Searching for 'dirty bombs'

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For at least the second time since terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, elite U.S. counterterrorist units have been put on a heightened state of alert in response to intelligence worries that the al-Qaida network has obtained one or more weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), including biological and/or nuclear materials.

Published reports, along with new information obtained by Insight from U.S. intelligence and military sources, point to a growing body of evidence that terrorists associated with and/or sympathetic to Osama bin Laden are planning a significant attack on U.S. soil. Also targeted are allied countries that have joined the worldwide hunt for the radical Muslim cells hell-bent on unleashing new waves of terrorist strikes.

The U.S. government's activation of antiterrorist forces comes as the FBI issued a warning Nov. 14 that a "spectacular" new terrorist attack may be forthcoming – sooner rather than later. This alert, among others about which Insight has learned, coincides with the conclusion by top U.S. intelligence officials that bin Laden is alive and in control of a revitalized al-Qaida network with new cells operational in the United States. Both the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) conducted tests of a newly surfaced audiotape featuring the international terrorist leader and concluded it is genuine. In the tape, bin Laden promised new attacks.

Concerns about possible terrorist strikes are centered not only on the United States but also on Canada. Canadian officials are worried that there might be a hotbed of terrorist cells planning attacks, as evidenced by Canadian Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay's Sept. 3 hand-delivered directive to Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director Ward Elcock telling him to put the prevention of terrorists from getting their hands on a "dirty bomb" or other nuclear weapon among the highest priorities of Canada's spy service.

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The CSIS increasingly has been concerned about extremist Islamic groups operating in Canada that have had dealings with known al-Qaida operatives, including some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. They are mindful that terrorists have entered the United States from Canada with plans to carry out bombings.

Elsewhere, the Australian government issued an unprecedented warning to its citizens that al-Qaida terrorists there might launch attacks within the next two months. Prime Minister John Howard made the extraordinary declaration recently that he is prepared to make pre-emptive military strikes against terrorists in neighboring Asian countries planning to attack Australia. Australian intelligence agencies also are very worried about the likelihood of an al-Qaida attack using nuclear weapons.

The FBI's latest warnings are unusually dire. They state that bin Laden's terrorist organization may be planning an unprecedented attack to cause "mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy and maximum psychological trauma" on a scale far greater than the attacks on the World Trade Center's twin towers and the Pentagon.

Senior U.S. intelligence analysts who spoke to Insight say they fear such an attack would involve a nuclear device. They say a nuclear dirty bomb is the ideal weapon to accomplish the magnitude of carnage and mayhem of which the FBI has warned. They point to intelligence that indicates a nuclear weapon of some sort already may be in the hands of al-Qaida, which has or is attempting to deliver the device or devices to terrorists operating here.

"To me, 'spectacular' indicates a very serious attack against a very serious target near-term," said former FBI counterterrorism analyst Matthew Levitt. CIA Director George Tenet warned in October that "you must make the assumption that al-Qaida is in an execution phase and intends to strike us [again]." Tenet and other senior U.S. national-security officials have stated publicly that al-Qaida is likely to launch another spectacular attack against the United States.

Senior U.S. military and intelligence sources began telling Insight more than a month ago that they had "warnings and indications" of a major new attack, possibly involving a nuclear weapon. Intelligence sources tell Insight that the details were of sufficient concern to activate a special antiterrorist unit – the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), a 30-year-old federal organization whose mission it is to find and disarm nuclear weapons. NEST was activated shortly after Sept. 11 in response to a similar state of high alert that also was based on intelligence indicating al-Qaida had plans to detonate a nuclear device in Washington or New York City.

The earlier "plot" is believed to have been thwarted by the massive roundup of suspected terrorists in the weeks after Sept. 11, according to top-secret briefings given to senior members of Congress late this summer, Insight is told by Capitol Hill staffers and intelligence officials familiar with the briefings.

That a nuclear-bomb plot may have been thwarted was made disturbingly clear, the sources say, by the disclosure that physical evidence indicated some detained al-Qaida members actually had handled radioactive materials, including at least two who exhibited symptoms of radiation sickness. One of the sources said this "only intensified our concerns about al-Qaida networks we continue to monitor. ... They exhibited symptoms of exposure to various radioactive substances" consistent with building a dirty bomb.

One intelligence source involved in tracking al-Qaida in the United States told Insight in late September following the secret congressional briefings that, as a result of the post-Sept. 11 roundups of al-Qaida operatives, "there [was a fear that there] may actually [have been] one or more of these [dirty] bombs or the components to build them laying around in some public storage facility or some other place that these cells we busted up were using, and that's really scary." Today, these sources say intelligence indicates the materials may be in the hands of newly formed al-Qaida cells under the direct control of bin Laden, a possibility that in part led to the FBI's particularly gloomy Nov. 14 alert.

