Red mercury
Salmon Egg
hand?
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1080852006
Bill
-- Ferme le Bush
donald haarmann
"Salmon Egg" <salm...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:C0EC12D3.35390%salm...@sbcglobal.net...
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Sigh... not yet again.......
-----------------------------
The colour of danger
A WEEK after the bomb attack in Oklahoma City and a month after the nerve gas
attack in Tokyo, it is impossible not to feel a deep chill at reports that "red mercury"-the
ultimate terrorists' weapon-might really exist (see This Week).
Red mercury was supposedly developed in the Soviet Union, and stocks have
periodically been offered for sale in the West by figures from Russia's underworld. It
has been described as an explosive so powerful that it could trigger fusion in a small
volume of tritium and deuterium, thus making it possible to build a neutron bomb the
size of a baseball.
No one knows if red mercury really exists. From time to time, scientists from the
former Soviet Union claim to have created the cherry red compound of antimony and
mercury, made with the help of intense radiation in a nuclear reactor. Bizarre killings
have been linked to an international trade in the chemical. The dismembered corpse of
one chemist who might have handled red mercury was found in a car boot in South
Africa. Friends and associates died in mysterious circumstances.
In the West, scientists from nuclear weapons establishments have tended to write off
red mercury as a hoax. Conspiracy theorists, of course, just see that as evidence that
the West is secretly at work on the chemical.
Enough doubts remain to make two things worth doing. First, every rumour about red
mercury should be investigated, if only because the trail may lead to an arms dealer
with ex-Soviet connections. These are people who might have access to illegal
plutonium, which it is just as vital to intercept. And secondly, the International Atomic
Enegy Agency should consider strict controls on sales of tritium.
--------------------------------
THIS WEEK
Cherry red and very dangerous
Rob Edwards, Stuttgart
NEW SCIENTIST 29 iv 99
"RED MERCURY", a uniquely powerful chemical explosive which has been dismissed
by many experts as a myth, could be real-and it could pose a serious threat to the
world's attempts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. New information leaked from
South Africa, Russia and the US has convinced leading nuclear weapons scientists that
the chemical's potential risks should now be taken seriously.
The scientists, who include Sam Cohen, the American nuclear physicist who invented
the neutron bomb, and Frank Barnaby, the former director of the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, are worried that red mercury could make it
much easier for nations or terrorist groups to construct small but deadly thermonuclear
fusion weapons. They are calling for the 178-nation conference on the future of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, due to end in New York in two weeks, to introduce
tougher controls on the international trade in tritium, one of the raw materials of the
fusion bomb.
"I don't want to sound melodramatic says Cohen, who worked on the Manhattan
Project to build the atom bomb in the 1940s and was a nuclear weapons adviser to the
US government with the Rand Corporation for 20 years. "But red mercury is real and it
is terrifying. I think it is part of a terrorist weapon that potentially spells the end of
organised society." He claims that it could be used to make a baseball-sized neutron
bomb capable of killing everyone within about 600 metres of the explosion.
Barnaby, a respected nuclear weapons analyst who has been investigating red
mercury for the past six years, is more cautious. He accepts that there have been many
cases in which offers of red mercury for sale at enormous prices have turned out to be
hoaxes. But he believes "on the balance of probabilities" that a mercurybased high
explosive which could revolutionise the design of nuclear weapons was developed
within the former Soviet Union.
The latest evidence Barnaby has seen is two documents leaked to Greenpeace,
apparently from a former mercury production plant in South Africa. The documents
detail chemical specifications for a
substance called "red mercury 20:20", a compound of pure mercury and mercury
antimony oxide (Hg2Sb2O2) described as "cherry red" and "semi-liquid". The docu-
ments seem to form part of a request from an unknown buyer for the supply of "4-10
flasks per month" of the substance.
One of the documents, dated 2 April 1990, is addressed to Wolfgang Dolich at the
British-owned Thor Chemical company at Speyer, near Mannheim in Germany. Dolich,
who was a sales manager at the time and is now the company's German
director, could not remember who bad sent him the document, nor could he decipher
whose illegible signature it bears. But he thinks the document is likely to be one of the
many requests that he used to receive for mercury products. He says that he probably
passed it on to his company's sister plant plant at Cato Ridge in Natal, South Africa,
where mercury compounds were manufactured until a few years ago.
But Dolich told New Scientist that nothing could have come of the request because
Thor, which runs chemicals businesses in seven countries from its headquarters in
Margate, Kent, had never been involved in the manufacture of red mercury.
The document also contains a handwritten note saying "Herewith all we have on red
mercury" and signed "Alan". Dolich thinks this is likely to be Alan Kidger, Thor's
Johannesburg-based sales director who was mysteriously murdered in November
1991. South African police investigators believe that Kidger's murder could be linked to
a clandestine trade in red mercury, although the company denies this.
