White House Releases Revised Antiterrorism Plan

By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Preventing terrorist groups from acquiring weapons of mass destruction continues to be a priority for the United States, according to the most recent revision of the national antiterrorism strategy released yesterday by the White House (see GSN, Aug. 23).

The strategy, the third version to be published since the Bush administration first released an antiterrorism plan in February 2003, declares that “weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is one of the gravest threats we face.” 

The 2003 document also listed preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction as a central goal.

The newest strategic outline also stresses the importance being able to trace nuclear material to its point of origin as part of a “new deterrence calculus.”  Attribution needs are not explicitly addressed in the 2003 outline

“We will ensure that our capacity to determine the source of any attack is well-known, and that our determination to respond overwhelmingly to any attack is never in doubt,” the report states.  Not only would terrorists face retaliatory action but so would those who aid or assist such groups.

The antiterrorism outline describes broad, vague plans to prevent the transfer of all WMD-related technology but indicated the specific focus was on weapon-usable fissile materials.

Iran emerges in the report as a potential source of weapons of mass destruction or WMD technology for terrorist groups.  “Most troubling is the potential WMD-terrorism nexus that emanates from Tehran,” it said, while labeling Iran the most active state sponsor of international terrorism.

The report also describes the hope to deter WMD attacks by improving the nation’s ability to mitigate the effects of such a strike — essentially limiting massive casualties, economic disruption and panic — as a short-term goal.  How that goal will be met is not outlined in the strategy.

Frances Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, told reporters yesterday that the newest White House strategy is “far more detailed” in terms of WMD-related information than documents previously made public.  Compared to the 2003 report, the most recent revision describes goals in preventing WMD proliferation more explicitly and in bullet-pointed items.

“Together, we pledge we'll continue to work together to stop the world's most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons,” President George W. Bush, echoing language from the report, said yesterday in a speech to the Military Officers Association of America.

The potential for a rogue nation to transfer nuclear material to a nonstate group is a possibility that has haunted antiterrorism experts, but deterring that transfer could be difficult.  If tracing nuclear material back to its source is not possible then threatening a counterstrike against the terrorists’ suppliers is more difficult.

When nuclear terrorism experts consider attribution they often comment on the difficultly of that process (see GSN, June 21).  In 2002, the United States was still several years away from having the capability to determine the origins of nuclear material after any potential explosion, according to a National Academy of Sciences Report.

Both government officials and nongovernmental experts have been tightlipped about the extent of U.S. attribution technology, and precise capabilities remain shielded behind a wall of classification (see GSN, July 28).

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security Subcommittee in July, however, experts identified attribution as a issue of concern.

“I don’t know if your committee wants a closed hearing sometime, but that is a big problem area,” said Fred Ikle, a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former defense undersecretary under President Ronald Reagan.

Jay Davis, a former national security fellow at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, wrote in 2003 that “there is no assurance” that in the wake of a nuclear blast that the United States would be able “to uniquely determine a perpetrator.”

While avoiding specifics of attribution abilities — technical forensics fused with intelligence and law enforcement data — the report released yesterday by the White House suggests that such capabilities are still being developed.

“We will develop the capability to assign responsibility,” it said, listing the initiative as part of the nation’s short-term plan to combat terrorism.  No specific timeframe is noted.

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