you.
02:36This is Frontline.
02:41The Soviet people were long trained to evade the rules and trick their rulers.
02:53They have now found themselves in a new Russia with no rules at all.
03:00The revolution in the last decade brought about has often looked more like a brawl than a democracy.
03:06Chaos and corruption are as common as capitalism and commerce.
03:15The majority of businesses here operate on the edge of the law, to put it mildly.
03:22All of us, to one degree or another, walk along the edge of the law and often break it.
03:27Most people don't have the moral right to seek the defense of the law because they themselves break it.
03:42For the first time in history, crime and chaos plague a state in possession of huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and nuclear material.
03:49And that makes the new Russia a dangerous place for everyone.
03:59His name is Leonid Smyunov.
04:02He is the first known thief of bomb-grade nuclear material in the world.
04:06For 25 years, he worked as a lab engineer here at Luch, a plant that manufactured nuclear reactors for the Soviet space program.
04:16Over five months, day in and day out, he filched tiny amounts of uranium until he had stolen more than three pounds of the same material that fueled the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
04:27I lived from paycheck to paycheck, but it was stable.
04:38Then came the reform of 1992 and money lost its value.
04:46That was when I got this idea to siphon off uranium little by little.
04:50We had a highly enriched uranium, up to 90% enriched uranium 235.
04:58And did you ever have any close calls?
05:03A situation where I could have been caught?
05:06No, there really weren't any.
05:09Because who would suspect me?
05:12Such an idea never occurred to any of our workers.
05:15Who would have thought of it?
05:17It was completely unexpected for everyone.
05:23The vial was so small, and no one searched our bags.
05:28There were no detectors, so no, no such thing.
05:34The uranium Smyunov stole is the material would-be bomb builders prefer, easy enough to use to improvise a nuclear device.
05:42But who might get hold of it didn't seem to concern him.
05:45What was there to worry about?
05:49After all, I had such hot stuff, I'd have no trouble selling it.
05:52The main thing was to get hold of it, and I thought I would just wander around Moscow.
05:57There are all sorts of firms and offices there.
06:01I would just look at their names, many foreign and Russian companies.
06:05I would just hint about the stuff I had.
06:07If someone believed me, then we could talk.
06:09In the new Moscow, corruption is the most stable currency.
06:14It's an opportunity to grab the money, run and hide where no one can catch you.
06:21Interpreting the market in this primitive way, people are ready to use any means to get a huge amount of money in one go,
06:29and then disappear to spend the rest of their life in Hawaii or somewhere else in the United States,
06:36say in Little Odessa in New York.
06:39That's the real danger.
06:43Only our conscience tells us if something can or cannot be done.
06:53Well, sometimes people have problems with their conscience, and this is serious.
06:59Over the months he amassed the uranium in a lead container on his balcony, no one at the luch factory noticed anything missing.
07:08Smirnov was finally arrested, but only by accident.
07:12Swept up with a couple of drunken friends he met at the local train station.
07:16He'd been on his way to Moscow, carrying his nuclear loot.
07:20It was a crime without precedent.
07:22It would be met with official confusion.
07:24He didn't mention the person's name.
07:30He just said he was going to give the containers to that person.
07:34He didn't tell us anything else.
07:41Slow to react to the gravity of the crime, investigators too were stumbling their way through a strange new world.
07:50I think the unsettled state of social and economic life is a serious problem in our country.
08:01That's my personal point of view.
08:05It's a serious problem and shouldn't be punished with imprisonment.
08:12He shouldn't be blamed for the circumstances of his life, a top intelligent professional who got a miserable salary.
08:25Jailed, awaiting trial, Smirnov was allowed to marry, a ceremony witnessed by the cameras of the local KGB.
08:32I don't think of him as a real criminal.
08:41He took every precaution against harming anyone.
08:45He was, in the end, freed, punished with only three years probation.
08:49I just needed a new refrigerator and a new gas stove.
08:55I didn't need a big profit.
08:57I just needed to live through the tough times when I wanted to buy something but couldn't because of inflation.
09:04My salary couldn't keep up and I couldn't buy anything.
09:08I just needed to buy a few essentials and then work honestly.
09:13The director at Lutsch was stunned by the lenient sentence but insisted Smirnov's crime was unique.
09:23Why are the same concerns expressed about American scientists?
09:29If someone has money, he can buy any scientist.
09:33But no one mentions Germans, British, Americans.
09:37Why is it Russian scientists are so vulnerable?
09:46My point of view is the opposite.
09:48I think they are much less vulnerable.
