[iwar] [fc:Terrorists.and.mass.destruction]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-03 22:10:59


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Terrorists.and.mass.destruction]
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                    Terrorists and mass destruction
                            Oct 3rd 2001
                   From The Economist Global Agenda

Will the next terrorist attack involve biological, chemical or nuclear
weapons? How worried should we be?

Do we need these?

BEFORE the dust had settled, before more than a fraction of the dead had
been named, rescue workers were picking over the debris of the World
Trade Centre with test tubes.  Soon after, all crop-spraying aircraft
were grounded for several days.  America s government was terrified that
the atrocity of September 11th might be followed by something even
worse.  Suppose that equally unscrupulous terrorists were to get their
hands on chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons.  They would
surely use them. 

Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, the terrorist network thought to
be behind the attack on America, may already have such weapons, and be
planning to use them in response to any American military strikes.  How
real is that threat?

For terrorists prepared to die, the easiest way to spread poisonous or
radioactive materials might be simply to fly into repositories of them,
or to use lorries full of them as suicide bombs.  There are some 850,000
sites in the United States alone at which hazardous chemicals are
produced, consumed or stored.  Ominously, several men were arrested in
America last week with fraudulently-obtained permits to drive trucks
that carry such hazardous loads.  Mr bin Laden has called it a religious
duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and has boasted of buying a
lot of dangerous weapons, maybe chemical weapons for the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan that now harbours him. 


It s harder than you think

Fortunately, turning chemical, biological or nuclear materials into
usable weapons is not that easy.  First, you have to acquire or
manufacture sufficient quantities of the lethal agent.  Second, you have
to deliver it to the target.  And third, you have either to detonate it,
or to spread it around in a way that will actually harm a lot of people. 

Evil, but incompetent

In 1995, an apocalyptic Japanese cult called Aum Shinrikyo released a
potent nerve agent called sarin on the Tokyo subway.  The intention was
to kill thousands.  In fact, only 12 people died.  The cult s
researchers had spent more than $30m attempting to develop sarin-based
weapons, yet they failed to clear any of the three hurdles.  They could
not produce the chemical in the purity required.  Their delivery
mechanism was simply to carry plastic bags of sarin on to the trains. 
And their idea of a distribution system was to pierce those bags with
umbrella tips to release the liquid, which would then evaporate. 

The attack, in other words, was not a great success.  Yet, of the three
classes of weapon of mass destruction, those based on chemicals should
be the easiest to make.  Their ingredients are often commercially
available, and their manufacturing techniques are well known.  They have
been used from time to time in real warfare, so their deployment is also
understood. 

Biological weapons are trickier; and nuclear weapons trickier still. 
Germs need to be coddled, and are hard to spread.  (Aum Shinrikyo
attempted to develop biological weapons, in the form of anthrax spores,
but failed to produce the intended lethal effects.) Making atomic bombs
is an even greater technological feat.  Manufacturing weapons-grade
nuclear explosives is fantastically expensive, and detonating a bomb is
notoriously difficult. 

Joint ventures

Nevertheless, there may be ways round these obstacles.  One quick fix
would be to hire unemployed weapons specialists from the former Soviet
Union.  Some of these people are known to have left Russia for Iran,
Iraq, China and North Korea, but none has yet been directly associated
with any terrorist group. 

Panic is not always justified

America has, over the past ten years, spent more than $3 billion
dismantling former Soviet nuclear weapons, improving security at Russia
s nuclear storage sites, and keeping former weaponeers busy on useful
civilian work.  But only a tiny fraction of this money goes towards
safeguarding chemical and biological secrets.  And even the nuclear side
of things has sprung the odd leak. 

There have been numerous attempts to smuggle nuclear materials out of
the former Soviet Union, and there are unconfirmed suspicions that Iran,
for one, may have got its hands on a Russian nuclear warhead.  So far,
though, police and customs officers have seized mostly low-grade nuclear
waste.  This could not be turned into a proper atomic bomb, but with
enough of it, a terrorist group might hope to build a radiological
device, to spread radioactive contamination around.  Fortunately, the
occasional amounts of weapons-grade stuff that have been found so far
fall short of the 9-15kg needed for a workable bomb. 



Theories of deterrence

The most effective way for a terrorist group to make nuclear weapons
would be to find a government that is willing to allow access to its
laboratories or its arsenal.  After the Gulf war, UN inspectors
discovered that Iraq had come within months of building an atomic bomb. 
The effort, however, is thought to have taken a decade and to have cost
Saddam Hussein upwards of $10 billion.  He acquired much of the
necessary equipment from abroad, either by bribing suppliers or by
pretending that it was for use in harmless fermentation plants and
vaccine laboratories.  When the inspectors were thrown out of Iraq in
1998, they were convinced that while most of Mr Hussein s nuclear
programme had been destroyed, along with much of his missile and
chemical arsenal, important parts of the biological effort remained
hidden. 

More than two dozen countries are thought to have built weapons of mass
destruction, or else are trying to do so.  But there is no evidence that
any of these governments has helped terrorist groups to acquire such
weapons.  It is one thing to give terrorist groups money or a place to
hide.  It is quite another to give a nuclear suitcase bomb to an outfit
such as al-Qaeda, which no government can control. 

Nevertheless, the prospect that some state could help a terrorist group
overcome the significant hurdles to deploying a biological, chemical or
nuclear weapon is frightening.  Since the September 11th attacks,
American officials have stressed that not only the terrorists involved
in any future assaults, but also the states that shelter them, can
expect to find themselves in the cross-hairs.  Deterrence has worked in
the past, at least against states.  Mr Hussein used chemical weapons
against his own Kurdish subjects, but was too afraid to do so against
American troops during the Gulf war, because America had promised
massive retaliation if he did.  But such threats may not be so effective
against shadowy terrorist networks.  Where do you aim the retaliatory
missiles? And it is not clear whether even states such as Iraq and North
Korea, which operate largely outside international law, can be deterred
from lending a secret helping hand to a group such as Mr bin Laden s, if
they believe they can do so undetected. 

Of intelligence and imagination

In 1998, America bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant which it said
showed traces of a precursor chemical for VX, a highly potent nerve gas
that inspectors believe Iraq had put into weapon form.  Some observers
speculate that, even if Sudan s denials that it was manufacturing any
such stuff are true, the country may have served as a trans-shipment
point for supplies to Iraq.  Might some weapons assistance have flowed
the other way, possibly reaching Mr bin Laden s network, which used to
operate out of Sudan? Iraq denies it has had anything to do with Mr bin
Laden, but there have been unconfirmed reports that one of the New York
hijackers met a senior Iraqi intelligence official earlier this year in
Europe. 

The number of potential suppliers of weapons technology has expanded
over the past decade.  Countries that were once dependent on outside
help, mostly from Russia and China, are now going into business
themselves.  North Korea, for example, has created a thriving missile-
and technology-export business with Iran, Pakistan, Syria and others in
the Middle East.  It is unlikely that any such ballistic-missile
technology would find its way into terrorist hands any time soon.  But
all technologies tend to get cheaper, and to spread.  Even if there is
no immediate threat, it may eventually not be just hijacked aircraft
that are flying into places that terrorists have taken a dislike to. 
And their warheads may consist of something worse than aviation fuel. 


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