[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 176 (Wednesday, November 14, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14391-S14392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           NUCLEAR TERRORISM

  Mr. CASEY. Madam President, the United States today faces a broad set 
of national security challenges, so many of them, but just to name a 
few: initiating a responsible redeployment of U.S. combat troops out of 
Iraq, preventing the Taliban from making a comeback in Afghanistan, 
addressing the current turmoil in Pakistan, responding to 
antidemocratic trends in Russia.
  Our whole country has a full plate of national security challenges. 
So today I wish to speak about one of those, but I think it is at the 
top of the list, and I think it is an issue that has not received 
nearly enough attention in the Senate or in the other body. It is a 
longer term threat that has not received the attention it deserves, but 
I believe this issue is the single greatest peril to this great Nation, 
and that is the prospect that a terrorist group, possibly with the 
active support of a nation state, will detonate an improvised nuclear 
weapon in an American city.
  I commend those who have displayed outstanding leadership on this 
issue, many of these individuals over several years, if not, in some 
cases, decades. Former Senator Nunn, of course, has been a leader on 
this issue; Senator Lugar, a colleague of ours and the ranking member 
of the Foreign Relations Committee, a committee on which I have the 
honor to serve; and, of course, the chairman of that committee, Senator 
Joe Biden. All of these individuals and others have worked on this 
issue for many years.
  In the weeks following 9/11, a lot of Americans know our intelligence 
community picked up a very frightening report from an agent. It was 
rumored that al-Qaida had acquired a Soviet-era nuclear weapon and had 
managed to smuggle it into New York City. The response of our 
Government, although secret at the time, was swift. Teams of experts 
were deployed across New York City with state-of-the-art detection 
equipment in an effort to track down this bomb before it exploded.
  The threat was ultimately discounted. There was no nuclear weapon 
inside the United States at that time. The intelligence community's 
agent had bad information. But what is so frightening about these 
events is that it is entirely plausible that al-Qaida could have 
smuggled a nuclear weapon into our Nation.
  One can only imagine the retrospective questions that would have 
followed such a horrific attack. What could our Federal Government have 
done to prevent such a detonation, we would ask. What policies or 
programs did we fail to prioritize? And, thirdly, how could we not have 
appreciated the urgency and the magnitude of the threat of nuclear 
terrorism?
  I hope we never have to ask and answer those questions. But here we 
are 6 years later and neither the United States nor any other nation 
has been forced to confront the aftermath of a terrorist attack 
involving a nuclear weapon. Yet I regret to say we cannot rely upon 
good luck continuing indefinitely. The threat of nuclear terrorism 
persists, and the United States and the international community are 
failing to move quickly enough to neutralize this threat.
  Why am I so concerned about nuclear terrorism and the challenges that 
it poses, not just for the world of today but for the world of our 
children and the world of our grandchildren? Some may ask that, and in 
response I just will cite a couple examples as to why I and everyone in 
this body should be concerned.
  No. 1, last year a Russian citizen was arrested in Georgia on charges 
of seeking to smuggle 100 grams of highly enriched uranium on the local 
black market in that country, with the promise made that he could 
deliver another 2 to 3 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at a later 
time.
  This arrest on smuggling charges is only one of hundreds involving 
fissile material that have emerged since the breakup of the Soviet 
Union in 1991. The good news is the quantities detected so far have 
been very small. The bad news is, just as with drug trafficking, those 
transactions come to our attention only after a fraction of what may 
actually be occurring.
  No. 2, too many facilities across the globe do not yet have the 
security safeguards we should demand for stockpiles of fissile 
material. Today, as many as 40 nations--40 nations--possess the key 
materials and components required to assemble a nuclear weapon. 
Surprisingly, we don't fully understand the magnitude of this problem. 
Among other experts, Dr. Matthew Bunn, a leading expert on nuclear 
terrorism, reports that neither the United States nor the International 
Atomic Energy Agency--we know from the news as IAEA--has a 
comprehensive prioritized list assessing which facilities around the 
world pose the most serious risk of nuclear theft.
  Finally, the third example I would cite in terms of why this is such 
an important issue and important question is, a columnist by the name 
of David Ignatius, with the Washington Post, reported last month that a 
senior Energy Department intelligence official had briefed the 
President and other administration officials that al-Qaida is engaged 
in a long-term mission--a long-term mission--to acquire a nuclear 
weapon to use against the United

[[Page S14392]]

