The al-Qaeda terrorist network is fully capable of building a radioactive "dirty bomb" targeting the United States and other Western nations and "has crude procedures" for producing chemical weapons, the CIA warned today. In an annual report to Congress on proliferation threats, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also repeated its insistence that Iran was pursuing "a clandestine nuclear weapons program". But it remained silent about charges, made earlier this month by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who accused Iran of seeking to adapt its missiles to carry nuclear warheads. Instead, the agency used its strongest terms to alert lawmakers to the threat of terrorist organisations using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials to harm the United States and its allies, saying the danger of such an attack "remained high".
"One of our highest concerns is al-Qaeda's stated readiness to attempt unconventional attacks against us," the report said. The CIA said analysis of an al-Qaeda document recovered in Afghanistan in the summer of 2002 "indicates the group has crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin, and VX". The group founded and led by Osama bin Laden, the admitted mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, is also keenly interested in radiological dispersal devices, or "dirty bombs," the spy agency warned. It added that construction of such a device "is well within its capabilities as radiological materials are relatively easy to acquire from industrial or medical sources".
Documents recovered by US forces in Afghanistan show that bin Laden and his associates were engaged in what US intelligence officials described as "rudimentary nuclear research". But the CIA cautions that the true extent of al-Qaeda's nuclear program "is unclear," suggesting it could be more advanced than originally thought. Outside experts, such as Pakistani nuclear engineer Bashir al-Din Mahmood, may have provided assistance to al-Qaeda's nuclear program, according to the report. Bashir reportedly met with bin Laden and discussed nuclear weapons with him, the CIA asserted. |