The Bomb in the Backyard

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."