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Materials for “Crude” Chemical Attack Readily Accessible to Terrorists, Experts Say
Raw materials for chemical terrorism are readily available, according to experts, and an attack using those materials is more likely to occur than an incident of biological or nuclear terrorism, the Washington Post reported Friday (see GSN, Dec. 7, 2004). “A crude chemical attack is within the reach of any reasonably professional terrorist group,” said Jeffrey Bale, a senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. “With a sufficiently toxic substance, you will succeed in killing some people.” Many experts have said, however, that weaponizing such chemicals remains difficult and dangerous. “Fortunately, this kind of thing is hard to do: It requires scientific knowledge, some sophisticated technology and skill,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The bad news is, it’s not hard enough. And you don’t know how well these groups have learned the lessons of past failures and improved on them.” An unclassified CIA report in November said al-Qaeda had acquired “crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin and VX,” but that the group appears to have made little progress beyond those initial stages, the Post reported. “There are few groups that have both the motivation and the capability to acquire and effectively use chemical weapons,” said senior researcher Jonathan Tucker of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “Al-Qaeda appears to have the motivation but not the capability — not yet.” The possibility remains for terrorists to buy or steal powerful chemical weapons from military stockpiles, the Post reported. Defense officials and weapons experts have offered varying assessments of whether arsenals such as the one at the Russian military site of Shchuchye are adequately protected. “The Russians claim that just one of the shells is potent enough to kill 85,000 people at a football game — every single person,” said U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who has visited Shchuchye. “There are more than 1.9 million weapons at Shchuchye alone. Anyone who thinks this is not a problem needs to work through that arithmetic.” However, other experts have noted that a chemical attack could occur without acquisition of chemicals. By targeting chemical factories, storage bins, tanker cars or trucks that contain lethal agents, terrorists could carry out a large-scale attack. “It would be consistent with the modus operandi of al-Qaeda, which has always sought to use our Western technology against us,” Tucker said. “Like Sept. 11, such an attack would not be high-tech. But it could be very effective.” (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, Dec. 31, 2004). EDITOR’S NOTE: Richard Lugar serves on the board, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.
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