www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32285-2004Dec28.html
All RSS Feeds The World After 9/11 : The Nuclear Threat Nuclear Capabilities May Elude Terrorists, Experts Say By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A01 Of all the clues that Osama bin Laden is after a nuclear weapon, perhaps the most significant came in intelligence reports indicating that he rec eived fresh approval last year from a Saudi cleric for the use of a doom sday bomb against the United States. For bin Laden, the religious ruling was a milestone in a long quest for a n atomic weapon. For US officials and others, it was a frightening rem inder of what many consider the ultimate mass-casualty threat posed by m odern terrorists. Even a small nuclear weapon detonated in a major Ameri can population center would be among history's most lethal acts of war, potentially rivaling the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. About This Series The three articles beginning today are the culmination of a year-long eff ort to examine the challenges the United States faces more than three ye ars after the attacks of Sept. Previous articles have ranged f rom the threat posed by conventional truck bombs to the difficulty of tr acking terrorist fundraising. The articles starting today take a detaile d look at terrorists' ability to acquire and use weapons of mass destruc tion -- nuclear, biological and chemical. While the dangers certainly are real, there is considerable disagreement among security experts about the probabilities for "catastrophic terrori sm." In the case of nuclear and biological weapons, the subjects of arti cles today and tomorrow, there are technical and scientific hurdles that have proved daunting, even for nations with sizable budgets and state-o f-the-art facilities. Chemical weapons, which will be explored in an art icle Friday, would be somewhat easier to devise or obtain, but also far less likely to yield huge numbers of casualties. A radiological device w ould have similar limitations for terrorists. Each type of weapon presents special challenges for the groups seeking to acquire it, but experts warn that the odds for a successful attack coul d rise significantly in the future as determined foes intersect with adv ancing technology.
Sign Up Now Despite the obvious gravity of the threat, however, counterterrorism and nuclear experts in and out of government say they consider the danger mo re distant than immediate. They point to enormous technical and logistical obstacles confronting wou ld-be nuclear terrorists, and to the fact that neither al Qaeda nor any other group has come close to demonstrating the means to overcome them. So difficult are the challenges that senior officials on President Bush's national security team believe al Qaeda has shifted its attention to ot her efforts, at least for now. "I would say that from the perspective of terrorism, the overwhelming bul k of the evidence we have is that their efforts are focused on biologica l and chemical" weapons, said John R Bolton, undersecretary of state fo r arms control and international security. "Not to say there aren't any dealings with radiological materials, but the technology for bio and che m is comparatively so much easier that that's where their efforts are co ncentrating." Still, the sheer magnitude of the danger posed by a nuclear weapon in ter rorist hands -- and classified intelligence assessments that deem such a scenario plausible -- has spurred intelligence and military operations to combat a threat once dismissed as all but nonexistent. The effort inc ludes billions of dollars spent on attempts to secure borders, retrain w eapons scientists in other countries and lock up dangerous materials and stockpiles. "The thing to keep in mind is that while it is extremely difficult, we ha ve highly motivated and intelligent people who would like to do it," sai d Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council staff member and s enior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Each type of weapon of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical -- presents special challenges for the groups seeking to acquire them, b ut also opportunities that can be exploited by people determined to unle ash their awesome destructive powers. This is the first of three article s aimed at exploring those risks and challenges. Difficult Course Without sophisticated laboratories, expensive technology and years of sci entific experience, al Qaeda has two primary options for getting a bomb, experts say, both of which rely on theft -- either of an existing weapo n or one of its key ingredients, plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Nuclear scientists tend to believe the most plausible route for terrorist s would be to build a crude device using stolen uranium from the former Soviet Union. Counterterrorism officials think bin Laden would prefer to buy a ready-made weapon stolen in Russia or Pakistan, and to obtain ins ide help in detonating it. Last month, Michael Scheuer, who ran the CIA's bin Laden unit, first disc losed in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" that bin Laden's nuclear eff orts had been blessed by the Saudi cleric in May 2003, a statement other sources later corroborated. As early as 1998, bin Laden had publicly la beled acquisition of nuclear or chemical weapons a "religious duty," and US officials had reports around that time that al Qaeda leaders were discussing attacks they likened to the one on Hiroshima. A week after his CBS appearance, Scheuer said at breakfast with reporters in Washington that he believed al Qaeda would probably seek to buy a nu clear device from Russian gangsters, rather than build its own. There were as many as a dozen types of nuclear weapons in the hands of th e Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, but Russian officials have sa id that several kinds have since been destroyed and that the country has secured the remainder of its arsenal. The nature and scope of nuclear c aches are among the most tightly held national security secrets in Russi a and Pakistan. It is unclear how quickly either country could detect a theft, but expert s said it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out on their own how to work a Russian or Pakistani bomb.
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