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FOR
PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY
William
D. Hartung, Senior Research Fellow World Policy Institute
June 11th, 2002
PRESS
ADVISORY: "Dirty" Bombs, and the Bush Administration's Dirty Little Secret
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New York, NY -- June 11, 2002 -- Yesterday's announcement
by Attorney General John Ashcroft that authorities had a Brooklyn-born
Latino man in custody for involvement in an alleged Al Qaeda
plot to explode a radiological bomb in Washington, DC underscores
the
continuing vulnerability of the United States to a wide variety of possible
terrorist attacks.
"If the evidence against the suspect proves to be accurate, the Bush administration
deserves credit for heading off this plan in its early stages," said William
D. Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute. "But
this case also highlights the Bush administration's dirty little secret. They
still don't have their priorities straight when it comes to taking measures to
thwart the most damaging -- or the most likely -- kinds of potential terror
attacks on U.S. soil."
There is general agreement among experts that the most damaging effects
of a so-called "dirty bomb" -- a conventional explosive set
up to disperse radioactive materials in a populated area -- would be
psychological and economic. Loss of life would be minimal compared to
the use of a nuclear weapon, which could kill tens or hundreds of thousands
of people in a highly populated urban area. The threat of a radiological
weapon still needs to be taken seriously, however, since a crude device
would be far easier to construct and transport than a nuclear weapon,
and the fear and chaos that the use of one or more of these devices would
cause could strike a devastating blow to the morale of the public, as
well as to the economies of the targeted areas.
"Unfortunately, the Bush administration's priorities are off the mark when
it comes to dealing with either a radiological weapon or an actual nuclear bomb," Hartung
noted. "While the U.S. government spends nearly $9 billion per year for
an unproven missile defense system designed to protect against what many U.S.
intelligence experts argue is the least likely method a rogue state or terrorist
group would use to target the United States with a nuclear weapon -- a long-range
ballistic missile -- policymakers have barely scratched the surface in efforts
to secure radioactive materials that might be used to construct a 'dirty' bomb
or to establish monitoring systems to detect dangerous radioactive materials
at major facilities and transportation hubs."
As for the threat of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a terrorist
group, the most important single step that can be taken to prevent that
from happening -- destroying Russia's vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons
and bomb-grande nuclear materials -- is completely ignored by the loophole-laden
Bush-Putin accord on nuclear arms reductions.
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