[ RadSafe ] Preventing a Nuclear 9/11

[Gerry Blackwood]

Article

MATTHEW BUNN

Preventing a Nuclear 9/11

Presidential leadership is the key to accelerating
progress on securing nuclear weapons and materials.

In their presidential contest, President George W.
Bush and Senator John Kerry agreed that the most
deadly danger facing the United States is the
possibility that terrorists could obtain a nuclear
bomb. Fortunately, if effective action is taken now,
we have a good chance to prevent such a catastrophe
from ever occurring.

Currently, however, the scope and pace of the U.S. and
world response simply do not match the urgency of the
threat. As the new presidential term begins, much of
the work of securing the world’s nuclear stockpiles so
that they cannot fall into terrorist hands remains
unfinished. Scores of nuclear terrorist opportunities
lie in wait in countries all around the world—sites
that have enough nuclear material for a bomb and are
demonstrably not adequately defended against the
threats that terrorists and criminals have already
shown they can mount. These insecure caches also
represent opportunities for hostile states, because
stolen nuclear material could cut years off the time
needed to obtain their first bomb.

Separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU),
the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons, are too
difficult for terrorist groups to produce themselves.
If the world’s stockpiles of these materials and of
nuclear weapons themselves could be effectively
secured, nuclear terrorism could be reliably
prevented, and hostile states could be blocked from
taking advantage of this potential shortcut to the
bomb. With effective action now, the danger could be
substantially reduced during President Bush’s second
term. Success would require sustained presidential
leadership to overcome the myriad political and
bureaucratic obstacles to progress, but it would not
require enormous investment or the development of
technologies not already in hand. President Bush thus
has an historic opportunity to leave, as a lasting
legacy, a world in which nuclear terrorism is no
longer a principal threat to world security.

An attack using an actual nuclear explosive—either a
stolen weapon that terrorists had succeeded in
acquiring and detonating or a bomb they made
themselves from stolen nuclear material—would be among
the most difficult types of attack for terrorists to
accomplish. Despite a number of claims, there is no
credible evidence that any terrorist group has
succeeded in getting a nuclear bomb or the materials
needed to make one. Nevertheless, the warning signs
are clear.

    * First, by word and deed, al Qaeda and the global
movement it has spawned have made it clear that they
want nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden has called
acquiring nuclear weapons a “religious duty.” Al Qaeda
operatives have repeatedly attempted to obtain nuclear
material and recruit nuclear expertise. Two senior
Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists met with bin
Laden at length and discussed nuclear weapons.
Documents recovered in Afghanistan reveal a
significant nuclear research effort.
    * Second, if terrorists could obtain the HEU or
plutonium that are the essential ingredients of a
nuclear bomb, making a bomb might well be within the
capabilities of a sophisticated group. One study by
the now-defunct congressional Office of Technology
Assessment summarized the threat: “A small group of
people, none of whom have ever had access to the
classified literature, could possibly design and build
a crude nuclear explosive device . . . Only modest
machine-shop facilities that could be contracted for
without arousing suspicion would be required.”
    * Third, hundreds of tons of nuclear material in
dozens of countries around the world today remain
dangerously vulnerable to theft. There are no binding
global nuclear security standards, and nuclear
security around the world varies from excellent to
appalling. Many of the more than 130 civilian research
reactors using HEU fuel, which are found in some 40
countries, on every inhabited continent, have no more
security than a night watchman and a chain-link fence.
Most of the nuclear facilities in the world, including
many in the United States, would not be able to
provide a reliable defense against attacks as large as
terrorists have already proved they can mount, such as
the four coordinated, independent teams of four to
five suicidal terrorists each that struck on September
11, 2001, or the 40 terrorists armed with automatic
weapons and explosives who seized a crowded Moscow
theater in October 2002. Theft of the essential
ingredients of nuclear weapons is not a hypothetical
worry, it is a current reality: The International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented 18 cases of
theft involving weapons-usable plutonium or HEU.
    * Fourth, if terrorists could steal, buy, or make
a nuclear bomb, there is little confidence that the
government could stop them from smuggling it into the
United States. After all, thousands of tons of illegal
drugs and hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants
cross U.S. borders every year, despite massive efforts
to stop them. The essential ingredients of a nuclear
bomb can fit easily into a briefcase, and the weak
radiation these materials emit can be made quite
difficult to detect with the use of modest amounts of
shielding.
    * Fifth, such a crude terrorist bomb would
potentially be capable of incinerating the heart of
any city. A bomb with the explosive power of 10,000
tons of TNT (smaller than the Hiroshima bomb), if set
off in midtown Manhattan on a typical workday, could
kill half a million people and cause more than $1
trillion in direct economic damage. Devastating
economic aftershocks would reverberate throughout the
world.

