DAN RATHER : First, a CBS News exclusive about a captured Al Qaeda leader who
says his fellow terrorists have the know-how to build a very dangerous weapon and get it
to the United States.
Speaker: And the media took the bait. They portrayed the dirty bomb as an extraordinary
weapon that would kill thousands of people, and, in the process, they made the hidden
enemy even more terrifying. But, in reality, the threat of a dirty bomb is yet another
illusion. Its aim is to spread radioactive material through a conventional explosion, but
almost all studies of such a possible weapon have concluded that the radiation spread in
this way would not kill anybody because the radioactive material would be so dispersed,
and, providing the area was cleaned promptly, the long-term effects would be negligible.
In the past, both the American army and the Iraqi military tested such devices and both
concluded that they were completely ineffectual weapons for this very reason.
[ CUT TO INTERIOR , LIVING ROOM ]
INTERVIEWER : How dangerous would a dirty bomb be?
DR THEODORE ROCKWELL , NUCLEAR SCIENTIST AND RADIATION RISK
EXPERT : The deaths would be few, if any, and the answer is, probably none.
INTERVIEWER : Really?
ROCKWELL : Yes. And that’s been said over and over again, but then people
immediately say after that, “But, you know, people won’t believe that, and they’ll panic.”
And then all the people working on this project, you know, the defence and so forth,
breathe a big sigh of relief because they got their problem back: you know, we’re gonna
all panic. I don’t think it would kill anybody and I think you’ll have trouble finding a serious
report that would claim otherwise. The Department of Energy actually set up such a test
and they actually measured what happened. And they—they—the measurements were
extremely low. They calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high
dose—not life-threatening, but fairly high—and I checked into how the calculation was
done, and they assume that after the attack, no one moves for one year. One year. Now,
that’s ridiculous.
LEWIS Z KOCH , BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS : The dirty bomb—the danger
from radioactivity is basically next to nothing. The danger from panic, however, is
horrendous. That’s where the irony comes. This—instead of the government saying,
“Look, this is not a serious weapon; the serious danger of this is the panic that would
ensue, and there is no reason for panic. Don’t panic.”