In an aircraft hangar at Joint Base Andrews, just outside of Washington, DC, one of the government's most secretive groups gathered recently to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Though there were drinks, cake and speeches, right from the start, it was clear this was not an ordinary birthday party.
"Please note that this is an unclassified event, so please understand that there is a lot that our people are not going to be able to discuss," Rick Christensen, the director of the National Nuclear Security Administration's office of nuclear incident response told the small crowd sitting in folding chairs.
The group is known as the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). It's made primarily of people who work elsewhere in the government—scientists, federal law enforcement personnel, and regulators—who all take time out of their day jobs to prepare for a nuclear incident. Think of it as a volunteer fire department – except the volunteers have high-level security clearances and they respond to nuclear threats.
NEST has always kept a low profile because almost everything it does related to nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism is classified, and because it doesn't want to alarm people.
But in an era when the Pentagon says the world is facing new nuclear threats and challenges, the group is trying to be slightly more open about its mission.
"We are always ready, 24-7, and always prepared to deploy," says Wendin Smith, the Deputy Under Secretary for Counterterrorism and Counterproliferation at the Department of Energy, which runs NEST. She hopes talking more openly about the mission might help people feel more assured, as well as deter adversaries who may be out to cause nuclear mayhem.
Cold War origin story
The history of the team sounds like it belongs in a spy thriller.
It all began in 1974, when a person going by the name "Captain Midnight" threatened to set off a nuclear bomb somewhere in Boston unless they were paid $200,000.
Government scientists from the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories rushed to an airbase near Boston, but missed flights and problems with their equipment meant they never actually entered the city. The crisis ended when the FBI left a bag containing phony bills at the ransom spot, but nobody came. The incident was deemed a hoax, according to the 2009 book Defusing Armageddon, which details the history of the NEST group.
Then-president Gerald Ford was appalled, and six months later the government created NEST to aid in the response to, "lost or stolen nuclear weapons and special nuclear materials, nuclear bomb threats, and radiation dispersal threats," according to the secret memorandum that set up the team.
It quickly found work. In 1978, NEST deployed in Canada's remote Northwest Territories to recover debris from a crashed Soviet reconnaissance satellite that was powered by uranium. A year later, NEST helicopters circled over the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, after one of the plant's reactors partially melted down. At the time, little was known about how much radiation had leaked from the plant, and it was NEST who helped collect the necessary data to guide evacuation orders.
In 2011, NEST experts and equipment flew to Fukushima, Japan, after a nuclear power plant there melted down and spewed a plume of radioactivity across the countryside.
The mission was "to help the Japanese government understand what is being released from the damaged reactors, and where is that plume going, where is it deposited on the ground," says Jay Tilden, the DOE's head of intelligence and counterintelligence who until recently ran NEST.
NEST does more than survey areas for radioactivity. Teams also train to search for and disarm nuclear weapons that are lost or damaged. And they learn how to evaluate other terrorist threats—for example, using nuclear material to make a so-called "dirty bomb."
There's less that can be openly discussed about those missions, but, Tilden says, NEST doesn't want to be seen as a shadowy government agency flying around in black helicopters. In fact, when the group purchased new helicopters a few years ago, he explicitly avoided the color.
"We didn't even want them dark gray because they look military," he says. "We wanted to be very distinct. We're a civil agency and when those aircraft are flying they're flying largely for a public health and safety mission."
The aircraft have a two-toned, blue-and-gray color scheme, and the government agents who fly them around aren't exactly men in black either. They are folks like Jacqueline Brandon, a physical chemist who works as a mission manager for NEST.
"When I found out as a scientist I get to fly in a helicopter and do real national security missions, I was like, 'sign me up right away!' " Brandon recalls.
Her job is to sit in the back of the helicopter scanning for signs of radioactivity as the helicopter flies low to the ground.
"To me it's like a rollercoaster ride, I love it," she says.
Constantly watching
She's airborne a lot. This year alone, NEST aircraft have flown above the Super Bowl, the Boston Marathon and both Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Part of their job is to monitor large events like these even when there's no specific threat.
And then there's the calls they haven't planned for.
"They happen periodically," she says. When they do, "we'll pack up all of our gear and be up and be in the air in four hours and flying over whatever we're trying to fly over."
Brandon didn't want to get into too many specifics about what might spur a NEST team into action, but Smith, the current head of NEST, was willing to talk in broad strokes.
"We don't provide the details but I would say on a weekly basis there's either an unknown event that triggers the deployment of a NEST team or a question from a local responder," she says.
Smith says nuclear materials are more a part of daily life than most people may realize. They're used in oil and gas drilling, and in a lot of medical applications. Sometimes people are even injected with radioactive dye to aid with medical imaging.
In fact, somebody with radioactive dye in their body caused a recent NEST response. A team was called out after local police found a radioactive puddle in a fast food parking lot somewhere in America.
Smith says they quickly identified the source. "If somebody doesn't use a public restroom and happens to alleviate their need in a parking lot, then that can cause a troubled signature if there is indeed an isotope, a medical isotope involved," she says.
Of course NEST prepares for far worse. Smith is less open about those dark scenarios, but she says, "the fact that people understand that NEST exists...is important to help people sleep at night."
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