The most vulnerable facilities

Which facilities around the world pose the most urgent
dangers? The risk posed by each facility where
potential nuclear bomb materials exist depends on four
factors: the quantity of material, specifically
whether there is enough at the facility for a bomb;
the quality of the material, particularly how
difficult it would be for potential recipients to turn
it into a nuclear bomb; the effectiveness of the
security and accounting arrangements at the site; and
the level of threat at that site. A security system
that would be sufficient in Canada, for example, might
not be in Pakistan. Applying this framework to the
limited information publicly available, three primary
sources of concern emerge: Russia, HEU-fueled research
reactors, and Pakistan.

Russia has the world’s largest stockpiles of nuclear
weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials, with
huge quantities of high-quality materials (or nuclear
weapons themselves) dispersed in hundreds of buildings
and bunkers at scores of sites. Security for these
stockpiles has improved from poor to medium during the
past 15 years. The economy has stabilized, nuclear
scientists and workers are being paid a living wage
(and on time), and glaring holes in fences have
largely been fixed. But tight budgets and a widespread
complacency about the threat, which also prevails at
nuclear facilities in countries around the world,
including the United States, continues to lead to
problems ranging from broken intrusion detectors to
employees propping open security doors for convenience
and guards patrolling with no ammunition in their guns
(to avoid accidental firing incidents).

Meanwhile, the threat to these facilities is
frighteningly high. Russian officials confirm that
terrorist teams have actually carried out
reconnaissance at Russian nuclear warhead storage
sites (whose very locations are secret). The Russian
state newspaper reports that the 41 heavily armed
terrorists who seized a theater in Moscow in October
2002 considered seizing the Kurchatov Institute, a
Moscow site with enough HEU for dozens of bombs. In
2003, a Russian criminal case revealed that a Russian
businessman had been offering $750,000 for stolen
weapons-grade plutonium for sale to a foreign client
and had made contact with residents of the closed
nuclear city of Sarov, Russia’s equivalent of Los
Alamos, to try to close a deal. Corruption and theft,
often involving insider conspiracies, continue to
plague Russia on a massive scale. And al Qaeda has
deep ties to the Chechen terrorists, who have
demonstrated their ability to strike in force, without
warning or mercy.

Next on the list of vulnerable facilities are the
world’s generally poorly guarded HEU-fueled research
reactors. There is little hope of providing effective
security at many of these facilities, both because of
indefensible locations (for example, on university
campuses) and lack of sufficient revenue to pay the
cost. Scores of these facilities have enough HEU for a
bomb on site, particularly if one includes irradiated
fuel elements (which are small and easy to handle,
still contain HEU, and in most cases are not
radioactive enough to be a serious problem for
determined terrorists attempting to steal them).
Much of the work of securing the world’s nuclear
stockpiles so that they cannot fall into terrorist
hands remains unfinished.

Pakistan has a relatively small and heavily guarded
nuclear stockpile. But the threats facing that
stockpile are terrifyingly high, both from the armed
remnants of al Qaeda still operating in the country
and from insiders in Pakistan’s nuclear establishment
who are sympathetic to extreme Islamic causes. The
fact that A. Q. Khan, revered in Pakistan as thefather
of the Pakistani bomb, was willing and able to build a
global black-market network selling uranium enrichment
centrifuge technologies and actual nuclear bomb
designs highlights the insider danger. And the
possibility that one of those bomb designs might have
fallen into terrorist hands emphasizes the urgency of
making sure that terrorists cannot get the ingredients
to make that recipe.

Progress in reducing the threat

Offensive action against terrorist groups and
defensive steps such as nuclear material detection at
borders have their place in dealing with the nuclear
terrorist threat, but because nuclear materials and
the activities needed to turn them into a bomb may be
difficult to detect, both are weak reeds to rely on.
The greatest leverage in reducing this threat is in
preventing nuclear material from leaving the sites
where it is supposed to be in the first place, because
once it is out the door, the difficulty of finding and
recovering it increases enormously.

