WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- Weapons and non-proliferation experts doubt claims surfacing Monday from al-Qaida's number-two man that the terrorist organization has acquired a nuclear weapon.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp is airing an interview with Osama bin Laden's biographer who claims Ayman al-Zawahiri told him al-Qaida had purchased small, suitcase-portable nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia from disgruntled Russian weapons scientists.
"My instinct is if they have one we would first find out when they used it," said Joseph Cirincione, a non-proliferation expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "What's the point of (boasting)?"
He said the government's fear has long been a terrorist organization would obtain not one but two nuclear devices, hide them in different cities and then make a set of demands. To prove its intent, it would then detonate one. Claiming to have a suitcase bomb doesn't carry the same weight.
Mir told ABC al-Zawahiri said in November 2001 al-Qaida had sent representatives to Moscow, Tashkent and other central Asian states to buy nuclear weapons.
'Mr. Mir, if you have 30 million dollars, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available'," Mir said al-Zawahiri told him in the interview, part of which were released in advance of the show's airing.
Daniel Benjamin, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies is similarly skeptical.
"Rumors along these lines have been out there a number of years. It can't be ruled out; it's also not very likely. My strong belief is if they had one they would have used it," he told UPI Monday.
Various federal government reports as late as 1999 reference rumors that bin Laden purchased suitcase-sized and -borne nuclear weapons from the Chechen mafia.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, made the "suitcase nuke" issue a central one by convening a series of hearings beginning in 1997 featuring Russian defectors. Weldon was told in 1992 by Alexander Lebed, national security adviser to then- President Boris Yeltsin that 84 out of 132 Russian suitcase nuclear bombs had gone missing.
"I raise (the issue) continuously. I have no way on my own doing the investigation. It's the intelligence community that's got to pursue these (leads)," Weldon said.
Robert Einhorn, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation from 1999 to August 2001, expressed doubt about Lebed's information.
"I guess it cannot be ruled out altogether, but it seems very unlikely. Not much credence is put in the old claim by General Lebed," Einhorn told UPI.
Then-FBI Director Louis Freeh said in 1997 that he was convinced there was no concrete evidence to suggest any of small nuclear weapons were stolen from the Russia arsenal.
"There's no evidence we've seen which establishes theft or criminal diversion for criminal or terrorist purposes and no link between any organized crime group," he said.
Weldon contends that view is myopic, and the Clinton administration didn't do enough to follow the leads.
"I am convinced back then our government didn't take the aggressive steps they should have taken to track down the stories. All during the 1990s they just brushed it aside," Weldon told UPI.
That said he believes al-Qaida is more likely to have a radiological or dirty bomb than a suitcase nuke.
Cirincione agreed. Just an ounce of Cesium packed into a traditional car or truck bomb could contaminate 20 city blocks with radiation, rendering the area uninhabitable. The actual physical toll on victims of even a strong radiological dose from a dirty bomb would not be major, the American Institute of Physics reported in March 2002. People within a half-mile of a dirty bomb would be exposed to less than their average exposure to naturally occurring radiation in a year, AIP reported.
The prospect of just such a dirty bomb was behind the arrest and detention of Jose Padilla, an American citizen held as an enemy combatant for his alleged involvement in a plot to use a radiological bomb in the United States.
Padilla was arrested in May 2002 after he returned from Pakistan where the Bush administration alleges he was discussing a plan to use a dirty bomb in the United States.
The U.S. government spends between $20 million and $30 million a year on a program to employ about 30,000 Russian weapons scientists on peaceful research projects so they will not be tempted by economic hardship to sell their expertise to terrorist groups, a part of the Nunn-Lugar program.
