Overview
	Technical Background
The Threat   The Threat in Russia & NIS   The Global Threat   The Demand for Black Market Fissile Material   Anecdotes of Insecurity
	Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
	Reducing Stockpiles

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

The Threat

The Demand for Black Market Fissile Material

Status

To organize the discussion of such incidents, this section focuses on: (a) al Qaeda and the global jihadist movement it has spawned; (b) Chechen terrorist groups; (c) the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo (now known as Aleph); (d) Iran; and (e) Iraq, prior to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.  This list of cases is not intended to cover the entire universe of possible recipients of stolen nuclear weapons and materials, but only to convince the reader that there are both terrorist groups and states that have actively sought these items.

Al Qaeda and Nuclear Weapons

Most terrorist groups have no interest in threatening or committing large-scale nuclear destruction.  Focused on local issues, seeking to become the governments of the areas now controlled by their enemies (and thus not wanting to destroy those areas), and needing to build political support that might be undermined by the horror and wanton destruction of innocent life resulting from a nuclear attack, all but a few terrorist groups probably would not want to get and use a nuclear bomb even if they could readily do so.[5]

There are, however, a few dangerous exceptions who do seek to cause mass destruction, and who might be able to put together the capability to do so.  Al Qaeda and the global jihadist network it has spawned are at the top of this list.  On September 11, 2001, they permanently put to rest the complacent belief that those crazy enough to want to kill large numbers of people would be crazy enough to make it impossible for them to put together the means to do so.  They are focused not on a local battle for which the immense power of nuclear weapons might be seen as unnecessary, but on a global struggle in which nuclear weapons might well be seen as essential instruments.  Bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network have made their own desire for nuclear weapons for use against the United States and its allies explicit, by both word and deed.  Bin Laden has called the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) a "religious duty."[6]  Al Qaeda has been seeking to buy stolen nuclear weapons or nuclear material, and to recruit nuclear expertise, for more than a decade.[7]

Bin Laden sought and received a religious ruling (fatwa) from an extreme Saudi cleric in May 2003 authorizing the use of weapons of mass destruction to kill American civilians—indeed, arguing that such use was morally obligatory if it was judged a military necessity. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft quoted from the ruling in June 2003 before the House Judiciary Committee: "If a bomb that killed 10 million of them and burned as much of their land as they have burned Muslims land were dropped on them, it would be permissible."[10]

Al Qaeda’s followers believe, in effect, that they brought down the Soviet Union—that the mujahedeen’s success in forcing the Soviet Union from Afghanistan was a key factor leading to the Soviet collapse.  And they appear to believe that the United States, too, is a "paper tiger" which can be driven to collapse—that the 9/11 attacks inflicted grievous damage on U.S. economic power (Osama bin Laden once estimated the total cost at $1 trillion), and that still larger blows are needed to bring the United States down.  As bin Laden put it in a message to his followers in December 2001, "America is in retreat by the grace of God Almighty and economic attrition is continuing up to today.  But it needs further blows.  The young men need to seek out the nodes of the American economy and strike the enemy’s nodes."[11]  The notion that major blows could cause the collapse of the United States is, in essence, al Qaeda’s idea of how it will achieve victory.  A nuclear blast incinerating a U.S. city would be exactly the kind of blow they want.

While most terrorist groups would not be able to make a nuclear bomb even if they had the material, unfortunately, it is certainly possible, as discussed in more detail below, that a well-organized and well-financed group such as al Qaeda might be able to make at least a crude nuclear explosive if it could get the needed material, and had time and resources to devote to the task.  The commission appointed by President Bush to investigate U.S. intelligence capabilities and past conclusions regarding weapons of mass destruction revealed in March 2005 that in October 2001 the U.S. intelligence community assessed that al Qaeda was capable of fabricating at least a "crude" nuclear device if it could obtain the requisite nuclear material—separated plutonium or HEU.  The commission also reported that the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) Center and its Counterterrorist Center judged in November 2001 that al-Qaeda "probably had access to nuclear expertise and facilities and that there was a real possibility of the group developing a crude nuclear device."  And the commission emphasized that the documents seized from al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban "brought to light detailed and revealing information about the direction and progress of al-Qa’ida’s radiological and nuclear ambitions," which had not been available when those earlier judgments were made.[12]

Of course, al Qaeda today is not the same group that existed before the 9/11 attacks.  The previous centrally controlled, organized structure of al Qaeda has been substantially disrupted by the worldwide campaign against the organization since the 9/11 attacks, including the destruction of al Qaeda’s Afghanistan sanctuary.[13]  But top officials of the U.S. government and of other governments have continued to warn that al Qaeda retains both the intention and the capability to inflict catastrophic attacks, particularly on the United States, and that it continues to seek weapons of mass destruction.  In summarizing the global threat to U.S. interests in February 2005, the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community were unanimous in warning of the continuing desire for weapons of mass destruction on the part of al Qaeda and the global jihadist network it has spawned.  CIA Director Porter Goss warned that "it may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons."  FBI Director Robert Mueller warned that the intelligence community is "extremely concerned with a growing body of sensitive reporting that continues to show al Qaeda’s clear intention to obtain and to ultimately use some form of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in its attacks against the United States."[14]  As Goss and Mueller emphasized, the threat is not only from whatever remains of the old, centralized al Qaeda, but from global jihadist movement that has spun off from it.  Some elements of this amorphous movement have aims for mass violence on a similar scale, and may have some potential to pull together the required capabilities—which, as discussed below, would not necessarily require advanced scientific knowledge, large numbers of people, or significant fixed facilities. 

