Okay so read this......Beryillium and remember KGB uses bible calendar
code ......so here is a point I am making and not as young as I used to
be......wish I could download my brain of trivia to get at the best....
So REMEMBER - who was the guy who murdered all these people of different
ethnic backgrounds. Now he was a Lithuanian with Lithuanian
connections......his parents were dentists and he had web site......
One man he murdered was in a Karate School as I recall - strange, that
is until you read this article - Beryllium shipsments from
Lithuania....Russian Mafia involved and if that isn't a laff becaue
Russian Mafia is KGB......
So tatoos.....mode of identification. I knew this one Special OPs guy
with a horrible tatoo and he said on 7 or so were ever done of his
special troup....Tattos, Karate School and Beryllium and burning of Los
Alamos to destroy records - Russian records destroyed they say now or
stolen or "lost".
This Russian Mafia and this deal in Lithuania somehow connects to this
Lithuanian who murdered all those people....Lithuaian pride - but read
this story and see connection to Karate and Chop Chop schools? Like
Ninjh , chop chop - I liked Indy Jones who was about to be attached by a
500 pound Japanese wrestler - he shook his head, and pulled his gun - or
he would have been gumby doll.
The bible is a big geography book - all is charted, it is keyed to
missing nazi gold, stolen art, (golden apples in silver frame).....it is
Mafia stuff for they have built their entire operation about the
bible......this is Master Plan for Death from Genesis Genocide to Alpha
and Omega Man in Revelations 22.....they say 22 is a very unluckey
number.
Does anybody if you read this far, remember the name of that guy, the
Lithuanian, who went beserk like Manchurian Candidate.....and murdered
all those people - but this karate stuff conection might be linked not
only to the theft and illegal transfer of Beryllium but big time drug
money involved.....Russian Mafia now in Ecstasy business.......looks
like that is how they downed Clinton, the big pervert with feet of clay,
his achilles heel of which all were aware.
Now what I am getting at is this - this links, this beryllium to
missiles, nuclear weapons, Los Alamos, Russian and Chinese sabotage and
espionage....and Lithuania, a little country most forget exists suddenly
in new when this guy goes ballistic and murders of all people a man in a
Karate School....all picked in advance....is this another Sollog
Line.....
The Enemy Within sits in our White House Oval Office with his
stooges......he has put people in charge who are traitors to our country
and destroy us from within. They steal our secrets and burn and
destroy witnesses against them.....another CIA agent marked for death
probably, is alleged to have committed suicide.
Remember Bill Colby too.....and John Paisley who lived next door to Bud
Fensterwald who was CIA who was also found in river......
Remember for where there is a testimony there is usually the murder of
the testators......now this, is from Hebrews and is part of Bill
Clinton's and Al Gores New Covenant that those bastards made for
us.......dead rainbows. Dark clouds, murder and slaughter of the
innocents and our children, Littletons - drugs and poppy fields.....but
Beryllium.....here is one cause and you find it not far from Garden of
Eden at this point in time.....evil is as evil does.
A Saba
Beryllium Deal, Russian Mafia
U.S. News & World Report
October 23, 1995
The Russian connection
BYLINE: By Tim Zimmermann; Alan Cooperman
DTELINE: Moscow
Its regional mafias are strong, its nuclear wealth vast. In Russia, the
former are vigorously pursuing the latter, and that means trouble;
The end was breathtaking. For four decades, the world lived under the
threat of nuclear holocaust. Then the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union
came next. Suddenly, superpower missiles were no longer targeted at
cities. The prospect of Armageddon dimmed.
Nuclear nightmares do not die, however; they change. From the chilling
cold war doctrine f mutually assured destruction comes a new nuclear
paradox. Instead of a hostile Soviet superpower, with nuclear weapons
under tight totalitarian control, the world now confronts a new, more
benign Russia. Yet the new Russia is, in some ways, more dangerous than
the old. It is a place where chaos is a constant, where old safeguards
are eroding or already have fallen away, where nuclear know-how and
materials are suddenly for sale.
If there is an abiding irony in Russia today, it is this: that the new
order impoverishes the old nuclear gatekeepers while offering quick
riches to those who can pass them by. It is capitalism, Wild East style.
The desperate physicist, the scheming janitor, the corrupt security
guard -- these are worrisome enough. But the real nightmare scenario
involves Russia's ruthless organized-crime syndicates and corrupt
government officials working in league to create new markets for nuclear
materials, a bazaar with some of the world's most dangerous weapons on
offer, a place where savvy buyers will know to come calling. "Any
organized, sophisticated criminal group that has the networks of
international distribution, which can get access to these materials and
connect them with the right buyer," says FBI Director Louis Freeh, "is a
grave and immediate threat."