Barnaby regards the specifications in the documents as scientifically credible,
although they are not always easy to understand. They are similar to others he has
seen from Russia, Germany and Austria and reinforce his view that there is a significant
international trade in red mercury. In association with two other senior scientists from
Italy and the US, whom he declined to name, he is now actively trying to acquire a small
sample of red mercury so that its alleged properties can be properly tested in a
laboratory.
Barnaby's group has talked to four unnamed scientists in Russia. Barnaby says all
four provided detailed information about red mercury. As a result Barnaby has
concluded that it is a polymer with a gel-like consistency in which mercury and antimony
have been bound together after irradiation for up to 20 days in a nuclear reactor.
He says that mercury antimony oxide is produced in "relatively large quantities" at a
chemicals factory in Yekaterinburg. Red mercury itself, he claims, was first produced in
1965 in a cyclotron at the nuclear research centre at Dubna, near Moscow, and is now
made at "a number" of Russian military centres, including Krasnoyarsk in Siberia and
Penza, 500 kilometres souh_ east of Moscow. One Russian scientist estimates that
Russia produces about 60 kilograms of red mercury a year.
Barnaby argues that the gel, as well as having possible uses in fission weapons,
could yield enough chemical energy when compressed to fuse tritium atoms and
produce a thermonuclear explosion. The gel may already be incorporated in Russian
neutron weapons, such as the M-1975 240-millimetre mortar, he says.
If this is true, red mercury would be a remarkable material which could have dramatic
implications for energy production as well as weapons technology. But its existence is
doubted, not just by the British, US and German governments (This Week, 6 June
1992), but also by independent critics. Two of the most notable are Joseph Rotblat,
emeritus professor of physics at the University of London, and Ted Taylor, a leading
bomb designer at the US nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos in New Mexico in
the 1950s.
Taylor points out that the only conceivable way to obtain the high levels of chemical
energy claimed for red mercury would be to dislodge the inner electrons of mercury and
antimony. But he argues that it is difficult to see how this could produce a substance
that was stable long enough to be used as an explosive. "I would bet that it does not
exist," he says.
Despite his scepticism, Taylor believes that the potential implications of red mercury
are so significant that it ought to be investigated. The discovery of material that could
release hundreds or thousands of times more chemical energy than TNT could be
"more important than nuclear fission", he says. it could revolutionise space travel as
well as making possible a fearsome new category of nuclear fusion weapons. "I hope
it's all wrong, but maybe I'm slipping into wishful thinking," he says. He agrees with
Barnaby and Cohen that trade in tritium ought to be subject to the same safeguards as
plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the essential ingredients of fission bombs.
Cohen, however, claims that red mercury is one of a new class of highly explosive
materials under secret investigation by nuclear weapons scientists in the US. He quotes
a memorandum which he received recently from Sandia National Laboratories, the
nuclear weapons engineering centre in New Mexico, which describes such materials as
"ballotechnic". According to the memo, this means that "under certain conditions" the
chemical energy obtained "can be greater than with high explosives".
Bob Graham, a senior researcher at Sandia, says that he coined the term
"ballotechnics" to describe devices which produce heat following exposure to shock.
But he insists that it has no connection with red mercury, which he does not believe
exists. "Graham is not free to speak openly about this," counters Cohen. "I am."
-----------
Old Tale Of Swindle Resurfaces In Bosnia .
By CHRIS HEDGES
New York Times 14xii97
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzgovina - The secret weapon that cost the Bosnian
Serbs $6 million cash was handed over by somber men in a clandestine meeting on a
windswept bridge in the closing months of the Bosnian war two yeas ago. In return,
they were passed a brass container the size of a suitcase that they were told contained
a foot ball-sized nuclear weapon, or so the story goes.
The container was spirited to the mountain town of Pale, headquarter of Radovan
Karadzic and his war time government. Dr. Karadzic, unable to contain his excitement,
pried open the lid and stared inside to se his prize, which the seller, a Liberia arms
dealer, said was made with a substance called Red Mercury.
"It was filled with this jelly-like material," said Predrag Ceranic, the head of the secret
police at the time, who said he was involved in the operation. "Mr. Karadzic
immediately suspected that he had been cheated. He told everyone in the room that
maybe this was just jelly."
Mr. Ceranic has a sheaf of documents to support his story. But his timing in
announcing it — just before the recent Bosnian Serb parliamentary elections — and his
current allegiance to Dr. Karadzic's rival, Biljana Plavsic, suggest that whether e story
is true or not the tricks and
turning of modern democratic political campaigning have not eluded the Bosnians.
Aides to Ms. Plavsic, the Bosnian Serb President, naturally confirmed the tale told by
Mr. Ceranic, who spoke with Dr. Karadzic: this summer and is now the chief of state
security for Ms. Plavsic. And officials loyal to Dr. Karadzic, predictably, dismissed it.
"This is part of the campaign against Dr. Karadzic," said Slavko Paleksic, the Minister of
Police in Pale who was reached by telephone. 'Dr. Karadzic is the very. personification
of our struggle and this is why Plavsic and her supporters keep up these attacks. It
seems a shame to accuse a man who is not able to defend himself, who cannot even
leave his own home. If this happened 1995, why do these people decide to jell us about
it now?"
Perhaps unknown to Dr. Karadzic, the mysterious substance has been the center of
several swindles in recent Eastern European history.
"It was a crazy idea, but Dr. Karazic is a gambler and he was willing part with a lot of
money, taken from the Serbian people, to realize his dream of getting his hands on a
nuclear weapon," Mr. Ceranic said. He began to speak openly in early 1995 about the
arrival of a secret weapon that would end the war, although at the time few people
knew he intended to buy a nuclear bomb." Mr. Ceranic said that in January 1995, Dr.
Karadzic made contact with the arms dealer, Nikolas Oman, who said he had contacts
with Russia peddling a miniature neutron bomb that weighed less than 5 kgs. The arms
dealer promised Karadzic that 12 hours after detonation there would be no harmful
radiation, Mr. Ceranic said.
'Nikolas told the Defense Minister that Red Mercury looked just like Ping-Pong balls,"
Mr. Ceranic said.
Affter the first $6 million in cash, the remaining $60 million would be raised by
mortgaging a state-owned refinery in Srpski Brod to a Liberian owned company,
OrbaI Market Service Ltd.
On March 1, 1995, according to legal documents in Mr. Ceranic's posession, the
company gave the Bosian Serb Government a $60 million mortgage for the refinery.
Milan Ninkovic, the Bosnian Serb defense Minister at the time, withdrew $6 million
from the central in Banja Luka. a few weeks r, according to the documents.
'"Once the formalities of the mortgage were complete, arrangements made for the
delivery of Red Mercury," Mr. Ceranic said. "At the of March, a passenger car
arrived at the Gradiska border cross from the direction of Zagreb. it met by Ninkovic
and an armed esscort.
Russian gangsters have been selling "purer fusion" Red Mercury weapons in Eastern
Europe for more a decade to clients from rogue states and terrorist groups. Red
Merrcury samples that have turned pp in Europe have proved to be innocuous. Most
scientists say that the small nuclear weapons, as well as the substance allegedly
used to make them, do not exist.
That apparently was the case with e Bosnian Serb purchase.
According to Mr. Ceranic, Dr. Karadzic, in a panic, sent top aides to Moscow to find
out more about Red Mercury and what exactly his $6 ad bought. "When the delegation
got back to Pale they reported to Karadzic that he had been swindled," Mr. Ceranic
said. "Mr. Karadzic was disappointed," Mr. Ceranic. "He was hoping to use a Nuclear
weapon in the war, or at least be able to threaten to use it."
-------------
Nuclear Shell Game?
A Hard Look at the Mysterious Red Mercury
Andy Zipser
Barron's 15iii93
WHEN Alan Kidger hung up the phone in early November 1991, he told his wife he
would be back shortly, then slipped out of his Johannesburg home without saying
where he was going. Several days later, he was found stuffed into the trunk of his car,
his severed legs, arms and torso smeared with a thick, black substance.
Now the unsolved murder has become one of the more horrific aspects of a bizarre tale
spanning three continents. Kidger, 48, was international sales director of British-owned
Thor Chemicals, which imports mercury waste for recycling. Because local residents
had long accused the company of polluting the soil and groundwater, and because the
black substance smeared on Kidger's corpse was a mercury compound, some South
African officials speculated he had been killed by eco-terrorists. But then someone
breathed the words "red mercury" — and before you could say "Pandora's box," the
South African press was off and running with its version of this latest global myth.
Welcome to the new, improved red menace, complete with Russian roots and the threat
of nuclear annihilation. Quite unlike the last red terror, this one is largely debunked by
the Western establishment and apparently has bewildered the Russians themselves.
But that hasn't deterred the European press: Newspapers on both sides of the former
Iron Curtain have been rife with stories of smuggling arrests by the dozens, of red
mercury shipments concealed in automobile fire extinguishers, of bid prices of
$150,000, $300,000, even $500,000 a kilogram for the mysterious substance. And why
not? Judging by the numerous claims on its behalf, red mercury is a modern
philosopher's stone that can do just about anything: It makes stealth aircraft stealthier,
infrared sensors more sensitive, counterfeits harder to detect— and atom bombs
smaller and easier to build.
As the deadliest version of this legend has it, red mercury is an antimony mercury oxide
that was developed in the Soviet Union as a simpler, more efficient trigger for atomic
bombs. Such triggers, which surround a core of plutonium or enriched moreover,
because it is liquid can be shaped more easily, simplifying one of the more difficult
aspects of bomb design.
