Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism: The Threat According to the Current Unclassified Literature
Abstract
The prospect of chemical, biological, radiological, and/or nuclear (CBRN) terrorism is recognized by the United States government as an acute security challenge, Particularly following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, but also for several years prior, senior U.S. officials and official government reports have underscored the likelihood, over time, of terrorist organizations coming into possession of such unconventional materials, and the prospect of their use against the United States homeland, U.S. forward-deployed forces, or U.S. friends and allies, Toward the end of the last century, this concern was heightened, among other events, by the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 use of sarin in the Tokyo subway The combination of increasing availability of technology and expertise, a perceived mass-casualty motive structure for particular terrorist organizations, the impending end of a millennium, a spate of conventional attacks against U%S assets - World Trade Center, 1993; Oklahoma City Federal Building, 1995; American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, 1998; and the U.S.S. Cole, 2000 - and both the widespread suspicion of terrorists seeking CBRN weapons and the actual sub-national employment of a chemical agent all contributed to this general assessment, More recently, the prospective linkage between terrorist organizations and state actors with weapons of mass destruction programs has become an acute security concern. Indeed, this nexus is central to the logic of the emergent 'Bush Doctrine'. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified in May 2002, 'we have to recognize that terrorist networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction, and that they inevitably are going to get their hands on them, and they would not hesitate one minute in using them. That's the world we live in'.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 31, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA404213
Entities
Organizations
- National Defense University