The danger is here. As a result of Freeh's initiative, the FBI has been
working with Russian police in an undercover operation targeting Russian
organized-crime groups trying to sell nuclear materials. The challenge
is big, the stakes could not be higher -- as this story makes clear.
THE STUFF IN THE BASEMENT
When it came in, the tip was not altogether surprising. The time was May
1993, the place Vilnius, the sleepy capital of Lithuania. For months,
there had been whispered hints that a strange shipment, a consignment of
great value, was moving around the picturesque Baltic nation. The hints
had been followed by violence. A mob war had swept like brush fire
through the streets of Klaipeda, Lithuania's busiest port, its gateway
to the world. At the time, Joseph Rimkevicius (pronounced
Rim-KEV-i-chuss), the chief of the organized-crime section of the
Lithuanian police, couldn't figure it out. After conversations with
several informants, however, the burly detective understood things more
clearly: A Lithuanian crime group had tried to extort a cut of some
big-money smuggling action. But they had erred badly. They had tried to
muscle a tougher crime syndicate, one unprepared to roll over and make
payoffs. After the shootings and bombings were over in Klaipeda, 10 men
were dead. Rimkevicius was wary. Something other than the usual
cigarette-and-vodka scam was afoot. The anonymous tip might explain what
that something was. The caller suggested that detectives might want to
take a look in the basement storage rooms of the capital's largest bank,
the Lithuanian Joint-Stock Innovation Bank. A man of action, Rimkevicius
was eager to do just that.
Within days, using a bomb threat as a pretext, a team of Rimkevicius's
detectives descended on the bank. Backed by heavily armed Lithuanian
special-forces troops, the detectives began rooting through the
building's hushed vaults. Rimkevicius left no corner unexplored. In the
deepest recesses of the bank's basement, the squad hit pay dirt: 27
wooden crates, each stenciled with peculiar Russian markings.
Eagerly, the detectives pried open the crates. Inside, they discovered
thousands of oddly shaped parts, machined from an unfamiliar
gunmetal-gray substance. Shipping papers said the weird-looking ingots
were beryllium, and that there were 4.4 tons of the stuff stashed in the
Vilnius bank and one other bank located in Kaunas, another Lithuanian
city.
In Vilnius, then abroad, alarm bells rang. Strong and light, beryllium
is a valuable commodity. On the open market, sold legally, it goes for
more than $ 600 a kilo. It is used in missile-guidance systems,
high-performance aircraft and precision optical components. It is
nuclear scientists and weapons designers who really prize the stuff.
Beryllium is a great neutron reflector. That makes it a critical
material for building a more efficient nuclear warhead or a smaller
nuclear reactor (box, Page 61).
What the beryllium in the bank vault was to be used for and who put it
there were questions for which Rimkevicius had no answers. But one of
his investigators, Romas Rinkevicius, soon knew the police were in for a
wild ride. Forensic scientists had been called in to examine the
beryllium as it sat in the vault. Suddenly their Geiger counters began
chattering like crickets. The stuff, it seemed, was radioactive. Not so
radioactive that Rinkevicius feared for his safety -- "I'm bald
already," he joked -- but radioactive nevertheless.
The beryllium seizure was significant. For the past three years, as
evidence of nuclear-related smuggling out of the former Soviet Union has
mounted, authorities in Russia and the United States have argued that it
is largely an amateurs' game, playedby plant workers and other small fry
haphazardly pocketing materials in hopes of making some easy cash. Maj.
Gen. Andrei Terekhov, the head of the Russian Interior Ministry
directorate responsible for guarding nuclear facilities, reaffirmed that
view at a Moscow news conference earlier this month. "It is impossible,"
General Terekhov said, "to speak of the existence of mafiya groups
specializing in the theft of radioactive materials."
The impossible has happened. A five-month investigation by U.S. News and
CBS's "60 Minutes" provides irrefutable proof that Russian organized
crime was behind the mysterious shipment of beryllium seized by police
in Lithuania. It is the first hard evidence that Russian crime
syndicates have attempted to smuggle nuclear-related materials from the
former Soviet Union. The trail of the smuggled beryllium wound from
Moscow to Yekaterinburg in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, through Vilnius
and ultimately to Switzerland, where a mystery buyer was prepared to pay
$ 24 million for the shipment -- about 10 times the legitimate market
rate. Relying on interviews in six countries and shipping documents and
business contracts in Russia and Lithuania, the investigation found
that:
The export of the beryllium was handled by a trading firm that police
officials have linked to a powerful Russian mafiya. Payment for the deal
was guaranteed by a Moscow-based karate club through its director
general, a Sverdlovsk native who has never been convicted of a crime but
whom Russian police interviewed in connection with the beryllium
shipment and consider to be a racketeer. In 1994, after the beryllium
shipment, the man was promoted to deputy governor of the Sverdlovsk
region and appointed its chief representative to the Russian Federation.
