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Is America missing the growing threat of nuclear terrorism?

While Washington focuses largely on the traditional proliferation threat -- of nations in search of highly engineered nuclear weapons -- it has moved slowly to combat a new and more worrisome challenge, of nation-less terrorists who want to acquire and use crude nuclear bombs, and who would settle for a delivery system as common as an ocean freighter.

The chance that a terrorist group could obtain the key ingredient of a nuclear bomb and then produce a less-than-perfect, but usable, explosive is not as far-fetched as many analysts believed even a few years ago. Indeed, if there was one thing the presidential candidates could agree on in their first debate, it was that the No. 1 threat to America's security is nuclear weapons in terrorists' hands. Yet misconceptions, inattention and politics have kept Washington from responding strongly enough, and in a timely fashion.

Traditional thinking about terrorists was that very few would want to carry out an attack using nuclear weapons even if they had the capability to do so. As Brian Jenkins, a counterterrorism specialist at the Rand think tank, observed in 1975, "Terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead."

This assessment probably was correct in the past and remains true for most terrorist organizations with clear political objectives. However, it no longer applies to a new breed intent upon inflicting massive violence unrelated to specific political goals.

In March 1995, for example, the apocalyptic terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo launched a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway with the goal of killing thousands. Although the chemical attack produced only a dozen fatalities, Aum also sought nuclear weapons. Aum's leader believed using nuclear weapons would usher in an apocalypse.

Since 1994, Al-Qaida operatives have reportedly tried to buy enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. In late 1998, Osama bin Laden maintained that acquiring such weapons "to counter those of the infidels is a religious duty."

Regrettably, misconceptions held by many U.S. (and Russian) policy-makers have impeded timely government responses. These officials have exaggerated the difficulty of terrorists making crude but devastating nuclear bombs.

Policy-makers have, in particular, mistakenly believed that terrorists would seek to design a nuclear bomb that meets the same rigorous military specifications that a nation would require. In fact, the new breed of terrorists primarily wants a powerful weapon regardless of whether it has a predictable explosive yield, is compatible with military delivery systems (such as missiles) or meets stringent safety and reliability standards.

The secrets of nuclear weapon design were revealed long ago. The only significant barrier remains access to fissile material: highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium. If terrorists obtain this material, they can try to build two types of first-generation nuclear bombs.

The simpler type can use only HEU. This gun-type weapon slams one piece of HEU into another to ignite a nuclear explosion. A terrorist organization like Al-Qaida could probably build such a weapon if it had access to less than 100 pounds of weapons-grade HEU. And it wouldn't need sophisticated ballistic missiles; it could deliver the weapon to its target by hiding it in a cargo container on a ship.

The more sophisticated implosion-type bomb can employ either HEU or plutonium. But making this weapon would challenge the abilities of terrorist groups, leading most independent analysts to conclude that HEU presents a much greater risk for terrorist use than plutonium.

Unfortunately, stockpiles of HEU are immense. There are several hundred tons of HEU in Russia alone, and additional tons are scattered throughout dozens of countries -- enough material to make thousands of crude nuclear bombs. And yet the United States has not made securing, consolidating and eliminating HEU an urgent priority.

Although the Department of Energy recently launched an important initiative to address the problem of HEU, the National Security Council and the Department of Defense still appear more intent upon eliminating terrorists than HEU. And even the Department of Energy has yet to develop a realistic plan with adequate financing to accomplish its objectives. Efforts by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to accelerate the pace and expand the scope of related U.S. non-proliferation efforts also have met with resistance by Congress and have not been championed by the White House.

Could terrorists tap these stockpiles?

To date, treaties and international agreements have concentrated almost exclusively on stopping nations from getting the bomb. But nuclear black-marketeers have increasingly operated outside the bounds of nations, supplying nuclear technology and weapons designs to the highest bidder.

While conclusive evidence that terrorists have exploited the nuclear black market has not emerged, the longer this market continues to operate, the greater the chance that terrorists will employ this clandestine network to acquire HEU or components for building nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration has made matters worse by narrowly defining the principal nuclear proliferation problems in terms of the "axis of evil" nations: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. This overly simplistic characterization of the threat and the proposed solution -- "regime change" -- not only politicized the proliferation debate at home and abroad, but redirected U.S. intelligence resources away from more pressing nuclear terrorism challenges. For a small fraction of the price tag of the Iraq war, the United States could have secured, consolidated and eliminated many more tons of weapons-usable HEU.

Today, it is likely that the only parties seeking to inflict nuclear punishment on the United States are terrorist organizations. The major obstacle in their path is access to fissile material -- especially HEU.

Unless U.S. government organizations adapt more quickly to the new security environment and treat HEU consolidation and elimination as the highest priority, the next failure of intelligence involving nuclear weapons could be something we all should fear -- terrorists using a crude nuclear bomb.

CHARLES D. FERGUSON is science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. WILLIAM C. POTTER is director of the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies. They are the lead authors of the new book "The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism." They wrote this article for Perspective.