Nuclear Terror Stories: Hype or Helpful?
We struck a nerve with viewers this week in our stories about holes in homeland security's efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of the country. Three people, two of them anonymous, complained the stories were simple sensationalism during a ratings month.
I'd like to address that and give you some background behind these reports.
When my managers approached me and asked me to be the reporter on this project my first reaction was almost identical to one of our anonymous callers; "Sheesh," I thought as I rolled my eyes, "this is just fear-mongering to get ratings."
Anyone around here will tell you, I'm not prone to hype and I'm not shy about challenging managers in our newsroom. But before I jumped to conclusions, I figured I needed to learn more about what they had in mind.
You know what? My mind changed after I saw all the evidence.
It turns out this idea began with Jim Fry, my colleague at Belo's Washington DC bureau (Belo owns KGW), and a fellow I've known and respected for 15-years (albeit long distance). He'd seen the National Planning Scenario written by the Department of Homeland Security. He'd talked to some of the nation's most respected nuclear physicists about serious lapses they saw in DHS' border protections.
Belo's DC bureau was helping many of Belo's stations gather customized information for each market where our company has TV stations. The physicists graciously agreed to do mathematically accurate maps and scenarios for each city, including Portland.
I read all those same documents and more, including some analysis I'm not allowed to reproduce for you because it is simply too detailed and could conceivably be used by our enemies. I talked to those experts. When they went on camera, they were exceedingly cautious not to say anything that is not already easily available.
I believe the experts were credible. They included the analysts at Homeland Security, the physicists at the Natural Resources Defense Council (and Homeland Security officials regard the NRDC physicists as credible too), and the experts at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (N.T.I.)
N.T.I. is a non-profit, non-partisan group headed by former Senator Sam Nunn and created by Ted Turner whose sole mission is to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. N.T.I. says it's far more effective to make sure highly enriched uranium is contained in the countries where it is now, not try to catch it at our borders.
And then I talked to one more person. His name is Byron Harris. He's a reporter at my former station, Belo's WFAA-TV in Dallas. If ever there was anyone in TV news who does not succomb to lowest-common-denominator TV hype, it's Byron. I hold him the highest regard. (This is a guy who was exposing the Savings & Loan crisis of the 1980's before newspapers discovered the crisis.) Byron was doing similar stories on this threat in Dallas. To him, this threat is real and the holes in security are real.
He's not covering this story as a stunt and neither am I.
And here's a key point at least one viewer misunderstood. Our stories, and N.T.I., are not advocating more military action by the Bush administration. N.T.I.'s entire focus is on diplomatic solutions to contain the nucelar fuel in other countries, which at present are moving at a snail's pace. There has been no increase in funding of these efforts in the last 5 years. Yet D.H.S. has spent $300 million on radiation portal monitors which experts say could not detect highly enriched uranium.
(Don't be fooled by the name, "Highly Enriched Uranium." "Highly enriched" is barely radioactive. That's why it's so hard to detect and so much easier to smuggle. A terrorist with a basic knowledge of modern physics would need just 150 pounds to make a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear bomb. It's the easiest, safest weapons grade nuclear fuel to use.)
So, is Homeland Security spending money wisely?
Is the $300 million actually buying the protection we need?
Shouldn't the public know about extremely credible experts who challenge the government on these very points?
If the absolute worst was to ever happen anywhere in America and a terrorist did manage to set off a nuclear weapon, we'd be doing reports to say, "the government new about the threat but failed to stop it."
These are the fundamental questions I felt viewers had a right to know about.
Ok. That was Part One of my series.
Why did we do Part Two? Why did we show the hypothetical scenario of a nuclear attack on Portland?
Because any American city really could be a target. A nuclear attack is the only scenario that can do a trillion dollars worth of damage in an instant to America, no matter where it happens.
Every city and state needs to have a plan. I was pleased to learn (and we reported this) that Oregon Emergency Management already knew about this nuclear scenario. They take it seriously. And O.E.M. has had planning meetings with Portland officials on it too.
The goal was not to scare.
Fearmongering was not our motive.
Realism was.
How do you accurately describe the potential impact if you don't outline the ripple effects of such an attack?
I was surprised to find that O.E.M.'s Director advocated nuclear attack training for children. Yes, the old "duck and cover" routines seem awfully cheesy in the old cold war era films, but he thinks that basic training was sound.
As N.T.I.'s Vice President Laura Holgate says, "I think a little fearis appropriate. Becase we are in fact at risk." She wants the public to know about this risk. She hopes they'll challenge their elected officials about how federal money is spent, about what's really going to make us secure. She wants people to be educated about the risks and the possibilities to learn in advance whether their local officials have a plan.
Did we ignore solutions? I think we touched on the planning the state says it has done, but no, we did not get into it in-depth. (We were already stretching the limits of our audience's attention spans with two 4-minute stories.)
Is there another story to do on what that training should be? I think that's probably a good idea.
We live in a terribly different world from just 10 years ago. Terrorism has already happened on our soil.
If this absolutely worst-case attack happened, would anyone know what to do? O.E.M. believes it's time to start that discussion again -- and this story could just spark that very important conversation.
