One Point Safe [Hardcover]

Leslie Cockburn (Author), Andrew Cockburn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 1997

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the cold war may have come to an end.  But the deadly Soviet nuclear arsenal--thousands of warheads and hundreds of tons of plutonium--continues to sit virtually unguarded, presenting the world with a new and even more terrifying nuclear threat.  And it's not just criminals, extremists, or terrorists who are now in a position to place us all at risk.

It is also Russia's high military command, who see their colleagues in other departments making millions off the privatization of industry; and it's the officers in charge of underguarded weapons stockpiles, unable to compete with the post-Communist new rich; and it's the very guards manning the night watch, whose bellies ache from hunger. . .

From the vaults of the National Security Council to the headquarters of the mysterious Twelfth Department in the Russian Ministry of Defense, veteran journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn take the reader on a tour of deadly potentialities: couriers crossing Central Europe with suitcases full of materials more lethal than any virus; a Siberian warehouse littered with the raw material of twenty-three thousand Hiroshimas; the fanatical terrorist who has already built one radioactive bomb.  Then it is revealed how U.S. intelligence has realized with horror that among those involved in the business of nuclear smuggling is an organization born out of the old KGB, headed by a man described by one high-ranking official as "the most dangerous man in the world."

Based on firsthand reporting, classified documents, and the personal stories of the men and women on the front lines, One Point Safe makes it frighteningly clear that we're nowhere near as safe as we'd like to think.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

So you thought that the end of the Cold War erased the threat of nuclear annihilation? Think again; according to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, authors of One Point Safe, the world is a more dangerous place than ever. In 1993, in the Ural Mountains, two nuclear warheads disappeared from a weapons plant, and it took three days for officials to notice; in Moscow, more than 80 small bombs are missing from a nuclear arsenal. Who has these weapons? How did they get them? What is the West is doing about it? These questions are at the heart of the Cockburns' story, a chilling tale of the Russian mafia, international terrorists, and a small, heroic band of Washington bureaucrats struggling to make the West come to terms with the threat it faces.

One Point Safe often reads like a thriller, filled with hair-raising tales of nuclear thefts dating back more than 20 years. Descriptions of the 1994 U.S. effort to document the presence of nuclear components in Iraq is particularly vivid, while the Cockburns' behind-the-scenes tour of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's top-secret world is eye-opening, to say the least.

Review

The Cockburns have focused on the sexiest threat--missing or stolen nuclear weapons--when most experts say the bigger problem is the smuggling of nuclear components and technological know-how. Moreover, One Point Safe is silent on perhaps an even more alarming threat: chemical and biological agents, which are easier to conceal and transport than nuclear components. -- The New York Times Book Review, Eric Schmitt

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st Anchor Books ed edition (September 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385485603
• ISBN-13: 978-0385485609
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #929,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Re: nuclear terror policy, the Emperor Has No Clothes!, November 3, 2001

By 

vfrickey (off in the mountains somewhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Point Safe (Hardcover)

Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, the Robert and Suzanne Massie of inside Washington, finally find a subject adequate to their awesome network of connections - the ludicrous and almost totally complete and completely needless lack of a nuclear terror policy in the United States Government during the Administrations of Bill Clinton and of George Bush the Elder.

The Cockburns treat readers of One Point Safe to the unique and dizzying perspective of Energy Department nuclear intelligence specialist and White House policy hotshot Jessica Stern, and Stern turns out to be the Boswell of the incredibly scary era we live in, in which some fifty-odd nuclear bombs which can fit inside of a suitcase are... out there somewhere, lost in Soviet nuclear accounting and waiting for someome like Osama bin Laden to pick them up at a garage sale somewhere in Kazahkstan and use them on the United States.

This book had my complete attention when I picked it up ... long before the horrors of September 11th, the Cockburns managed to overcome any remaining doubt in my mind that America has been a sitting duck for nuclear terrorists for decades.

The authors of One Point Safe overcome even their own overblown journalistic prose, delivering an utterly terrifying true story about the complex network through which it still is presumably all too possible to buy weapons-grade nuclear material, possibly even still possible to buy assembled nuclear weapons, if only you have a few millions of dollars and the right contacts.

I won't spoil the surprise after upsetting surprise in this book, but if you are at all concerned about not becomning a martyr to the stunning stupidity and political corruption which has made nuclear terror against the United States an all-too-real possibility (even a probablility, now) then buy and read One Point Safe. Borrowing it from the library won't be good enough, you'll want to go back to this book again and again, if only to make reality checks of the false reassurances which still manage to ooze from Washington after the drastic remodeling of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center by airliners in 2001. Perhaps we need to re-read it just before each Election Day as well.

This book is an invaluable part of the thinking man's survival kit.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read, June 4, 2003

By 

Shawn Hughes "still prefers paper to pdf" (near Oak Ridge, Tenn.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Point Safe (Hardcover)

I purchased this book some time ago, thinking the title referred to a story about an inherent safety deficiency in early US Nuclear Weapons Systems.

In fact, the book is the account of Project Sapphire, the undertaking of removing a large amount of the former Soviet Unions' poorly - guarded stock of fissile materials. The book, reading like excellent fiction, is chock full of facts and trivia; enough to satisfy even the most technically - oriented reader. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in nuclear or nonproliferation issues. In fact, it was the basis for the movie " the Peacemaker ".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Book That Should Scare the Daylight Out of You, October 21, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: One Point Safe (Hardcover)

In an era of world peace and the new world order, this book highlights the risks of the post cold war world and the threat of nuclear terrorism. The stories about the known capture of nuclear material outside the borders of the former USSR are enough to make you think about resurrecting your parents bomb shelter plans. When you contemplate the cases that are not known it makes you want to leave the planet.

I found myself engrossed in the book to the point of having to return to reality and to remember that the accounts in the book are not fictional. SCARY! A must read.