The beryllium shipment originated at a restricted nuclear research
facility, the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in the city of
Obninsk, located some 60 miles from Moscow. The purchase order for the
beryllium, which came from another nuclear research institute in the
Sverdlovsk region, was bogus. In addition to beryllium, the Obninsk
facility was home to hundreds of kilograms of poorly guarded plutonium
and highly enriched uranium -- the essential fuel for nuclear weapons.
The beryllium was mixed with small amounts of highly enriched uranium.
Nine kilograms of radioactive cesium -- a substance lethal in even small
amounts --were also released by Obninsk to the Russian trading syndicate
handling the beryllium transaction. The cesium has since disappeared.
Just before the beryllium was seized in Vilnius, the Russian trading
syndicate located an Austrian firm prepared to buy the shipment for $
2.7 million. That firm in turn had lined up a buyer in Zurich, who was
willing to pay an inflated price of $ 24 million for the beryllium. An
Interpol investigation could not learn the identity of the prospective
buyer. But the managing director of the Austrian firm indicated to U.S.
News and "60 Minutes" that the Zurich buyer represented Korean
interests. At the time, North Korea had a thriving covert program to
develop both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Contrary to public statements of concern about the problem of
proliferation, the government of Boris Yeltsin rejected entreaties from
Lithuania's government to take control of the beryllium after it had
been seized and frustrated efforts by Washington to find out more about
the case. Instead, Moscow argued that the shipment was legal and should
be returned to the Sverdlovsk trading firm involved in the transaction.
Because Moscow declined to assume responsibility for the beryllium, more
than two years after its seizure, the ingots remain in limbo, stuck in
the same Vilnius bank vault where they were discovered.
The Lithuanian Institute of Physics is housed in a dilapidated building
in the gentle hills outside Vilnius. Like research labs throughout the
former Soviet Union, it is staffed by well- trained scientists who now
have little work and almost no money. When a truck began delivering
crates ofberyllium to the institute in the late spring of 1993, Deputy
Director Vidmantas Remeikas and Senior Scientist Regimantas Kalinauskas
wasted little time plucking the radioactive pieces from the assorted
boxes. The total amount of radioactive beryllium came to approximately
141 kilograms. Some of the beryllium pieces were so radioactive that the
two scientists first thought they had a really hot load on their hands.
"What if all the boxes have such a sample," they remember saying to each
other. Subsequent analysis, however, brought the estimate of uranium
contamination down to between 100 and 200 grams.
"Thingamabobs." The origin of the beryllium eventually became clear.
While nosing through the institute's labs one day, a visiting Russian
physicist, Yevgeny Makarov, came across some of the beryllium pieces. He
recognized them immediately: They were parts from an experimental
reactor he had built while working at Obninsk in 1955. To Makarov, now a
professor of physcs in Moscow, the fact that some of the beryllium was
radioactive was not surprising. As reactor fuel rods were pushed and
pulled through holes in the beryllium, he recalls, they would break off
or leave deposits of radioactive uranium-235. What was a surprise was
coming across the beryllium almost 40 years later in a Lithuanian
research lab. "How," Makarov wondered, "did my thingamabobs get here?"
The answer lies in Russia's Sverdlovsk region. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, Sverdlovsk has been at the forefront of the many
Russian regions struggling to loosen Moscow's grip on their affairs.
With its enormous wealth of mineral resources, extensive
military-industrial complex and old- boy connections to Russian
President Boris Yeltsin, the region has become a hotbed of corrupt
capitalism (Page 65). "It is," says Louise Shelley, an expert on Russian
organized crime at American University in Washington, D.C., "the
gangster capital of Russia."
One of the most popular ways to make money in Sverdlovsk is in
commodities. The scheme is simple. Pay for your goods in rubles, then
ship them out of the country -- legally or illegally -- and sell them
for dollars. Thanks to the artificially low ruble prices in Russia,
profits can be huge. In the chaotic days following the Soviet Union's
collapse, Igor Vladimirovich Rudenko was well placed to take advantage
of such opportunities. Deputy commercial director of the Sverdlovsk
trading firm ALT Ltd., Rudenko was also chief of the Materials and
Technical Supply Department of the local nuclear research institute
operated by Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom. As
chief of that department, Rudenko had access to lists detailing all
surplus materials available at nuclear facilities throughout the Minatom
system.