The United States, other countries, and the IAEA have
a wide range of efforts under way to secure, monitor,
and reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials
in the former Soviet Union and around the world. These
efforts have had real, demonstrable successes,
representing an excellent investment in U.S. and world
security. Enough material for thousands of nuclear
weapons has been permanently destroyed. Indeed, half
of the nuclear-generated electricity in the United
States now comes from blended-down HEU from dismantled
Russian nuclear weapons. Security for scores of
vulnerable nuclear sites has been demonstrably
improved. At least temporary civilian employment has
been provided for thousands of nuclear weapons
scientists and workers who might otherwise have been
driven by desperation to seek to sell their knowledge
or the materials to which they had access. But in
virtually every aspect of these efforts, much more
remains to be done.

By the end of fiscal year (FY) 2004, the Department of
Energy (DOE) estimates that at least the first round
of U.S.-sponsored “rapid upgrades”—for example,
bricking over windows and installing nuclear material
detectors at doors—had been completed for some 46
percent of the estimated 600 tons of HEU and separated
plutonium in the former Soviet Union. Within that
total, more complete “comprehensive upgrades” had been
completed for roughly 26 percent of the material. On
the other hand, comprehensive upgrades have been
completed for some 70 percent of the sites where these
materials exist, but most of the nuclear material is
at the 30 percent of the sites where these upgrades
have not yet been completed. Under an accelerated plan
developed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, DOE hopes
to complete comprehensive upgrades for all of this
material by the end of 2008, but achieving that
objective will require a dramatic acceleration of the
current pace of progress. During FY 2004, the amount
of material covered by either rapid or comprehensive
upgrades increased by only a few percent.

The obstacles to progress are more political and
bureaucratic than budgetary. Disagreements over
exempting U.S. assistance from taxes, over liability
in the event of a nuclear accident in the course of a
cooperative project, over contracting procedures, and
over access to sensitive nuclear sites have slowed
progress, in some cases for years at a time. The Bush
administration, for example, allowed two important
threat reduction agreements with Russia to expire
rather than compromise on the liability language on
which it was insisting, which would require Russia to
accept 100 percent of the liability even if an
accident was caused by intentional sabotage by U.S.
personnel. That dispute has now delayed efforts to
destroy thousands of bombs worth of excess plutonium
by more than two years. Similarly, because of disputes
over who would pay roughly $50 million in installation
costs—and, if the United States paid, how much access
U.S. personnel would get—dozens of sets of equipment
for a “quick fix” of security at Russian nuclear
warhead storage sites that were delivered more than
four years ago are still sitting in warehouses
uninstalled.

The access issue has been particularly problematic. To
confirm that taxpayer money is being spent
appropriately, the United States, in most of these
programs, has been demanding that Russia give U.S.
personnel direct access to the sites where the work is
being done. But these sites are some of Russia’s most
secret nuclear facilities, and Russia has resisted
U.S. demands. In some cases, the Russian secrecy
isclearly excessive; the danger to Russia from
terrorists obtaining these stockpiles is far greater
than the danger to Russia from Americans learning a
few more secrets. In other cases, the U.S. demands are
unreasonable. After all, the United States would not
allow Russian experts to visit its comparable
facilities. The issue has only become more difficult
to address as Russia’s security services have grown
more omnipresent since President Putin’s rise to
power. As Russia’s economy has improved and its
government has strengthened, Russia has become a
tougher partner, more willing to take firm positions
and stick to them, even at the risk of blocking key
assistance programs. Fortunately, there is growing
recognition on both sides of the need for some
compromise on the access problem, and DOE and Russia’s
Federal Agency for Atomic Energy have recently
completed a promising pilot project to demonstrate
approaches to confirming that U.S. funds are spent
appropriately without compromising nuclear secrets.

