CIA: Al-Qaida 'set for nuclear strike'

Al-Qaida terrorists and their supporters are set to use nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in deadly strikes, a CIA report claims today.

An internal report seen by The Washington Times, which is renowned for its security sources, said the terror network plans to use unconventional weapons “to cause mass casualties”.

It said that while “most attacks” by the group were likely to be small scale, extremists linked to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden “have a wide variety of potential agents and delivery means to choose from for chemical, biological and radiological or nuclear attacks.”

One goal of any attempted strike would be spread “panic and disruption,” the CIA report said.

It also identified several deadly toxins and chemicals that could be used in attacks, including nerve gases, germ and toxin weapons, anthrax and ricin, and radiological dispersal devices, also known as “dirty bombs”.

Al-Qaida is developing bombs with radioactive material from industrial or medical facilities, and an al-Qaida document found in Afghanistan revealed that the group had sketched out a crude device capable of causing a nuclear blast, the report said.

“Osama bin Laden’s operatives may try to launch conventional attacks against the nuclear industrial infrastructure of the United States in a bid to cause contamination, disruption and terror,” the report said.

According to the report, al-Qaida and other terrorists could also produce what the CIA called an “improvised nuclear device” capable of causing a nuclear blast.

Such a bomb is “intended to cause a yield-producing nuclear explosion,” the report said.

Terrorists could produce a nuclear device in three ways, including a bomb made from “diverted nuclear weapons components,” a nuclear weapon that had been modified, or a new, indigenously designed device, the report said.

A home-made nuclear bomb would be one of two types: either an implosion device that uses conventional explosives to create a nuclear blast, or a “gun-assembled” device.

To make a nuclear bomb, the terrorists would first need to obtain fissile material like enriched uranium or plutonium as fuel for the blast.

A more likely type of terrorist attack is the use of such nuclear material with conventional explosives to create a “dirty,” or radiological, bomb, the report said.

“Use of a (radiological dispersal device) by terrorists could result in health, environmental and economic effects as well as political and social effects,” the report said.

“It will cause fear, injury, and possibly lead to levels of contamination requiring costly and time consuming clean-up efforts.”

Among the materials that are available to terrorists for this type of bomb are caesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60 – materials used in hospitals, universities, factories, construction companies and laboratories.

The report also raised the spectre of a new aerial attack.

It said both Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the September 11 hijackers, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who is on trial in the US on charges related to those attacks, “expressed interest in crop dusters,” raising fears that al-Qaida was considering using aircraft to spread biological warfare agents.