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The sources said fresh intelligence collected on al-Qaida's nuclear ambitions strongly indicates that a new scheme to attack the United States with some sort of nuclear device has been resurrected with the re-emergence of bin Laden and the reconstitution of unidentified al-Qaida cells in the United States. These sources are gravely concerned.

The seriousness of the continuing al-Qaida threat in the United States was reinforced vividly in September when authorities broke up what intelligence officials say was an important al-Qaida terrorist cell in Buffalo, N.Y., that had been under federal surveillance since before the Sept. 11 attacks. Members of the alleged Buffalo cell are charged with aiding and abetting terrorists by having attended al-Qaida's Al-Farooq terrorist training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan – a location not only where information was found detailing the construction of nuclear weaponry, but also enough low-grade uranium-238 to make a dirty bomb.

As the alleged Buffalo cell was being dismantled, U.S. counterterrorist intelligence operations were uncovering evidence of still other "sleeper" terrorist cells across the country – cells Bush administration officials acknowledge they have yet to identify. In addition, and perhaps more alarmingly, senior intelligence officials now say a long-standing terrorist cell in addition to the one assigned to carry out the Sept. 11 attacks is known to have been operational and that many of its members have not been identified. In recent weeks, according to CIA sources, a handful of foreign students attending universities across the country have been linked definitively to al-Qaida's hierarchy and are believed to be involved in plans for future attacks. The sources said secret detentions of the students are expected as soon as surveillance operations of the young men are deemed to have exhausted all useful intelligence.

"All I can say is that these and other al-Qaida operatives we're monitoring may be part of the sorts of spectacular attacks" mentioned in the FBI's Nov. 14 alert, one of the CIA sources tells Insight. Those under scrutiny include a former Soviet KGB officer working at the United Nations who is believed to have worked on brokering deals for nuclear-weapons materials overseas.

It's no secret that for many years bin Laden has sought nuclear weapons to use against the United States and its allies. Western intelligence agencies secretly have tracked efforts by his far-flung terrorist network to acquire both the materials to build an A-bomb as well as fully constructed nuclear warheads. As this report was being completed, the son of a Pakistani nuclear scientist told authorities that bin Laden approached his father months before the Sept. 11 attacks about making nuclear bombs. The scientist's son reportedly said his father met bin Laden several times in Afghanistan. Months earlier, a number of Pakistani nuclear scientists were identified as having had discussions with bin Laden and his top bomb-making scientists about how to make nuclear weapons.

A former high-ranking Taliban official recently said uranium was smuggled from the Ukraine into Afghanistan where it was bought by the Taliban and given to bin Laden. Both Iraq and bin Laden are known to have tried to obtain nuclear-weapons technologies from the Ukraine, a country riddled with corruption and lax security over its nuclear stockpile. In September, Pyotr Simonenko, the leader of the Ukrainian Communist Party, released information showing that 200 of the 2,400 nuclear warheads in the Ukraine at the time of the Soviet Union's dissolution are unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma is under investigation for military deals with Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions.

A cache of weapons-grade uranium – enough for a handful of small nuclear bombs – remains stored at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, an obscure Soviet-era defense lab where security has been of great concern to the United States. Iraqi officials openly have pursued trade deals with local companies and have visited Kharkiv's old Soviet weapons factories and research centers, including the Kharkiv Institute. Iraq maintains an "honorary consul" in Kharkiv who is a Ukrainian exporter with an office not far from the institute.

Connections between Iraq, bin Laden and al-Qaida have provoked intense worry on the part of U.S. officials, who already strongly suspect Saddam Hussein assisted bin Laden's quest for nuclear weapons. Classified intelligence behind the FBI's alert indicates nuclear devices or materials have been obtained from Iraq that intelligence has linked to high-level al-Qaida leadership. Much of this intelligence derives from a special Pentagon task force created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld following the Sept. 11 attacks. Rumsfeld ordered a team of defense officials outside regular intelligence channels to focus on unearthing details about Iraq's ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist networks by meticulously analyzing existing and real-time intelligence on terrorists and Iraq.

The product of this extraordinary undertaking is said to have disclosed heretofore unknown ties between bin Laden's al-Qaida organization and Iraq. Pentagon officials recently confirmed that a number of senior al-Qaida leaders have taken refuge in Iraq, a fact the officials do not find surprising. Classified intelligence from as far back as 1988 which was made available to Insight shows that Iraq has harbored notorious terrorists, such as Abu Nidal, and provided them with cash, protection and training facilities.

The issue of Iraqi ties to al-Qaida was the subject of briefings given to select lawmakers in September that focused almost exclusively on Saddam's nuclear-weapons capabilities and his suspected transference of these capabilities to al-Qaida. Sources say intelligence indicates that al-Qaida terrorists who lived and worked in the United States, including at least one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, were linked to bin Laden's nuclear-weapons-acquisition efforts.