The documents, training manuals, and other evidence recovered by coalition forces and by Western media in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban, along with other information that has appeared in the public domain (including descriptions of interviews with detainees and information put out by al Qaeda-linked organizations), present a mixed picture.  On the one hand, it is clear that the overwhelming focus of the organization and the training it provided was on conventional weapons and explosives.  On the other hand, the evidence makes clear that al Qaeda had a strong interest in getting all types of unconventional weapons—chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear.[15]  Within the category of unconventional weapons, the group and its allies appear to have devoted more effort to chemical, biological, and radiological weapons than to actual nuclear bombs—as suggested by the videotapes showing testing of poison gas on animals, and the several poison-related plots that have been revealed in recent years.  Nevertheless, the detailed drawings, training manuals, and other documents and physical evidence recovered by coalition forces and by Western media from caves and safe houses in post-Taliban Afghanistan confirm that highly placed al Qaeda operatives, including alleged chemical and biological commander Abu Khabbab, had also been focused on obtaining a nuclear weapons capability.  Some of the most important documents revealing interest in nuclear weapons were found in an Afghan safe house used by Khabbab, who British intelligence has confirmed carried out training courses in al Qaeda training camps on making and using poisons.[16]  Many of the discussions of nuclear weapons in the seized documents are quite unsophisticated and contain substantial errors; some are of higher quality, however, including one fact about initiating a nuclear chain reaction that remains classified and could not simply have been downloaded from the internet.[17]

Al Qaeda's interest is of long standing, stretching back over a decade.  Michael Scheuer, from 1996 to 1999 the head of the CIA team focused solely on Osama bin Laden, wrote in 2004 to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that in mid- to late-1996, "CIA's Bin Laden unit acquired detailed information about the careful, professional manner in which al-Qaeda was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons."  In his letter, he continued, "there could be no doubt after this date that al-Qaeda was in deadly earnest in seeking nuclear weapons."[18]  The U.S. federal indictment of bin Laden for his involvement in the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania charges that "at various times from at least as early as 1992, Usama bin Laden and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons."[19]  The best documented of these incidents was an attempt in 1993 to purchase HEU for a nuclear bomb in the Sudan, which has been described in some detail in court testimony of Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, the al Qaeda operative charged with several key steps in the transaction.[20] While al-Fadl reports that al Qaeda believed the material to be HEU when it was seeking to make the purchase, it appears that the suppliers were running a scam, and the material was not usable in nuclear weapons.  Similarly, it appears that al Qaeda has been scammed on several other occasions in attempts to acquire what it thought was weapons-usable nuclear material.[21] Senior bin Laden lieutenant Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, arrested in Germany in 1998 and still in prison, has been charged with being the mastermind behind this attempted purchase, and possibly others: as with bin Laden, the indictment of Salim charges that he was involved in an attempt to purchase uranium "for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons."[22]

In addition to this 1993 attempt, there have been repeated reports, of varying levels of credibility, regarding al Qaeda attempts to purchase nuclear materials or nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union.[23]  Scheuer in particular has emphasized that the group has been seeking to purchase stolen nuclear weapons, and has "a very professional acquisition system" and "clearly has a presence in the former Soviet Union."[24]

Al Qaeda and its allies have also actively attempted to recruit individuals with nuclear weapons expertise.  For example, Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met at length with two senior Pakistani nuclear weapons experts, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudari Abdul Majeed—both Taliban sympathizers with extreme Islamic views—and pressed them for information on making nuclear weapons.  While Mahmood and Majeed deny having supplied any useful information, Pakistani intelligence officials told the Washington Post that the two had provided detailed technical information, in violation of Pakistan’s secrecy laws, in response to bin Laden’s questions.[25]  Similarly, in 2000, an official of Russia’s National Security Council announced that the Taliban regime had attempted to recruit a nuclear expert from a Russian facility.[26]  In 1998, a scientist at one of Russia’s premier nuclear weapons laboratories was arrested for spying for both the Taliban and Iraq (in this case on advanced conventional weapons designs, not nuclear weapons—though the security services announced that this was by no means the first such espionage case at that laboratory).[27]

In November 2001, Osama bin Laden boasted to a Pakistani journalist that al Qaeda already had chemical or nuclear weapons.[28] The same journalist has also reported that bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had claimed that the group had succeeded in buying portable nuclear weapons from disaffected ex-Soviet nuclear scientists.[29]  There is no evidence that either claim is true, but, if the remarks were accurately reported, they demonstrate that al Qaeda at its highest levels remains actively interested in obtaining a nuclear capability, and has identified the insecure nuclear weapons, material, and expertise in the former Soviet Union as a potential source to satisfy those ambitions.

