Last Best Chance

Last Best Chance is a gripping docudrama starring actor and former senator Fred Thompson about the threats posed by loosely secured nuclear weapons and materials around the world. NTI produced the program, which aired on HBO, as part of its public education mission.

Following the attacks of September 11th, the 9/11 Commission warned that al-Qaeda had been seeking a nuclear bomb for more than 10 years and urged governments to do more to take the threat off the table.

Last Best Chance, produced in 2005, underscores the stakes in a dramatic depiction of how a terrorist organization could realistically plan and implement the acquisition of nuclear material and bomb-making technology.

In the movie, al Qaeda operatives organize three separate operations aimed at getting nuclear weapons. The material is then fabricated into three crude nuclear weapons by small groups of trained terrorists, who have recruited bomb-making experts to help them manufacture their weapons.

Governments around the world discover clues to the plot, but are unable to uncover the scheme before the weapons are en route to their destinations. The film clearly demonstrates that the hardest job for terrorists is gaining control of a nuclear weapon or material. Because the governments had failed to take sufficient action to secure or destroy the nuclear weapons material, they are helpless to prevent an attack.

Last Best Chance has been featured on NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s Nightline, in the New Yorker,  and on wtop.com.

Last Best Chance was written and directed by Ben Goddard.