Re: suitcase nukes: Sy Hersh wrote a scary piece on this for The New Yorker or The Atlantic a few yrs. ago as well.
A friend who read one of those books a few yrs. ago (not the Laurie Garrett one, Richard Preston?) on bio-chem warfare says that when Putin came in he was alarmed at the amount of research the Soviets had done on bio-chem weaponry and the stocks they had and he shut it down.
-- Michael Pugliese