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TERRORISTS COULD EASILY ACQUIRE AND TRANSPORT A NUCLEAR
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| TERRORISTS COULD EASILY ACQUIRE AND TRANSPORT A NUCLEAR WEAPON Graham Allison 2007 (Director at Belfar Center for Science and International Affairs, Prof of Government and Chair of the Dubai Initiative at Harvard's JFK School of Government, "The Three 'Nos' Knows" http://nationalinterest.org/article/the-three-nos-knows-1843/ To assess the threat one must answer five core questions who, what, where, when and how Who could be planning a nuclear terrorist attack Al-Qaeda remains the leading candidate. According to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Al-Qaeda has been substantially reconstituted-but with its leadership having moved from a medieval Afghanistan to Pakistan-a nation that actually has nuclear weapons. As former CIA Director George J. Tenet's memoir reports, Al-Qaeda's leadership has remained "singularly focused on acquiring WMDs" and that "the main threat is the nuclear one" Tenet concluded, "I am convinced that this is where [Osama bin Laden and his operatives want to go" What nuclear weapons could terrorists use A ready-made weapon from the arsenal of one of the nuclear-weapons states or an elementary nuclear bomb constructed from highly enriched uranium made by a state remain most likely. As John Foster, a leading US. bomb-maker and former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote a quarter of a century ago, "If the essential nuclear materials are at hand, it is possible to make anatomic bomb using information that is available in the open literature" Where could terrorists acquire a nuclear bomb If a nuclear attack occurs, Russia will be the most likely source of the weapon or material. A close second, however, is North Korea, which now hasten bombs worth of plutonium, or Pakistan with sixty nuclear bombs. Finally, research reactors in forty developing and transitional countries still hold the essential ingredient for nuclear weapons. When could terrorists launch the first nuclear attack If terrorists bought or stole a nuclear weapon in good working condition, they could explode it today. If terrorists acquired one hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium, they could make a working elementary nuclear bomb in less than a year. How could terrorists deliver a nuclear weapon to its target In the same way that illegal items come to our cities everyday. As one of my former colleagues has quipped, if you have any doubt about the ability of terrorists to deliver a weapon to an American target, remember They could hide it in a bale of marijuana. Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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