09:50I'm sure the attempts to take advantage of the current situation in Russia
10:04and produce a nuclear bomb are doomed to failure.
10:11It is impossible.
10:13Smirnov was the only thief of bomb-grade nuclear material officially acknowledged by Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy.
10:22Frontline would discover that he is not alone and the Russian government knows it.
10:29By 1992, the word had spread.
10:33Anything that set a Geiger counter-clicking was a hot commodity.
10:35For the Russians making deals to plunder their country's resources, nuclear materials promised colossal profits.
10:46Most of the offers were scams, as the Russians claim.
10:50Flim-flam men offering junk scavenged from radioactive waste dumps and hospital X-ray machines.
10:55Until August 10th, 1994.
11:01Munich.
11:05In Germany today, officials say they have seized more plutonium, the type that can be used to make a nuclear weapon.
11:11It was the largest amount of bomb-grade nuclear material seized outside the borders of a nuclear superpower.
11:18Germany said it can prove that Russia is the source.
11:22The world trembled.
11:25But the German operation had been a sting.
11:28The buyer, an undercover cop.
11:30That's the case that everybody was waiting to see happen.
11:35And when it happened, it happened exactly how everybody feared it was going to happen.
11:43It was the Tom Clancy novel coming to life.
11:46A bunch of smugglers...
11:48Mark Hibbs was critical of the Germans from the beginning for their apparent intention to embarrass the Russians.
11:53There was a magnificently orchestrated leak to the press.
11:58Suggested, we're talking about weapons material, we're talking about a super organized nuclear mafia in a post-communist country that everyone was afraid of.
12:11German intelligence hailed it as a blow against that mafia, but the fact remained that the buyer was a cop.
12:17People are now asking the question, was this a case which was unique or was this a case which is the tip of the iceberg?
12:27The fact of the matter is that right now we don't know whether this is the tip of the iceberg or whether this is the whole iceberg.
12:32The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, Manatom, was enraged that the Germans had failed to notify them and yet claimed they weren't in control.
12:46We're unhappy that when this plutonium was found the origin is immediately established. Russia. Why Russia? How can it be proved that this is from Russia?
12:57Manatom spun its own version of where the plutonium came from.
13:02The spokesman from Manatom said on German television that the material came from Germany, that we had flown it by plane to Moscow and then flown it back.
13:12An idiotic concept. But by this you can see how earnestly Manatom has tried to undercut the true story.
13:23You know how they check baggage in customs? It just can't get through. It's not a sewing needle, you know.
13:31I find all of this very surprising. The whole case is so shaky.
13:35In fact, the smuggler would eventually testify that in the chaos of Moscow's airport, he had simply kicked the suitcase containing three quarters of a pound of bomb grade plutonium along the far side of the customs desk.
13:48But German surveillance had missed the moment when he bought it and so failed to nail down the crucial fact, where the plutonium came from.
13:57That left it to the scientists.
13:59It is a question the scientific detectives at the European Nuclear Forensic Institute told producer Sherry Jones they have been investigating since the plutonium was sped here in the first hours after the Munich bust.
14:20Here we have a small quantity of the powder from this particular find of pure plutonium.
14:26They explained that in production, nuclear material takes on individual characteristics, fingerprints, which can reveal whether the sample is from weapon stocks or commercial reactors.
14:40As in any detective work, if you have fingerprints on file, you could match up what you've discovered and know the precise facility where the plutonium seized in Munich was produced.
14:50And we found these rod shaped particles, which we identified as plutonium oxide, then we found these hexagonal across section particles of uranium oxide, very, very typical.
15:03Under a microscope, we were able to pick out individual particles.
15:08And interestingly, the probe we used was a piece of human hair, a human eyelash, because this happens to have the correct sort of size and important, the correct type of flexibility.
15:20There's got to be a male eyelash because females put too much on their eyes to make themselves look beautiful.
15:25And that takes away the elasticity, which is required.
15:28This doesn't tell you...
15:30We're starting to look for traces of pollen, fibers, dust, which will give us some clue as to where the material might have come from and whose hands it might have been.
15:39It's a bit more difficult in the case of the drugs people, because our materials normally aren't handled.
15:46They're handled inside glove boxes, and then they're very carefully sealed up.
15:49People usually don't touch plutonium with their fingers, because they always wear gloves, so you won't find any human tissue on it.
15:58And has that been true of these two more things?
16:01It was an important clue.
16:02The material had not been in the hands of amateurs.
16:05Whoever had stolen it knew what they were doing.
16:08It's been handled by experts.
16:12There's no question.
16:14From this unique process, as he showed to you, you can identify the place where this process is used.
