Major Crimes as Analogs to Potential Threats to Nuclear Facilities and Programs

This Note is part of an ongoing investigation into the problem of potential and actual criminal adversaries of U.S. nuclear facilities and programs. Because of the low level of criminal activity against nuclear targets in the United States, The Rand Corporation has employed an analogous methodology to study this subject. Rand developed over several years a surrogate data base consisting of nonnuclear crimes that are analogous to potential incidents against nuclear facilities and programs. The data base contains 121 sophisticated and high-value burglaries, robberies, and other "conventional" crimes. Data on 45 of these crimes were taken directly from an earlier Rand study and an additional 76 crimes were selected for this document. Most of the information comes from newspaper and journal articles, and is subject to their errors and limitations. The data base was analyzed for information such as insider involvement, number of perpetrators, value of loot, type of crime, violence, coercion of employees, and use of deception. The purpose of the document is not to declare what should be done by those responsible for the security of nuclear facilities and materials, but to emphasize areas of particular vulnerability as observed in the analogous data base. Among the inferences and observations are the following: the higher the value of the loot the more likely that insiders participated; the higher the value of the loot the more perpetrators are likely to be involved; crimes involving insiders have an unusually high rate of apprehension; insiders can pose a great threat to nuclear security for a variety of reasons and in a number of ways; a high number of crimes occur while loot is in transit; crimes employing deception or coercion are very successful; his authority and/or access often determines whether an insider will use deception; and crimes of coercion usually have as their victims employees with authority and access. Synopses of each of the 121 crimes are provided.
This report replaces ADE750244.