Many years ago, pre-911, I made my living hauling radioactive materials and explosives, lots of explosives. (There’s something you did not know Greg) I did this just about everywhere east of Joplin, Missouri. Since this was home, I brought a lot of this stuff here for the weekends. I never once had an escort on the public highway for this type of load.

I do know that the more sensitive materials were shipped with three man driver teams, one driving, one in the sleeper, and one literally riding shotgun. (All had some level of security clearance) Some of those loads had federal agents following. All these high profile loads were actually unmarked so as to not attract attention. If you see one of these, you will never know what you are looking at. Kind of like seeing a military airplane fly overhead never thinking that it may have a nuke racked inside.

Anyway, the stuff that travels around us everyday would scare you to death if you only knew, and worried about it. I hear trains rumbling through Manassas every night and wonder what just passed my home.

Incidentally, I have seen the casks that have been sitting in pier warehouses in Norfolk, VA for years just waiting to be hauled out to sea and dropped to the ocean bottom. Those casks were as big as my house. I don’t know if they are still sitting there. They were for spent fuel, perhaps from our Naval fleet??? Incredible!

What should really be of concern to us is the fact that all the companies that transport these materials and all sensitive US Government loads were bought up by foreign countries years ago! (Not long after the Johnson years)
Everything that moves under US govt. contract is computer logged and tracked by non-US governments!

That’s right Greg, that load was being tracked, but by whom?

Again, the containers could be empty…we’re assuming they were full, which is pretty unlikely in my experience with nuc material transfer.

As to Flavius Maximus…I have to say aloud there are a lot of folks out there in the criminal world smart enough to figure out how to put together a dirty bomb with rad material that is a lot easier to come by then UF6. Let’s face it…dirty bomb = rad material and explosive. Plenty of construction sites have the explosive material and the rad material is at the same places the kids buy their explosive material.

Let’s face it in 1995 a kid — an Eagle Scout candidate to be correct — put together a radioactive emitter using materials from the house and hardware store. Bad guys aint gonna wait for someone to haul this stuff into their hands…they go get it.

Could these be empty and they just didn’t change the placards? I suppose so.

On the second point, if this transportation corridor is so juicy, someone could just hang out on a bridge over 66 and watch everything, which is a lot more coverage than some random guy driving on the road at the same time would ever get.

I didn’t try to tail anything, and even if I would have wanted to that’s not at all easy in heavy congestion. I had somewhere to go, and as fascinating as this was, I just didn’t have the time and it’s not important to figure out where this is going. It was on the road I commute on. It was hugely unusual. It happened at a time I thought was not well chosen.

And I understand Faisal Gill doesn’t commute on that route.

There are two other possibilities to consider other than just a standard transport of nuclear material.

One, maybe the load of material has been dropped off and the driver just didnt adjust his placards. Certainly the containers could have been empty and our friends were driving empty. I can tell you that there are regular alerts throughout the local and state police communities about radioactive transport so if it isnt being escorted, it probably isn’t material.

Two, is it on the road to get you to notice? Let’s face it now and then you alert the media that you are starting a new security procedure or doing something “different” to combat our enemies with your eyes fully open to see who is watching the new changes, even though they have already been made. Maybe someone wanted to see how far you or Faisal Gil or someone else would follow the trucks and they were tailing those tailing the trucks? Just a thought.