User:Howard C. Berkowitz/Roberts

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John B. Roberts II is a journalist and television producer, who worked in the Reagan White House as a political strategist.

He is a consulting producer for The McLaughlin Group, and has been featured on NBC’s Dateline and in The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.

Roberts is coauthor of a book on the Dalai Lama.

“Nuclear Secrets and the Culture Wars," American Spectator, John B. Roberts, II, “Nuclear Secrets and the Culture Wars,” American Spectator 32, no. 5 (May 1999), pp. 34-39, 76.

This was not Russia in 1995. It was the United States in 1985. The facility was

Pantex, the United States’ main plant for putting together and taking apart nuclear weapons, in Amarillo, Texas – intended to be perhaps the highest-security nuclear site in the United States, if not the world.1 The Pantex inspection took place just after a special project team had finished urgently reviewing security at every site in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex managed by the Department of Energy (DOE). The team found scores of serious security vulnerabilities and made 94 recommendations for action to improve security throughout the DOE complex. The Secretary of Energy at the time launched a major initiative to implement the steps the team called for – an effort that was dubbed Operation Cerberus, after the mythological guardian of the gates of hell. Most of the team’s recommendations were implemented within less than a year, and nearly all were carried out within a few years, at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. The result was substantially and demonstrably improved security – miles of impressive razor-wire fences installed, major barriers put in place, upgraded access controls installed, guard forces beefed up, and more.2 Yet within a few years, complacency was creeping back, security budgets were being cut, and DOE security managers were warning that if immediate actions were not taken to correct the decline,

nuclear weapons and materials could not be adequately secured.3

The $1.5 billion figure is from the American Spectator account, which is an attack on allegedly lax security measures in the Clinton years, and holds up Operation Cerberus as a counter-example from the Reagan years. The notion that all was well with DOE security in the Reagan and Bush years does not stand up to the scrutiny provided in Nuclear Weapons Facilities; President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Science at Its Best, Security at Its Worst: A Report on Security Problems at the U.S. Department of Energy (Washington D.C.: PFIAB, 1999; available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/pfiab/ as of 13 December 2006).

John B. Roberts II’s article for the Washington Times (March 1, 2005)

Close Mexico Border to Terrorists… CIA Director Porter Goss' warning that al Qaeda might try to use "chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons" in his Feb. 17 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee overshadowed a more urgent intelligence warning. At the same hearing, Vice Admiral James Loy, deputy secretary of Homeland Security, testified that al Qaeda has changed tactics for inserting terrorist teams into the United States. According to Adm. Loy, al Qaeda plans to use Mexico's professional people smugglers — known as coyotes — to infiltrate terrorists across our southern border. Adm. Loy's information is based on recent interrogations and has been confirmed by ongoing counterterrorist operations. But Adm. Loy's Mexican bombshell didn't generate widespread media coverage because it was buried in written testimony instead of being delivered in telegenic sound bites. Al Qaeda's departure from its previous modus operandi means the organization intends to attack us using new methods for which we are unprepared. Adm. Loy attributes al Qaeda's interest in using Mexico as a springboard to the conclusion by al Qaeda's leaders that their "operational security" will be enhanced. They are right. Under current conditions, terrorists can easily enter the United States undetected in the stream of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who cross from Mexico annually. At present, the United States has no defense against this contingency. Washington's decades-long policy of benign neglect of illegal immigration has spawned a global infrastructure of underworld industries to facilitate the flow of illegal aliens [and terrorists].

This underground pipeline originates in countries as far away as China, Brazil and Nigeria, where professional smugglers charge thousands of dollars to transport aliens to the United States. Many of these smuggling networks converge in Mexico, where coyotes intimately familiar with the gaps in our security take over the task of transporting aliens beyond the border into our cities. Aliens who prefer can travel to Mexico's border towns and hire their own coyotes as guides for the final passage. To assist them, the Mexican Foreign Ministry has prepared a handbook for illegal aliens. Once inside the United States, newly arrived migrants are directed to forgers who create phony documentation, including Social Security cards and birth certificates. These documents satisfy employer requirements and, in most states, are more than sufficient to obtain a driver's license. Some states will knowingly license undocumented aliens. Illegal aliens can also obtain credit cards from sub-prime lenders. With a driver's license and a credit card, an alien can open a bank account, lease a safehouse, rent a car, buy weapons, or purchase an airline ticket for use in a suicide mission…

If Mr. Goss' warnings about al Qaeda attacks using weapons of mass destruction are right, we can't afford to lose time getting control over the illegal immigration pipeline into and inside our country before they deliver the next band of al Qaeda killers to our doorstep.