16:24And in the case of this particular sample, do we now know the place where that hexagonal...?
16:31I know places where these processes have been tried out, yes.
16:37For example?
16:38Not in the European Union.
16:40Scientists here may be privately convinced that the plutonium came from Russia, but neither Russia nor the United States will deposit its nuclear fingerprints in an international databank.
16:52Without that match, nothing could be proved.
16:55Russian authorities continued to deny that the plutonium came from its stockpile.
17:02But in Germany, the Munich smuggler would secretly testify.
17:06He bought the plutonium from a man in Moscow.
17:09In June of 1994, he paid $2,000 for a sample.
17:14It was handed over at October Revolution Square.
17:17In August, he bought 360 grams more.
17:20And that is all we knew, until we got a break from a surprising source.
17:25Frontline received a copy of a confidential letter sent to the German authorities from the Russian FSB, the successor to the KGB.
17:35The letter asked the Germans to interrogate the Munich smuggler about his Russian connections,
17:40and included the names and photographs of five men under criminal investigation.
17:45The most intriguing detail was that two of the five lived in a Russian town that was home to several nuclear research facilities, Obninsk.
17:55Obninsk, a town of 110,000 people and more than 10 tons of bomb-grade nuclear material.
18:14During most of the Cold War, it was closed, impossible to enter without permission from the KGB.
18:20Today, Moscow and the temptations of the new Russia are 90 minutes away by commuter train.
18:29The FSB letter said that the Munich smuggler illegally bought 400 grams of a radioactive material from the two Obninsk men.
18:38But we only had names, no addresses, no telephone numbers.
18:43We enlisted Valery Yakov, deputy editor of the newspaper Izvestia, to help us find them.
18:50He is renowned in Russia for his coverage of the war in Chechnya.
18:53They don't have it. They don't have either of their names, neither Baranov nor Astafiev.
19:00They're not listed. They only have lists for those people who register their telephone.
19:07If it's a really small town and everyone knows each other, you can ask.
19:16But otherwise, there's no way of finding someone.
19:18There's no such thing as a directory or a bureau where you can find out where someone lives.
19:23You have to go to the police or the internal passport agency.
19:26Our official attempts to find the two men were blocked.
19:34In Moscow, the requests for interviews on the subject of nuclear theft had been either denied or dodged.
19:40Most people seemed to be suddenly called away on so-called business trips whenever we were in town.
19:45When I called my contacts working in investigations on different subjects,
19:51I understood talking to them that everyone is trying to wait.
19:56There's very little time before the elections.
20:01And in Russia, everyone is awaiting who will come to power.
20:06Will Yeltsin and his entourage stay or will the communists come to power?
20:12Then we'll have to answer for every word not carefully spoken now.
20:18It's a period of sitting and waiting.
20:24Everyone is waiting.
20:27It seemed we had reached another dead end.
20:31But if the material had come from Omninsk,
20:33it might have come from a place like the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering,
20:37the largest of the seven nuclear facilities in town.
20:40By 1994, this prestigious research center was a collection of highly trained, poorly paid scientists.
20:47Security was no better than at Lutsch.
20:49The system was quite, quite weak.
20:53We had lots of, you know, holes which go straight from the material handling area to outside of the building.
21:03So it means that theoretically, it was lots of possibility to take this material out of the building.
21:15Unlike the Karlsruhe nuclear lab in Germany, where it took more than an hour to clear ourselves and our equipment,
21:21at Omninsk, the director of security simply waved us in.
21:25It was more convenient, of course, but an unsettling glimpse of a system in transition.
21:31One that had always based its security not on gates and guards, but generous rewards for its nuclear elite and the iron grip of the KGB.
21:40The Institute here designed and built the world's largest fast breeder research reactor.
21:48The building that houses it contains almost eight tons of bomb-grade material.
21:53The reactor is fueled by rods loaded with disks, each filled with uranium or plutonium.
21:59Small, easy to swipe and stuff in a pocket.
22:02A crude nuclear bomb could be exploded with less than a hundred of them.
22:07The quantity of disks we're dealing with is quite significant, about 70,000, if you're counting highly enriched nuclear materials.
22:19Last year, we created a special file of data on plutonium disks, about 15,000.
22:26We plan to continue this work through the year, so that next year we can have an exact proven file of data on the disks of highly enriched nuclear materials.
22:41Besides, the quantity of these materials is increasing all the time as the research continues.
22:48In a system dependent on its absolute control over people, the Soviet Union never felt the need to conduct comprehensive inventories at its nuclear facilities.
