Magazine Article - Foreign Policy

The Bomb in the Backyard

| November / December 2006

Nearly 3,000 people were killed five years ago when terrorists plowed airplanes into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The terrorist attack was undoubtedly a terrible tragedy. But it could have been much worse. Eight years earlier, aides to Osama bin Laden met with Salah Abdel al-Mobruk, a Sudanese military officer and former government minister who offered to sell weapons-grade uranium to the terrorists for $1.5 million. He proffered up a 3-foot-long cylinder. The al Qaeda representatives agreed to the purchase, because after all, as one of them later said, "It's easy to kill more people with uranium."

For more information on this publication: Please contact Managing the Atom
For Academic Citation: Zimmerman, Peter D. and Jeffrey G. Lewis. “The Bomb in the Backyard.” Foreign Policy, November / December 2006,
32-39
.

The Authors

Peter D. Zimmerman

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