Fragmentary evidence suggests that al Qaeda’s nuclear effort continued after the destruction of its Afghan sanctuary.  The fatwa on nuclear use, coming in 2003, makes clear that the group’s interest in nuclear weapons is by no means a thing of the past.  According to press reports, al Qaeda operative Sharif al-Masri, captured in the Afghan-Pakistani border area in mid-2004, told interrogators that al Qaeda is looking to acquire nuclear materials in Europe and move them to Mexico and from there across the porous border into the United States.[30]  Two militants arrested in Germany in January 2005—one of whom was an Iraqi who had trained in al Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps and was associated with alleged 9/11 planner Ramzi Bin al-Shibh—had tried to purchase uranium, and had been recorded by authorities discussing specific locations to obtain uranium.[31]  As then-CIA Director George Tenet summarized the situation in early 2004: "this enemy remains intent on obtaining, and using, catastrophic weapons…Al Qa’ida continues to pursue its strategic goal of obtaining a nuclear capability."[32]  There can be little doubt that if al Qaeda had the opportunity to get stolen nuclear weapons or materials, they would jump at the chance.

At the same time, the limited evidence publicly available continues to suggest a broad gap between the capabilities that well-organized and capable terrorist groups like al Qaeda could put together, and the capabilities they have demonstrated to date.  While a few of the documents recovered in Afghanistan do include some disturbing sophistication on nuclear subjects, many are extremely naïve.  There is no hard evidence that al Qaeda has in fact pulled together the level of expertise on nuclear weapons design and manufacture that a few reasonably competent technical people who invested some months in researching the topic would in principle be able to put together from unclassified references.  Similarly, despite reports that the group repeatedly encountered scam artists claiming they had weapons-usable nuclear material when they did not, there are no open source reports that al Qaeda ever acquired one of the commercially available systems for identifying isotopes, despite the relatively low cost and ready availability of such systems.

The same surprising lack of sophistication is reflected in some other reported incidents of al Qaeda pursuit of nuclear or radiological materials.  The summaries that have been released of the interrogations of José Padilla, for example, indicate that he and his accomplice presented to top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah the absurd idea that the two of them could make a nuclear bomb using instructions downloaded from the internet.[33]  Zubaydah, according to this account, expressed skepticism and suggested that a dirty bomb would be easier, but warned that this was not as easy as Padilla seemed to think either.  Strikingly, "senior al Qaeda detainee #1" (apparently  Zubaydah himself, since his statements describe Zubaydah’s thinking) reports that Zubaydah, in discussing a dirty bomb, spoke of "explosives wrapped in uranium," again suggesting a rather low level of nuclear expertise, since uranium, which is not very radioactive, would be among the least deadly materials to use in a radiological dirty bomb.  Nonetheless, Zubaydah gave Padilla and his accomplice money to travel to meet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, another very senior al Qaeda operative, in order for Mohammed to evaluate the plan.  Mohammed also thought the plan was impractical, and suggested that they focus on simpler attacks (such as bombing apartment buildings by turning on the gas in an apartment and detonating it with a bomb on a timer).  Thus, both Zubaydah and Mohammed were immediately skeptical of the feasibility of nuclear and radiological attacks.  It may be, however, that Zubaydah and Mohammed’s skepticism was based on a low (and possibly accurate) assessment of the personal technological capabilities of Padilla and his accomplice, rather than on a view that nuclear and radiological attacks were impractical in general.

Similarly, in the case of the two al Qaeda operatives arrested in Germany in 2004 and charged with seeking uranium, the sparse information that is publicly available suggests they wanted the uranium for dispersal in a dirty bomb, rather than for use in a nuclear weapon—and the choice of uranium for that purpose again suggests a very rudimentary level of nuclear knowledge.[34]  In short, more than a decade after al Qaeda’s pursuit of the bomb began, there is as yet no strong, publicly available evidence that the group or its followers have put together the capabilities that would be necessary to make a nuclear bomb.  But unfortunately, we simply cannot know what capabilities al Qaeda and its followers may have managed to keep hidden—or may acquire in the future.

Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult (now renamed Aleph) carried out a comprehensive program of development for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons prior to its famous nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway.[35]  Aum’s leader, Shoko Asahara, was obsessed with weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.  The cult had tens of thousands of members at its peak; assets in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars, millions of which it spent on its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs; hundreds of members with advanced technical training, in some cases from Japan’s leading universities; and a substantial number of facilities where it could pursue its work in secret (prior to the Tokyo subway attack, Japanese authorities gave the group remarkably free rein, in part because of its status as a religious organization).  The cult targeted Russia as a potential source of nuclear weapons, materials, and technology.  It reportedly succeeded in recruiting tens of thousands of members there; reportedly recruited both staff members at the Kurchatov Institute[36] (one of Russia’s leading nuclear research centers, and a site where hundreds of kilograms of HEU was poorly secured and accounted for at the time) and in the town of Obninsk[37] (site of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, where tons of HEU and hundreds of kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium were poorly secured and accounted for at the time).  The cult established extended relationships with a variety of senior Russian officials, including the chairman of Russia’s Security Council, and it sent senior cult officials on numerous weapons-shopping trips to Russia.