23:00The first are happening only now, and only with the assistance of scientists from U.S. nuclear weapons labs.
23:07The security situation at the Russian site selected for the initial lab-to-lab quick fixes is classified secret,
23:14but the institute here was at the top of the list of those that were most vulnerable.
23:19The first step was to secure the building housing the fast breeder reactor.
23:23Only then did they begin to count the nuclear material inside.
23:27We just put a disk of highly enriched uranium, and we're measuring the gamma rays that we analyze with the computer here.
23:34We can determine what the enrichment of uranium is.
23:38And we're still in the process of testing this equipment.
23:42There are some features of the equipment that are not quite up to specification at this time.
23:48That's one of the reasons I'm here, is trying to understand what the problems are.
23:53Most of the accounting, it was by weight only?
23:57Yes.
23:58What were the implications of that?
24:00Weight will only give you mass, but it doesn't tell you whether you're really looking at anything radioactive.
24:06So, in theory, someone could substitute the uranium in those rods?
24:12Yes, in theory that could be done.
24:16Before Munich, there was no central system to verify how much nuclear material had been produced here, informally transferred between departments or stored.
24:26Smart guy could say, did you verify this container once in a month, once in a year, or once in ten years?
24:36We say, yeah, maybe.
24:41Maybe.
24:42So, it means that possibility of losing something, it always exists, because it's a scientific approach.
24:55Never could say 100%.
24:57It's always some possibility.
24:59But, officially, the Ministry of Atomic Energy continued to insist.
25:04No losses of plutonium have been reported at any of our facilities.
25:09With Valery Yakov, we continued our hunt for the two Obninsk men.
25:14And on a summer Friday at five o'clock, we got a break.
25:17The on-duty policeman was playing a game on his computer instead of paying attention to the fact that we asked about two men under criminal investigation.
25:25He gave us an address.
25:27He's not here.
25:28Will he be in?
25:29No, he's out of town.
25:30I'm from the newspaper.
25:31Is Vestia.
25:32Is Vestia.
25:33Oh, God.
25:34No, what's so terrible?
25:35It's a newspaper.
25:36Just like any other.
25:37Do you know about this situation?
25:38What can I tell you?
25:39I'm quite surprised that a newspaper is interested in it.
25:41What, is he some kind of hero?
25:42No, we're all heroes.
25:43All of us are heroes.
25:44Invisible, of course.
25:45I don't know.
25:46Well, then, sorry.
25:47Bye.
25:48Bye.
25:49Bye.
25:50Bye.
25:51Bye.
25:52Bye.
25:53Bye.
25:54Bye.
25:55Bye.
25:56Bye.
25:57Bye.
25:58Bye.
25:59Bye.
26:00Bye.
26:01Bye.
26:02Bye.
26:03Bye.
26:04Bye.
26:05Bye.
26:06Bye.
26:07Bye.
26:08Bye.
26:09Bye.
26:10Bye.
26:11So we never found him, we had found what we believe to be his apartment in housing that
26:16had been built for the employees of the institute.
26:19By now, rumors that the Munich material might have been stolen from Amnensk had swept through
26:25the place.
26:27All I can say is that I've taken inventory and everything is accounted for.
26:34All employees are in place.
26:36Even when we get a less than sober employee.
26:39Well, you know what I mean.
26:41It's Russia.
26:46The report is made.
26:50All my people are in place.
26:53All accounted for.
26:55In fact, the rumors sparked a debate among the scientists here.
26:59Could the plutonium have come from their stockpile?
27:02Who could have stolen it?
27:05It's very painful to think that someone right there at your side
27:08could do something to damage.
27:12Not just cheat you out of ten dollars or five rubles,
27:16but do something that could bring about a great misfortune for all of us.
27:21It's a terrible feeling.
27:25And if you succumb to it,
27:29you create in your mind even more doubts and suspicion.
27:32We never talked about an inside threat,
27:42only about people outside the collective,
27:45about an attack, about war.
27:48And now, with the help of our American colleagues,
27:52we are facing the insider problem.
28:00There is an unofficial anxiety among the physicists
28:03who have long worked with the deadly material,
28:06even when they joke about it.
28:09Old security system.
28:13Officially, they are being kept in the dark.
28:15And so, your intelligence services have not provided,
28:19have not called you about this.
28:21You're just reading the same stories I'm reading in the newspaper.
28:24Absolutely right.
28:26You may even have more information than I do.
28:31I don't read the Western press.
28:34Only what comes here.
28:35The problem is bigger than the institute in Uminsk.
28:48Russia's nuclear stockpile
28:50stretches across the country's 11 time zones.
