Customer Reviews

One Point Safe

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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 ".

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.

Andrew & Leslie Cockburn gives us an explosive expose of the real story of Russia's nuclear stockpile and its security system (or lack thereof) and the US attempts to remedy the situation. From high-level turf fights in Washington to a Oak Ridge Laboratory team's feverish efforts to retrieve weapons-grade uranium from Kazakhstan before Iran gets it, they provide a thoughtful and omminous tale that is more stranger than fiction. Although it tends to slow down a little towards the end, overall it is a compelling tale of an important situation all Americans should be aware of today.

Very interesting introduction to the topic of nuclear smuggling, and the dangerous deterioration of the military in the former Soviet Union. We in the military often spoke of the USSR as "a Third-World nation, but with nukes". That assessment is more true than ever, according to the authors. Grinding poverty, crime - both petty and organized - and an undisciplined, unreliable military. Bad as Russia now is, we really, really want it to stay the only nuclear Third-World nation (OK, except India). The authors' depiction of internal US politics and agency wrangling over nuclear terrorism is depressing. Read this book after seeing Cockburn's movie "The Peacemaker", and you can put an actor's face to many of the real characters.

The Cockburns have found an attractive heroine in Jessica Stern and an important issue for national and international debate, but their exaggerations, misstatements of fact, and their treatment of the problem in terms of personalities and the interplay of good and evil in the U.S. government make it very hard to take their writing seriously. There are much better treatments of nuclear terrorism in both fiction and non-fiction. Buy and read them instead.

In a style as gripping as Frederic Forsyth, and without needing to sensationalize, One Point Safe documents just how little control the Russians have kept over their nuclear arsenal. Despite the calamity that portends if former Soviet nuclear weapons fall into the wrong hands, you won't hear much from public officials except soothing reassurances. By interviewing former and present officials here and in Russia who know just how little lies behind those reassurances, Cockburn and Cockburn make clear why nuclear suitcase bombs have not become a salient public issue: neither the Administration nor Congress has any idea what to do about them. If this major public service weren't enough, the authors also give you authentic insight into how bureaucracy works in both Washington and Moscow. A little band of guerilla warriors fights for space in the tiny attention spans of top decision makers preoccupied with partisan infighting over Whitewatergate, campaigngate, Paulagate, while careerists try to block their march into the Oval Office. Brave people risk their lives to remove the latest load of yellowcake lying in an unsecured warehouse in some place you never heard of, before ex-Soviet officers down on their luck plot to steal it for the terrorist market or the Iranians. Ultimately, of course, the careerists win, but the warriors take the fight public in this book. Citizens can only hope that the wrong people haven't bought a bomb in the meanwhile.

The authors have written a very engaging book on the potential for loss of control of nuclear weapons and materials due to the lack of security, crime and poverty in the former Soviet Union. The most complete, unclassified review of the "Loose Nuc's" issue ever published. Although the book primarily focuses on the potential of nuclear weapons and weapons making materials falling into the wrong hands, it should provoke disaster scenarios in the reader's mind that will have them burning up the phone lines to the politicians. The amount of never before released material contained in this book makes me wonder if the higher echelons of our government are preparing the American public for a potential diaster or fearing a disaster are seeking public support to prevent it.

A great book from start to finish. It reads like a fictional thriller, but it is all for real. Intelligently written and a great read.

If you are interested in national security or in the welfare of you children, this book is must reading. The Cockburns have lobbed a grenade into a complaisant political Washington ... and everyone is pointing fingers. Curiously, no one seems to be disputing their basic premise: that the nuclear stockpile in Russia is in chaos and unless something is done, sooner or later, fissile material is going to end up in the hands of terrorists, criminals, or states like Iraq.