Nonetheless, Aum Shinrikyo failed to acquire nuclear weapons or the materials to make them—and apparently concluded that nuclear weapons would be sufficiently difficult and time-consuming to acquire that it should place its principal emphasis on chemical and biological weapons, in the belief that these would be easier to produce quickly, on a schedule consistent with Asahara’s predictions of when doomsday would occur.  While the chemical and biological programs proceeded on a remarkable scale—with more than a dozen different chemical and biological attacks, production of a wide range of agents, and construction of a facility capable of producing hundreds of kilograms of sarin nerve gas per year—the efforts were riddled with mistakes.  Had Aum made fewer mistakes in producing and dispersing the sarin used in the Tokyo subway attack, the number of fatalities would have been far higher.  As far as can be determined, Aum’s biological attacks never killed anyone.  Indeed, Aum reportedly was dispersing a non-virulent strain of anthrax used in vaccines, unaware that the anthrax it had acquired was not deadly.[38]  These extensive problems in the efforts of such a large, well-financed, technically trained terrorist group contributed to the pre–9/11 view that terrorists crazy enough to want to cause mass death would be crazy enough to interfere with their ability to put together weapons of mass destruction.

Similarly, much of Aum’s nuclear program seems to have been poorly focused.  It was pursuing efforts such as purchasing a sheep farm with uranium deposits in Australia and stealing confidential documents on laser isotope enrichment, with the idea of producing HEU by mining uranium, purifying it, and using laser enrichment to separate the U-235 (having gone to considerable lengths to steal documents related to laser enrichment technology).[39]  This is perhaps the most technically demanding and difficult route to acquiring fissile material yet devised.  Yet there is no public evidence that Aum pursued the apparently simpler approach of trying to steal any of the tons of separated plutonium or hundreds of kilograms of HEU that were present in Japan, even though during the peak of the cult’s operations, Japan did not have regulatory requirements that nuclear facilities where such materials were located have armed guards on-site.

Aum did pursue the straightforward approach of seeking to acquire nuclear technology and material from the former Soviet Union.  The cult put one of its leading technical experts in charge of its Russia operations. It sent a leading cult official, Kiyohide Hayakawa, on more than 20 trips to Russia, apparently in significant part weapons-buying expeditions (Hayakawa’s extensive notebooks include the arresting notation "how much is a nuclear warhead?" followed by several possible prices).[40]  The group even requested a meeting with then-Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov in an attempt to purchase a nuclear weapon.  While Mikhailov refused to meet with Aum, then-Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and other senior officials met with an Aum delegation headed by the cult’s leader, Shoko Asahara, in early 1992.  Some reports assert that Aum paid between $500,000 and $1 million to Oleg Lobov, then Secretary of the Russian Security Council, between 1991 and 1995—a charge Lobov denies.  Lobov and Aum co-founded a Russian-Japanese university in Moscow, with offices that Lobov had arranged across from the Bolshoi Ballet and only minutes from the Kremlin—a sign of the extensive influence Aum enjoyed.[41]

After the 1995 sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway the Japanese government moved aggressively against the group’s weapons of mass destruction programs and arrested most of its top leadership.  An effort to ban the group entirely failed, however, though the group was banned in Russia.  Nevertheless, this was not the end for Aum, or for its interest in weapons of mass destruction.  Years later, Tokyo police were reporting that the cult acquired software from industry and government entities enabling it to steal information on Japan’s nuclear program, including data on nuclear fuel suppliers and nuclear material transport routes—the latter being particularly worrisome, as transport is the part of nuclear material’s life-cycle where it is most difficult to protect from violent theft attempts.  The group was also said to have hacked into computers and acquired sensitive information on nuclear transport in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries.[42] While many of the group’s key leaders remain in prison, the group, now known as Aleph, still has thousands of members, and continues to recruit more.  As recently as late 2004, the Japanese National Police Agency, in its annual report, warned of the "danger" that the cult would return to "organized illegal activities," pointing out that the cult continues to emphasize the centrality of the doctrines of founder Shoko Asahara.[43]  In Russia as well, there have been concerns over continued activity of the cult, which is estimated to have some 300 active members in Russia and several facilities there, despite its status as a banned organization.[44]

In short, like the al Qaeda case, the Aum Shinrikyo case demonstrates that even large and well-financed terrorist groups with ample technical resources can have substantial difficulty following the nuclear path.  In particular, it appears that despite being willing to spend millions of dollars in Russia to acquire nuclear weapons or the means to make them, the group failed to do so.

Chechen Terrorists

There is a substantial record of interest in, and statements about, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons by the more extreme Chechen terrorist factions. It is important to be careful about the evidence, however, as in the ongoing conflict, Russian officials have been quick to charge the Chechens with virtually any horrific act or intention imaginable.  Moreover, Chechen nationalists should not all be tarred with the same brush.  By no means all Chechen nationalists support terrorist tactics, and by no means all Chechen terrorists would be interested in the scale of violence involved in a nuclear attack.  Genuine Chechen nationalists, fighting for an independent Chechnya, might be reluctant to actually use a nuclear bomb against Russia, fearing that the likely response might well effectively obliterate any chance for a functional future Chechen state.  (Threatening such use in order to blackmail Russia into withdrawing its forces, however, might be of more interest to genuine Chechen nationalists.)  The best documented incident involving Chechen fighters and radiological material—the placement of cesium-137 in a popular Moscow park in 1995—is an example of this kind of restraint: the Chechen fighters placed the material in the park and then informed the Russian media where it was, as a warning, without attempting to use the material for an actual attack.

