'Dirty' Bombs, and the Bush Administration’s Dirty Little Secret

New York, NY – June 11, 2002 – Yesterday’s announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft that authorities had a Brooklyn-born Latino man in custody for involvement in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to explode a radiological bomb in Washington, DC underscored once again the continuing vulnerability of the United States to a wide variety of possible terrorist attacks.

"If the evidence against the suspect proves to be accurate, the Bush administration deserves credit for heading off this plan in its early stages," said William D. Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute.

"But this case also highlights the Bush administration’s dirty little secret. They still don’t have their priorities straight when it comes to taking measures to thwart the most damaging -- or the most likely – kinds of potential terror attacks on U.S. soil."

There is general agreement among experts that the most damaging effects of a so-called 'dirty bomb' – a conventional explosive set up to disperse radioactive materials in a populated area – would be psychological and economic. Loss of life would be minimal compared to the use of a nuclear weapon, which could kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a highly populated urban area. The threat of a radiological weapon still needs to be taken seriously, however, since a crude device would be far easier to construct and transport than a nuclear weapon, and the fear and chaos that the use of one or more of these devices would cause could strike a devastating blow to the morale of the public, as well as to the economies of the targeted areas.