If all that is true, such substance could accelerate atom bomb development in country
still struggling to develop the nuclear arsenals. It could enable construction of bombs
using smaller quantities of fissionable material than needed in star card atomic
warheads, making it attractive to countries wit limited supplies of plutonium and
enriched uranium. And could result in smaller we' heads, which would appeal t
terrorists.
Small wonder, then, the Third World demand for re mercury is red hot—or that Russia’s
economic chaos has encouraged strenuous efforts to satisfy it. The result, as reported
in European` newspapers, is pure James Bond, including an extensive smuggling
network that stretches from the Urals through Romania and Bulgaria to Austria,
Germany and Italy. According to one breathless account, a former Italian neo-facist
living in southern France " the sole agent for the Ukrainian makers" of red mercury.
Absurdities abound. TI Russian news agency Tass reported that two Armenians made
their way to Siberia and kidnapped the young son of used "mainly for the nuclear
submarine program" apparently made him the first journalist in the world to advance
that particular interpretation.
.
Even the staid Times of London has jumped in, reporting last October that some Middle
Eastern countries "will go to almost any lengths" to acquire red mercury. The
International Atomic Energy Authority, according to the Times, received boxes of
paperwork regarding the substance after a U.N. nuclear inspection team raided a
Baghdad building. The newspaper also quoted a Russian politician as bragging that red
mercury is so potent, "a bomb the size of a grenade could blow a ship out of the sea."
For all that entrancing detail, however, remarkably little is known about the material
itself. Not a single Western government has confirmed seizure of anything so truly
exotic it could be called "red mercury"— although there have been dozens of
interceptions of everything from normal mercury tinged with brick dust to depleted nu-
clear reactor fuel. Nor has anyone produced even one nuclear warhead with a red
mercury trigger. No matter. This is a story with a life of its own, and despite the
anxieties it engenders, both Russian and American officials
seem willing—for different reasons—to allow it to fester.
The one government presumably in the best position to comment on red mercury has
been truly schizophrenic on the issue, with some highly ranked Russian officials
dismissing red mercury as the modern equivalent of UFOs, while others lament the
ongoing theft of a treasured national resource. In the best traditions of doublespeak,
sometimes the same person utters completely contradictory viewpoints.
Last August, for example, Security Ministry spokesman Andrei Chernenko reported to
the media on the initial successes of Operation Tral, which was designed to combat a
very real and pervasive smuggling problem. As reported in transcript form by Tass,
Chernenko announced that Tral had uncovered "a whole number of large-scale thefts at
leading state-run industrial plants," as well as "the existence of a well-organized
network of criminal gangs specializing in the export of strategic raw materials."
Neverthless, he added, the rumored thefts of red mercury were untrue because red
mercury "does not exist at all."
Two months later, in a second press conference on the same subject, Chernenko as-
sured his listeners that while Operation Tral had intercepted stolen materials worth 6.5
billion rubles, "no major leaks" of red mercury had occurred.
WHEN Alan Kidger hung up the phone in early November 1991, he told his wife
he would be back shortly, then slipped out of his Johannesburg home without saying
where he was going. Several days later, he was found stuffed into the trunk of his car,
his severed legs, arms and torso smeared with a thick, black substance.
Now the unsolved murder has become one of the more horrific aspects of a bizarre tale
spanning three continents. Kidger, 48, was international sales director of British-owned
Thor Chemicals, which imports mercury waste for recycling. Because local residents
had long accused the company of polluting the soil and groundwater, and because the
black substance smeared on Kidger's corpse was a mercury compound, some South
African officials speculated he had been killed by eco-terrorists. But then someone
breathed the words "red mercury" — and before you could say "Pandora's box," the
South African press was off and running with its version of this latest global myth.
Welcome to the new, improved red menace, complete with Russian roots and the threat
of nuclear annihilation. Quite unlike the last red terror, this one is largely debunked by
the Western establishment and apparently has bewildered the Russians themselves.
But that hasn't deterred the European press: Newspapers on both sides of the former
Iron Curtain have been rife with stories of smuggling arrests by the dozens, of red
mercury shipments concealed in automobile fire extinguishers, of bid prices of
$150,000, $300,000, even $500,000 a kilogram for the mysterious substance. And why
not? Judging by the numerous claims on its behalf, red mercury is a modern
philosopher's stone that can do just about anything: It makes stealth aircraft stealthier,
infrared sensors more sensitive, counterfeits harder to detect— and atom bombs
smaller and easier to build.
As the deadliest version of this legend has it, red mercury is an antimony mercury oxide
that was developed in the Soviet Union as a simpler, more efficient trigger for atomic
bombs. Such triggers, which surround a core of plutonium or enriched moreover,
because it is liquid can be shaped more easily, simplifying one of the more difficult
aspects of bomb design.
