What is a Dirty Bomb?
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I want to bring in Joie Chen in Atlanta. She has more on the military campaign, some analysis from today's Pentagon briefing -- Joie.</s>JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, right, as a former Pentagon reporter yourself, Wolf, we certainly got the very detailed update on what happened at today's Pentagon briefing. But we want to take a minute now and look at a little bit of detail from today's briefing from Secretary Rumsfeld and get a little detail now from our CNN military analyst, General David Grange, who is with us from Chicago. General, I know that in the course of your active duty in the Army, you had done some work in counterterrorism. So I want you to help our viewers understand more about this dirty bomb business. It keeps coming up. It came up with Secretary Rumsfeld today. Can you just put a little fine point on what a dirty bomb really is?</s>RETIRED GENERAL DAVID GRANGE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, it's the ability to jury-rig an explosive device using conventional explosives to spread radiological material. And with the proliferation right now of weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, the possibility does definitely exist. And with the transnational crime that's going around the world right now, the power some of these criminal organizations that are in that of kind of activity to terrorist elements, it is something to be aware of and precautions must be taken.</s>CHEN: We think a lot of nuclear fuel in Russia. But in this sort of dirty bomb, suitcase bomb type material, it could be any of a number of radioactive elements, couldn't it? It could be spent fuel. It could even be something as simple as some medical, radioactive material.</s>GRANGE: It could be. And it could be just recent nuclear waste material that's confiscated, stolen, bartered for. You know, it is not as simple as you may think, maybe, to get it into the country, but it probably could be brought in or stolen in our own country, though we have better security measures than a lot of places overseas like possibly in Pakistan or Russia or elsewhere. But have you it take precautionary measures and I'm sure our government is doing that. But I think the possibility definitely exists and we ought to support, as American citizens, any kind of counterproliferation means that is brought up either in our homeland or abroad.</s>CHEN: When I understand this notion of a dirty bomb, a suitcase type bomb, something that is really transportable. This appears to be something that actually uses a normal sort of explosive, say TNT, something of a conventional explosive and then tacks on radioactive material on top of it?</s>GRANGE: Right. The conventional explosives, C-4, TNT, dynamite, would spread the material and contaminate an area. It wouldn't have an explosive effect of a nuclear device, but it would contaminate areas. And though it maybe a very low yield, a few people would probably be injured or pick up the results of this contamination. And just like the anthrax terror and chaos that was spread with those few incidents, it would have the terrorist effect of inducing fear.</s>CHEN: So, really, the important thing is not necessarily how many people might be killed, how many people might be deliberately effected by the radioactivity, but just the psychological impact for a lot of us, the notion of a nuclear device.</s>GRANGE: Right, or in this case really, a radiological device. But the point is the psychological effect, as you said, Joie, is the thing that, really, is what the terrorist wants to induce upon the American people or any other of our allies.</s>CHEN: That is what terrorism all about, isn't it? General David Grange, our CNN military analyst, thank you very much for your insight on that. We will continue to look further into this notion of dirty bombs. Now let's go back to Wolf in Washington.</s>BLITZER: Thank you very much, Joie.