Weapons Of Mass Destruction Are Easy To Build, Easy To Hide

It happened across town from the Popular Mechanics office. Fanatics exploded a truck bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center. Although the blast killed six and injured more than 1000, we got off lucky. "A lone madman or nest of fanatics with a bottle of chemicals, a batch of plague-inducing bacteria or a crude nuclear bomb can threaten or kill tens of thousands of people in a single act of malevolence," says Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.

Just how vulnerable is the United States to terrorists using weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)? R. James Woolsey, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, tells PM he believes terrorists armed with WMDs represent the single most serious threat to U.S. national security. And one that at present we are ill-prepared to meet.

WMDs fall into three categories: chemical, nuclear and biological. Most experts agree that despite their occasional high visibility--for instance, after the Aum Shinrikyo nerve gas attack on a subway in Tokyo--chemical weapons pose relatively little threat. "Chemicals are big and bulky," says Woolsey. Even if a terrorist group can acquire mustard, chlorine or nerve gas in sufficient quantity, there remains the problem of dispersing the agents in a way that causes serious damage.

"Some analysts believe that those who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 laced their bomb with cyanide, which burned up in the explosion," says Richard K. Betts, director of the Columbia University Institute for War and Peace Studies, in New York.

Nukes
The threat posed by nuclear weapons is both lesser and greater than that posed by chemical agents. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it seemed almost certain that a stolen nuclear bomb would turn up on the black market. A slew of novels and action movies sketched out scenarios of attacks against cities and major public events, such as the Super Bowl.

None of these attacks has come to pass. Experts doubt one ever will. "Few terrorist groups have shown an interest in inflicting true mass destruction," says Betts. The reason: Fear of a nuclear reprisal against their home countries. And even if a group were so suicidally inclined, there remain the pesky details of designing and building a nuclear weapon.

"Nuclear is tough to do unless you already have fissionable material," Woolsey points out. "A homemade nuclear device would be primitive, and also large and bulky."

As for an attack by a rogue state that somehow managed to buy stolen nuclear weapons, this also appears unlikely. Besides the dread of a counterattack, the problem is the delivery system. "Iraq, Iran or North Korea will not be able to deploy intercontinental missiles for years," explains Betts.