28:53Huge amounts are less than 10 miles from the Kremlin.
28:56At the Kirchatov Institute,
28:58also an early focus of U.S.-Russian lab-to-lab cooperation.
29:01And here, in the sea of Moscow's official obfuscation,
29:07is another island of frankness,
29:09where physicists like Alexander Rumyansev
29:12believe they are in a race against the black marketeers.
29:15Okay, let's drive.
29:20Until the year 1973,
29:23this building was considered as one of the most secret buildings
29:27in the Korchatov Institute because of research work.
29:29Any idea of how many tons of material is in there?
29:35The total weight exceeds 200 tons.
29:40As they said to me there,
29:42some of it is attractive to theft because it's small,
29:46it can be carried.
29:48Small, extremely small.
29:50You may just put it in your pockets 96% enriched uranium.
29:56It's like Italian spaghetti.
29:57Material as easy to pick up as Italian spaghetti,
30:02measured not in ounces but in tons.
30:05And though other work has begun,
30:07this is the only building
30:09where the U.S.-assisted security measures are complete.
30:11This building contains material which is almost by the order of magnitude exceeds the dreams of Saddam Hussein.
30:22There are rogue states besides Hussein's Iraq, known to have nuclear dreams.
30:29Pakistan, North Korea, the Iranian program is probably the most advanced in that particular area that we have to worry about.
30:40We didn't do a good job of detecting the Iraqi programs.
30:42David Kaye led the U.N. team who uncovered Iraq's nuclear program in the aftermath of the Gulf War.
30:49Smuggling allows you to compress a program that in most countries is probably a five to ten years technological hurdle into days or weeks.
31:00Uh, and no detection system is adequate for that sort of challenge.
31:05The field is right between us...
31:09Protecting nuclear material at the source is the only sure way to prevent it from being stolen or sold.
31:15I think I got it to say.
31:17When it was reported that Iranian nuclear experts had visited a forgotten plant in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan,
31:24the U.S. moved in.
31:26In a secret race against the onset of winter, codenamed SAFIRE,
31:31Americans evacuated to the United States,
31:34enough uranium to build 25 of the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima.
31:38You have to say that in the chaos of Russia, the Russians had forgotten that that material was there.
31:42That's even more frightening.
31:45One wonders what else they've forgotten.
31:47How many more Operation SAFIRE's will have to be pulled out?
31:59No one has yet tracked stolen Russian nuclear material to either rogue states or terrorist groups.
32:06But there is plenty of evidence of an underground trade in nuclear materials.
32:10One piece of it was revealed in a little-known incident in a small German town.
32:16An incident that would prove, if buyers emerge, there are plenty of people willing to fill their orders.
32:22In Lanzhut, the most hustling of the would-be nuclear salesmen was Gustav Idich,
32:28a slippery Slovak musician who moonlighted in the weapons market, always on the lookout for a customer.
32:35We met in Lanzhut at the Hotel Eisenhofer.
32:39And I offered him MiGs, those Russian helicopters, and also various kinds of metals that I had at the time.
32:51Scandium. I also had nickel and aluminum.
32:55And there were handguns like pistols and scorpions, and he said,
33:02Oh, scorpions. I want those.
33:04But this time, Idich was talking to an undercover cop, the same buyer who worked the Munich Sting.
33:11The case of Lanzhut, which happened during the summer of 1994, started with tips,
33:18with the discovery that people were in the market looking for buyers for nuclear material.
33:22As the classified report on the German operation reveals, the undercover buyer would be able to procure six different samples of radioactive materials,
33:36four from Gustav Idich.
33:38When we were leaving, he leaned towards me and asked in a very low voice if I would be able to obtain plutonium or uranium for him.
33:47And I said, You know, that's the least problem.
33:52Because I have a friend who's a director in Kazakhstan, who's sitting on two tons of it.
34:02These middlemen are people who try to make a buck out of anything.
34:07They would, for the right money, sell their own grandmother tomorrow.
34:11And the day after tomorrow, they would sell their own sister into the red light district.
34:15The Kazakhstan connection would not pan out.
34:20But the police wiretaps record that the circle of traders widened, each pressing his commercial contacts for what he could shake loose,
34:28as the undercover buyer pressed for bomb-grade material.
34:31One of those who would be caught in the snare was V├бclav Havlik, a Czech bar owner who also moonlighted trading with the former Soviet Union.
34:41But until Idich drew him in on the nuclear deal, he'd mostly been importing food.
34:45I didn't take it that seriously because I didn't believe such a powerless little man like me could ever gain access to these kinds of materials.