There is no evidence Rudenko is involved in organized crime, but in
early 1992 he and his ALT colleagues decided that they could make some
serious money by purchasing surplus beryllium. Rudenko knew from his
lists that Minatom's Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in
Obninsk had a surplus of 4,000 kilograms of the metal. Before Rudenko
could proceed, however, there were a few hitches. First, they needed
financial assistance. The beryllium would cost upward of 30 million
rubles; ALT had nowhere near that much cash on hand. Money wasn't the
only problem, though. As ALT Director Alexander Palvinsky explained to
police, the company needed not just any old money but Moscow money. In
early 1992, he claimed, movement of money to the Russian capital from
outlying regions was being blocked; cash from Moscow would open doors.
Enter Yuri Ivanovich Alexeyev. A prototype of the new Russian
capitalist, Alexeyev operates in the gray zone that exists in Russia
between the underworld and the official world. Alexeyev states
categorically that, as far as his role in the beryllium deal was
concerned, "no one has broken the law." He denies any knowledge of where
the beryllium ended up and insists that, "within the country, we are
allowed to trade any materials that are not on a special control list."
He was interrogated by police but not prosecuted.
Alexeyev's is an intriguing tale. He grew up in the Sverdlovsk region
and, until last month, was its deputy governor and chief representative
to the Russian Federation. According to a Sverdlovsk acquaintance, who
spoke nervously about him, Alexeyev got his start in Sverdlovsk running
a series of video parlors in the late 1980s. Alexeyev, according to this
person, employed karate students he had trained to guard his parlors.
Russian police sources say Alexeyev also began a career of "basic
racketeering" at the time. According to a Russian police colonel, one of
Alexeyev's groups did a lot of business with a man named Oleg Korataev,
a professional boxer who was murdered in Brooklyn, N.Y., last year. U.S.
law enforcement authorities described the hit as an assassination
orchestrated by a Russian mafiya; there is no evidence Alexeyev had any
involvement.
In Russia, there are two levels of racketeering. The first is inhabited
by street thugs -- known as "tattoos," for their extensive prison body
art. The tattoos are basically low-level muscle who extort payoffs for
protection. Alexeyev was above that, according to Russian police
sources, operating at a far more profitable level known as "the roof."
This level is peopled by traditional crime bosses, along with some of
Russia's new entrepreneurs and the bureaucrats of the old regime
possessed of connections, strong stomachs and a driving ambition to make
the most of new opportunities to get rich quick. Businesses that deal
with these groups are brought under the roof. If they cannot afford to
develop their own security forces, protection is provided. More
important, they may get connections and access to lucrative contracts --
all for a hefty cut, of course, typically about 30 percent and sometimes
up to 70 percent of profits.
Links to power. With his many connections, Alexeyev soon emerged as one
of the more powerful entrepreneurs in Sverdlovsk. "He is organized
crime," says a former police officer there. "But you cannot make money
in Russia without breaking the law. So I would not call him simply a
criminal. He is a businessman who is forced to break the law and who
earns money from his connections to power." Others are more cautious,
but not solely because Alexeyev has stayed out of jail. "Of course, I
cannot call him a criminal," says a senior Russian police official
assigned to organized-crime investigations. "The response would hit me
between the eyes."
In the early 1990s, Alexeyev made the move to Moscow and established a
number of sports clubs and commodity trading firms. In the new Russia,
many sports clubs are considered by police and organized-crime experts
to be training venues for security thugs and racketeers. Even Russian
mafiosi have started to joke openly about the new phenomenon of
"organized sport"; in Russian, the phrase rhymes with "organized crime."
"The Soviet Union had a huge number of athletes and athletic
organizations," says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the Russian
Academy of Sciences. "Society does not need these people after they
leave sports. But mafiya organizations do need them."
Alexeyev's flagship sports organization, the Karate-Do Federation of the
European-Asian Region, was certainly a full- service outfit. In addition
to promoting karate, Article 2 of Karate-Do's registration document
lists among its main goals the rather opaque objective of "satisfying
the needs of citizens in trade and services." Article 3 is more
explicit. It lists the "main activities of the society" as producing and
selling consumer goods, construction, tourism, public catering, running
video game halls and casinos and consulting on legal issues and
questions of foreign economic activity ... "and other activities
permitted by law."
Alexeyev also was the man to see in Moscow regarding exports from
Sverdlovsk. By early 1992, he had added a semiofficial capacity to his
array of private ventures in the capital -- lobbying the Russian federal
government for export licenses and quotas for the Sverdlovsk region.
