CNN INTERNATIONAL SHOW: INSIGHT 05:00 PM June 10, 2002
Government Announces Thwarting al Qaeda Plan
MANN: Joining us now to talk about the dirty bomb and its impact is John Pike, a weapons analyst who is the director of GlobalSecurity.org, an online defense policy group.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Let me ask you, first of all, we don't know much about the threat. We don't know much about the suspect. We really don't know much in general, but on the basis of the limited information that is publicly available, how worried are you? How serious do you think this threat was?
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Well, I think that it's more serious now that you have a suspect in custody who was apparently part of an actual plan as opposed to the information that was previously available, that suggested that al Qaeda was interested in radiological weapons, but there was no evidence that they actually had a plan for doing something with them.
If you have somebody in custody now who was out reconnoitering, trying to figure out exactly where you were going to be attacking, that does suggest that he has compatriots, many of whom I assume are unknown to him, who are part of the rest of the plan to actually conduct the attack.
So I think that they've gone from thinking about radiological weapons to trying to actually do something with them.
MANN: The first step would be to get radioactive materials. The government says they didn't find any in the suspects possession. How hard would it be to actually get some? What would the first step be like?
PIKE: Well, I wouldn't expect to find the radiological materials in this guys possession, because he was simply the scout. And if you look at the previous operations that al Qaeda has mounted, you're going to have some people doing reconnaissance, others doing logistics, others actually conducting the attack.
And so presumably there would be other people, part of this operation, whose job it was to obtain the materials, fabricate the device and actually in-place it.
If you're talking about a small device, something that would panic a lot of people, contaminate a subway station, there are literally tens of thousands of such sources at hospitals, welding shops, universities, scientific labs here in the United States, and an equal number in any number of other countries around the world.
Getting it into a country -- wouldn't take it through an airport. There are radiation detectors there, but if you think of all of the illegal drugs that get into this country, certainly there are other ways of getting those sources into this country where an attack could be mounted.
MANN: I suppose there's one point we can't make clearly enough, but just to make sure we are making it clearly -- everyone agrees that panic would be the result of this kind of attack. Would the panic be well- founded? Or really would people be fearing something that sounded a lot worse than it was?
PIKE: I think that a very important point to stress is that these are weapons of mass disruption rather than mass destruction.
The most likely attacks are those that would involve a small radiological source, not the sort of thing that's going to be an immediate health hazard to anyone, but something that's going to play on the natural and sometimes, I think, excessive fear that the public has of radiation.
You can't see it. You're not sure that you've been exposed to it. You're not sure that the government really knows everything that's going on, or that they're really telling you everything that's going on. So there is a very real possibility that we would see a replay of the panic that we saw after the anthrax attacks last fall, totally out of proportion to the actual hazard to health.
MANN: Does the government know what to do about this kind of episode? Clearly, it was caught unawares when the anthrax attacks took place.
PIKE: Well, there's been a lot of thought given to this radiological hazard. Most of the first responders in major metropolitan areas, the fire departments, already have radiation detectors. If there is any event, an explosion, a suspicious fire, that has the possibility of being a radiation event, they have radiation detectors to enable them to very quickly determine whether there is a radiation hazard.
And presumably, they have some procedures in place to alert the public, tell them what to do, tell them what not to do. But as we've seen, every time you have one of these events, those procedures turn out to have some problems I them. They're prepared -- obviously not completely prepared.
MANN: Just one last question: we know now, or we are told, that two men have been arrested in connection with this. From what you are saying, it sounds like there would be many more out there, and that the plot really would not be seriously disrupted.
PIKE: I think that that's one of the big concerns that you have about al Qaeda, and one of the reasons I'm skeptical about improving intelligence could have prevented the September 11 attacks -- that an operation like this might involve a dozen, two dozen people, most of whom are not known to each other, most of whom would not be aware of the details of the plot.
Some of them wouldn't even know what role they were playing. They would just be told go here, do that. And I think that the fact that they are now making such a big public release about this suggests they have no additional clues on this conspiracy, but they want to publicize this, frighten the conspirators into thinking that the plan has been revealed, maybe scare it off, if they can't disrupt it by actually detaining the conspirators.
MANN: John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. Thanks so much for being with us once again.
PIKE: Thank you.
MANN: Another break, and then a look at how United States politics plays in the war against terror.
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