Feds Search Basketball Arena for Domestic Nuclear Terrorists in Their Own March Madness

As the NCAA finishes up March Madness, another type of madness is unfolding as the U.S. military retools its weapons of mass destruction response apparatus to focus not on attacks by familiar foreign terror groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS, but by American citizens. 

Late last month, for the first time ever, the National Guard conducted an exercise simulating a frantic search for a nuclear dirty bomb at a basketball and hockey arena in Trenton, New Jersey. What made the exercise different from hundreds of such similar war games held since 9/11 is that purely domestic terrorists were identified as the perpetrators.

“The FBI has just received intelligence that a well-resourced domestic terrorist group has planted bombs, including one with cesium-137 — a radioactive isotope — in the arena,” the military said about the scenario for the exercise. “The clock is ticking.”

The CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton is a multipurpose facility able to seat 8,000. The arena aims to attract more college basketball matches, having hosted Princeton vs. Rutgers in November.

The mock nuclear materials search took place from March 25-28 and involved National Guard “Civil Support Teams” from New Jersey, Delaware, and Idaho; other military teams; city, county, and state police and hazardous material teams; and federal government agencies, including the local FBI field office and experts from the national Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

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Established during the Clinton administration in 1998, the National Guard Civil Support Teams are charged with “consequence management” in the event of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear — known as CBRN — incident. The 20- to 25-member teams can also be assigned to “incidents of national significance” and “national security events” that involve intentional and unintentional CBRN releases. They have been deployed on standby for the Super Bowl and Boston Marathon, as well as for NCAA tournaments. The teams were extensively employed during Covid-19.

The exercise scenario last month resembles the feverish plot of the post-9/11 TV series “24,” which dramatized the concept of a ticking time bomb and the extraordinary measures it might justify. (“24” also had its own sports tie-in, having aired its pilot episode right after the Super Bowl.) But “24” portrayed the dirty bomb plots as being masterminded by foreign terror groups similar to those that carried out 9/11. By pointing the finger at a “domestic terrorist group” — that is, Americans — the U.S. military outpaces not just Hollywood, but also the facts.

Though the FBI says in its fiscal year 2025 budget request to Congress that during 2023, its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate “disrupted 42 incidents; made 62 arrests; and had 43 indictments, 56 sentencings and 56 convictions,” none involved actual nuclear materials or such a dirty bomb. There’s no evidence that any domestic terrorist group has ever been well-resourced enough to construct a nuclear dirty bomb. But that hasn’t stopped Washington from building on January 6 to feed its current domestic extremism obsession and fearmongering about it.

In November, the Washington-based Stimson Center published a report, “The Threat from Within,” that hypes the purported insider threat to nuclear security posed by “domestic violent extremists.” The report is funded by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The Stimson Center also receives funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (the Defense Department agency charged with weapons of mass destruction).

“The January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol revealed the flaws in a system designed to weed out unsuitable candidates for sensitive work protecting nuclear materials, weapons, facilities, technology and personnel,” the Stimson report’s executive summary says. 

The report acknowledges a shift from foreign to domestic terrorism, saying, “Rather than focusing on international extremists with foreign ideological motives, federal agencies and law enforcement have begun to recognize the prevalence of domestic violent extremist threats to national security and critical infrastructure, including the nuclear sector.”

As an example of the domestic extremist threat to nuclear security, the Stimson reports cites the case of Ashli Babbitt. An Air Force veteran who participated in the storming of the Capitol building before being killed by a law enforcement officer, the report points to Babbitt’s employment at a nuclear plant as “​​troubling — especially when considering the appeal of nuclear infrastructure as a target for extremists.”

That’s of course a long shot from saying Babbitt had any intention of targeting that nuclear infrastructure — which there’s no evidence for — in order to, say, construct a dirty bomb. 

But that won’t stop the government from playing its own game.