That put Alexeyev at the center of the export action. "Practically
everything is decided in Moscow. The quotas, the licenses, they are all
handed out in Moscow," explains the Russian police official. "Behind all
these licenses are connections between the government and criminal
structures. That's natural, of course."
In 1992, when Rudenko of ALT Ltd. arrived in Moscow to meet with his
colleague from Sverdlovsk and propose a transaction involving 4.4 tons
of beryllium, Alexeyev was happy to talk. Rudenko told police that in a
meeting held at Alexeyev's Moscow residence, in the President Hotel, the
rising young star of Sverdlovsk promised to front money for the
beryllium, drawing on Karate-Do's Moscow bank.
Writing a letter. Having lined up the financing, Rudenko decided that an
order for surplus beryllium on his institute's letterhead was needed to
turn the trick with his colleagues at Obninsk. Laying his hands on
letterhead was not a problem. The institute he worked for in Sverdlovsk
was actually just a branch of Minatom's Research and Design Institute of
Energy Technologies, located in Moscow. A year or so earlier, a printing
house had mistakenly omitted the designation "Sverdlovsk Branch" on an
order of institute stationery. Instead of throwing the whole batch out,
it was used as scrap paper throughout the institute.
Rudenko grabbed a few sheets, then ran up a formal requisition. It was
dated April 7, 1992. The order asked for 4,000 kilograms of surplus
beryllium. For good measure, Rudenko threw in an additional request, for
9 kilograms of cesium. Estimates are difficult to come by, but German
police believe cesium commands a price of $ 100,000 or more per kilogram
on the black market. Rudenko addressed the order to the chief engineer
of the Obninsk facility, then signed it in the name of his institute's
deputy director, Vladimir Ilyin, who happened to be out sick. Ilyin
later told police he had no knowledge of the transaction.
The financing was interesting. According to the purchase order, a copy
of which was obtained by U.S. News, "payment for and receipt of the
metals shall be performed by the General Directorate of the Union of
Karate-Do Organizations." At the bottom of the order, underneath the
initials Rudenko placed in his deputy director's name, were the
signature and seal of Yuri Alexeyev. Alexeyev admitted to police in 1993
that he signed the order, but he said he had no idea why it mentioned
beryllium and knew nothing about what had become of the shipment. Less
than a month after the shipment, ALT Ltd. changed its name to AMI.
Alexeyev told police he was not familiar with the company. "The name AMI
does not ring a bell," Alexeyev said, "and I cannot say whether any
contractual obligations existed with the company." In his interview with
U.S. News and "60 Minutes," Alexeyev told a slightly different story. He
admitted knowing AMI but said he only "guaranteed" payment for the
beryllium and cesium as a simple gesture of gratitude to AMI, because it
had sponsored a big championship for his Karate-Do federation. "We have
created the federation," Alexeyev explained, "to prevent people from
turning to the criminal world."
Powerfully built, just 36 years old, Alexeyev appears uncowed by his
brush with police. Before Russian investigators got around to asking him
queston arate-Do was liquidated, and all records rat the beryllium deal
were destroyed. Now Alexeyev has taken to handing out a glossy brochure
of all the high-tech weapons the Sverdlovsk region is trying to sell.
"We don't have an air conditioner in it," he says regretfully of the
best tank on offer, quickly stressing its modern fire-control system.
That nuclear-related materials are being offered for sale in the former
Soviet Union should not be a surprise; the surprise is that it has taken
organized crime so long to get into the act. Although Vladimir Ilyin,
Rudenko's boss at the Sverdlovsk institute, denied to police any
knowledge of the Obninsk beryllium deal he admitted that his institute
had also sold some beryllium in 1992, in order to meet the payroll. Like
the Obnisnk sale, the material went to a private trading company, called
EVA Ltd. Unlike the Obninsk sale, that beryllium disappeared. Obninsk
was in no better position to refuse an offer for beryllium when it
arrived in April 1992. "The finances," Obninsk chief accountant G.I.
Kozlov told Russian investigators, "were very bad at the time."
A decision to sell the beryllium was made easier by Russia's confusing
regulations. Was beryllium a restricted material or not? Even Viktor
Mikhailov, the director of Minatom, reflects a lack of knowledge on the
subject. "Beryllium is used widely in many industries except for the
military," Mikhailov incorrectly told U.S. News and "60 Minutes." He
added, also incorrectly, that beryllium is not on the list of dual-use
items that Russia agreed to start restricting in 1993 as a member of the
international Nuclear Suppliers Group. "It came from a nuclear facility,
from a nuclear end use .... It should have been the national
government's responsibility, whatever they say," says a State Department
expert on proliferation issues who was involved with the case.
