Blog Post
For the past decade, analysts and researchers at the Belfer Center have warned of the possibility of a megaterrorist attack on America.
The Center has produced dozens of books and reports analyzing -- and anticipating -- these threats. BCSIA has assembled teams of more than two dozen leading scholars and practitioners of national security to analyze terrorism in its multiple dimensions. Products include: Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy (1996), America''s Achilles Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (1998), Catastrophic Terrorism (1998), and others.
These studies have informed several recent national commissions and task forces including the Commission on American National Interests, the Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, the bipartisan Baker-Cutler Task Force on Nonproliferation Programs in Russia, and others that have been unanimous in seeking to sound an alarm about this danger.
As the Baker-Cutler Task Force concludes: "The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons usable material in Russia could be stolen by criminals, sold to terrorists or hostile nation states, and used to threaten American troops abroad or citizens at home."
The Hart-Rudman Report warns that: "The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century."
The BCSIA-sponsored Commission on America''s National Interests (1996 and 2000), which included leading Senators and national security specialists from across the country, highlighted the threat of megaterrorism as a major challenge to American national interest.
Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) applauded the work of the Commission and the role it played in informing his Subcommittee on Emerging Threats of the Senate Armed Services Committee. At the first meeting of that Subcommittee he warned that "there is a real opportunity for a handful of zealots to reek havoc on a scale that hitherto only armies could obtain. Targets will be selected for their symbolic value, like the World Trade Center in the heart of Manhattan, because terrorists need to escalate their attacks, making each more spectacular and horrific than its predecessor."
Our Center''s consensus analysis of the terrorist threats America faces today identifies dangers even more horrific than the assault Americans suffered on September 11. Indeed, a primary focus of our efforts has been to make vivid the possibility, even likelihood, that the United States could be attacked by terrorists or rogue states wielding weapons of mass destruction. As a 1995 Washington Post op-ed by me on this topic concluded: "in the absence of a determined program of action, we have every reason to anticipate acts of nuclear terrorism before this decade is out."
As the most open society in the world, the U.S. is also among the most vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Given the realities of the freedoms we cherish most, the inescapable connections created by global commerce and technology, and the persistence of evil adversaries in this world, America will remain vulnerable to such acts for as far as the eye can see. American citizens have no viable alternative but to resolve that they will do now what we should have done before. There exists a well-developed agenda of actions that can significantly reduce these dangers going forward. In acting to advance that agenda, we can salvage from this tragedy a redeeming hope.
In the aftermath of September 11, the Center has renewed its efforts to understand and prevent terrorism. We welcome thoughts and suggestions about how we can do this more effectively.
— Graham Allison