The Unthinkable

In October, 2005, a radiation sensor at the Port of Colombo, in Sri Lanka, signalled that the contents of an outbound shipping container included radioactive material. The port’s surveillance system, installed with funds from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the Department of Energy, wasn’t yet in place, so the container was loaded and sent to sea before it could be identified. After American and Sri Lankan inspectors hurriedly checked camera images at the port, they concluded that the suspect crate might be on any one of five ships—two of which were steaming toward New York.

Sri Lanka is a locus of guerrilla war and arms smuggling. It is not far from Pakistan, which possesses nuclear arms, is a haven for Al Qaeda, and has a poor record of nuclear security. The radiation-emitting container presented at least the theoretical danger of a “pariah ship,” Vayl Oxford, the director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, said. It seemed plausible, if unlikely, that Al Qaeda or rogue Pakistani generals might load a bomb onto a cargo vessel. Within days, American satellites located the five suspect ships and intelligence analysts scrutinized their manifests; a team at the National Security Council took charge. One ship, it learned, was bound for Canada, and another for Hamburg, Germany. The White House decided to call in its atomic-bomb squad, known as NEST, the Nuclear Emergency Support Team—scientists who are trained to search for nuclear weapons. One team flew to Canada and a second to Europe, where it intercepted one of the ships at sea before it could reach Hamburg. They found nothing.