If all that is true, such substance could accelerate atom bomb development in country
still struggling to develop the nuclear arsenals. It could enable construction of bombs
using smaller quantities of fissionable material than needed in star card atomic
warheads, making it attractive to countries wit limited supplies of plutonium and
enriched uranium. And could result in smaller we' heads, which would appeal t
terrorists.
Small wonder, then, the Third World demand for re mercury is red hot—or that Russia’s
economic chaos has encouraged strenuous efforts to satisfy it. The result, as reported
in European` newspapers, is pure James Bond, including an extensive smuggling
network that stretches from the Urals through Romania and Bulgaria to Austria,
Germany and Italy. According to one breathless account, a former Italian neo-facist
living in southern France " the sole agent for the Ukrainian makers" of red mercury.
Absurdities abound. TI Russian news agency Tass reported that two Armenians made
their way to Siberia and kidnapped the young son of used "mainly for the nuclear
submarine program" apparently made him the first journalist in the world to advance
that particular interpretation.
.
Even the staid Times of London has jumped in, reporting last October that some Middle
Eastern countries "will go to almost any lengths" to acquire red mercury. The
International Atomic Energy Authority, according to the Times, received boxes of
paperwork regarding the substance after a U.N. nuclear inspection team raided a
Baghdad building. The newspaper also quoted a Russian politician as bragging that red
mercury is so potent, "a bomb the size of a grenade could blow a ship out of the sea."
For all that entrancing detail, however, remarkably little is known about the material
itself. Not a single Western government has confirmed seizure of anything so truly
exotic it could be called "red mercury"— although there have been dozens of
interceptions of everything from normal mercury tinged with brick dust to depleted nu-
clear reactor fuel. Nor has anyone produced even one nuclear warhead with a red
mercury trigger. No matter. This is a story with a life of its own, and despite the
anxieties it engenders, both Russian and American officials
seem willing—for different reasons—to allow it to fester.
The one government presumably in the best position to comment on red mercury has
been truly schizophrenic on the issue, with some highly ranked Russian officials
dismissing red mercury as the modern equivalent of UFOs, while others lament the
ongoing theft of a treasured national resource. In the best traditions of doublespeak,
sometimes the same person utters completely contradictory viewpoints.
Last August, for example, Security Ministry spokesman Andrei Chernenko reported to
the media on the initial successes of Operation Tral, which was designed to combat a
very real and pervasive smuggling problem. As reported in transcript form by Tass,
Chernenko announced that Tral had uncovered "a whole number of large-scale thefts at
leading state-run industrial plants," as well as "the existence of a well-organized
network of criminal gangs specializing in the export of strategic raw materials."
Neverthless, he added, the rumored thefts of red mercury were untrue because red
mercury "does not exist at all."
Two months later, in a second press conference on the same subject, Chernenko as-
sured his listeners that while Operation Tral had intercepted stolen materials worth 6.5
billion rubles, "no major leaks" of red mercury had occurred.
By December, some Russian politicians were sounding a downright desperate note.
"Some brilliant minds have come up with a new element in the Mendeleyev table,"
Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi told the Seventh Congress of People's
Deputies, using the Russian name for the periodic chart. "They've obtained the
necessary export documents and they're sending abroad this substance, which does
not exist in nature, this so-called red mercury. What is this substance that is being sold
in such volumes and at astronomical prices? Where is the money going? A sufficient
number of documents has been obtained and a serious investigation needs to be
carried out."
A month later, in early January, the Security Ministry was again referring to "the
phantom product" and predicting that "the search for the non-existent substance has no
prospects."
Such on-again, off-again cues may be indicative of nothing more than a greatly
splintered Russian bureaucracy, in which the left hand literally doesn't know what the
right hand is doing. While Rutskai's reference to export documents implies the
existence of red mercury, for example, a deputy addressing the same assemblage a
few days later contended the export licenses were simply a subterfuge for smuggling
other precious materials—principally uranium, plutonium, gold, osmium and iridium—
with high specific gravity’s.
The mixed signals have likewise driven some Western physicists to distraction, as they
attempt to reconcile what is known with what's rumored. "It's a very odd story, and at
first sight it sounds very improbable," acknowledges Frank Barnaby, a noted British
nuclear weapons expert. "But the thing that has to give you pause is the seniority of the
Russians who are claiming it exists and has these applications, and it's very hard to see
these people involved in a hoax."
John Hassard, a lecturer in nuclear physics at Britain's Imperial College and an expert
in nuclear weapons proliferation, is even more skeptical but also reluctant to declare red
mercury a hoax. "If you put a gun to my head and forced me to say whether it's true or
not, I would probably have to say it's not true, but I don't think we can be so cavalier as
to dismiss it," he contends.