Under the "roof." Bureaucratic bungling is one thing; bogus purchase
orders are another. Alexeyev says that he and his sports club,
Karate-Do, were never directly involved in the beryllium transaction and
that a beryllium shipment, institute to institute, was OK. Rudenko's
Institute of Energy Technologies in Sverdlovsk never took possession of
the beryllium that ended up in Lithuania, however. Contrary to
Alexeyev's denials, invoices clearly indicate that the recipient of the
beryllium was none other than Karate-Do. "Let's put it this way," says
the senior police official, regarding Karate-Do. "It has some criminal
inclinations. But I simply can't say anything more." Ultimately, the
beryllium was shipped east to Sverdlovsk, where AMI, the successor
company to Rudenko's ALT, took control.
Getting the beryllium out of Obninsk was one thing; getting it out of
the country and making a profit on it was another. For that operation,
AMI turned to yet another trading firm -- the Urals Association for
Business Development (UADS is its Russian acronym). It, too, was deeply
connected with the Sverdlovsk region's organized-crime syndicates,
Russian police say.
UADS was a natural choice for the export and sale of beryllium. Before
the Soviet Union collapsed, the UADS director, Mikhail Dolmatov, worked
in the metallurgical institute of the Urals branch of the Soviet Academy
of Sciences. He knew metals and where they might be sold abroad. Like
Alexeyev, Dolmatov had pull in the new Sverdlovsk political universe, in
part through his connections to Valery Trushnikov. At the time of the
beryllium transaction, Trushnikov was "head of government," which made
him the No. 2 politician in the region.
Perhaps inevitably, given Dolmatov's connections and interest in the
metals trade, UADS operated under an organized crime "roof," police
officials say. According to the senior Russian investigator responsible
for organized crime, in the early days of the new Russia, trading copper
and precious metals was a profitable way for crime groups to invest
their illegal profits. UADS, says this official after checking his
computer database, had the backing of one of the Sverdlovsk region's
most violent and powerful crime groups, known as the "Central Group,"
for its location in the heart of the city of Yekaterinburg.
Dolmatov and UADS quickly made a name for themselves in the metals
export business. In April 1992, as the beryllium deal was coming to
fruition, KGB officers seized 12 tons of zirconium, another precious
metal with nuclear applications, at a Sverdlovsk airport and accused
UADS of smuggling. The zirconium was bound for Lithuania and a trading
firm called VEKA. Despite that hitch, Dolmatov turned to VEKA again in
June 1992 -- this time with a contract to sell the 4.4 tons of beryllium
from Obninsk for $ 2.7 million.
The deal was sweet. According to an agreement UADS reached with the
government of Sverdlovsk, 20 percent of the profits would be used to
purchase wool from Austria for a wool production complex in Sverdlovsk;
the remaining 80 percent allegedly would be used to purchase consumer
goods to be re- imported and sold in the region. The Sverdlovsk regional
government, which was making a lot of money from export deals like this
one, promptly issued an export license for the beryllium.
The UADS export application came up short, at least in two respects. "It
was always necessary," says Rustam Safaraliev, executive secretary of
the Commission on Export Control in Moscow, "to declare why and for what
purpose the material would be used." The UADS application made no
mention of what the 4.4 tons of beryllium would be used for outside
Russia. There was a bigger problem. The beryllium from Obninsk was
contaminated with highly enriched uranium. Under Russian law, it was and
is illegal to export such contaminated materials without permission. No
such permission had been sought or granted.
If VEKA, the Lithuanian firm, had had a buyer lined up and ready to go,
the beryllium might never have been seized. VEKA had purchased the
beryllium on spec, however, hoping to find an end user or another
middleman willing to pay a good markup. After importing the shipment
into Lithuania, VEKA advertised the beryllium to businesses and would-be
buyers across Europe. Months later, AMI -- the Russian firm for whom
Yuri Alexeyev had "guaranteed" the financing of the beryllium purchase
-- grew frustrated with VEKA. After some dispute with the Lithuanian
firm, AMI secured the return of the beryllium. AMI had lined up a buyer
of its own.
Going for broke. That buyer was H-Kontor, headquartered in Klagenfurt,
Austria. According to contract documents, H-Kontor was willing to pay $
2.7 million for the beryllium. It was a lot of money. But if the deal
went through, the company stood to make even more in profit. According
to Interpol officials, H- Kontor and a partner firm called ATRACO--
thought by police to be based in the northern Italian city of Brescia --
had identified a buyer in Zurich who was willing to pay $ 24 million for
the beryllium.
