After appearing in numerous film and TV programs and even creeping its way into American political discourse, the suitcase nuke, a nuclear bomb small enough to be easily hidden, is unlikely to exist, according to experts. The revelation left the anchors of the Fox News program Fox & Friends more than a little disappointed.
"You mean '24' isn't true," Co-host Page Kelly inquired, referring to Fox's national security-themed prime time hit, starring Kiefer Sutherland as CIA agent Jack Bauer. "'24's my favorite show."
"It is a little bit of a let down," agreed Greg Kelly.
Others likely to be let down by this most-recent reality check on perceived threats to the United States are politicians and political candidates eager to use force on nations they believe would supply such a device to terrorists. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice famously said of Iraq's alleged nuclear program in 2003, also proven not to exist. Though she was not making reference to a specific nuclear device, the suitcase bomb, ever-present in the public mind since 9/11, may have made the idea seem plausible to so many.
The conversation on Fox & Friends then turned to other disappointments, this time at the box office. The group discussed the lackluster ticket sales of Robert Redford's new political thriller, Lions for Lambs, explaining that people "are seeing these kind of [political] talking points from 'Lions for Lambs' done better with Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson and here on this program."
You can read the full Associated Press Report on suitcase nukes at this link.
The following video is from Fox's Fox & Friend's, broadcast on November 11, 2007.