Having delivered a perfunctory nod to feet-on-the-ground pragmatism, and despite the
total absence of empirical data, both Barnaby and Hassard have spent a remarkable
amount of time avoiding any appearance of being cavalier. Barnaby postulates a
liquefied form of the compound to which is added, in a reactor or particle accelerator, a
transuranic actinide such as californium 252, "an extremely good emitter" of neutrons.
Hassard muses that antimony and mercury are both very heavy atoms which, when
joined, create a lattice of "boxes" just about the size of plutonium atoms— "and that
makes me think you might be able to drift plutonium into it. Do that and you overcome,
in one stroke, the problems of thermodynamics in the implosion of your nuclear
weapon."
American scientists, more insulated than their British counterparts from all the
cloak-and-dagger intrigue, have been slower to explore red mercury's possibilities but
are no more immune to its seductions. Frank von Hippel, of Princeton University, had
his interest piqued last summer at a London conference at which Evgeny Mikerin, head
of the department of science and technology in Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry, stated
that red mercury exists and is "an exotic radioactive material used in microelectronics."
Yet after visiting the Urals a few weeks ago and failing to turn up a single sample of the
elusive substance, von Hippel confesses he's "more confused about red mercury than I
was before I left—I've heard too many contradictory stories about it."
Tom Neff, a physicist at the Center for International Studies at Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, who also has worked on economic development issues for the past 15
years, visited the Urals in late November, partly to investigate the red mercury stories—
but, like von Hippel saw neither the warheads nor any red mercury. Still, Neff
confesses, he is intrigued by the idea of exploiting the hydrodynamic flow properties of
a heavy liquid to design a nuclear trigger.
"It would take quite a bit of time to figure out if, technically, you could make it work," he
notes. "But it's plausible enough in theory that it would take a lot to shoot it down—right
now, you're basically asking people to invent bombs in a way that they haven't been
invented before, and to see if they work, based only on anecdotal evidence."
Yet both von Hippel and Neff point to what may be red mercury's true progenitor: not
Russian science, but a disastrous Russian economy. "There are a lot of people
exploiting the notoriety of this material," observes von Hippel. "The whole place is on
the verge of anarchy," adds Neff, citing dismal salaries, rampant inflation and literally
hundreds of thousands of effectively unemployed scientists and engineers. "Everyone
wants you to think that there's some problem because then you'll get someone in the
West to respond with help. And there's some logic to that, and more so as the place
gets worse and worse."
Given so many impulses for its continued existence—Third World demand for a nuclear
shortcut, Russian demands for hard currency and an economic environment ripe for
scam artists, con men and grifters—red mercury may have been an inevitable
fabrication. What may be most intriguing, however, is the remarkably soft response it
has received from U.S. officials.
A year ago, when CIA director Robert M. Gates was asked about red mercury by the
Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, "he gave the standard pat answer," says a
committee staffer: " 'We have seen the reports, we have not seen any hard evidence to
substantiate the reports, but we take all the reports seriously.' " Such equivocation, he
adds, seems to have become a standard "cover-your-butt" response by an agency that
was severely criticized for its poor analysis of Iraqi military strength two years ago, but
one consequence has been continued confusion and concern by U.S. policy makers on
the subject.
"It's something that's bedeviled everybody," the staffer explains. "The chronic nature of
the reports is troubling because hoaxes usually die, but this thing keeps going. And
there's a troubling combination here that's got everybody worried, because there's a
strong incentive to sell on the supply side and strong demand on the buy side." The
committee has tentatively agreed to revisit the issue Feb. 24, when it plans to meet with
the new CIA director, James Woolsey.
Off the record, however, intelligence officials say they have highly pragmatic reasons
for not shooting down the red mercury myth. "We don't think red mercury is a very
useful thing," acknowledges a government expert on nuclear proliferation issues who
asks not to be identified, "because it appears to us that the smugglers are selling a
product that won't do what they say it will do. But it's useful to us, because as this
trafficking continues it's possible to glean other useful information, such as the extent of
smuggling networks and of various potential buyers' nuclear intentions."
Other U.S. agencies, however, have had little compunction about declaring that red
mercury is only the latest version of an alchemist's perfervid dreams. "The exorbitant
prices being asked for this alleged critical material is [sic] indicative of a profit-motivated
scam," avers the Department of Energy's office of threat assessment, in a statement
prepared in response to Barron's inquiries. "Careful consideration" of the claims made
on behalf of the substance, it adds, manes it "apparent that red mercury does not exist."
In the end, there is something wonderfully apt in having a mercury compound at the
center of so much intrigue. For it was Mercury, Roman god of science and commerce,
who also served as patron of rogues, vagabonds and thieves.