After months of frustration, AMI was about to hit the jackpot. AMI
officials quickly arranged a charter to fly the beryllium from Vilnius
to Switzerland. Before delivery and payment, however, the mystery buyer
wanted a sample of the beryllium to verify its purity. The delay was
deadly. Just before the sample could be sent, the beryllium was seized
by police. The Zurich buyer vanished.
Subsequent investigation by Interpol failed to identify who the buyer
was or what he or she intended to use the beryllium for. ATRACO, the
Italian partner, appeared to be a front company; police in Italy could
not locate it. They questioned executives from a similar-sounding
operation in Brescia but got nowhere. By the time the Lithuanian police
asked their Italian counterparts to go back for more interviews, the
company had disappeared.
Who was the beryllium intended for? Janus Kozmus, the managing director
of H-Kontor, was questioned twice by police and said nothing about the
buyer. Questioned by U.S. News and "60 Minutes," Kozmus said the end
user was to be a Korean company. Whatever the truth, investigators are
resigned to living with their suspicions. "I think [the beryllium] would
have gone to a third country for special purposes," says the chief of
Interpol in Lithuania, Aurilijus Racevicius. "[But] the end user of this
metal was never established, and I don't think we will ever establish
it."
Washington weighs in. The Clinton administration learned of the
beryllium seizure through its embassy in Vilnius in May 1993, and
immediately tried to put a stop to its travels. In a letter dated Aug.
17, 1993, to Lithuanian Prime Minister Adolfas Slezevicius, U.S.
Ambassador Darryl Johnson laid out the administration's concerns. "Some
pieces [of the beryllium] contain HEU (highly enriched uranium), which
has been enriched to a level sufficient for use in nuclear weapons. ...
In any event, the uncontrolled shipment of beryllium remains of
proliferation concern due to its presence on the list of nuclear-related
dual-use materials." Washington's preferred solution was for the
Lithuanian government simply to confiscate the entire shipment.
That was easier said than done. Lithuania had no laws controlling
beryllium. And from the moment the shipment was seized, Moscow and AMI
began pressuring Vilnius to release all the beryllium that was
uncontaminated. rushnikov, the head of government in Sverdlovsk, weighed
in, alluding to profits to be made. "We would like to ask for your
assistance," Trushnikov wrote the Lithuanian government, "to return the
beryllium in order to sell it to a foreign partner."
That was exactly the outcome Washington wanted to prevent. The U.S.
Embassy in Moscow had approached the Russian government to find out more
about the shipment. It got nowhere. When Lithuanian Prime Minister
Slezevicius started to waver, Ambassador Johnson pulled out all the
stops. "If this stuff ends up in Iraq or Libya," he told Slezevicius,
"you are going to look awful, and Lithuania is going to have a lot to
answer for." Desperate for a solution, in March 1994, Prime Minister
Slezevicius wrote Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin asking that
Moscow take control of the beryllium. He got no reply. Despite the
requests of both Vilnius and Washington --and the obligation to control
beryllium that it assumed under 1992 amendments to the international
Nuclear Suppliers Group Guidelines that went into effect in 1993, before
the beryllium was seized -- Moscow stood firm and continued to insist
that the shipment be returned to its Sverdlovsk owners.
Ultimately, Washington prevailed. In May 1994, the Lithuanian government
returned the uncontaminated beryllium to the bank and made sure it was
not allowed to leave the country. It remains in the bank today, and
probably will for some time to come.
Controlling additional leakage from Russia's nuclear facilities will be
more difficult. Since 1993, Moscow has taken steps to tighten its
control on dual-use and fissile materials. Major security upgrades have
taken place at Obninsk and two other installations, with U.S.
assistance. Work continues elsewhere. But almost 100 priority sites
remain vulnerable to theft. Most problematic is the fact that thousands
of workers throughout Russia's nuclear facilities continue to live hand
to mouth, despite aid from abroad. Russia's nuclear infrastructure
continues to be characterized by a degree of confusion and
disorganization. And Russia's aggressive criminal mafiyas continue to
look for profit-making opportunities wherever they can be found. "The
conditions that made possible this [beryllium] export, if anything, are
more acute now," says William Potter, director of the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
Alexeyev and the Sverdlovsk regional government, in fact, are frustrated
by Washington's reluctance to allow them to profit legally on the
international market. "We want to trade nuclear materials," Yuri
Alexeyev says. "Our nuclear materials are 1.5 times less expensive than
yours. We are able to cover the world's demand for nuclear fuel twice."
It is this mentality -- capitalism with a vengeance -- that in the end
may defeat efforts to secure Russia's nuclear assets. "This is the time
of making fortunes, gang wars," Alexeyev says of Russia today. "You have
had the same in your time." There is a difference, however. In the
United States, the illicit commodity was liquor. In the new Russia,
among other things, it happens to be the stuff of nuclear nightmares.