States. According to this report by a senior Energy Department 
official, al-Qaida may have held off against further attacks against 
our Nation since 9/11 to focus on attaining a nuclear weapon.
  Madam President, I do have good news in this area. It is a serious 
topic, but there is some good news to report, although it also presents 
a challenge to us. The good news is, we know exactly what needs to be 
done to address the threat of nuclear terrorism. And a terrorist group 
as sophisticated as al-Qaida cannot build a nuclear weapon from 
scratch. The production of nuclear weapons and the fissile material 
that gives these nuclear weapons their deadly explosive power remains a 
capacity limited to a national government. A terrorist group can 
acquire a nuclear weapon through several means: It can purchase or 
steal a completed warhead from a state, or it can acquire the weapons-
grade plutonium or enriched uranium at the core of a nuclear warhead to 
devise an improvised nuclear device.
  Thus, if the United States works in concert with other nations to 
``lock down'' nuclear warheads and weapons grade materials around the 
world, we can prevent terrorists from accessing this material in the 
first place. We are making some progress on this front through programs 
such as the Nunn-Lugar effort--named after Senators Nunn and Lugar. 
This effort to dismantle nuclear weapons and secure excess nuclear 
materials is playing out, but we are not moving fast enough. Additional 
funding is required but, perhaps even more important, high-level 
attention at the level of Presidents and Prime Ministers is necessary 
to break through the bureaucratic obstacles and political inertia 
blocking more rapid security gains.
  After 9/11, the President should have made nuclear terrorism a key 
international priority, raising it to the very top of the U.S.-Russian 
agenda, for example. Instead, this administration continued a business-
as-usual approach. I believe this was a gross misjudgment. This issue 
cries out for Presidential leadership.
  But as vital as cooperative threat reduction programs are, we must go 
above and beyond them if we are to be successful in deterring a nuclear 
attack or nuclear terrorism. Not only should we do everything we can to 
prevent terrorist groups from acquiring the means to detonate a nuclear 
weapon, we must also fortify our capability to deter their use. A 
terrorist group such as al-Qaida is undeterred, but states, and 
certainly the states from which al-Qaida would acquire or steal a 
nuclear weapon, are not undeterred. We should make sure we keep 
pressure on them. We must enhance our ability to threaten overwhelming 
retribution against any state that by inattention or lax security 
enables a terrorist group to detonate a nuclear warhead in the United 
States.
  We can do this in a number of ways: First, we must elevate the cost 
for individuals and businesses that choose to facilitate illicit 
smuggling of fissile material and related nuclear components. Nuclear 
smugglers and nuclear smuggling networks rely upon middlemen to 
transport fissile material and nuclear components, to forge export 
licenses and Customs slips, and engage in other black market 
activities. Too often in the past, when such individuals and businesses 
are caught in the act, so to speak, or with their hands dirty, they 
receive minimal prison sentences. For example, the Russian citizen 
arrested in Georgia for nuclear smuggling was sentenced to only 8 years 
in prison. These lax criminal penalties cannot deter future actions of 
nuclear smuggling.
  Aiding and abetting nuclear smuggling is abhorrent and should be 
recognized for what it is--a crime against humanity. Just as the 
international community has banded together in the past to stigmatize 
the slave trade and genocide as crimes against humanity, so too should 
it now do the same thing for those who help terrorist groups acquire 
weapons of mass destruction. The United States should be a leader in 
this effort.
  No. 2, we should be working with the International Atomic Energy 
Agency to establish a global library, a library of nuclear fissile 
material. If the IAEA were to have nuclear samples from every weapons 
production facility in the world, when a nuclear device exploded 
somewhere in the world, we could, in short order, trace the nuclear 
material used in that explosion to the originating reactor or 
production facility. The capability of a library such as this could 
serve as a powerful deterrent. If a state knew it could be held 
ultimately responsible for a nuclear detonation, it would have a far 
greater incentive to secure and protect its nuclear materials. Those 
states that refuse to cooperate with such a global library would risk 
condemnation and suspicion in the event of a nuclear attack.
  Our colleague, Senator Biden, the chairman of the Foreign Relations 
Committee, has worked with the Armed Services Committee to strengthen 
U.S. efforts to take the first steps toward such a global library. 
Today, a group such as al-Qaida can get away with a nuclear attack on 
the United States because it does not have a fixed address at which we 
can easily retaliate. The same, however, does not apply to a nation 
that intentionally or through lax security provides the means for a 
terrorist group to detonate a nuclear device. The United States must 
leverage the same type of deterrence against those nations as it did 
against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
  Finally, we must be doing more in the overall effort to combat 
nuclear proliferation among states. It is a very simple equation. The 
more states that acquire a nuclear weapon and fissile material, the 
more likely it is one of those states or some of those weapons and/or 
fissile material may be vulnerable to theft or illicit sale to 
terrorist groups. That is but one reason we must prevent Iran from 
acquiring nuclear weapons. It is why we must work with our 
international allies and partners to continue to ensure that North 
Korea verifiably dismantles its nuclear facilities and weapons under 
the Six Party Talks. This link between nuclear proliferation and 
nuclear terrorism demonstrates the importance of reinforcing the 
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

  It is very difficult to imagine the utter devastation of an American 
city by an improvised nuclear device. It is perhaps for that reason the 
spectre of nuclear terrorism remains an abstract threat today. Yet 
before 9/11, very few of us could appreciate the dangers by commercial 
jet airliners hijacked by those on a suicide mission.
  Madam President, the time for action on the challenge of nuclear 
terrorism is now. We must move to bolster existing threat reduction 
programs, strengthen our deterrence capability against those who would 
perpetrate acts of nuclear terrorism, and, finally, recommit ourselves 
to the effort to reduce the role and the number of nuclear weapons in 
our world today. We do not have the luxury of time to wait.
  Before I relinquish the floor, I want to thank one of our great staff 
members for his work on this and so many other areas of our work. Jofi 
Joseph is one of our great legislative assistants who did a lot of work 
on this to prepare these remarks, and in so many other areas, and I 
want to commend him for his work.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.

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