Have A Nice Day

December 2, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under National Security, Terrorism 

The AP reports on the Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, which is slated to be released tomorrow:

 A bipartisan commission is asserting the country should expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or biological weapons sometime in the next five years.

The report was written by the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism. Among other things, it concluded: “Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing.”

The commission also is encouraging the new White House to appoint a National Security Council official to exclusively coordinate U.S. intelligence and foreign policy on combating the spread of nuclear and biological weapons.

The report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, acknowledges that terrorist groups still lack the needed scientific and technical ability to make weapons out of pathogens or nuclear bombs. It warns that gap can be overcome easily if terrorists should find scientists willing to share or sell their expertise.

“The United States should be less concerned that terrorists will become biologists and far more concerned that biologists will become terrorists,” the report states.

The commission believes biological weapons are more likely to be obtained and used before nuclear or radioactive weapons because nuclear facilities are more carefully guarded. Civilian laboratories with potentially dangerous pathogens abound, however, and could easily be compromised.

“The biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device,” the report says.

It notes that the U.S. government’s counterproliferation activities have been geared toward preventing nuclear terror. The commission recommends the prevention of biological terror be made a higher priority.

Study chairman Graham said anthrax remains the most likely biological weapon. However, he told the AP that contagious diseases, such as the influenza tstrain that killed 40 million early in the 20th century, are looming threats. That virus has been recreated in scientific labs, and there remains no inoculation to protect against it should it be stolen and released.

Graham said the threat of a terror attack using nuclear or biological weapons is growing “not because we have not done positive things but because adversaries are moving at an even faster pace to increase their access” to those materials.

Tom Brokaw’s riveting testimony to the Commission regarding the anthrax attack on NBC was a cautionary tale.

Comments