ABOUT THIS REPORT: A COOPERATIVE EFFORT
In May 1995, U.S. News reporter Tim Zimmermann began hearing stories
about a mysterious shipment of nuclear-related material that had been
seized by Lithuanian police. At approximately the same time, producers
for CBS News were following some of the same leads. Independently, each
news organization went after the story. By summer, U.S. News and CBS's
"60 Minutes" had decided to work together on it. Reporter Zimmermann and
U.S. News Moscow Bureau Chief Alan Cooperman linked up with a "60
Minutes" team led by correspondent Steve Kroft. The team was composed of
producers Michael Gavshon and Gary Scurka with associate producers
Claudia Weinstein, Carolyn McEwen and Kathy Wolff. Additionally, Channel
One, the educational TV programmer, provided important contributions to
the reporting. The joint effort involved interviews and research in six
countries over five months.
[Map is not available.]
A SMUGGLER'S TRAIL
Path of beryllium shipment
Yekaterinburg: Early 1992. The beryllium deal originated in the
Sverdlovsk region among trading firms with ties to organized crime.
Obninsk: March-April 1992. Relying on the phony purchase order, the
Institute of Physics and Power Engineering agrees to sell the beryllium.
The beryllium is moved by truck to Moscow.
Moscow: March-April 1992. Payment and receipt of the material is handled
by Yuri Alexeyev, a suspected racketeer from Yekaterinburg, through his
karate club. The beryllium is transported to Yekaterinburg.
Yekaterinburg: June 1992. The beryllium is flown to Lithuania.
Vilnius: May 1993. Responding to an anonymous tip, Lithuanian police
seize the beryllium shipment from a local bank.
Klagenfurt and Brescia: Late 1993-early 1994. Investigators learn that
the beryllium was to be bought, then sold again, by an Austrian-Italian
consortium.
Zurich: Late 1993-early 1994. Interpol determines that a mysterious
buyer was prepared to pay $ 24 million, about 10 times the market price
for the beryllium shipment.
Vilnius: May 1994. Unable to prosecute, the Lithuanian government
returns the shipment to the bank but prevents it from leaving the
country.
BOMBS AND BERYLLIUM
"Beryllium has no realistic substitutes in its strategic nuclear
applications," says a U.S. Department of Commerce analysis. It is one of
16 nuclear-related materials that are supposed to be tightly controlled
by the 31-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which includes both the United
States and Russia.
A highly efficient neutron reflector, beryllium is used in modern bomb
designs to significantly increase the weapon's explosive power and
reduce the amount of fissile material the bomb designer needs.
In the late 1980s, the CIA concluded that India was trying to develop a
sophisticated hydrogen bomb. One of the key tipoffs: India was buying
beryllium.
Powering the MX W87 warhead
In this U.S. hydrogen bomb design, the explosive power of a fission
trigger is boosted to several kilotons by the use of a beryllium
reflector and deuterium-tritium gas. This "primary" in turn triggers a
"secondary" fusion device. The total explosive power is 300 kilotons --
equal to 300,000 tons of TNT.
[Illustration labels]: Computer model of beryllium atom; Fission
trigger; Chemical explosive; Beryllium reflector; Plutonium -239;
Deuterium-tritium (DT) gas; Neutron generator; Nuclear warhead; X-rays;
Foam; Uranium-238 case; Fusion device; Uranium-235; Lithium deuteride
(fusion fuel); Uranium-238 or 235
USN&WR -- Basic data: Natural Resources Defense Council
GRAPHIC: Drawing, No caption (Illustration by Scott Swales for USN&WR);
Picture, Suspicions. Joseph Rimkevicius, Lithuania's chief investigator
of organized crime (Tim Zimmermann -- USN&WR); Pictures: Operator. Yuri
Alexeyev mixes politics and business easily. He financed the beryllium
deal as "a favor." (Alan Cooperman -- USN&WR); Map, A smuggler's trail;
Drawing, A smuggler's trail (Rod Little -- USN&WR); Picture, Computer
mod rlum atom (Photo by Ken Eward -- Science Source); Drawing, Bombs and
beryllium (Robert Kemp, Richard Gage -- USN&WR); Chart, Bombs and
beryllium (Natural Resources Defense Council); Pictures: Seizure.
Lithuanian special forces, with beryllium, in the bank vault (Police
Photos); Picture, Hot box. The contaminated beryllium, in a locked vault
in Vilnius (Heidi Bradner for USN&WR)
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