34:56A Czech proverb says, Opportunity makes a thief.
35:01Even a decent person can make a mistake, right?
35:06When somebody is tempting you with something for a long time, he'll get you in the end.
35:10And where, do you know where it was that you were going to be able to get more and more uranium once you had made this first contact?
35:22Well, I would have obtained it somehow.
35:27Let's just say if it hadn't been a fake set-up, and everything had worked out and the buyer was satisfied, then uranium would flow out of Russia.
35:40In early June 1994, according to police wiretaps, Illich told the undercover buyer he had tracked almost 90 pounds of uranium supposedly in the hands of former officers in the Russian KGB.
35:57One could get into these certain circles only through the intelligence services, those networks.
36:03And I hooked myself up through my friends, all of whom belonged to the KGB.
36:13And that's how it went, personal referrals.
36:17Through a referral from yet another middleman, Illich got wind of a group in Prague looking to sell uranium.
36:24They were advertising it as bomb-grade.
36:27He got a sample and delivered it to the undercover buyer.
36:29When he promised to produce the remainder if the buyer would meet him at a stop on the Autobahn, the Germans decided to arrest him.
36:37I never thought he might be some kind of crook.
36:42They were setting a trap for me.
36:44It never crossed my mind.
36:46Because I never dealt with these kinds of people who play tricks.
36:50Because in the circles where I move, they don't waste too much time on people who play tricks.
36:55Such a person has a short life.
37:03When the cops moved in for the bust, they were stunned to find only pellets of low enriched uranium.
37:09Illich would serve just 19 months in prison.
37:12And the stash of bomb-grade uranium would be left behind somewhere in Prague.
37:17It would be six months before the uranium hidden in Prague would surface.
37:30And when it did, six pounds of highly enriched uranium were seized.
37:34About a fifth of what it would take to build a bomb.
37:36It had been smuggled here by a man who came from Russia.
37:41Along with an accomplice, he had traveled from Moscow to Minsk in Belarus, to Warsaw, to Prague by train.
37:49Crossing each country's border, carrying his deadly contraband.
37:53He had those two cylinders with the uranium.
37:58Inside were two plastic bags containing the stuff.
38:04Czech detective Major Jan Rutowski, a newcomer to nuclear crime, investigated the case.
38:10And so he put these in his pockets and he got on the train in Moscow.
38:15No, no, not in his pockets. He just put it inside his underwear.
38:21I can't demonstrate because in my case it's not possible.
38:24He's a slim person and he got trousers that were too big and inside the trousers leg he put those containers.
38:30So he had one here and another one over here.
38:34He put a belt on and when crossing the borders he stood up and stayed by the window.
38:38So after the customs inspection finished, he went back to the bathroom, he pulled it out, put it in a suitcase and put it in the overhead compartment.
38:49So that's how he got it through.
38:55By the time he arrived in Prague, the middlemen in Lanzhut had been chasing after bomb-grade material for several months.
39:03So the Russian arrived here, brought with him two containers of highly enriched uranium without knowing at all if he would find any buyer.
39:14He came, as we say, like a blind man.
39:17That blind man is Alexander Sherbinin. When he was arrested, he had just turned 31. He had a wife and child back home.
39:30He had gotten himself deeply in debt in a new Russian business scheme gone bad.
39:35He's a person who is very trusting, very naive, a special kind of person.
39:45Sherbinin had been instructed to meet a Czech physicist who would find a buyer.
39:48He'd brought proof that the uranium was bomb-grade and evidence that the thief, whoever he was, knew what was in demand.
39:54On the certificate, written in the Russian alphabet, there was the chemical composition of the material and how enriched it was.
40:05It said this material was enriched to 87 and some decimal point, almost 88 percent.
40:11A high enough enrichment that it could easily be used by terrorists or rogue states with enough know-how to build a bomb.
40:22And there was apparently lots more available.
40:24From my interrogation, we found out that the Russians were able to deliver five kilograms of this material every month.
40:39They even promised that they were able to immediately deliver 40 kilograms as a one-time shipment.
40:47More middlemen would be drawn to the enterprise, scrambling for buyers, arguing among themselves about price.
40:56But even when the Russian was bunked in a boarding house on the outskirts of Prague, he made sure the uranium was close by.
41:03Here in this place, for about a month, a month and a half, Sherbinin hid the two containers in the bushes.
41:10At times, the story seemed too comic to be real.
41:13He hid them here, in that bush.
41:17But it was real. Someone had stolen the uranium.
41:21Someone had sent this man to Prague. The question was who.