***************************************-
THE RED MENACE To the Editor:
Andy Zipser's article ("Nuclear Shell Game? Feb. 15) was very interesting. We became
aware of "red mercury liquid" in the fall of 1984, but in a different context.
Our company is one of the largest suppliers of mercury chemicals in the United States.
At the time, we were located on Long Island. We received a telephone call from a
person claiming to be "Prince Shami, the financial minister of Nigeria." He said that he
needed red mercury liquid in order to color Nigerian money. In addition, the mercury
would stop fungus growth on this money.
Not knowing anything about the material, we did some research before meeting with
this person in Manhattan. When we met, I tried to explain that the material did not exist,
but he insisted he wanted it and would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.
During our conversation, he showed me a wad of money that he had his pocket. The
denominations were high, and the wad was huge.
Two weeks after the meeting. telephoned the Nigerian Embassy number he had given
me, but the people there claimed they hadn't heard of him.
Since then, we have received approximately five calls per month from people all over
the world wanting to buy red mercury liquid." They claim .It’s good for voodoo, for
medicine for nuclear business (as described in the Barron's article) and for other
unusual applications. I think its real purpose is an ingredient in a commercial sting.
BOB BLUMENTHAL Chemical Division
Noah Technologies Corp.
San Antonio
-------------
Red Mercury Is Hot, But the Question Is: What Exactly Is It?
* * *
A Russian Scientist Hawks It For Big Money, He Says, With Yeltsin's Sanction
By Aadignatius
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
YEKATERINBURG, Russia
It is the most dangerous substance on the world market, promising a way for rogue
nations to leapfrog into the nuclear club. Or, it's an elaborate hoax. Take your pick.
The substance is "red mercury," a material with an aura of mystery and international
intrigue. Shadowy Russian businessmen vie for licenses to export it to buyers in Africa,
Asia and the Middle East. But nobody is saying exactly what red mercury is, or even
exactly how it might be used.
The stuff, its makers claim, is the breakthrough ingredient for making cutrate nuclear
bombs as small as watermelons. By various accounts, it can also produce antiradar
coatings or propel rockets.
If it's fake, then why are businessmen in the former Soviet Union signing contracts for
red mercury that in some instances involve billions of dollars?
The Truest Believer
Oleg Sadytov is more than just a believer. The 39 year old scientist claims to have been
producing red mercury a complicated synthesis of mercury and oxidized antimony
for more than a year at his factory in the Urals.
While many scientists are suspicious about red mercury's touted properties, the claims
of the latter day alchemist have garnered considerable attention for Mr. Sadykov's
company, Promekologia. A small and unprofitable environmental concern,
Promekologia's main earlier activity had been a feeble attempt to grow tomatoes in
permafrost.
A visit to Promekologia's offices in Yekaterinburg merely deepens the mystery. Heavy
steel doors and an unsmiling security detail deny entry to a visitor. But Alexander
Popov, a disheveled chemical engineer, finally emerges from Promekologia's secure
inner sanctum and leads his visitor past a number of starkly empty offices to a
conference room. Gaining access to this place, however, doesn't mean getting to see a
sample of the fabled substance.
"We don't actually keep any red mercury here," explains Mr. Popov. He declines,
moreover, to disclose the whereabouts of Promekologia's production facility. "In Russia,
we have a saying: 'The less you know the better you sleep."
Six hundred miles west, in an apartment in Moscow, Mr. Sadykov turns out to be
somewhat more forthright. Promekologia's director says he has produced a test batch of
five kilograms of "Red Mercury 20.20" that, he says, would fetch 5300,000 a kilogram
on the world market.
It is sums like that, and outlandish claims for the substance, that make many in the
international scientific community skeptical. "Take a bogus material, give it an enigmatic
name, exaggerate its properties, mix in some intrigue and voila: a half baked scam,"
says Vic Hogsett, technology analyst at the U.S. nuclear weapons research center in
Los Alamos, N.M.
"Western experts don't believe it," concedes Mr. Sadykov, a tall man with intense eyes
and a penchant for dark suits and flashy pink ties. "But remember, five minutes before
plastic was first synthesized, scientists didn't believe that was possible either." Mr. Sady
Lov, however, has no red mercury on hand to show off.
The director does produce two curious documents, both of which turn out to be
authentic. The first is a classified decree from Mr. Sadykov's longtime acquaintance,
Boris Yeltsin. Issued last year, the decree grants Promekologia the exclusive right to
produce, buy and export red mercury for a period of three years tax free. The Russian
president thus would seem to be a believer, too.
The second document is even more impressive. It is a contract Promekologia signed
last March to export 84 tons of red mercury for $2 .2 billion. Not bad for a company with
sales last year of $1,200.
The buyer is a concern in Van Nuys, Calif., registered as API International Inc. Mr.
Sadykov says the company is a purchasing front for "about 50 Fortune 500
corporations" that plan to use red mercury for peaceful purposes. He declines to say
just what they might be.
