16.Homeland Security called to account on nuclear terrorism efforts

Homeland Security called to account on nuclear terrorism efforts

A senior Homeland Security official said last week that the department is conducting assessments of groups and individuals who may be involved in smuggling nuclear materials for nuclear terrorism.Jane Lute, deputy homeland security secretary, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that the department’s anti-nuclear terrorism efforts include both technical and intelligence programs.
“We want to understand the threat fully. We want to understand who those individuals might be or groups or other institutions, agencies, entities that exist that might be trying to acquire illicit materials,” Lute said.
During the hearing, Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman said the threat of terrorists using nuclear weapons is real. He noted a U.S. strategy report published in May has warned that “the American people face no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon. Black markets trade in nuclear secrets and materials. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal a nuclear weapon.”
Lieberman said that one problem is that government agencies in charge of detecting nuclear smuggling are “woefully behind” in developing detection capabilities despite $4 billion in funding since 2005.
Lute listed U.S. concerns: “What are the lines of communication that they might exploit? What are the means they might exploit to advance their threat? What are our vulnerabilities? How can we best address them? Those are the kinds of things that we are putting into our dialogue with the intelligence community to more fully develop our understanding of the threat.”
The goal of the effort is to “make it near to impossible for anyone to acquire or attempt to use illicitly nuclear materials and weapons,” she said.
“In the meantime, we want to make it prohibitively difficult,” Lute said. “That depends on creating uncertainty, significant uncertainty in the minds of potential adversaries to layer defenses that reduce risk and shore up our ability to defend ourselves. We believe this country can defend itself in this area as well as others. And so we will use all the tools at our disposal, including analyses and understandings of risks, vulnerabilities and capabilities of technologies, processes and our operating components to ensure that we keep this country safe.”