NUCLEAR THREAT NOT LIKELY TO COME FROM SKY

We need "An Immigration Time Out" until the INS can do its job and is capable of thoroughly screening all foreign nationals entering this country and enforcing immigration policy relative to those already here.

Our elected officials still don't get it.

We are scared. U.S. politicians, from President Bush on down, are
abdicating their responsibility for the safety of the American people.
The price we may pay is horrific to contemplate. We hoped that Sept. 11
would be a wake-up call for Americans to protect themselves from those
who hate us. But neither prayers, nor flag waving, nor the limited
response of Congress have made us appreciably safer than we were on
Sept. 11. What happened on that day will seem like a picnic in the park
compared to the devastation that slightly more sophisticated forms of
terrorism can bring. Sixty years ago, the brilliant and prescient
Hungarian-American nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, wrote "The position
of the United States may be adversely affected by the existence of
nuclear bombs. Clearly if such bombs are available, it is not necessary
to bomb our cities from the air in order to destroy them. All that is
necessary is to place a comparatively small number in major cities and
detonate them at some later time." Szilard, who worked closely with
both Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, recognized this catastrophic
threat years before the first nuclear explosion.

To Szilard's concerns we might add that such bombs could as easily be
exploded on ships sitting in harbor in New York City or Los Angeles.
President Bush is attempting to obtain congressional support for an
anti-ballistic missile shield that most knowledgeable scientists and
engineers believe cannot work. Whether or not these scientists are
correct, the fact remains that now, the most dangerous nuclear threat to
the United States by far is not a ballistic missile sent from 10,000
miles away, but rather the relatively simple scenario envisioned by
Szilard.

While the issue of antiballistic missile defense is extremely
challenging, the possible detection of terrorists' nuclear bombs is more
feasible. New, novel large-scale radiation sensors should be developed
and deployed at our ports and other places to deter the placement of
bombs. While some of this has been done for selected sites, terrorists
can strike anywhere and a major effort is required, we believe.
A reason no nuclear bombs were dropped during 40 years of Cold War
between the United States and the Soviet Union is that the leaders of
both countries realized that nuclear retaliation would devastate their
country. The same is true now for any country that launches a nuclear
attack on another country, which itself possesses nuclear weapons. But
stateless terrorists are under no such constraints.

Furthermore, terrorists may obtain nuclear weapon-grade materials and
knowledge from impoverished former Soviet nuclear engineers, from
scientists in the Pakistani nuclear program, and from other sources.
What are President Bush and Congress doing to protect the American
people from the real threat of nuclear bombs placed in our cities by
terrorists? Essentially nothing. The USA Patriot Act of Oct. 26, 2001,
represents our government's primary legislative response to the attacks
of Sept. 11. While this act is slightly better than nothing at all, it
represents only a tiny, tiny fraction of what the government can and
should do to protect us.

Current U.S. immigration policy is responsible in large part for
enabling the acts of Sept. 11. This is not new news. Anti-terrorism
experts had warned President Clinton that U.S. immigration policies
would facilitate a Sept. 11-type attack. At present, there are an
estimated 10 million, give or take a few million, illegal aliens in the
United States.

No one really knows how many there are, where they live, or what they
are doing, and therein lies the problem. If only a small fraction of
these people wish to harm the United States, we are exquisitely
vulnerable to another Sept. 11.

Poll after poll after poll of the American people show that, for many
reasons, we want legal immigration to be greatly reduced and an end to
illegal immigration. Why won't Congress listen to the people?
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party wants its cheap votes and most
Republican leaders want their cheap labor. Thus, even after Sept. 11,
it's business as usual in Congress and for President Bush. Pushing for
unregulated and uninspected Mexican trucks to enter and drive anywhere
in the United States, or for the amnesty of millions of illegal aliens
is not going to make the United States a safer place to live.

As scientists we understand, as Szilard did 60 years ago, that nothing
can make the United States completely safe against a nuclear terrorist
attack. But there is absolutely no reason politicians can't do much
better than business as usual. If we are truly diligent in protecting
ourselves now, then some future day when intense hatred in the world has
died away, we may find that we have been spared a nuclear holocaust.
We must act to protect our borders before it is too late.

Ben Zuckerman and David Cline are professors of physics and astronomy at
UCLA. Zuckerman is a member of the Board of Directors of the public
interest group Californians for Population Stabilization whose headquarters
are in Santa Barbara.

By Ben Zuckerman and David Cline

Readers may contact them at: Physics & Astronomy Department, 8371 Math-Sciences
Building, UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif. 90095 or through Californians for Population Stabilizatio(CAPS)1129 State Street, Suite 3-D
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
805-564-6626, FAX 805-564-6636
www.cap-s.org

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