Former WMD Chief: Al-Qaida Awaiting Nukes

A new report by retired longtime intelligence officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who served as chief of the CIA’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Department, accuses the U.S. government of seriously misreading al-Qaida’s operational objectives.

“Al-Qaida’s reasoning,” according to Mowatt-Larssen's new report from Harvard’s Kennedy School, “runs counter to analytic convention that equates the ease of acquisition of chemical, biological or radiological weapons with an increasing likelihood of terrorist use — i.e., a terrorist attack employing crude weapons is therefore more likely than an attack using a nuclear or large scale biological weapon.”

“In fact, it is the opposite” of that conventional wisdom, according to the analysis, entitled “Al-Qaida Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality.” Al-Qaida’s motivations suggest “the greatest threat is posed by the most effective and simple means of mass destruction, whether these means consist of nuclear, biological, or other forms of asymmetric weapons.”

That makes all the scarier the scolding that came this week from the congressionally authorized Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation. That panel gave the Obama administration an F grade for its performance in preparing the U.S. homeland for a terrorist attack that utilized biological warfare.

Mowatt-Larssen was stationed in Moscow and other critical venues in the course of his long career gathering intelligence. The details he provides of al-Qaida’s scheming in this report are nothing short of chilling.

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