41:25When Major Ratowski prided out of him, it was a name we had heard before.
41:33A certain Mr. Baranov approached him and offered to help him get rid of his problem, his debt.
41:38If he would deliver the uranium to this country.
41:45Baranov.
41:49We began to suspect what Major Ratowski did not know.
41:52That his Baranov was the same man we had been searching for in Obninsk.
42:03Since we learned from the Russian letter that he was under investigation as a source of the plutonium in the Munich case.
42:09In May of 1996, six weeks before the Russian presidential election, Major Ratowski was finally allowed to come to Moscow to interrogate Eduard Baranov.
42:24They met at the headquarters of the former KGB, now the FSB.
42:31And there, Ratowski says, Baranov confessed that he had hidden the uranium for six months before recruiting Sherbinin to smuggle it.
42:39They had been neighbors in Obninsk.
42:41To the question of where it came from or from whom he got it, he said, I will not answer that.
42:52Baranov would not tell you who gave him the uranium or where it came from?
42:58No, no, no, he refused to answer.
43:03And the Russians didn't ask him?
43:05No.
43:10That seems very surprising.
43:15For me, it was quite a surprise.
43:21Because I thought that regardless of the country that this should be of interest to the police to solve these kinds of things.
43:28But unfortunately, the interest is not that great over there.
43:40As it is in the movie, Moscow keeps silent.
43:44Moscow was silent.
43:45We went back to Obninsk.
43:54Along with Valery Yakov from Izvestia, we were determined to find Eduard Baranov and ask him the questions he had refused to answer when Detective Ratowski interrogated him.
44:05Who gave him the uranium?
44:12And where did it come from?
44:14Excuse me, please. Can we speak with Edward?
44:21Baranov would not talk to us.
44:24But during the five minutes Yakov spent inside trying to convince him, he learned enough to know we had found our man.
44:31This is the Edward we are looking for.
44:36When I asked him why he was summoned to Moscow recently, he smiled and said he wouldn't be able to talk about it.
44:44I understood that it was he.
44:48I tried to convince him in many ways so that he would share at least a little bit, that little part that he can talk about.
44:58He said he can't because he signed a paper that he won't say anything to anyone.
45:09And that's probably why he's still a free man.
45:13He's worried about his family.
45:16He showed me his young son who was running around and his young wife.
45:20He said he assumed that if this information becomes known now, it would seriously impede Yeltsin's chances in the elections.
45:31And maybe even cause him to lose.
45:33I understood that it could compromise not Yeltsin himself, but the people who surround him.
45:51Someone was protecting him. We did not know who.
45:59And we weren't certain he was the same Baranov implicated in smuggling the plutonium to Munich.
46:04So we took the Russian letter and the photo to show to Major Ratowski.
46:11What this letter suggests in combination with your investigation is that at least Baranov seems to have been involved in what is known as the Munich case as well as in your case.
46:27So, this is Baranov.
46:34Yes, this is Baranov.
46:36It was the same man.
46:39He refused to speak to us and the reason that he refused was because he said he had signed an agreement with the FSB that he could stay free if he didn't talk.
46:52It's possible. It's possible. All this actually corresponds with what I've said, that the Russians somehow do not have an interest in any investigation.
47:05That would fit with the suggestion that he signed some kind of agreement that he will not testify.
47:11That means that, as you can see, the Russian side has no interest whatsoever in investigating this case.
47:16Prague, Lanzhut, Munich. The three most alarming cases all connected through this one Russian trader living in Obninsk.
47:27Baranov was protecting someone. And someone was protecting him.
47:32But in Moscow, neither the FSB nor the Ministry of Atomic Energy would talk.
47:36It seemed a decision had been made at the highest levels.
47:40Russia will not publicly admit that nuclear material is leaking from its stockpiles, even if they themselves have the evidence.
47:48So the question is why? A question which troubles many Russians, who are also being kept in the dark.
47:53We should discuss people who decided to make money off such a dangerous venture and what compelled them to take such a step.
48:04Who helped them in trying to commit this crime? Who is guilty?
48:11Apparently, we just want to save faces that we don't have this problem.
48:15The descent from superpower has been dizzying for most Russians.
48:26And to admit that its deadly nuclear treasure is not secure would only add to the humiliation.
48:32That is one explanation. There is a darker possibility.
48:36As a Russian proverb says, the fish rots from the head down.
48:40I think Russia knows quite well who the men behind the scenes are.
48:48We see certain official-like channels that work together.
48:53The material doesn't fly away by itself. It doesn't become independent.
49:01Radioactive material doesn't roll through the land. People steal it. People transport it.