Efforts to track down API lead to a car parts shop in suburban Los Angeles. There,
API's president, J.C. Godinez, refers all questions to his New York CitY lawyer, Edward
Sousa.
I was nervous when I first got Involved," says Mr. Sousa, who arranges meeting at
midnight in a Manhattan hotel didn't want to deal with anything that would blow up the
world."
Once convinced that red mercury wasn't dangerous and has only peaceful potential
uses, the American lawyer a excepted the task of trying to get the substance legally out
of Russia and in Switzerland, where it is to be tested government labs. The AP partners,
says, plan to use red mercury to inject in oil wells, to break up clotting and pump o
additional crude.
"But I'm not a scientist," Mr. Sou' concedes. "You could show me red ski polish, and I
wouldn't know."
Unpersuaded Scientific Elite
The oil well application doesn't ho much water with Russia's scientific elite the Academy
of Sciences in Moscow.
"You want red mercury? Well, here some," says Lev Niselson, laboratory chi at
Moscow's Institute of Rare Elements, As he holds up a vial of reddish powder. "And I'll
sell it to you cheap."
The balding academician dissolves in laughter. He concocted the powder himself by
mixing mercury with iodine, and I suspects that most of what is touted around the world
as red mercury isn't much more than that. If there is red mercury, he say it has no
practical value evident to him.
For two years, bureaucrats and perspective traders have sent purported chemical
analyses of red mercury to Mr. Niselson and a colleague, Ywri Buslayev, Russian
chemistry expert. The analysis seem to suggest the dawning of a new age of
supermetals with extraordinary storing capabilities. But each time, the two men have
found what they consider fatal flaws contradictions in the analyses l and have rejected
them as bogus. |
Alternative Theories
"Red mercury absolutely does not exist," says Mr. Buslayev, who has his own theory as
to the meaning of the mystery. l money laundering. Others contend that "red mercury"
is a cover for the export of other sensitive materials. maybe uranium or even gold. But
there is at least one expert who, perhaps with tongue in cheek says red mercury might
be for real.
Tom Neff, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls himself an
agnostic on the issue but wants to believe He is serious enough about it to have given a
Russian colleague in the Urals $100 to find him a red mercury sample. "That was a long
time ago," Mr. Neff says. "Hey," he adds after a pause, "that guy's still got my money!"
More seriously convinced is Frank Barnaby, a British nuclear scientist currently m
Russia searching for red mercury. "I used to think it was a hoax," he says. "But I now
accept that it may be possible to construct a nuclear weapon with this material." And
what about Mr. Yeltsin's decree, which his office confirms is legitimate? Doesn't that
suggest that people at the highest levels of government with access to secret
information believe red mercury is legit? "I think it was an error, " says Ivan Materov,
Russia's first deputy trade minister.
Mr. Sadytov contends that claims that red mercury doesn't exist can be traced to
criminal and political groups" that, he l says, have been exporting the material | since
the 1970s and don't want their monopoly broken. Among the alleged conspirators:
senior KGB officers, Communist ' Party leaders, military brass.
For now, Mr. Sadytov cultivates al Image of secrecy, which might not be bar for
business. He won't discuss his back ground, except to say that he once worked in a
classified antiweapons program.
But for a man of science, he has quirks. He turns white when a visitor pulls out a
camera. "We've done research that proves that extrasensory experts can kill a living
being from 1,000 kilometers with just a photo," Mr. Sadykov explains. "In fact, I myself
can do this." And, as we know, he can also make red mercury.
--
donald j haarmann
------------------------------------
What passes for woman's intuition is
often nothing more than man's transparency.
George Jean Nathan
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
> What is this red mercury thing? Is it merely science fiction that got out of
> hand?
>
> http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1080852006
A scam.
If there is the slightest truth to the matter it may refer to some
mercury compound or alloy being used in Russian nuclear weapons as a
medium to shape compression waves from normal explosives.
Dirk
|||new...@nezumi.demon.co.uk
Even though it is a brilliant scam for separating the gullible and
greedy from their money and the News of the World is famous for its
entrapment stings I am not sure people on trial should be let off so
lightly. There are no known legitimate civilian uses for "red mercury".
And for that matter no known military applications either, but the
reason for buying it is pretty clear. Even a casual internet search
will show the dumbest criminal that if it existed it would be the
ultimate terrorist weapon. Lucky for us all that it does not!!!
Real red mercury compounds include Cinnabar - used as a pigment since
ancient times.
http://www.galleries.com/minerals/sulfides/cinnabar/cinnabar.htm
http://webmineral.com/data/Cinnabar.shtml
I wonder if the result of the trial would have been any different had
the material they tried to buy been something else in the WMD class
that really does exist like mustard gas or sarin.
Regards,
Martin Brown