Congressional sources familiar with the briefings described this intelligence as "terribly disturbing." Their comments were echoed by senior intelligence officials, several of whom have worked to track suspected al-Qaida operatives. That al-Qaida cells have been linked to Sept. 11 hijackers suspected of being involved with efforts by the group to develop nuclear weapons is "unnerving," one of the sources emphasized.

This summer, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Tenet outlined to senior congressmen the scope of NSA-collected "signals intelligence" (SIGINT) from satellites of contacts between Baghdad and al-Qaida before and after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Intelligence sources say the SIGINT "definitely" involved discussions of nuclear weapons of interest to al-Qaida.

Intelligence agencies since have openly confirmed contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida's leaders. Rumsfeld said intelligence on "these contacts has been increasing since 1998" and has expanded to include "credible evidence" that al-Qaida leaders sought contacts in Iraq for assistance in acquiring WMDs.

Counterterrorist authorities say classified intelligence leaves "little doubt" Saddam has "a nuclear-weapons capability" that includes not only stockpiles of enriched uranium necessary for building a nuclear weapon and low-grade nuclear material for building crude dirty bombs, but also a strong likelihood that Iraq possesses an unknown number of Soviet-era "man-portable" nuclear bombs, some of which reportedly were offered to bin Laden. Iraq has denied it has or has sought WMDs and has claimed that it is in full compliance with various U.N. prohibitions on such matters.

Intelligence sources say the White House has evidence – of which the United Nations long has been aware, according to former U.N. Iraqi nuclear-weapons inspector David Kay – that Iraq successfully built and tested a variety of dirty bombs and that the technological know-how and materials to construct them may have been made available to al-Qaida. U.S. intelligence long ago concluded that it was possible for Iraq to build a radiological dispersal device (RDD). Top-secret Iraqi nuclear-weapons documents later obtained by U.N. weapons inspectors prove Iraq successfully tested several types of the bombs using non-weapons-grade nuclear materials – materials that would be significantly easier for al-Qaida to obtain, transport and use than actual bomb-grade radioactive materials.

Additionally, although U.N. weapons inspectors destroyed much of Iraq's nuclear bomb-making infrastructure between 1991 and 1998, its bomb designs and nuclear-weapon components still are missing. "Iraq has never surrendered to inspectors its two completed designs for a nuclear bomb, nuclear-bomb components such as explosive lenses and neutron initiators that it is known to have possessed, or almost any documentation of its efforts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade using gas centrifuges, devices which are small and readily concealed from reconnaissance," says Steve Dolley of the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute.

What's more frightening, top U.S. intelligence officials tell Insight, is Saddam's possible possession of portable tactical nuclear bombs. A former well-placed intelligence source privy to the details of Iraq's suspected acquisition of these bombs says, "In intelligence parlance, the likelihood that Iraq has these bombs [and that it may have provided some to al-Qaida] is 'B-percent,'" – a highly classified intelligence term that means the "highest degree of probability." The portable nukes that intelligence officials strongly suspect Saddam got his hands on were built by the former Soviet KGB and are believed to be in the one-kiloton range, which is enough destructive power to level a major inner-city area.

Laura Holgate, who was chief of a Pentagon program to secure Soviet nuclear stockpiles during the Clinton administration, recently said she believes a stolen tactical nuke is as great a risk as a dirty bomb.

Intelligence sources tell Insight that at least several dozen of the weapons were never recovered following the U.S.S.R.'s collapse. "That's a fact," a former high-ranking intelligence official with one of the United States' pre-eminent spy agencies says emphatically. The source says that in the early 1990s Iraq was provided with two of these portable nuclear bombs from ex-KGB officials and that these were detonated covertly to test their effectiveness as part of a deal under which Saddam was considering the purchase of an unknown number of the bombs. Counterterrorist sources familiar with the matter exclusively tell Insight the evidence is in the form of both electronic-communications intercepts and spy-satellite imagery collected at the time of the tests, which CIA counterterrorists confirm.

The intelligence parallels information provided to this reporter in 1993 by a top Russian official and U.S. intelligence official during a background conversation with the two in Washington. The Russian official said at the time that both his government and the United States were gravely concerned about two portable tactical nuclear bombs in the KGB's possession that could not be accounted for and which were believed to have been diverted to a rogue Arab state or terrorist organization. The U.S. intelligence official, who now directs an important department of the U.S. intelligence community, concurred with the Russian official, saying the intelligence agency he headed at the time was "fully aware" of the two missing nukes.

Whether the missing nukes first were diverted to Iraq and then made their way into the hands of terrorists is unclear. What is clear is that U.S. officials increasingly are concerned that al-Qaida has made significant inroads into acquiring nuclear weapons, perhaps with help from Iraq.

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Anthony L. Kimery is an intelligence specialist and free-lance writer for Insight.