WMD Terrorism

A UN nonproliferation body carried out its first formal in-country visit last month, examining the steps that the United States has taken to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Zia Mian reviews Fallout, Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz’s account of how the CIA recruited the Tinner family as agents inside the Abdul Qadeer Khan network. In addition to adding detail to previous accounts of the Khan network, the book shows how the CIA sought to protect its dominant position in internal U.S. policy debates on Khan’s nuclear smuggling operation and shielded the Tinners from criminal prosecution.

The April nuclear security summit that President Barack Obama will host in Washington will be an unprecedented event. More than 40 heads of state from the developed and developing world will gather to discuss the need to prevent nuclear terrorism and secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years. This four-year pledge—a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s nuclear security policy—must be achieved.

On Dec. 3, a congressionally mandated commission released a report offering 15 recommendations to help the U.S. government improve its ability to prevent and respond to threats of biological and nuclear terrorism. Drawing even more attention and criticism than the recommendations, however, was the commission's prediction that terrorists were likely to carry out an attack with biological or nuclear weapons somewhere in the world within the next five years. (Continue)