A year ago this month, armed raiders broke into the Pelindaba nuclear research facility in South Africa, where that nation stores its weapons-grade nuclear material, in circumstances that strongly suggest inside knowledge and even insider complicity in the raid. They shot an employee in the chest and made a clean escape from the supposedly high security facility, and still know one knows who they were and there aren't even any worthwhile leads to tracking them down.

Tonight, 60 Minutes talks to Anton Gerber, the shot employee, who only deepens the mystery.

The raiders had detailled knowledge of the security and layout of the plant.

They had breached and shut off a 10,000-volt barbed-wire fence and eluded security cameras and guards at one of the country’s most secure facilities.

As the attackers approached the door, Gerber called security and said they were under attack. "It shouldn't have taken more than three minutes to get there," says Gerber. He says it took 24 minutes to respond to his call. Gerber has filed suit against the Pelindaba facility for damages. Another fact he finds suspicious is that the police never questioned him until 60 Minutes began investigating the story. "It is strange," Gerber tells Pelley.

Theories have included a raid by terrorists, criminals and some kind of highly organised "lover's triangle" revenge attack on Gerber himself. But there have been no arrests, no suspects named, no clues. And what the 60 Minutes piece doesn't reveal is that the raiders almost got what they came for. The NYT, last year, reported:

when four gunmen burst into the room. Mr. Gerber pushed his fiancée under a desk. The attackers shot him in the chest, grabbed a computer and fled, but abandoned their booty as they came under assault by guards.

At no point did the raiders attempt to seize nuclear material - but that computer seems to have been important to their plans. They went right to it, grabbed it and ran. Perhaps it contained details of how South Africa built its nuclear weapons, perhaps incriminating details of their suspected partners in that bomb-building project.

But whatever the real motives and real identities of the raiders, Pelindaba underscored the harsh reality that in facilities across the globe nuclear material is secured, but not all that strongly. Plants in the former Soviet Union, in Pakistan and in South America are judged as especially vulnerable, and could hand a non-state actor - a terrorist group - the knowledge and materials for bomb making. It's a threat that the Nunn-Lugar Act of 1991 and the subsequent Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, focused on the former Soviet states, has tried to address even as the Bush administration has tried to underfund it and to use it as a bargaining piece in posturing over Georgia. It's a subject we know is close to Barrack Obama's heart, as he's seen for himself how loose the security at such facilities can be.

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    Most folks missed it, because the vote came just before the bailout bill, but on Wednesday the US Senate voted 86-13 to approve the India 123 bill, giving India access to US nuclear know-how and materials for the first time since India conducted a nuclear weapons test three decades ago. Both presidential candidates voted for the bill and the House had already passed it 298 to 117. The roll call for the Senate vote shows that Boxer, Byrd, Feingold, Leahy and Sanders were among the few "Nay" votes.

Arms control experts aren't at all happy with the deal:

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, blasted the deal as a "nonproliferation disaster." India, along with Pakistan and Israel, has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. India conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, despite international outrage, and continues to produce fissile material. Kimball said the deal "does not bring India into the nonproliferation mainstream" because it "creates a country-specific exemption from core nonproliferation standards that the United States has spent decades to establish."

But Bush is:

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    The International Atomic Energy Agency's head, Mohammed el-Baradei, has warned that the Agency faces an increasingly uphill struggle in its essential non-proliferation role due to a measly budget.

Opening the IAEA's annual assembly, Mohamed ElBaradei called for urgent steps to increase funding of the U.N. watchdog, modernise equipment and enhance its legal authority to verify the nature of nuclear programmes in suspect countries.

"We have really reached a turning point. Years of zero (real) growth budgets have left us with a failing infrastructure and a troubling dependence on voluntary support which invariably has conditions attached," he said.

"This is not just about money. We do not work in a political vacuum. Political commitment to the goals of the agency needs to be renewed at the highest level," ElBaradei told the IAEA's General Conference at its Vienna headquarters.

"It would be a tragedy of epic proportions if we fail to act (for lack of resources) until after a nuclear conflagration, accident or terrorist attack that could have been prevented."

The IAEA's budget, which at present stands at only 340 million euros ($490 million), must stretch to cover investigations of places like Iran, Syria (and soon maybe Israel -it's on the Agency's agenda finally), inspections in dozens of countries, testing, education programs and safeguard monitoring. El Baradei says that the Agency's work is presently "seriously compromised" by the lack of money.

Yet this might be OK with some nations, who apparently want the Agency hamstrung because they are consistently late in sending their contributions. Last July, the Agency warned that if some member nations didn't pay up quickly, it would be broke by September. In 2006, the Bush administration still owed the IAEA over a third of it's contribution, over $14 million. Enough money always does eventually come in to keep it operating, but there are suspicions that the money comes with strings attached, forwarding those nation's agendas in return.

Everyone says the IAEA is essential, but no-one wants to put their money where their mouth is. Maybe Obama should. It would be a good contrast to Republican zeal for bypassing arms control agreements and waving sabers at every opportunity.