Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- The threat of a terrorist attack with a weapon of mass destruction within the United States likely has not decreased, one of the nation's top combatant commanders said here yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 5).

"I have to assume that [the threat is] not going down. Is it going up? Hard to tell," Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, head of U.S. Northern Command, said during a Defense Writers Group breakfast. The Colorado-based command is assigned to bolster the Defense Department's homeland security efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

"If we ever had a major nuclear attack or ... a bomb went off somewhere in the country, that's going to be a tough thing for us to solve," he later added. "Nobody should have any illusions about how challenging that will be for the nation."

However, a report issued today by a group led by the former heads of the Sept. 11 commission concludes the nation is not likely to face a terrorist strike using an unconventional weapon.

"Despite al-Qaeda's long interest in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, on the infrequent occasions that it or affiliated groups have tried to deploy crude versions of these weapons, their efforts have fizzled," the report, written for the national security group of the Bipartisan Policy Center, says under a section titled "Attacks that are unlikely to happen."

More generally, the report -- issued one day before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States -- states that the United States is faced with a threat from al-Qaeda and associated extremist organizations that is "more complex and more diverse than at any time over the past nine years."

The task force was led by former Republican New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Indiana Democratic lawmaker Lee Hamilton, who chaired the commission that offered policy recommendations to better safeguard the nation, including creating the position of national intelligence director (see GSN, July 23, 2004).

"By any objective criteria a WMD attack ... a true, mass casualty attack of catastrophic proportions, is less likely today than it might have been some years ago," Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University terrorism specialist and co-author of the 42-page document, told Global Security Newswire today after a press conference unveiling the report.

"At the same time, on Sept. 10, 2001, I would have told you that a massive attack on lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol building is also unlikely," he added.

Hoffman credited U.S. efforts to deprive al-Qaeda and its affiliates of their overseas bases that could prepare a WMD assault as the main reason the threat has diminished.

The Obama administration's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review addressed the need for WMD response forces. To that end, the Defense Department this summer announced it would establish 10 National Guard domestic units assigned to that mission. The forces are intended to conduct quick responses to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and large-explosive devices (see GSN, July 13).

Ohio and Washington state would host homeland response units in fiscal 2011. Similar forces would be established in California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah in the following budget cycle. Those groups would be operational by the end of September 2012.

The units would be placed in the 10 Federal Emergency Management Agency regions and each made up of 270 Guard personnel with expertise in fields including decontamination, medical care and search and extraction.

In addition to the 10 National Guard units, the Defense Department intends to organize WMD defenses encompassing a CBRNE Response Force, two consequence management command groupings, 57 WMD Civil Support Teams and 17 CBRNE-enhanced response force "packages," according to a Pentagon release.

Winnefeld said yesterday he is "very optimistic" about the direction mapped out by the QDR report, which outlines the Pentagon's policy priorities for the next four years, because it moves WMD response away from a "very federal-centric approach to a sort of shared, party federal, partly state National Guard approach."

The admiral predicted the organizational moves would save more lives in the event of an actual WMD attack as response forces could deploy faster to affected areas. He did not specify how quickly the planned units could make it into the field, though the Pentagon has claimed they could do so in 12 hours or less.

He added Northern Command and National Guard Bureau officials overseeing the transition are working to make sure any changes go "smoothly and that we're all speaking the same language when we show up on the scene, whether it be a federal or National Guard type of response."

Still, "the most important thing is to prevent the God darned thing from happening in the first place while we remain prepared to respond to it if it does happen," Winnefeld told reporters.

Today, Hoffman said terrorists were likely to continue to pursue CBRN weapons with the intention to cause mass disruption rather than mass casualties.

"We find terrorists less and less gravitating toward the exotic or unconventional types of weapons. They're so concerned with being successful now that they're sticking to their stock trade of guns and bombs," he told GSN. "But they also understand that an unusual type of terrorist attack could have highly disproportionate effects ... It could be very modest, it could not even kill anybody, but still would have an impact."