A former high-level CIA official said yesterday the International Atomic Energy Agency should consider opening an intelligence office to counter the nuclear terrorism threat, Reuters reported (see GSN, Jan. 13).
"The good news is that no credible information has surfaced that al-Qaeda has obtained weapons-usable nuclear materials. The bad news is that (these) are missing in significant quantities," said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, one-time head of the CIA's WMD and terrorism division.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog could provide an extra-national option for sharing intelligence on nuclear dangers, Mowatt-Larsen said, pointing to the agency's examination of Iran's nuclear program and the nuclear market once operated by top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
"We urgently need to overcome bureaucratic and security impediments to finding a way via the IAEA or another (multilateral) way to greatly expand how nations work together to find loose nukes," he told Reuters. "No single state has all the answers. We should leverage the IAEA's expertise, broaden (its) mandate in this regard ... to supplement and support national efforts."
An IAEA intelligence office could be staffed by personnel from member states or by retired agents, Mowatt-Larssen said while attending a conference on nuclear security in Vienna, Austria (see GSN, March 31).
"They could use their connections with member governments while reducing the IAEA's dependency on them," he said.
"It's urgent because there's been a fundamental breakdown in nuclear security. The record of material seizures shows they have been serendipitous, not because (police) were looking for it," Mowatt-Larssen added. "We are living on borrowed time. The problem is too overwhelming for bilateral and unilateral efforts alone."
Nuclear material is known to have been stolen or gone missing in more than 1,500 incidents since 1993, an IAEA official said. The actual number might be much larger given the likelihood of under-reporting, he added (Mark Heinrich, Reuters, April 1).