As about a dozen cases involving missing or deceased American nuclear scientists have come to light, a retired high-level FBI official says some of them fit a pattern that he considers suspicious.  The disappearances are highly suspect.

     "The missing [and] disappearance thing is suspicious inherently," said Chris Swecker, who served as assistant director of the FBI. "What they were working on would certainly, without a doubt, be a target of a hostile foreign intelligence service like Russia or China. It could be Iran, could be Pakistan."  Swecker believes the six deaths that have been widely reported don't have much in common, and he doesn't believe they're connected.

     While Swecker isn't convinced that there's a conspiracy afoot even among the missing scientists, he agrees that authorities should be looking for links in the disappearances, given the high-value, sensitive technology that they all worked with or near.  The disappearance of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland earlier this year set off the cascade of theories about the missing and dead scientists. He was the former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, and had connections to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where top-secret nuclear research is conducted.

     He vanished in New Mexico after leaving his home with only a pair of boots and a handgun. He left his phone, keys and glasses behind.  "I'm just saying that ... the FBI would have interest in anything that happened to them because of what they were working on," he said. "And, in fact, [with] McCasland, the FBI showed up uninvited that very afternoon. '