The probability that the U.S. will be hit with a weapons of
mass destruction attack at some point is 100 percent, Dr. Vahid
Majidi, the FBI’s assistant director in charge of the FBI’s
Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, tells Newsmax.
Such an attack could be launched by foreign terrorists, lone
wolves who are terrorists, or even by criminal elements, Majidi
says. It would most likely employ chemical, biological, or
radiological weapons rather than a nuclear device.
As
it is, Majidi says, American intelligence picks up hundreds of
reports each year of foreign terrorists obtaining WMD. When
American forces invaded Afghanistan, they found that al-Qaida
was working on what Majidi calls a “nascent” weapons of mass
destruction effort involving chemical and biological weapons.
In every other case so far, the reports of foreign terrorists
obtaining WMD have turned out to be unfounded. However, Majidi’s
directorate within the FBI investigates more than a dozen cases
in the U.S. each year where there was intent to use WMD.
For example, in 2008, the FBI arrested Roger Bergendorff, who
was found to have ricin and anarchist literature. Ricin kills
cells by inhibiting protein synthesis. Within several days, the
liver, spleen, and kidneys of a person who inhales or ingests
ricin stop working, resulting in death.
“The notion of probability of a WMD attack being low or high is
a moot point because we know the probability is 100 percent,”
Majidi says. “We’ve seen this in the past, and we will see it in
the future. There is going to be an attack using chemical,
biological or radiological material.”
Even a WMD attack that does not kill a great number of people
would have a crushing psychological impact.
“A singular lone wolf individual can do things in the dark of
the night with access to a laboratory with low quantities of
material and could hurt a few people but create a devastating
effect on the American psyche,” Majidi says.
As described by Majidi, who was previously the chemistry
division leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the WMD
Directorate was established in 2006 to coordinate all elements
of the FBI that deal with WMD cases.
Regarding a subject that is full of hype and misinformation, it
is rare for an official who is an expert in the field and has
full access to current classified information to talk about it
for publication.
Majidi says the kind of threat that keeps him awake at night is
one from a lone wolf. That’s because the FBI, along with the CIA
and foreign partners, has developed a number of ways to detect
plots by al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists. Besides
intercepting their communications and infiltrating their
organizations, the FBI gets reports when people purchase
materials that could be used in a WMD attack. These techniques
are known as trip wires.
For my book “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to
Stop the Next Attack,” Arthur M. “Art” Cummings II, who headed
FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations,
gave an example of the FBI’s use of trip wires.
When the FBI got a report of a man buying chemicals that could
be used for explosives, it investigated. In this case, it would
have been easy to dismiss the purchases as innocent, since the
man was buying the supplies from a swimming pool company, and
his business shipped pool supplies.
“That explanation wasn’t good enough,” Cummings says. “It’s not
OK to say, It looks like pool supplies, we’re done. You don’t
finish there. Who at the pool company, specifically, did he buy
them from? What specifically was the transaction, and what
happened from there? Is it a friend; is it an associate; is it
somebody who wants to do us harm? There was a day we would have
said, It’s a commercial transaction, don’t worry about it. Each
and every lead is followed all the way down to the most minute
detail.”
Majidi says three agents from his directorate have been assigned
to FBI offices overseas — known as legal attaché offices or
legats — in countries like Georgia to work with foreign
intelligence authorities on possible attacks.
Currently, Majidi is working to develop ways to detect
development of new organisms that could be used in a biological
attack. By definition, there would be no way to detect a new
organism or to develop an antidote before it is unleashed.
“We are not sitting on our hands waiting to predict what will
happen based on what happened yesterday,” Majidi says. As an
example, he says, “You can design an organism de novo that never
existed before. While there is no known articulated threat, this
is something that we feel is a technology or science that
potentially can be misused, either accidentally or on purpose.”
The FBI is working with the synthetic biology community to
develop ways to zero in on any hint that someone could be
developing such an organism that could become a threat.
“We’re not there to stop the science but to integrate our
activities within their portfolio so that when the threat does
develop or may develop over a long arc of time, we are ahead of
those issues,” Majidi explains.
Majidi says the most remote threat is an attack with a nuclear
device. A terrorist bent on detonating a nuclear weapon would
have to successfully negotiate a series of steps, Majidi says.
He would have to find an expert with the right knowledge. He
would have to find the right material. He would have to bring
the device into the country, and he would have to evade
detection programs.
“While the net probability is incredibly low, a 10 kiloton
device would be of enormous consequence,” Majidi says. “So even
with those enormously low probabilities, we still have to have a
very effective and integrated approach trying to fight the
possibility.”
Experts are constantly being quoted with estimates of the amount
of enriched uranium that could be unaccounted for from Soviet
Union stockpiles and could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Majidi says no one knows the actual amount.
“I know there is a hobby of guessing, and different folks give
you a different number,” he says. “All I can tell you is that
from the interdictions that we have had in the past decade, the
quantities have been sufficient of highly enriched uranium that
I clearly worry about this material on a global scale. How much
is there? Any amount is too much.”
A terrorist who stole a nuclear weapon from a country that has
one would have an easier time than if he tried to make one. “One
of the things you have to understand is that nuclear markets are
very ambiguous markets,” Majidi says. “There are as many bad
guys trying to sell material as there are good guys trying to
make sure that that doesn’t happen.”
While terrorists talk about using WMD, the preferred method for
attack so far has been explosives. Majidi cites two examples:
the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian
citizen who boarded a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit on
Dec. 25, 2009, and tried to detonate explosives sewn into his
underwear; and the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, a
Pakistani immigrant who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times
Square.
“While all of these guys are still interested in potentially
using chemical, biological, or radiological weapons wherever it
is possible, the pragmatic approach that they have taken is to
use what has worked for them best, which is various forms of
explosives and improvised explosives,” Majidi says.
“The latest round is concealing explosives coming through the
commercial shipping environment,” Majidi notes. “That brings to
the fore the fact that explosives are something that we’re not
going to get away from any time soon. It’s the modality that is
most often preferred by a pragmatic adversary.”
Given the sensitivity and complexity of the subject, Majidi says
he tries to present all the issues in context: “One of my jobs
is to make sure I put all of these things in an appropriate
light, because if you were in my job you would see that everyone
always tries to elevate things to a tremendous level.”
Of one thing Majidi is sure: “There’s a probability of 100
percent that a WMD event will happen.”
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of
Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches
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