Maurice Hinchey: “Mr. Chairman, I think it is true that the real threat to our security does come from the former Soviet Union, nuclear…”

“Mr. Chairman, I think it is true that the real threat to our security does come from the former Soviet Union, nuclear threat to our security does come from the former Soviet Union, but not in the way that some of our friends and colleagues imagine. It does, in fact, come in a way that was described for us an hour or two ago by the former chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from California. He talked about the ability to smuggle into the country, in the tons of contraband that cross our borders daily, a nuclear device, or parts of a nuclear device, to be assembled here and then set off possibly by terrorist or terrorist organization. That constitutes the real most immediate threat to our security. Now coincidentally, just within the last several weeks in Czechoslovakia authorities seized an automobile and the contents of that automobile. In that care were approximately 6 pounds of highly enriched uranium which were smuggled out of the Soviet Union by a Russian, a Ukrainian, and a citizen of Belarus. They were trying to take that 6 pounds of enriched uranium and sell it to terrorists on the open market. Now there are within the former Soviet Union at least 150 sites that contain enriched uranium from which those people, or people like them, can obtain that fissionable material, take it out of the former Soviet Union and put it on the marketplace for terrorist organizations.”