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Al Qaeda’s leaders yearn to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction against the United States; if they acquired a nuclear bomb, they would not hesitate to use it.
November 6, 2002 By David Albright I. Introduction This essay by David Albright – a physicist, and the President of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. – examines Al-Qaeda’s efforts towards acquiring weapons of mass destruction. He argues that al-Qaeda developed “only limited technological capabilities in Afghanistan to produce WMD.” However, he writes, “if al Qaeda had remained in Afghanistan, it would have likely acquired nuclear weapons eventually.” The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on contentious topics in order to identify common ground. Essay By David Albright Al Qaeda’s Nuclear Program: Through the Window of Seized Documents By David Albright Following the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001, intelligence agencies and the media scrambled to find documents and other information about al Qaeda and its next potential targets. A priority was uncovering information about al Qaeda’s progress on acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear weapons.
Al Qaeda views the acquisition of WMD as a religious obligation. However, it could develop only limited technological capabilities in Afghanistan to produce WMD, and few believe al Qaeda obtained nuclear weapons while it was entrenched there. On the other hand, al Qaeda’s determination to get nuclear weapons along with its increased ability to obtain outside technical assistance, lead to the conclusion that if al Qaeda had remained in Afghanistan, it would have likely acquired nuclear weapons eventually.
Although al Qaeda’s WMD efforts are in disarray, it remains determined to get WMD. As a result, preventing al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from getting nuclear weapons or other WMD must be an overarching goal of the United States and the international community.
Searching Afghanistan General Tommy Franks, commander of American forces in Afghanistan, said last winter that detailed searches had been conducted at over 100 hundred sites in Afghanistan, including about 50 sites suspected of being involved in the production of weapons of mass destruction. Western and Northern Alliance intelligence officers scoured houses, caves, and training camps for documents, booklets, personnel records, videos, equipment, materials, and other evidence of WMD programs. Many members of the media, who arrived in Kabul soon after the fall of the Taliban in mid-November 2001, uncovered many al Qaeda and Taliban records. In Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan, they climbed over walls to get into al Qaeda safe houses, gained access to offices, visited nearby training camps, and acquired hard drives from al Qaeda computers. CNN, The Evening Standard, The Times of London, the Associated Press, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, The New York Times, and others reported on the information they found in videos, on computer hard-drives, and in hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and other written records.
This information provides a detailed snapshot of the terrorist group’s activities in Afghanistan and abroad. These activities include: Instruction manuals to train recruits to make and use a wide variety of conventional explosives; Details about the daily lives of al Qaeda personnel; Pictures or schematics of intended targets including nuclear power plants; Training manuals for teaching recruits who speak many different languages to wage guerilla and conventional warfare; Instructions on operating undercover overseas; and Instructor and student notebooks describing techniques of kidnapping and assassination. Only a relatively small portion of the records found by the media, however, were about nuclear weapons or other WMD. Nor did the intelligence agencies find a significantly larger amount or vastly different types of nuclear documents in the records they collected. Al Qaeda and the Taliban likely either destroyed or took many important WMD documents.
The media uncovered partially burned documents and other evidence that documents had been burned or removed in advance of the forces of the Northern Alliance and its allies. As a result, any assessment based on the recovered records remains partial. Nuclear Documents The captured documents reinforce assessments that al Qaeda is highly determined to obtain nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on January 16, 2001 at a Defense Department briefing: “We have found a number of things that show an appetite for WMD.” To support his claim, he cited diagrams, materials, attempts to acquire items, and specific cases wherein such weapons were discussed at al Qaeda meetings. David Ensor of CNN reported on December 4, 2001, that according to U.S. Officials, one hand drawn diagram found either in a Taliban or al Qaeda facility showed a design for a “dirty bomb.” In regards to nuclear weapons, U.S. Officials also saw evidence that al Qaeda was also seeking to acquire or develop a nuclear explosive device.
George Tenet told Congress in late January 2002 that the United States uncovered rudimentary diagrams of nuclear weapons in a suspected al Qaeda house in Kabul. According to a CIA report released publicly on January 30, 2002, these “diagrams, while crude, describe the essential components-uranium and high explosives-common to nuclear weapons.” Superbomb Document In November 2001, CNN found an Arabic document titled “Superbomb” in the home of Abu Khabbab, the code-name of a senior al Qaeda official. This document, which was assessed by this author in cooperation with CNN, has some sections that are relatively sophisticated and others that are remarkably inaccurate or naive.
Over 25 neatly hand-written pages, the author discusses various types of nuclear weapons, the physics of nuclear explosions, properties of nuclear materials needed to make them, and the effects of nuclear weapons. It is not systematic in its coverage and the author sometimes covers some subjects in depth and others superficially or incorrectly. Nor is it a cookbook for making nuclear weapons, as many critical steps to make a nuclear weapon are missing from the document. Nonetheless, this documents shows that Al Qaeda was interested in developing a deeper understanding of nuclear weapons. Some of the information in the document suggests that the author understood short cuts to making crude nuclear explosives. The document is missing its cover and first pages, so the author’s name or background is unknown. The date of the document is also unknown.
The first page begins “since the latter is less stable and therefore more capable of nuclear fission. For this reason, anyone desiring to obtain a nuclear weapon must set up a plant for enriching uranium.” The author advocates the use of laser enrichment, which he claims is “simple.” In reality, however, laser enrichment is incredibly complex to master. This indicates that the author only possessed a rudimentary understanding of the knowledge to enrich uranium or was trying to convince the reader to pursue this enrichment technology for an unstated reason. The sections on plutonium and uranium are relatively detailed. Compared to the sections discussing nuclear weapons, these sections imply that the author was more comfortable writing about the nuclear fuel cycle than nuclear weapons. According to Ronald Wolfe, the Arab language specialist who translated this and other documents found by CNN, the author is most likely Egyptian. Moreover, the Superbomb document looks like the type used by professors and lecturers at Arab universities.
