Posted on 03/14/2003 2:48:58 PM PST by Angelus Errare
U.S. officials fear nuclear attack by al-Qaida Search for bin Laden takes on new urgency
Knight-Ridder News Service
WASHINGTON -- The manhunt for Osama bin Laden has become more urgent because of growing fears among intelligence officials that he is obsessed with building a nuclear bomb to explode on U.S. soil.
Federal intelligence and energy officials worry that bin Laden's terrorists will build an improvised nuclear weapon and smuggle it into the U.S., possibly in a container ship, according to well-placed sources.
His goal, they believe, is a nuclear hellstorm like the 1945 Hiroshima blast that killed 140,000 Japanese.
Unlike smaller-scale attacks, which can be planned and authorized by lower-level leaders, the chain of command in al-Qaida's nuke project answers directly to Bin Laden, right-hand man Ayman Al-Zawahiri and an unidentified scientist called "Dr. X," the sources said.
Alarming new statements by a top al-Qaida lieutenant -- in U.S. custody for the past year -- add to evidence of Bin Laden's doomsday bomb ambition.
On Feb. 2, captured al-Qaida planner Abu Zubaydah was asked what type of "new" attack would "surprise" America.
"Zubaydah's first response was nuclear, although he has continually stated that he does not believe that al-Qaida acquired nuclear weapons," said a secret Feb. 19 intelligence bulletin obtained by the New York Daily News.
Some in government suspect al-Qaida has a secret nuclear-bomb lab in Sudan, Pakistan or Yemen. Other officials doubt it.
The CIA says no specific nuclear plot has been uncovered, but one U.S. official described bin Laden's bomb lust as "on our screen for a long time."
"It is clear that al-Qaida is moving in that direction amidst obstacles," said British terrorism expert Rohan Kumar Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda."
The furtherance of bin Laden's nuclear ambitions has alarmed others outside the intelligence community.
"The greatest danger we face is a nuclear bomb being smuggled into this country," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "The amazing thing is how little we're doing about it."
"The probability of us stopping a bomb from being smuggled into the U.S., unfortunately, is small," said Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear terrorism expert who co-wrote a report on the threat released Wednesday by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Though difficult for terrorists to build, a nuclear bomb detonated inside Grand Central Terminal would vaporize a half-million New Yorkers, the report said.
Sources say al-Qaida has tried to recruit disgruntled nuclear scientists overseas, particularly in Pakistan, where nine scientists were reported missing last January.
"One of the great worries is that the Pakistani nuclear core is infiltrated by Taliban and al-Qaida," Schumer said.
The United States, through its allies, has bought off some foreign nuclear scientists and jailed others, the sources said.
Pakistan insists it keeps tabs on nuclear experts. "Their whereabouts are observed and their travel is observed," a Pakistani official told the New York Daily News.
He pointed to Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the fired chief of Pakistan's plutonium energy project, who was jailed for a year after U.S. intelligence grew suspicious of him in 2001. Mahmood later admitted he twice met with bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri about nuclear-bomb production.
So does this mean his status is back on "alive"? I'm so glad that W was saying a while back that he didn't consider catching Osama to be all that important. Well, at least he's passing another PATRIOT act to spy on us. I guess that makes up for it.
Now look me in the eye and deny that there isn't at least one spot in California that you'd like to see vaporized.
I'll be quite impressed if you can come up with that quote.
:-)
Bush pointed out that lately he "hadn't heard much" from bin Laden who, in the past, has been seen on videotape and said he did not believe the Saudi exile was "at the center of any command structure."
"I truly am not that concerned about him ... I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country, I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban."
I'm so glad that W was saying a while back that he didn't consider catching Osama to be all that important.
The man keeps a scorecard in his desk. While he's right to take some emphasis off of Bin Laden (to keep the "war is failing" crowd quiet), Bush also said "dead or alive" related to OBL. Neutralizing this coward is certainly important to President Bush, not to mention the rest of America.
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