The story is much the same for other parts of the
broad effort to reduce the nuclear terrorist danger in
Russia. For the locations where actual nuclear
warheads are stored, initial rapid or quick-fix
upgrades appear to have been installed for roughly
half the bunkers where these warheads exist (a
calculation complicated by the fact that neither
government has ever released complete data on how many
of these facilities there are). In addition, after
breakthroughs on access to at least some of these
sites, some comprehensive upgrades are being
completed, although the vast majority remain to be
done. A number of European countries have contributed
to improving security and accounting for nuclear
material at particular facilities in the former Soviet
Union, as have Japan and Australia, but these efforts
are dwarfed by the U.S. program already described. The
225 tons of HEU destroyed so far under the
U.S.-Russian HEU Purchase Agreement represents roughly
one-fifth of the HEU stockpile that Russia had when
the effort began.

In much of the rest of the world, the cooperative
effort to lock down these stockpiles is at an even
earlier stage. HEU has been removed from a few sites,
and security has been upgraded (modestly in some
cases, more substantially in others) at a larger
number, but this still constitutes a small fraction of
the total. However, in the spring of 2004, Secretary
of Energy Spencer Abraham announced the Global Threat
Reduction Initiative (GTRI), with the mission of
accelerating removals of nuclear material from
vulnerable sites around the world and improving
security at sites where such material will remain,
along with improving controls over radiological
materials that might be used in a “dirty bomb.” GTRI,
however, is just getting started. Key cooperative
efforts with countries such as Pakistan, China, and
India are just beginning to get under way. Also, as of
the end of fiscal 2004, effective nuclear material
detection equipment was up and running at only 1 of
the 20 “megaports” that ship most of the millions of
containers that arrive in the United States every year
and at only a fraction of the legal points of entry
into the United States (not to mention the thousands
of kilometers of wild borders and coastline).
The first and most crucial step in securing nuclear
materials is to put in place an accelerated and
strengthened effort with Russia, based on genuine
partnership.

In addition to the pace of these efforts, there are
two other critical issues that have to be considered:
effectiveness and sustainability. Security systems for
nuclear weapons and their essential ingredients must
be adequate to defeat the scale of threats that exist
in the post-9/11 world. Moreover, success in defending
against any given threat will require not only good
equipment but also effective security personnel, with
a strong security culture. Propped-open security doors
and guards without ammunition suggest that the culture
problem remains a substantial one, not just in Russia
but in countries around the world.

Equally, it will do little good to spend billions of
dollars installing security equipment if the equipment
is broken and unused in five years’ time. It is
absolutely critical to build in approaches to ensuring
that these systems and procedures will be sustained
for the long haul and particularly to obtaining
high-level government commitment to provide the
resources to make that happen.

The United States now spends roughly $1 billion
annually on cooperative efforts to dismantle, secure,
and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction in countries around the world. That
amounts to less than one-quarter of one percent of the
U.S. defense budget. In 2002, the Group of Eight
industrialized democracies established the Global
Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and
Materials of Mass Destruction, with the other
participants agreeing to match the U.S. investment. To
date, however, the non-U.S. funds have been slow in
coming and are largely committed to projects such as
dismantling aging submarines that, although important,
will have little direct effect on reducing the risk of
nuclear terrorism. For now, expanded budgets are less
critical than overcoming the underlying political and
bureaucratic obstacles to progress. But if those
obstacles can be overcome, more money will be needed
to implement an accelerated global effort. Though no
detailed cost estimate for securing the world’s
nuclear stockpiles has yet been done, the needed
security upgrades could probably be put in place
worldwide within a few years for a cost, during that
period, of between one-half of one percent and two
percent of the U.S. annual defense budget.

A security-first agenda

An accelerated and strengthened effort would have many
ingredients, but three are essential: accelerating and
strengthening the effort in Russia, where the largest
stockpiles of potentially vulnerable nuclear materials
still exist; removing the material entirely from the
world’s most vulnerable sites; and building a
fast-paced global coalition to improve security for
nuclear materials around the world.

Working with Russia. The first and most crucial step
is to put in place an accelerated and strengthened
effort with Russia, based on genuine partnership.
Between them, Presidents Bush and Putin have the power
to overcome the disputes that have been allowed to
slow progress in these efforts. President Bush should
use his excellent relationship with President Putin to
convince the Russian president of the urgency for
action, both for Russia’s own security and as a
central requirement of a positive relationship with
the United States.

