Personally I agree and don't believe AQ has suitcase nukes. Those things are meant to be very high maintenance and hard to keep up. However, if the US had found evidence that AQ had tested them and might well have more, the last thing they'd do i sannounce it publicly. That would give AQ instant street cred, throw jitters through the market and public and make a lot of people start getting nervous about the war...behind the scenes feeler to friendly governments and redoubled efforts by Intel would be their key course of action.
That said, I think the story is rubbish.
Yep. They are high-maintenance for fundamental physical reasons, and the few governments capable of building them would, if anything, design them to be even higher-maintenance as insurance against some rogue element outside their control somehow getting hold of one.