To further support this, CNN found student notes in houses in Kabul, one containing a date of early 2000, that have crude drawings that appear to be based on the one in the Superbomb document. Thus, an instructor may have used the Superbomb document to give a course to al Qaeda members about nuclear weapons. Some of the notes in the margins suggest that the instructor may have not been the author of the document.
In that document and in student notebooks there are similar figures of atomic bomb designs using plutonium or uranium. However, these designs are not credible nuclear weapons designs. If someone obtained separated plutonium and built this design, it would not function as an atomic bomb. Rather, it would be a radiological dispersal device (RDD). These students, who thought they were learning about nuclear weapons, were in actuality learning about making radiological dispersal devices. The Superbomb document was found in conjunction with a wide variety of other documents regarding the manufacture and use of conventional explosives.
An interpretation of this finding is that the students, who were taking an advanced course in building conventional explosives, also received instruction in the ultimate explosive, nuclear weapons. A student notebook found by The Washington Post in Kabul, supports this view. A November 22, 2001 Washington Post article reports that while most of the notebook contains information written during a general course on using conventional explosives, but the last page contains notes specifically about atomic explosions. Moreover, some of the information that appears in the notebook is similar to what is in the Superbomb document. Other Records Other records imply that al Al Qaeda had a more sophisticated understanding of atomic bombs than what is suggested by the Superbomb document. NBC reported that hard drives found by U.S. Intelligence agencies had more interesting information about nuclear weapons than those obtained by the media.
A document found by a reporter of the London Times, who was one of the first to search al Qaeda houses in Kabul, shows that the Arab readers were partially discerning about what they obtained. The reporter found a part of a page of a document that simplistically discussed hydrogen bombs and other nuclear weapon topics. The document was typed in English with Arabic notes handwritten on the page. The document contains several mistakes, some of which are outlandish. At one place, the writer of the document compares the chemical structure of plutonium to the fictitious elements Saturium, Jupiternium, and Marrissum. The writer of the Arabic notes drew arrows from these three words, to an Arabic phrase, which translates to: “This is bullshit.” A document found by The New York Times in Afghanistan discusses precautions for using chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons written by Abul Khabad. In the preface, he identified himself as coming from Greece and as a “protector of mujahedeen.” It is unknown who this person is, or if it is another spelling or code-name of Abu Khabbab.
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The New York Times, in an extensive report on al Qaeda documents on March 18, 2002, cited officials who said that papers were found in Kabul explaining the use of radioactive isotopes in agriculture and medicine in the same rooms as notebooks on conventional explosives, further indicating research into RDDs. Several documents reportedly described the manufacture of nuclear weapons and their effects. In addition, other documents described defenses against a nuclear attack. Many documents contained detailed information about making and using conventional explosives, including one called RDX, a high explosive popular with militaries. It has also been used as an ingredient in “shaped charges” used to compress the nuclear core of an implosion-type nuclear design.
However, none of the documents reviewed by this author contained any information about shaped charges. This finding supports the conclusion that al Qaeda’s capabilities were limited. However, it also fuels speculation that al Qaeda may have favored a gun-type nuclear design, which is simpler to make and depends on the use of a propellant to fire a slug of highly enriched Uranium (HEU) down a barrel into another piece of HEU. Foreign Assistance The documents support the view that al Qaeda’s leadership understood its limitations and was taking steps to improve its ability to create an industrial infrastructure to make WMD. Al Qaeda realized that foreign assistance would allow it to overcome its weaknesses and be more efficient and economical in making WMD. A record obtained by The Wall Street Journal from a computer hard drive appears to be a 1999 al Qaeda progress report on its efforts to make nerve gas.1 The author of the memo complained that the use of non-specialists had “resulted in a waste of effort and money,” urging the recruitment of experts as the “fastest, safest, and cheapest” route.
Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian captured in 2004, allegedly claimed that Al-Libi had said the nuclear bomb’s operatives “would be Europeans of Arab or Asian descent”. The notes show that US interrogators spent large amounts of time trying to establish whether al-Qaeda had access to nuclear material.
Salman Yehah Kasa Hassan, a Yemeni operative, allegedly said that “an associate of his brother was apprehended attempting to sell uranium for $500,000”. However, after the Yemeni authorities confiscated the uranium, “it was rumoured to have disappeared in a transaction with Osama bin Laden”. Mohommad Zahir, a “weapons dealer” from Afghanistan, was arrested in 2003 allegedly carrying a memo referring to “two or three cans of uranium”, “intended for the production of an 'atom bomb’”. Another detainee “discussed the issue of buried uranium in Kandahar”. Other detainees talked about “a ship purchased by al-Qaeda” which was intended to be used “to transport weapons, explosives, and possibly uranium purchased from countries along the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea”. Of particular concern to the US was a network of nuclear scientists and military officers called “Ummah Tameer Nau”, which was set up “to assist in spreading the modern achievements of science and technology among Muslims”. Al-Qaeda apparently also regularly explored the use of chemicals in attacks, believing that getting these into the US would be easier than nuclear material.
The use of biological agents, including anthrax, was also considered. One detainee allegedly claimed that Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, discussed “how to smuggle explosives and chemicals into England”. According to the US documents, another key al-Qaeda operative discussed a “dirty bomb” with other plotters, which “would combine a regular explosive with uranium or other radiological material”.
The nuclear material “would be disbursed throughout a limited region due to the blast, exposing all within the area to the radiated material”. The terrorists’ aim was to cause “latent illness for most, as well as widespread panic far exceeding the affected area”. Name: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Click top right icon to view fullscreen version).