Expert: Fear of nuclear terrorism may be overblown

Seven years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, experts and presidential candidates continue to put nuclear terrorism atop their lists of the gravest threats to the United States. Brian Michael Jenkins, a longtime terrorism expert with the Rand Corp., argues however, that the threat lies more in the realms of Hollywood dramas and terrorist dreams than in reality. He told National Journal’s James Kitfield that although there has never been an act of nuclear terrorism, the threat is so potentially catastrophic that it incites fear — and that fear fulfills a terrorist’s primary goal. Here are Jenkins’s responses to two of Kitfield’s questions:

Kitfield: Are you saying that Al Qaeda is interested in nuclear weapons only in the abstract, as a propaganda tool?

Jenkins: No. Al Qaeda has actual nuclear ambitions, there is no doubt about that. When Osama bin Laden was in Sudan, he tried to acquire some nuclear material. The efforts were mostly amateurish, and Al Qaeda was the victim of some scams. Qaeda [leaders] also had meetings with some Pakistani nuclear scientists while in Afghanistan. So, clearly, they were thinking about nuclear weapons. If bin Laden were able to acquire a nuclear weapon, I also suspect that he would use it. My larger point is that Al Qaeda has already become the world’s first nonstate nuclear power without even having nuclear weapons.

Kitfield: Do you mean by its ability to incite fear of nuclear terrorism?

Jenkins: Yes, and we contribute to that fear. The message clearly coming out of Washington for the last seven years has been a relentless message of fear. We’ve spent the years since 9/11 discussing every conceivable vulnerability of our society. We talk about the next catastrophic attack not as a matter of “if” but “when,” implying that it’s unavoidable.