Old weapons, new terror worries

Chechen separatists have strong links with Al Qaeda, and have warned explicitly that they might take over a nuclear facility. Few doubt their chutzpah. Russians were shocked when 41 heavily armed Chechens seized a theater in downtown Moscow in October 2002 - a force that could easily overwhelm numerous remote nuclear sites, says Bunn.

"This is very worrisome," says Bunn. "The basic assumption is that the intelligence services are so good, they'll know [when intruders are] coming. [But] if they don't know, they're going to be in trouble."

Bureaucracy is blunting the effectiveness of US efforts to tighten Russian nuclear security. Just half of the 123 US-supplied kits for making quick-fix upgrades at secret sites have been installed, four years after delivery. They each include a half a mile of multilayer fencing and an array of intrusion detectors.

"A huge part of security for those sites is that nobody knows where they are," Bunn says. "[The upgrade kits] are sitting on shelves, and terrorists apparently know where sites are. It's unbelievable."

Many Russian experts argue, though, that even if a terror group seized a nuclear weapon, they would not be able to use it. American and most Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles have various safeguards that can permanently disable a weapon if it is tampered with, or require an actual missile launch to arm the warhead.

"We can't exclude terrorists seizing a missile, but that will be the end of this terrorist act, because they will not be capable of launching it - never," says Dvorkin, who also discounts chances of an inside job. "There is not a single worker next to a nuclear weapon who is capable of giving this information, because the codes are only known to the highest command."

However, Russia is believed to have around 3,400 live "tactical" nuclear weapons - such as mines and artillery shells, which are sometimes triggered only by radar or radio signals. US experts suspect that these weapons are often not protected by much more than padlocks.

Still, the amount of foresight Al Qaeda displayed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks deepens fears of nuclear terror.

"It's more complicated than slapping on an alarm clock and running a couple of wires, like James Bond," says Jon Wolfstahl, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But we believe it's within the capability of more sophisticated, well-financed groups, especially if they can get their hands on scientists or engineers with knowledge of these systems."

Al Qaeda tops that short list.

"[Al Qaeda cells] are not very capable, technically, but they're learning more and more, and this isn't going to go away in one or two years," says David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Searching for clues about the level of Al Qaeda nuclear expertise, he has examined troves of documents and videos uncovered in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

"They make a lot of mistakes, [but] they're becoming more capable over time," says Mr. Albright. Recruiting nuclear and computer experts could make the dangers surge.

"People have that capability, they may turn sympathetic to Al Qaeda, or be blackmailed by Al Qaeda," Albright says. "You can't build a defense on the premise that Al Qaeda can't do it."

• First of an occasional series on US-Russian strategic issues.

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