Experts Warn Terrorists Could Launch Nuclear Attack On U.S.

A group of nuclear weapons specialists has issued ominous warnings before members of the U.S. Congress that terrorist groups like al-Qaida could launch a massive attack on the United States and currently there is little to deter or defend against such a strike. Sidney Drell, an arms control specialist and physicist at Stanford University, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee the United States has entered, what he calls, a "dangerous time." "I view us on the precipice of entering a new and more dangerous nuclear era with the spread of technology, which means, in particular, the enrichment of uranium, which makes it possible for more societies to enter the nuclear club," he said. "That raises the danger of nuclear weapons getting in the hands of terrorist groups and others unrestrained by the norms of civilized behavior as we know it and therefore these weapons become more likely to be used." The dean of Georgetown University's school of Foreign Service, Robert Gallucci, agrees. Gallucci, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, says the most dangerous threat is that a terrorist group will smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States. "The most likely is that a terrorist group, al-Qaida or an al-Qaida cousin would acquire a nuclear weapon and introduce it into the United States," he explained. "It seems to me that that is a threat against which we have neither a defense nor a deterrent."