But a range of indicators suggests that some Chechen factions may be interested in violence on a nuclear scale.  The attack by 32 heavily armed and suicidal terrorists on an elementary school in Beslan, in September 2004, which ended in the massacre of over 300 people, most of them children, demonstrates clearly that some Chechen factions are willing to kill innocent civilians on a large scale, and are capable of organizing large and well-planned operations to do so.  Some of the most prominent Chechen factions have increasingly allied themselves with an extreme Islamic agenda that is more global than local, and there have long been ties between some Chechen factions and al Qaeda.  Chechen fighters have trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, foreign al Qaeda fighters have fought in Chechnya, and Chechen fighters have fought for the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.[45]  The most extreme Islamist factions might be tempted to use a weapon of mass destruction against Russia—or some groups might provide such weapons to al Qaeda for use elsewhere, making the ongoing conflict in Chechnya potentially a global danger.[46]

Some statements by Chechen terrorists and documents seized from them have suggested an interest in large-scale nuclear terrorism—either by sabotage of a major nuclear facility or use of a nuclear bomb—and Chechen terrorists have repeatedly indicated an interest in the use of radiological weapons.[47]  As one recent example—suggesting the tension within the Chechen camp between those who support and oppose nuclear terrorism—Akhmed Zakayev, an envoy for then-Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, warned that additional terrorist attacks in Russia were likely, and that: "We cannot exclude that some group takes over some nuclear facility.  The results may be catastrophic, not only for Russian society and for Chechen society, but for the whole of Europe."[48]  Though not specifically mentioning nuclear weapons, leading Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev—who took responsibility for the Beslan attack—told the Globe and Mail newspaper in October 2004 that he would use any means to force Russia to give Chechnya independence, including the use of chemical and biological weapons against civilians.[49]  During 2004-2005, some Chechen elements increasingly adopted a radical jihadist agenda.  In July 2004, shortly before the Beslan attacks, even Maskhadov, a relative moderate and long-time opponent of the tactics used by Basayev and others, gave an interview in which he said that attacks on Russian cities would be legitimate, and praised Basayev as continuing "to battle the occupiers successfully."[50]  After Maskhadov was killed by Russian security forces in early 2005, he was replaced with a more radical leader from the Chechen Sharia Council who has said the Chechens will no longer ask Russia for peace.[51]

In January 2002, Russian troops found what they described as late Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev's personal archive, which contained a detailed plan to hijack a Russian nuclear submarine.[52]  The commander of Russia's troops in Chechnya, Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoi, told reporters on February 2, 2002, that the plan provided for seven Slavic-looking fighters to seize a submarine from the Russian Navy's Pacific Fleet some time in 1995-96, and blackmail Moscow into withdrawing troops from Chechnya and recognizing the republic as an independent state.[53] Moltenskoi reported that former naval officer Islam Khasukhanov developed the plan back in 1995 and that then-chief of the Chechen General Staff Maskhadov had personally reviewed the plan and made notes on it. Khasukhanov had served on Russian submarines before leaving the Pacific Fleet in the rank of naval commander to become chief of the operational department of the Chechen separatists' general staff. [54]

In 2003, Yuri Vishenvskiy, then-chairman of Russia’s nuclear regulatory agency, said that "information from the power agencies indicates that there have been attempted attacks" on Russian nuclear facilities by Chechen terrorists.[55]  Similarly, as noted at the beginning of this section, the Russian state newspaper has reported that the 41 heavily armed terrorists who seized a theater in Moscow in October 2002 considered seizing the Kurchatov Institute instead.  While the Kurchatov Institute has enough HEU on-site for dozens of nuclear weapons, the press report, based on information from Russian security services, suggested that the plan the terrorists considered involved not stealing HEU but seizing a reactor at Kurchatov, threatening to blow it up if their demands were not met.[56]

Most disturbing are the specific incidents which suggest Chechen terrorist interest in stealing nuclear weapons or weapons-usable nuclear material.  These include, most notably, the incidents sited at the outset of this section, in which terrorist teams carried out reconnaissance at nuclear warhead storage facilities and on nuclear warhead transport trains.  Another disturbing incident occurred in March 2002, when Russian police in the Sverdlovsk region arrested three Chechens in possession of a range of guns and explosives.  One of the men was found to have a valid pass to the high-security closed city of Lesnoy, site of one of Russia's largest nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facilities.  (This pass would have entitled him to enter the closed city, but not the weapons facility itself, though he could have used his access to the city to build relationships with employees and guards at the weapons facility.)  He had the pass because his father had been an employee at the plant and the family had lived in the city.[57]  In January 2003, Colonel-General Igor Valynkin, commander of the 12^th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the branch responsible for guarding Russia's nuclear weapons, summed up the situation by warning that "Chechen terrorists plan to seize some crucial military facility or nuclear warhead so as to threaten not just Russia, but the whole world."[58]

