“FEDS SEARCH BASKETBALL ARENA FOR DOMESTIC NUCLEAR TERRORISTS IN THEIR OWN MARCH MADNESS
As UConn meets Purdue, the national security state wants you worried about a different faceoff.
AS THE NCAA finishes up March Madness, another type of madness is unfolding as the U.S. military retools its weapons of mass destruction response apparatus to focus not on attacks by familiar foreign terror groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS, but by American citizens.
Late last month, for the first time ever, the National Guard conducted an
exercise simulating a frantic search for a nuclear dirty bomb at a basketball and hockey arena in Trenton, New Jersey. What made the exercise different from hundreds of such similar war games held since 9/11 is that purely domestic terrorists were identified as the perpetrators.
“The FBI has just received intelligence that a well-resourced domestic terrorist group has planted bombs, including one with cesium-137 — a radioactive isotope — in the arena,” the military
said about the scenario for the exercise. “The clock is ticking.”
The CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton is a multipurpose facility able to seat 8,000. The arena
aims to attract more college basketball matches, having hosted Princeton vs. Rutgers in November.
The mock nuclear materials search took place from March 25-28 and involved National Guard “Civil Support Teams” from New Jersey, Delaware, and Idaho; other military teams; city, county, and state police and hazardous material teams; and federal government agencies, including the local FBI field office and experts from the national Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.…
…As an example of the domestic extremist threat to nuclear security, the Stimson reports cites the case of Ashli Babbitt. An Air Force veteran who participated in the storming of the Capitol building before being killed by a law enforcement officer, the report points to Babbitt’s employment at a nuclear plant as “troubling — especially when considering the appeal of nuclear infrastructure as a target for extremists.”
That’s of course a long shot from saying Babbitt had any intention of targeting that nuclear infrastructure — which there’s no evidence for — in order to, say, construct a dirty bomb.
But that won’t stop the government from playing its own game.”