Nuclear Terror Threat “Real,” Experts Say

High-level U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts are scheduled to testify today on Capitol Hill regarding the persistent threat of a terrorist nuclear strike on a major U.S. urban center in coming decades, USA Today reported (see GSN, March 31).

“The prospect of terrorists detonating a nuclear device on American soil sometime within the next quarter-century is real and growing,” says prepared testimony by Gary Ackerman, research director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (see GSN, March 13).

An act of nuclear terrorism could kill hundreds of thousands of people, cause $1 trillion in damage and spread panic around the nation, according to experts, who are set to speak as part of an ongoing Senate inquiry on U.S. defenses against the threat.

“Such a calamitous attack would represent a game-changing event far exceeding the impact of 9/11 on the nation,” Ackerman is expected to tell the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, head of the Energy Department’s Intelligence and Counterintelligence Office, is expected to address initiatives to destroy and safeguard other nations’ nuclear stockpiles and other efforts to combat the threat (see GSN, March 13). 

The Energy Department has also increased programs to block smuggling of nuclear materials and augmented U.S. capabilities to disarm an atomic bomb, USA Today reported (see GSN, Jan. 7).  The Homeland Security Department is testing and deploying radiation detection equipment at overseas ports and U.S. points of entry (see GSN, March 5).

“Today, al-Qaeda’s nuclear intent remains clear,” Mowatt-Larssen’s testimony says, adding that regular reports of nuclear smuggling attempts suggest “that we collectively have not done enough to suppress trafficking and ensure the security of all nuclear materials worldwide.”

Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (ID-Conn.) said yesterday that the hearing “is not to encourage unnecessary fear but to confront the threatening realities so that we can then deal with them in defense of our country and people” (Mimi Hall, USA Today, April 2).

Meanwhile, Sandia National Laboratories Senior Vice President Al Romig yesterday discussed various WMD counterterrorism technologies developed at the site, the Associated Press reported.

Speaking at the start of a three-day conference in Albuquerque, N.M., Romig referred to detection equipment able to distinguish benign radiation sources from possible weapon ingredients as well as decontaminating foams and methods for determining biological agent sources.

“There are no silver bullets that will automatically just fix the problem,” he said.  “There isn’t some magic law that we can pass, there isn’t some magic box that a place like Sandia can create to fix the problem. … It’s really a systems solution that we require.”

Multilayered counterterrorism efforts involve determining the presence of terrorist threats and the likelihood they could be carried out, deploying detection technology to prevent threats from entering the country, and establishing response and recovery plans in case an attack is completed, Romig said (Sue Major Holmes, Associated Press/El Paso Times, April 2).

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