Chechen groups might well be able to pull together the capabilities needed to acquire nuclear weapons or materials in Russia, though there is no solid evidence that they have done so to date.  Attacks such as Beslan demonstrate Chechen terrorists’ ability to pull together attacks involving dozens of fighters striking at once, without warning; armament including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and large quantities of explosives; and help from current or former members of Russia’s policy and security services.  Many nuclear facilities would find it difficult to defend against a no-warning attack on that scale.  Similarly, the problem of theft by corrupt or blackmailed insiders is potentially a serious one; insider thefts of weapons from military facilities and of equipment from nuclear facilities occur routinely in Russia,[59] and Chechen fighters have regularly made use of both corrupt insiders and tactics such as kidnapping family members of individuals they wish to blackmail.  Indeed, a number of police and security officials have been arrested for their assistance in Chechen terrorist attacks.[60]  Certain Chechen militant groups are known to have ties with Chechen organized crime groups, to the extent that in some cases the lines between guerilla operations and organized crime have been completely blurred.[61]  Chechen criminal groups tend to dominate important aspects of narcotics trafficking and distribution throughout most of the former Soviet Union reaching to the Russian Far North and Far East, even collaborating with corrupt Russian military and security forces in moving drugs from Afghan and Central Asian points of origin into Russia.[62]  Such linkages among illicit narcotics trafficking networks, along with human and small arms trafficking networks, might prove important in the acquisition and transport of nuclear warheads and materials, though there is no specific evidence that any such connections have been made to this point.[63]

In short, in the last decade, three different terrorist groups in three different contexts have actively sought nuclear weapons, including attempting to buy or steal nuclear weapons or their essential ingredients, or at least carrying out surveillance in possible preparation for such an effort.  The world cannot assume that these groups will be the last.  Even if al Qaeda could somehow be destroyed completely, the threat of nuclear terrorism would be reduced, not eliminated.

Acquiring stolen nuclear material from abroad could offer an extraordinarily valuable shortcut, cutting a proliferator's bomb program from years to months, or even less, if other necessary preparations had already been made.  Making a bomb from nuclear material already in hand might be done both quickly and in facilities that might remain covert, presenting the international community with a terrifying new threat with very little warning.

Consideration of buying a nuclear weapon or the material to make one is not unusual in the historical record.  Australia wanted to purchase a nuclear weapon, when it was considering the nuclear weapons option; Egypt explored the possibility of a purchase when it was pursuing a nuclear weapons program; Libya, realizing the weakness of its own indigenous science and technology base, is reported to have repeatedly attempted to purchase a nuclear weapon, including an unsuccessful approach to China; there are even reports that Indonesia sought to purchase a bomb, decades ago.[64]  In short the cases of Iraq and Iran, described below, are not unique, and should be considered only as particular case studies of a broader phenomenon.  The more nonproliferation efforts focused on limiting states’ ability to build their own enrichment and reprocessing facilities succeed in the future, the more likely it is that additional states will pursue the purchase alternative in the future.

It was long a worry that Iraq might exploit such an opportunity, given its substantial nuclear weapons program prior to the 1991 Gulf War, and given its perceived interest in a covert nuclear breakthrough after that war.  But the available evidence suggests that despite some attempts, Iraq was not able to acquire weapons-usable material before 1991, and may not have tried seriously after 1991.  Since the U.S.-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, intelligence assessments on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program prior to the war have proven to be wildly wrong—and therefore considerable care has to be taken in assessing the available evidence concerning Iraq’s efforts to acquire black market nuclear material.

There is no dispute that Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein spent billions of dollars before the 1991 Gulf War attempting to establish an indigenous Iraqi capability to produce fissile material.[65]  This effort included the creation of a far-ranging procurement network involving large numbers of agents, front companies, and the like, which succeeded in illicitly acquiring a wide range of nuclear-related technologies from countries around the world.

While the network’s principal focus was on the technologies that would permit the establishment of indigenous Iraqi production of nuclear bomb material, it seems certain that pre-1991 Iraq would have snapped up weapons-usable nuclear material eagerly, had its agents been able to find a reliable source from which to buy it.  Indeed, in its declarations to international inspectors after the 1991 war, Iraq eventually acknowledged that it had purchased non-weapons-usable natural uranium for its indigenous production program on more than one occasion—demonstrating its willingness to purchase nuclear material illicitly.[66]  During the 1990s, Iraqi officials claimed to international inspectors that before the 1991 war, Iraq had received many offers of stolen nuclear materials for its weapons program, but had turned them all down—a claim that is difficult to credit.[67]  At least one participant in Iraq’s bomb program during the period before the 1991 war, Khidir Hamza, tells the opposite story.  Hamza reports that when arms dealers from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with whom Iraq had an ongoing relationship made offers of plutonium or highly enriched uranium, Iraqi authorities told them they were interested, and gave them cash to acquire samples.  In every case of which Hamza was aware, however, the samples turned out to be radioactive trash, not plutonium or HEU.[68]  As a result of these experiences, and out of fear of being caught by a Western sting operation, the part of Iraq's nuclear weapons program with which Hamza was associated began rejecting outside offers—though Hamza expressed his belief before the second Gulf War that Iraqi military intelligence continued to pursue them.  Hamza acknowledged that had any of the samples proved to be genuine weapons-usable nuclear material, Iraq would have been eager to purchase as much as was available.[69]

The accuracy of many of Hamza’s assertions, particularly about the importance of his own role in Iraq’s pre-war nuclear weapons program, has been extensively challenged.[70]  His assertions regarding attempted purchases of nuclear material nevertheless seem credible, because (a) they were detailed and described as incidents in which he had personally taken part; (b) they ran contrary to the overall point he was attempting to make, which was that the principal danger was Iraq’s potential to establish indigenous production capabilities, and so cannot be explained as having been made up to support a larger argument; and (c) they fit reasonably well with known facts concerning the extensive foreign Iraqi procurement network.  But they remain assertions from a single source of uncertain reliability.  If they are correct, they are particularly notable because of the timing of the incidents described: Hamza left the Iraqi program in late 1990, so his account would imply that arms dealers from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were claiming to be able to provide stolen plutonium and HEU before the Soviet Union collapsed.