The next U.S.-Russian summit should focus on a
presidential agreement that would identify securing
all stockpiles of nuclear warheads and materials as a
top priority for both countries’ national security;
jointly set a target date of completing comprehensive
upgrades within four years (while putting in place a
mechanism for quickly identifying and overcoming
obstacles as they arise); include an agreed approach
regarding access to sensitive sites (including a U.S.
offer of reciprocal access to comparable sites in the
United States and an arrangement for accomplishing
security upgrades at sites too sensitive for either
side to be willing to allow access to the other);
instruct their governments to ensure that the security
upgrades accomplished are designed to provide security
in the face of post-9/11 terrorist threats; and put in
place the commitments and approaches needed to ensure
that once effective security systems are installed,
high levels of security will be maintained after
international assistance is phased out.

The single most critical ingredient of success will be
changing the prevailing attitude among the nuclear
elite in Russia, as well as in most countries around
the world, that the nuclear terrorist threat is
farfetched and that existing security approaches are
adequate. The Beslan tragedy, showing that the
terrorists Russia faces can and will strike in force
and kill even schoolchildren, has reportedly begun to
undermine this complacency, and additional troops were
dispatched to guard nuclear facilities after that
crisis. But the underlying problem remains. Until
President Putin concludes that better security for
these stockpiles is an urgent priority for Russia’s
own security, he is not likely to assign the needed
resources to put in place and sustain effective
security for all of Russia’s nuclear stockpiles or to
sweep aside the obstacles to accelerated international
cooperation that his agencies have raised. Several
steps might help build a sense of urgency among
Russia’s key decisionmakers:

A fast-paced survey of nuclear security
vulnerabilities. President Bush should encourage
President Putin to put together a team of Russian
experts to conduct an assessment of potential
vulnerabilities and recommendations for fixing them at
all Russian sites with nuclear weapons or
weapons-usable nuclear material. Any thorough review
would reveal that many of these facilities are not
adequately defended against either large outside
attacks or significant insider conspiracies and would
give President Putin direct information on the
situation, rather than relying on assurances from his
nuclear officials. The United States can offer to
share its own experience with such fast-paced reviews,
which in some cases have led to dramatic and rapid
improvements in security, and to help cover the cost
of the needed improvements.

    * Nuclear terrorism war games. War games and
similar exercises have been effective in prompting
policymakers in a number of countries to think through
and face up to urgent challenges. A war game or series
of war games for Russia’s national security
policymakers, focused on nuclear theft and terrorism
(following up a similar exercise recently conducted in
Europe) could help convince participants that more
needs to be done to secure nuclear stockpiles.
    * Joint U.S.-Russian threat briefings. A series of
briefings by Russian and U.S. experts for key Russian
policymakers could outline in detail terrorist desire
for and efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, as well as
the very real possibility that if terrorists obtained
the needed nuclear materials, they could make at least
a crude nuclear bomb. Similar points should be made in
training nuclear security personnel, highlighting the
urgency of maintaining high security.
    * National requirements to meet a specified
threat. The United States should encourage Russia to
institutionalize regular review of vulnerabilities
through national regulations that would require
facilities to be able to defeat a specified level of
threat, coupled with effective inspection and
performance testing (in which “red teams” playing
outside attackers or insider thieves attempt to
overcome the system) to ensure that this goal is being
met.

Ultimately, gaining the needed Russian commitment to
this effort and the buy-in of Russian experts crucial
to long-term sustainability will require a genuinely
partnership-based approach in which Russian experts
play key roles, working with foreign partners in the
conception, design, and implementation of the entire
effort. As part of that partnership, the two countries
should jointly lead a global effort to secure nuclear
stockpiles around the world.

Removing vulnerable bomb material. The only foolproof
way to ensure that nuclear material will not be stolen
from a particular site is to remove it. What is needed
now is a fast-paced effort to remove the
weapons-usable nuclear material entirely from the
world’s most vulnerable sites, particularly HEU-fueled
research reactors.

Accomplishing that objective will require flexibility
and creativity, with approaches, including incentives
to give up the nuclear material, targeted to the needs
of each facility. Most of the world’s research
reactors are aging and unneeded. The best answer for
them is to provide incentives to shut them down. This
could include funding for decommissioning and for
employing their scientists in productive research
after the reactors close. This will take considerable
care, as no approach perceived by the world’s reactor
operators as anti-science or anti-nuclear is likely to
succeed. As part of such an effort, the international
community should help establish a smaller number of
more broadly shared research reactors, which is the
same direction that high-energy particle accelerators
took long ago.
We need a fast-paced effort to remove the
weapons-usable nuclear material entirely from the
world’s most vulnerable sites, particularly HEU-fueled
research reactors.

