Nuclear terrorism
These include the sabotage of a nuclear facility, the intentional irradiation of citizens, or the detonation of a radiological device, colloquially termed a dirty bomb, but consensus is lacking.
[8] As early as December 1945, politicians worried about the possibility of smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States, though this was still in the context of a battle between the superpowers of the Cold War.
There was a perception in Washington that the value of what is called 'special nuclear material' - plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) - was so enormous that the strict financial accountability of the private contractors who dealt with it would be enough to protect it from falling into the wrong hands.
Robert Litwak, vice-president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, deemed it unlikely that terrorist groups would be able to effectively create nuclear weapons without enriched uranium.
A radiological weapon may be very appealing to terrorist groups as it is highly successful in instilling fear and panic among a population (particularly because of the threat of radiation poisoning) and would contaminate the immediate area for some period of time, disrupting attempts to repair the damage and subsequently inflicting significant economic losses.
[24] Al-Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl told the FBI that bin Laden paid a Sudanese Armed Forces general $1.5 million for a cylinder of cinnabar which he believed contained South African uranium in 1993.
[27] According to leaked diplomatic documents, al-Qaeda can produce radiological weapons, after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build "dirty bombs".
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said that the materials had been kept at the university and "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction".
International Atomic Energy Agency spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that the seized materials were "low grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk".
[32][33] In October 2015, it was reported that Moldovan authorities working with the FBI had stopped four attempts from 2010 to 2015 by gangs with suspected connections to Russia's intelligence services that sought to sell radioactive material to ISIS and other Middle Eastern extremists.
[36] In April 2016, European Union and NATO security chiefs warned that ISIS was plotting to carry out nuclear attacks on the United Kingdom and Europe.
[7] Information reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) shows "a persistent problem with the illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, thefts, losses and other unauthorized activities".
"[52] In 2016, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent R. Stewart said that Pakistan "continues to take steps to improve its nuclear security, and is aware of the threat presented by extremists to its program".
The attack was condemned by many within the international community, including being described as nuclear terrorism by Lithuanian President Nauseda, "incredible reckless and dangerous" by US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and a war crime by Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg.
[65] In August 2022 Dmitry Medvedev published a comment warning that "accidents can happen at European nuclear plants too", which was widely interpreted as a concealed threat.
[67] In their presidential contest, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry both agreed that the most serious danger facing the United States is the possibility that terrorists could obtain a nuclear bomb.
[68] In 2004, Graham Allison, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Clinton administration, wrote that “on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not".
[21] In 2006, Robert Galluccii, Dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, estimated that, “it is more likely than not that al-Qaeda or one of its affiliates will detonate a nuclear weapon in a U.S. city within the next five to ten years.
"[67] According to senior Pentagon officials, the United States will make "thwarting nuclear-armed terrorists a central aim of American strategic nuclear planning.
"[77] Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in June 2010 that is believed to have been created by the United States and Israel to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea.
Non-proliferation policy experts have questioned "the use of private contractors to provide security at facilities that manufacture and store the government's most dangerous military material".
[82] In late 1974, President Gerald Ford was warned that the FBI received a communication from an extortionist wanting $200,000 ($1,200,000 today) after claiming that a nuclear weapon had been placed somewhere in Boston.
Federal officials then rented a fleet of vans to carry concealed radiation detectors around the city but forgot to bring the tools they needed to install the equipment.
An unknown group called the "Days of Omega" had mailed an extortion threat claiming it would explode radioactive containers of water all over the city unless paid $500,000 ($2,700,000 today).
The CTR established a program that gave the U.S. Department of Defense a direct stake in securing loose fissile material inside the since-dissolved Soviet Union.
[90] Robert Gallucci, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, argues that traditional deterrence is not an effective approach toward terrorist groups bent on causing a nuclear catastrophe.
[91] Henry Kissinger, stating the wide availability of nuclear weapons makes deterrence “decreasingly effective and increasingly hazardous.”[92] Preventive strategies, which advocate the elimination of an enemy before it is able to mount an attack, are risky and controversial, therefore difficult to implement.
[95] Intelligence officials have pushed back, testifying before Congress that the inability to recognize the shifting modus operandi of terrorist groups was part of the reason why members of Aum Shinrikyo, for example, were “not on anybody’s radar screen.”[96] Matthew Bunn, associate professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, argues that “Theft of HEU and plutonium is not a hypothetical worry, it is an ongoing reality.
[98] However, world leaders at the Summit failed to agree on baseline protections for weapons-usable material, and no agreement was reached on ending the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civil nuclear functions.
The documents cited Khalid saying that, if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed by the Coalition of the Willing, an al-Qaeda sleeper cell will detonate a "weapon of mass destruction" in a "secret location" in Europe, and promised it would be "a nuclear hellstorm".