49:06Plus officials could have been involved in these affairs, so you can't expect that everything would be revealed.
49:16It is the nightmare scenario. The scenario which most frightens the West.
49:22That nuclear material, lots of it, could be moved out of Russia if high-level corrupt insiders are involved.
49:29What do you mean by collusion?
49:33General Gennady Evstafiev of the Foreign Intelligence Service was the only official who would even talk about the possibility.
49:40That's impossible.
49:42That's impossible.
49:45Then why?
49:46Because it is a very sophisticated structure of producing, verifying, exporting and licensing and so on.
50:09There are hundreds of people involved.
50:13I can't believe that.
50:16I can't believe that.
50:22Moscow is silent.
50:26And so we are left with a frightening possibility that other nuclear material might have been stolen as well.
50:31We don't know what we don't know.
50:46In Washington, too, we wanted to ask questions about the apparent Russian reluctance to prosecute nuclear theft.
50:52We wrote letters asking to speak to the State Department, the directors of the FBI and the CIA, and Vice President Gore.
51:02Each of them declined.
51:08In Russia less than three weeks ago, the head of one of the nuclear weapons labs shot and killed himself,
51:14apparently in despair that his workers had not been paid in six months.
51:17The U.S. assistance in these places is a race against time.
51:23The nightmare scenario is that there is a breakdown in the security of one of these facilities,
51:28and that several bombs worth of material is stolen, and it's not recaptured.
51:38It just disappears into the underground world.
51:40On the morning after the first act of nuclear terrorism, what will Russia and the United States wish they had done?
51:50I would have no confidence that we're going to succeed at this.
51:54Which is not to say, I don't think we should try.
51:57Actually, I think we should try harder.
51:58But ultimately you have to realize you better spend some of your time worrying about consequence management of when it fails.
52:08Because we're not worried about a problem for 1996 or 1997.
52:13This is a problem well into the 21st century that we're going to have to struggle with.
52:18That's why it's extremely important to stop the material before it moves, not try to detect it after it is gone.
52:28If you're still curious about the nuclear smuggling threat, visit Frontline's website at www.pbs.org for more of our investigation.
52:48There's an interactive map of Russia's vast nuclear complex.
52:51FAQs such as what does it take to make a bomb, an extensive web guide to tracking nuclear proliferation, and lots more.
53:01Then let us know what you think at www.pbs.org.
53:08And now, your letters.
53:10This time, about Navy Blues.
53:13Here are some excerpts.
53:14For the bulk of the content of Navy Blues to be enlightening, I was particularly horrified by the comment made in regards to Admiral Borda's suicide.
53:23I think it's a sad day in America when we look at suicide as a warrior's death.
53:28To glorify his suicide under those circumstances does a huge disservice to those true warriors who gave their lives in Vietnam.
53:36I was surprised and delighted by the even-handed coverage Frontline gave to the Taylor incident.
53:41However, I was saddened by the decline of a great institution, the U.S. Navy, all in the interest of political correctness.
53:47Brian Esch, Townsend Man.
53:49Many of you have voiced strong feelings about Rebecca Hansen, who claimed the Navy flunked her out of flight training school because she filed sexual harassment charges.
53:57Giving this person a forum to tell her unbelievable story is a disservice to women who have real harassment complaints.
54:04Anthony Haig, Chester.
54:06Dear Frontline, I was appalled that Rebecca Hansen believed that she was a champion of women's rights.
54:11She is an abuser of women's rights and an embarrassment to the cause.
54:16Look to Carol Holt.
54:18Dear Frontline, whatever our problems, Navy men and women are not at war with one another.
54:21Frontline airs by confusing political, social, culture warriors with real warriors and disparages the hundreds of thousands of Navy men and women who serve together as true professionals in harm's way every day.
54:34Sincerely, Captain Rosemary Mariner, United States Navy, Alexandria, Virginia.
54:40Let us know what you think about tonight's program by fax, by email, or by the U.S. Mail.
54:46Mom wanted to be an actress.
54:52Dad was a star no one remembers.
54:56My family's story isn't like most.
55:00Or perhaps it is.
55:03It's about love that doesn't always fit the mold.
55:07We've all got secrets.
55:09My mother's just happens to be me.
55:16Joше▓, who let go next Christmas time.
55:22And I'll see you next time.
55:27And I'll see you next time.
55:30Go to the Re Richmond Doors.
55:33My family duasas.
55:37See you next time.
55:39Hope Griffiths.
55:42╨бcale team you decided to have a franchise rec sch├╢ne
55:44The End
56:14The End
56:44The End
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