The Complexity of Intelligence Gathering

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, hundreds of tons of nuclear materials were suddenly unsecured. The new, fragile Russian government had no ability or desire to claim facilities in formerly Soviet states, and it could no longer pay nuclear plant workers. Operatives from rogue states offered cash to purchase uranium and higher nuclear physicists.

Today we talked to Andy Weber, one of the American operatives who helped lock down dangerous nuclear material from Kazakhstan to Georgia to Moldova.

What You’ll Learn

• How did the US secure dangerous nuclear materials?

  
  



• Why didn’t the Department of Energy want the US to acquire them?

  
  



• Why shouldn’t you bring bourbon to Soviet functionaries?

  
  

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