The potentially critical importance of getting enough nuclear material for one bomb while the ability to make more was still being put in place became clear after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.  Seeing the U.S. and coalition response to that invasion, Iraq launched a "crash" program to rapidly produce a single bomb, and for that purpose it planned on using HEU from its French-supplied and Soviet-supplied research reactors, material that was under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.[71] As the availability of sufficient quantities of adequately pure and enriched HEU was a key limiting factor for this effort, Iraq surely would have been eager to receive HEU from a nuclear black market during the period of the "crash" program.  Whether Iraq’s extensive foreign procurement effort was given explicit orders to attempt to acquire such material at that time is not known. With the coalition attack in 1991, the crash program ran out of time.

It appears that the 1991 Gulf War and the intrusive international inspections that followed effectively put an end to the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.  The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the U.S. team set up after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to examine the nature and scope of Iraqi WMD programs, concluded that "Saddam [Hussein] ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."[72]  This conclusion is effectively identical to those of the IAEA inspection teams, but stands in stark contrast to the claims made by the Bush administration prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Despite pre-war statements to the contrary, the ISG also found no evidence that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991.[73]  The commission established to review U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction after the 2003 war strongly supported the ISG’s conclusions.[74]

The ISG report does document that despite UN inspections and sanctions after the 1991 war, Iraq continued an extensive procurement effort focused on acquiring a wide range of military technologies prohibited under the UN sanctions regime, including technologies and materials acquired from entities in countries such as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and Romania (all of which held weapons-usable nuclear material that was dangerously insecure at the time), among many others.[75]  Iraq succeeded, for example, in buying gyroscopes and other missile guidance instruments which were taken directly from decommissioned Russian strategic nuclear missiles, and which had been tested and certified by a leading Russian institute.  Desperate Russian institutes also agreed to sell a wide variety of other key missile technologies.[76]  As noted earlier, an employee of Russia's premier nuclear weapons laboratory, arrested in December 1998, was accused of spying both for the Taliban and for Iraq—in this case on advanced conventional weapons. These efforts continued right up to beginning of the 2003 war.  The ISG report, however, contains no mention of any post-1991 Iraqi effort to acquire black-market nuclear material.  The only specific such case that has been reported in the public record is the assertion by the Department of Defense official who led Project Sapphire, the removal of HEU from an insecure site in Kazakhstan in the Clinton administration, that Iraq had offered $16,000 per kilogram for the HEU at that site (at some time prior to 1994, when the material was airlifted to the United States).[77]  It is notable, however, that this charge is not repeated in the ISG report.

The ISG report, however, makes a persuasive argument that Saddam Hussein remained intensely interested in resuming the quest for nuclear weapons after UN sanctions were eventually lifted, and that the Iraqi regime took at least modest steps to ensure that the knowledge of the participants in Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was not dispersed.  In the words of one Saddam directive quoted in the report: "Keep nuclear scientists together at the IAEC [Iraq Atomic Energy Commission] in order to pool their skills and have them available when needed."[78]  With the HEU that was to have been used in the crash program removed from Iraq by international inspectors, acquiring stolen weapons-usable nuclear material would have been a critical way to maintain a secret nuclear capability.  Indeed, from 1991 to 2003, there was a broad consensus among experts on Iraq’s program that the only way it could achieve a nuclear weapons capability quickly would be by pursuing the theft option. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency warned in 1998 (well before the shift toward more alarming assessments in the run-up to the 2003 war) that Iraq "would seize any opportunity to buy nuclear weapons materials or a complete weapon."[79] The U.S. Senate's report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction declares that a series of U.S. intelligence analyses from 1997 on were "consistent" in assessing that if Iraq got the needed nuclear material from abroad "it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year," but that it would take "five to seven years" for it to make enough nuclear material for a bomb on its own, even with substantial foreign assistance.[80]  Similarly, both Khidir Hamza and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in Iraq emphasized that if Iraq had acquired enough nuclear material for a bomb, the small-scale effort needed to turn it into a bomb might have been difficult for inspectors to find.[81]  In short, there was ample reason to believe before the 2003 war that, regardless of the true extent of the Iraqi nuclear program, Saddam had a strong incentive to acquire stolen nuclear material that might have made a small, covert bomb effort possible. 

Nevertheless, the evidence now available suggests that Iraq did not make any strong and consistent effort to get black market nuclear bomb material after 1991, or to take any other substantial steps to reconstitute Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, preferring to focus first on getting UN sanctions lifted, and return to the pursuit of WMD after that had been accomplished.[82]

Iran

Because Iran retains a highly secretive government and has never been under the level of intense international inspection that Iraq faced, information about its procurement efforts is even more fragmentary than it is in the case of Iraq—but the available information suggests that Iran, too, has sought to purchase stolen nuclear material.

