Al-Qaida has attempted for at least 15 years to obtain material to make a nuclear weapon but has so far failed to do so because they have been “scammed” several times by criminal syndicates, the White House said Monday.
“The evidence is strong, the track record is demonstrated and we know that al-Qaida continues to pursue these materials,” said John Brennan, President Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser.
Brennan, speaking to reporters at the Washington Convention Center at the beginning of a two-day summit of global leaders to discuss proliferation, said that the terrorist organization has been taken for a ride more than once when trying to buy either highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium, or other components to make a nuclear bomb, from criminal organizations.
“Fortunately, I think they’ve been scammed a number of times,” Brennan said.
Brennan also said that global criminal organizations are, in fact, eager to sell nuclear weapons materials to al Qaeda.
“These criminal gangs are still looking for an opportunity to make money,” Brennan said. “These gangs and criminal syndicates are trying to obtain that nuclear material.”
White House officials have in recent days said that the threat of al-Qaida or any other terrorist or rogue organization obtaining a nuclear weapon is the greatest threat to American security, and Brennan and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated that message Monday.
Brennan said such a scenario would allow a terrorist group to “threaten our security and world order in an unprecedented manner” and potentially kill many innocent people.
He said some al-Qaida members have claimed in the past to have obtained materials for a nuclear weapon, but that most indications contradict that assertion. He added: “It’s difficult to disprove something like that.”
Brennan did let on that criminal organizations have attempted to sell viable nuclear materials to terrorist groups.
“There have been a number of instances over the years that we know that criminal organizations have tried to sell materials that they claim are fissile materials. Fortunately, most of these instances have turned out to be scams,” Brennan said.
“We know that al-Qaida has been taken by some of them but we know that al-Qaida has not been deterred at the same time,” he said.
Brennan did not talk about what happened in the instances where criminal groups tried to sell viable fissile material to terrorists. But he said that al-Qaida is trying to “develop within the organization the expertise to allow them to distinguish between that which is a scam and that which isn’t.”
Gibbs also announced that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had committed during a meeting with Obama Monday to get rid of its entire stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which he said was enough to create seven nuclear weapons.
Ukraine will rid itself of the fissile material before the next nuclear security summit in 2012, Gibbs said, and may end up shipping it to the U.S.