When Will Terrorists Get Nukes?

There's no question that Al Qaeda and its partners have shown interest in atomic weapons. There's also little doubt that they've tried to get one, and even consulted with experts on how to design and build them. And based on the public statements and private expressions of interest of Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, there's no question at all that if they had a nuclear device, they'd use it. But even as this week's nuclear summit in Washington underscores the need for tighter safeguards, current and former U.S. intelligence and nuclear-security officials believe terrorists remain years away from acquiring or building an atomic bomb. While there have been documented cases as recently as last month of criminal elements acquiring and attempting to smuggle the kind of fissile material that could be used to make a nuclear weapon, current and former officials say there's no evidence that any terrorist entity has come close to getting their hands on enough plutonium or highly enriched uranium to actually build one. And yet those experts also say intelligence on the nuclear underground is so fragmentary that a nuclear-terrorism threat could materialize almost without warning.

The senior White House adviser on counterterrorism, John Brennan, spoke at a press briefing before the start of the nuclear summit on Monday. "Over the years, Al Qaeda—including some senior Al Qaeda members—have claimed that they already have such nuclear capability or weapons," Brennan said. "That's not proved, but also at the same time it's difficult to disprove something like that. There is no indication that I have that Al Qaeda has a nuclear-weapons capability." Not that there haven't been occasional scares, he added. "There have been a number of instances over the years that we know that criminal organizations have tried to sell materials that they claim are fissile materials. Fortunately, most of these instances have been—have turned out to be scams. "Red mercury" [see this NEWSWEEK story for an explanation], other types of scams that are out there. We know that Al Qaeda has been taken by some of them, but we know that Al Qaeda has not been deterred at the same time. And so they have tried to develop within the organization the expertise that would allow them to distinguish between that which is a scam and that which isn't."

Nevertheless, the likely consequences of terrorists obtaining a nuclear bomb—or even the makings of a "dirty bomb"—are so dire that officials are making an all-out push to lock down all inadequately secured stockpiles of weapons-grade nuclear material. "The threat is not being hyped for political purposes, I can assure you," writes Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, one of the most esteemed U.S. experts on nuclear terrorism, in an e-mail exchange with Declassified. A veteran CIA specialist on weapons of mass destruction and former director of intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy, which controls the country's nuclear-arms facilities and research labs, he's now a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He cites four leading Americans in the push for nuclear disarmament: "When you can get [former secretary of state George] Shultz, [former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sam] Nunn, [former secretary of state Henry] Kissinger, and [former defense secretary William] Perry to sign onto something like "global zero" [nuclear weapons], that ought to make people stand up and take notice—couldn't pack more wisdom and nonpartisanship than that illustrious group into one cause."

"Why do the four horsemen think we have to lock up the nuclear genie?" Mowatt-Larssen asks. "Because if we don't, the odds are we won't get through this century without nuclear catastrophe. The world is too interconnected and too vulnerable. Individuals and groups aspire to wield the power of states. There's more nuclear stuff everywhere—a nuclear [power] renaissance driven by acute energy demands and a future of global warming. Nuclear weapons aspirants in all the wrong places (Iran, Syria, North Korea). A rising tide of extremism and radicalized 'have nots.' Failed states affording safe haven and sanctuary for the small footprints of future 9/11s."

Worse yet, Mowatt-Larssen warns, nuclear smuggling plots are a lot harder to crack than more conventional terrorist plots. "It's very hard for [us] westerners—we're focused too much on linear thinking, i.e., [that] threats follow a certain sequence of action—and everything has a cause and effect and is driven by a clock. Terrorists don't approach things that way—for example, they might procure the material in the last stages of the plan, rather than as a prerequisite to begin plotting ... [This] makes it very hard to connect the dots and establish the lineage of a potential plot."

And complacency could be fatal. "Yes, until now, it appears terrorists have been denied access to bombs or materials to make a bomb. But time is not on our side—it is uncertain when and where opportunity will present itself for terrorists to acquire a bomb, but the world will be tested (as it was in the last century) and we [had] better be prepared for the challenge. It might come tomorrow or not [for] another decade—but we will be required one day to neutralize a nuclear plot or crisis in progress. Such nonlinear unpredictability is the nature of the beast. So nuclear terrorism is a real threat—but it is a preventable catastrophe. The only thing we cannot [do] is dismiss the threat or ignore it. If we do, we will surely fail."