Like Iraq, Iran built a substantial illicit procurement network to acquire technologies related to weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, all over the world—but particularly in the former Soviet Union.  Like Iraq, Iran has succeeded in acquiring key missile technologies from Russian institutes, and has specifically sought technologies for producing both HEU and plutonium.[83]  Indeed, U.S. concerns over leakage of Russian weapons of mass destruction technologies to Iran have been central issues in U.S.-Russian relations for most of the period since the Soviet collapse.[84]  While it is now clear that the most critical technologies for Iran's indigenous efforts to produce nuclear material were coming from the black-market nuclear network led by Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, not from Russia, Iran's nuclear connections in the former Soviet Union are strong, and there are significant suggestions of ongoing efforts to acquire stolen nuclear material.

In 1996, the CIA warned that Iran was pursuing an indigenous production capability for both plutonium and HEU, and that "to shorten the timeline to a weapon, Iran has launched a parallel effort to purchase fissile material, mainly from sources in the former Soviet Union."[85] The next year, the Department of Defense pointed out that the "shortest route" for Iran to get nuclear weapons would be "acquisition of a nuclear weapon from a foreign source" or to "purchase or steal fissile material."[86]  In 2000, the CIA was still warning that "Teheran continues to seek fissile material"[87] and reportedly concluded that it could not rule out the possibility that Iran has already acquired a nuclear weapon capability, if it has succeeded in secretly procuring fissile material abroad.[88]  In 2003, the CIA warned again that it suspects that "Tehran is interested in acquiring fissile material…from foreign suppliers" for its nuclear weapons program.[89]

During 2003 and 2004, a series of IAEA reports documented Iran’s decades-long secret effort to develop uranium enrichment and other key technologies for producing potential nuclear weapons materials.[90]  Iran successfully procured a wide range of centrifuge- and laser enrichment-related technologies, through the black-market network led by Pakistan's A.Q. Khan and through contacts with entities in Russia  and other suppliers.  Like Iraq before 1991, Iran illicitly imported large quantities of uranium without reporting these acquisitions to the IAEA.  Iran repeatedly violated its safeguards obligations, both in failing to report imports and activities to the IAEA, and in providing information to the IAEA that Iran now acknowledges was false. 

The IAEA reports on Iran's nuclear activity indicate that Iran's indigenous enrichment program had gone on for well over a decade without producing a significant enrichment capacity.  Since Iran was for so long unable to produce significant quantities of weapons-usable material domestically, some in Iran might have perceived a strong incentive to acquire weapons-usable nuclear material from abroad.  The IAEA’s detection of HEU contamination of equipment at some facilities in Iran initially seemed to suggest either that Iran had succeeded in producing some HEU itself, or that it had received HEU from foreign sources.  The detection of 36% enriched HEU, a level of enrichment used in Soviet-supplied research reactors, in particular seemed to suggest that Iran might have gotten such material from abroad.  Iran has stated that the HEU particles came from contaminated equipment Iran received from abroad (much of it originating in Pakistan, but also including some non-centrifuge equipment from Russia that may have been the origin of the 36% enrichment).  In November, 2004, the IAEA reported that its "overall assessment" is that the data "tends, on balance to support Iran’s statement on the origin of much of the contamination," though other explanations continued to be investigated.[91]  Hence, as of early 2005, there is no clear evidence that these HEU particles did in fact come from black-market HEU.

There have been innumerable press reports (of varying levels of credibility) related to Iranian attempts to acquire nuclear materials or even nuclear weapons.  There have also been a significant number of actual arrests of Iranian nationals apparently associated with the Iranian special services, for smuggling of various types of nuclear or radioactive materials (though they have not been caught with substantial quantities of directly weapons-usable materials in any of the confirmed cases).[92]  At the Ulba facility in Kazakhstan, canisters were found labeled for shipping to Teheran, in a room next to the room where hundreds of kilograms of HEU were located.  The Iranians had reportedly approached Kazakhstan to secretly purchase beryllium and LEU from this facility, perhaps as a trust-building prelude to an offer to purchase the HEU.  (The HEU was subsequently removed from this facility under the U.S.-Kazakh cooperative effort known as Project Sapphire.)[93]

If Iran succeeds in establishing an operational enrichment capability of its own, its potential demand for black market fissile material would presumably lessen.  Nevertheless, as long as its enrichment facilities remained under IAEA safeguards, some demand for illicit nuclear material from abroad, which could be processed secretly without attracting inspectors' attention, might continue.

The Demand is There

There is no evidence that either a nuclear weapon or the nuclear material needed to make one has yet fallen into the hands of terrorist groups or hostile states.  But it is clear that both terrorist groups and states are attempting to get these items—and that if they succeed, the international community would be faced with a terrifying new threat with very little warning.  The fact that the known cases of theft and smuggling of plutonium and HEU cannot be linked to specific buyers should not blind one to the reality of the demand.  Indeed, there is no way to know what has not been detected: it may be that precisely those thieves and smugglers who are well-connected to potential buyers are the ones who do not get caught.  This sobering reality should lead governments around the world to redouble their effort to ensure that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material are secure and accounted for, and that potential nuclear smuggling can be successfully blocked.

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Written by Matthew Bunn. Last updated by Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and Josh Friedman on June 16, 2005.

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The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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