How Close Has Bin Laden Come to Acquiring N-Bomb?

The Guardian Unlimited

November 7, 2001

The seller was an ambulance driver, who had turned up to the meeting in
Istanbul with a friend and over a kilogram of uranium wrapped in
newspaper. The merchandise was from one of the old Soviet republics, the
man said, and he wanted U.S. $750,000 for it. Instead, he ended up in
jail. The buyers were undercover policemen.

The uranium seizure,
confirmed by the Turkish interior ministry, was a police sting
operation, but it is hardly reassuring. It raises the question of how
many similar deals are being made by more competent salesmen of what is
potentially the world's most deadly commodity.

The chilling uncertainty loomed over President Bush's blunt statements Tuesday. His remarks have added the White House's authority to a conclusion reached years ago by most proliferation experts. The threat of a terrorist nuclear weapon is real. The only significant uncertainty is the timing of the first attempt at a nuclear attack, and what kind of bomb would be used.

As the president pointed out, in raising the specter of an al Qaida nuclear attack he was simply quoting Osama bin Laden himself, who has told journalists that it would be a "sin" not to develop an Islamic bomb. "He announced that this was his intention and I believe we need to take him seriously," Bush said at a joint appearance with President Jacques Chirac of France at the White House.

There is also no doubt that Bin Laden is in the nuclear market. In February this year, one of the Saudi fugitive's aides, Jamal al-Fadl, told a U.S. court of his role in an attempt to buy U.S. $1.5 million worth of uranium in Sudan. Al-Fadl, who was giving evidence in the embassy bombings trial, testified that in 1993 he was sent to meet a man near Khartoum who was selling uranium apparently from South Africa. He did not know if the deal went through, but he said that al-Qaida was "very serious" about making the purchase.

Afghanistan Black Market is Awash With Uranium

Once Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, getting hold of uranium and other nuclear material did not present a serious problem. The black market in Afghanistan is awash with it. Robert Puffer, an American antiquities dealer in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, said he was frequently offered enriched uranium.

"It was in lead containers with cyrillic writing on it," Puffer told the British newspaper Guardian. "They would carry yellow cake [uranium] in matchboxes in their breast pockets. They would have rashes and they would ask me why. And I said: 'You're stupid—that stuff is dangerous.'"

Puffer said he was once taken to a warehouse in Peshawar where canisters of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, wrapped in sacking, were stored under the floor. The radioactivity sent a geiger counter buzzing from outside the building.

Having access to such radioactive material, however, is a long way from making a real nuclear bomb. That would require plutonium and highly enriched uranium and a lot of technical know-how. However, the mishmash of nuclear fuel and radioactive junk being touted in Istanbul over the weekend and which Puffer saw in Peshawar would suffice to make a "dirty bomb."

Such a weapon would consist of a rough assembly of radioactive material clumped around conventional explosives. When detonated, the blast would send up a plume of radioactive particles into the atmosphere killing and contaminating hundreds of thousands of people for miles around.

The International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) was initially sceptical about the "dirty bomb" threat but has changed its mind since September 11.

"We think this is entirely a live possibility," said David Kyd, a spokesman for the IAEA, which is based in Vienna.

Kyd said it could be delivered in the same way that the IRA took explosives into the City of London: inside a medium-sized van or lorry. Immediate fatalities would be confined to those caught up in an explosion but over the longer term there could be deaths from contamination. The main problem would be the sense of panic it would create.

Before September 11, the IAEA had assumed that terrorists were unlikely to take their own lives in detonating the bomb: "Our attitude has changed because 20 terrorists were prepared to sacrifice their own lives and because of the level of sophistication on September 11."

A real nuclear bomb is far more difficult to make. It is conceivable that a terrorist organization might be able to put together a crude atom bomb, of the sort that was dropped on Hiroshima. It would require eight kilos of plutonium or 25 kilos of highly enriched uranium. There is clearly a lot of bogus material on sale in Afghanistan, but it is also possible that some of it really is enriched uranium, or even plutonium.

The Pakistan nuclear program produces about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of enriched uranium a year, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nuclear watchdog publication. Furthermore, the pioneer of the Pakistani program, Bahiruddin Mahmood, is a fervent Islamist with close ties with the Taliban. He has been detained by the Islamabad government and is reported to have suffered a heart attack in detention. It remains unclear if he shared any of his knowledge or smuggled any nuclear materials in his frequent trips to Afghanistan in recent years to meet Taliban leaders.

Russian stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium are also a cause for concern. Security is reported to be lax and a U.S. program to provide alternative employment for unemployed Russian nuclear scientists and employees at defunct nuclear plants had ironically been scaled back by the Bush administration a few months before the terrorists struck. It is expected that the aid program will be on the agenda at next week's summit between Bush and President Putin.

No Evidence That Bin Laden is Close to Building Device

There is no evidence as yet that Bin Laden is close to building his own atomic device and his chances of constructing one have lessened considerably since the bombs began to fall on his bases.

Another way to acquire a nuclear weapon is to steal or buy one. There have been numerous unconfirmed reports of ex-Soviet warheads going missing and ending up in the volatile central Asian republics. There have also been rumors of KGB suitcase bombs (whose existence has never been definitively confirmed) being put on the market by Chechen warlords.

However, most experts look skeptically on these stories. Israeli intelligence, which monitors such proliferation closely, has rejected speculation that nuclear weapons have gone missing from the Soviet Union. Brigadier General Yossi Cooperwasser, chief of research for Israel's military intelligence, said:"We've checked out the reports and don't have any evidence to support concerns over lost, stolen or misappropriated nuclear devices."

However, the threat of a "dirty bomb" is serious enough. There is no doubt that this eminently feasible weapon is the most serious terrorist threat facing the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Copyright 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited