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Wild Atom: Nuclear Terrorism
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Global Organized Crime (GOC) Project
June 25, 1998

Key Findings and Recommendations

Few counterterrorist experts today doubt the appeal of nuclear terrorism to ruthless terrorists like those who carried out the vicious attacks in recent years in New York, Oklahoma City, and Tokyo. Nuclear explosives are no longer beyond the reach of terrorists: the technology is a half-century old, and weapons-usable fissile material is available on the black market. Should terrorists acquire a nuclear device, they could use it to intimidate, extort, cause panic, contaminate, or destroy.

Lessons learned from the unclassified Wild Atom simulation address the key issues of incident management (especially after a nuclear incident), intelligence, policy, and international cooperation.

Incident Management

If determined terrorists were to gain possession of a "loose nuke" today, the knowledgeable participants in Wild Atom concluded, successful interdiction would be extremely difficult. If their judgment is correct, the United States must immediately take steps to deal with a nuclear detonation or radiological dispersal on U.S. soil. The United States should

  • Improve consequence-management preparations at home and in cooperation with close allies. U.S. civil defense measures are improving, but what of all the other preparations necessary to cope with the effects of and clean up after a nuclear detonation or contamination? In particular, the U.S. national security and national disaster medical communities need to work together more closely.
  • Improve U.S. and allied capabilities to neutralize a nuclear device. The United States has some impressive capabilities, but could it work effectively with other states to locate and disarm a nuclear bomb? If not, are new forums, agreements, information sharing, and joint exercises needed? Have U.S. officials resolved the political and legal implications of a foreign request for help in disabling and disposing of a nuclear weapon?

Intelligence

Whatever chance there is to interdict a nuclear weapon coming to America, participants concluded, depends heavily on the availability of actionable intelligence. In addition to continued high-priority efforts to penetrate terrorist groups and proliferant states, Washington should also promote

  • Training and exercises to develop substantive expertise and effective working relationships among counterproliferation and counterterrorism analysts and operators on the one hand and appropriate officials in the policy, defense, law enforcement, and technical communities on the other.
  • Innovative international arrangements to share information promptly and to craft trafficker profiles jointly, identify patterns in the activities of nuclear criminals, determine the origin and route of seized nuclear materials, and assess the bomb-making capabilities of key rogue states and terrorist groups should they acquire sufficient fissile material. The United States needs to move beyond traditional bilateral intelligence liaison toward a multilateral pooling of information, analysis, and resources.
  • Increased funding and a sense of urgency to develop new sensors to detect both uranium and plutonium (and possibly other radioisotopes). The improved detectors need to be effective at a distance and despite shielding around the fissile material. They should be mobile, concealable, easy to operate, and inexpensive.

Policy

While working to improve intelligence and detection capabilities, the United States should also improve its policy process, Wild Atom participants urged.

  • Top officials must curb bureaucratic rivalry and parochialism to inculcate a culture of cooperation and a national strategy. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are cooperating, but they need to do more. Other agencies that handle domestic U.S. emergencies or that could gain needed information from foreign counterparts must join the traditional national security agencies in this effort.
  • Before the heat of a crisis, U.S. policymakers need to exercise response procedures, not only to ensure interagency cooperation but also to think through key issues, for example, guidelines for dealing with nuclear terrorists. Negotiations might avert a nuclear disaster, but they might also encourage future attempts at nuclear extortion.
  • Other key crisis response questions must be similarly addressed. Officials should try to establish the conditions that would justify search techniques that disrupt commerce and traffic. More important, what would justify evacuation of a U.S. city?

Dissatisfied with current policy, one senior participant suggested that the United States should adopt a tough, "you will die if you try" stance toward nuclear terrorists. He suggested three steps:

  • Defense: In the event of a terrorist device coming to America, close U.S. borders temporarily and push the nuclear detection effort offshore.
  • Deterrence: Declare publicly that any entity possessing nonsafeguarded nuclear material must give it up or be considered fair game for U.S. preemptive action. The United States should also increase rewards for surrendering fissile material or providing information on nuclear traffickers.
  • Response: Eliminate any entity that causes a nuclear explosion. In addition, brand nuclear criminals as international outlaws and invoke a firm policy of relentless pursuit of nuclear terrorists, much as law enforcement agencies today chase down "cop killers."

International Cooperation

Finally, Wild Atom participants urged, the United States should

  • Promote multilateral regimes that effectively combat proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials. How can we strengthen existing international norms? Do we need a nuclear smuggling convention?
  • Ensure secure control by responsible government authority over all remaining warheads and fissile materials. Should we move faster to help Russia secure the former Soviet nuclear stockpile? Are we institutionalizing U.S. assistance so that Russia can sustain these programs after our aid ends?
  • Strengthen international cooperation to try to interlock national defenses into a seamless, layered barrier against the smuggling and use of nuclear weapons and materials. Publicize these interlocking defenses to deter would-be nuclear traffickers. Several U.S. agencies are independently training foreign police, intelligence, and policy officials; but do we need institutionalized multinational arrangements? Because each state will try independently to keep nuclear materials out of its territory, achieving effective cooperation that involves risk taking will require time and perseverance.
  • Implement a public diplomacy campaign to brand nuclear terrorists as international outlaws. This campaign should include publicizing the severe penalties handed out to anyone convicted of a nuclear crime. It may also include offering bounties and amnesty for help in neutralizing nuclear criminals.

Raising awareness of the nuclear terrorist threat among senior U.S. policy-makers may be the first essential step toward strengthening our security. Toward that goal, the CSIS Nuclear Black Market Task Force hopes that Wild Atom will provide a timely alert rather than a frightening glimpse of the future. Although the lack of any confirmed illicit transfers of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the past few years appears to have produced overconfidence in some government circles, experts do not know whether the nuclear black market has been eliminated or only better concealed.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies is a public policy research organization.

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