A substantial number of the research reactors that are
still needed and still using HEU could convert to
proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium (LEU)
fuels that are already available. They should be given
support and incentives to do so, including funding for
buying new LEU fuel if necessary, especially in cases
in which a reactor would otherwise not buy new LEU
fuel because it already has HEU that will last for
many years or for the lifetime of the reactor. The
remaining research reactors that are still genuinely
needed and cannot convert to available LEU fuels
without a substantial degradation of their scientific
performance should be effectively secured for now and
given incentives to convert when development of
higher-density LEU fuel is completed. These efforts to
shut down or convert HEU-fueled facilities should
include the full range of vulnerable facilities with
dangerous HEU, including critical assemblies, pulse
reactors, isotope production reactors, and nuclear
icebreakers. The target should be to remove potential
bomb material from the world’s most vulnerable sites
within four years and eliminate all HEU from civilian
sites within 10 years.

A global partnership. The problem of insecure nuclear
material is global. Solving it will require forging a
global coalition of countries willing to work together
to improve security for nuclear materials, wherever
they may be. Given the devastating global economic
impact that a nuclear terrorist attack would have,
every country has a strong self-interest in
cooperating to reduce this threat.

But because of the intense secrecy surrounding nuclear
stockpiles and their security arrangements, building
that global effort will not be easy. Cooperation with
states such as Pakistan, India, Israel, and China to
improve security for nuclear stockpiles whose
locations remain secret will be a serious challenge,
requiring considerable creativity in developing
approaches that can make it possible to provide
information, advice, and equipment to improve security
without compromising nuclear secrets or contributing
to these states’ nuclear weapons programs. One step
that should be taken immediately is to strengthen the
IAEA’s Office of Nuclear Security, which carries
credibility in some quarters that U.S. assistance
programs do not, with more money, more people, and a
broader action plan.

New security standards for nuclear weapons and their
essential ingredients should be part of this global
effort. A United Nations Security Council resolution
passed in April 2004 creates a binding legal
obligation on every state to provide “appropriate
effective” security and accounting for its nuclear
stockpiles. This new obligation creates an opportunity
to build a global standard by fleshing out, through
the IAEA, the key elements that a nuclear security
system must include to meet the “appropriate
effective” requirement.

None of this will happen without sustained leadership
and political heavy lifting from the White House and
its counterparts around the world. President Bush
should appoint a senior full-time White House
official, with the access needed to walk in and ask
for presidential action when needed, to lead these
efforts and to keep them on the front burner at the
White House. That official would be responsible for
finding and fixing the obstacles to progress in the
scores of existing U.S. programs—scattered across
several cabinet departments and focused on various
pieces of the job—and for setting priorities,
eliminating overlaps, and seizing opportunities for
synergy.

The 9/11 Commission called for a “maximum effort” to
keep nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands. The steps
described here are an initial sketch of such an
effort. If the world can muster the will to change its
past approaches, there remains an excellent chance of
preventing a nuclear 9/11.

Recommended reading

David Albright, “Al Qaeda’s Nuclear Program: Through
the Window of Seized Documents,” Special Forum 47
(Berkeley, Calif.: Nautilus Institute, November 6,
2002) (available at
http://69.44.62.160/archives/fora/Special-Policy-Forum/47_Albright.html
as of November 9, 2004).

David Albright and Holly Higgins, “A Bomb for the
Ummah,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59, no. 2
(March/?April 2003) (available at
http://www.thebulletin.org/?issues/?2003/?ma03/?ma03albright.html).

Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate
Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004).

Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier, Securing the Bomb: An
Agenda for Action (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat
Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom,
Harvard University, May 2004).

Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John P. Holdren,
Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report
Card and Action Plan (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat
Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom,
Harvard University, March 2003).

Charles D. Ferguson and William C. Potter (with Amy
Sands, Leonard S. Spector, and Fred L. Wehling), The
Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism (Monterey, Calif.:
Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey
Institute of International Studies, 2004).

Paul Leventhal and Yonah Alexander, Preventing Nuclear
Terrorism (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1987).

Matthew Bunn (matthew_bunn at harvard.edu) is senior
research associate in the Project on Managing the Atom
in the Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School
of Government.

"Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."