Disarmament Documentation

Back to Disarmament Documentation

'We Have Entered A New World Of Proliferation': Statement by George Tenet, US Director of Central Intelligence, February 11

'The Worldwide Threat in 2003: Evolving Dangers in a Complex World', Statement by George Tenet, US Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 11, 2003; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) website, http://www.cia.gov.

Mr. Chairman, last year - in the wake of the September 11 attack on our country - I focused my remarks on the clear and present danger posed by terrorists who seek to destroy who we are and what we stand for. The national security environment that exists today is significantly more complex than that of a year ago.

• I can tell you that the threat from al-Qa'ida remains, even though we have made important strides in the war against terrorism.
• Secretary of State Powell clearly outlined last week the continuing threats posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, its efforts to deceive UN inspectors, and the safehaven that Baghdad has allowed for terrorists in Iraq.
• North Korea's recent admission that it has a highly enriched uranium program, intends to end the freeze on its plutonium production facilities, and has stated its intention to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty raised serious new challenges for the region and the world.

At the same time we cannot lose sight of those national security challenges that, while not occupying space on the front pages, demand a constant level of scrutiny.

Challenges such as the world's vast stretches of ungoverned areas - lawless zones, veritable "no man's lands" like some areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border - where extremist movements find shelter and can win the breathing space to grow.

Challenges such as the numbers of societies and peoples excluded from the benefits of an expanding global economy, where the daily lot is hunger, disease, and displacement - and that produce large populations of disaffected youth who are prime recruits for our extremist foes.

Terrorism

Mr. Chairman, as you know, the United States Government last week raised the terrorist threat level. We did so because of threat reporting from multiple sources with strong al-Qa'ida ties.

The information we have points to plots aimed at targets on two fronts - in the United States and on the Arabian Peninsula. It points to plots timed to occur as early as the end of the Hajj, which occurs late this week. And it points to plots that could include the use of a radiological dispersion device as well as poisons and chemicals.

The intelligence is not idle chatter on the part of terrorists and their associates. It is the most specific we have seen, and it is consistent with both our knowledge of al-Qa'ida doctrine and our knowledge of plots this network - and particularly its senior leadership - has been working on for years. ...

Al-Qa'ida will try to adapt to changing circumstances as it regroups. It will seek a more secure base area so that it can pause from flight and resume planning. We place no limitations on our expectations of what al-Qa'ida might do to survive.

We see disturbing signs that al-Qa'ida has established a presence in both Iran and Iraq. In addition, we are also concerned that al-Qa'ida continues to find refuge in the hinterlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al-Qa'ida is also developing or refining new means of attack, including use of surface-to-air missiles, poisons, and air, surface, and underwater methods to attack maritime targets.

If given the choice, al-Qa'ida terrorists will choose attacks that achieve multiple objectives - striking prominent landmarks, inflicting mass casualties, causing economic disruption, rallying support through shows of strength.

The bottom line here, Mr. Chairman, is that al-Qa'ida is living in the expectation of resuming the offensive. ...

Mr. Chairman, let me briefly turn to a grave concern: the determination of terrorists to obtain and deploy weapons of massive destructive capability, including nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological devices.

The overwhelming disparity between US forces and those of any potential rival drives terrorist adversaries to the extremes of warfare - toward "the suicide bomber or the nuclear device" as the best ways to confront the United States. Our adversaries see us as lacking will and determination when confronted with the prospect of massive losses.

Terrorists count on the threat of demoralizing blows to instill massive fear and rally shadowy constituencies to their side.

We continue to receive information indicating that al-Qa'ida still seeks chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons. The recently disrupted poison plots in the UK, France, and Spain reflect a broad, orchestrated effort by al-Qa'ida and associated groups to attack several targets using toxins and explosives.

These planned attacks involved similar materials, and the implicated operatives had links to one another.

I told you last year, Mr. Chairman, that Bin Ladin has a sophisticated BW capability. In Afghanistan, al-Qa'ida succeeded in acquiring both the expertise and the equipment needed to grow biological agents, including a dedicated laboratory in an isolated compound outside of Kandahar.

Last year I also discussed al-Qa'ida's efforts to obtain nuclear and radiological materials as part of an ambitious nuclear agenda. One year later, we continue to follow every lead in tracking terrorist efforts to obtain nuclear materials.

In particular, we continue to follow up on information that al-Qa'ida seeks to produce or purchase a radiological dispersal device. Construction of such a device is well within al-Qa'ida capabilities - if it can obtain the radiological material.

Iraq

Before I move on to the broader world of proliferation, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to comment on Iraq. Last week Secretary Powell carefully reviewed for the UN Security Council the intelligence we have on Iraqi efforts to deceive UN inspectors, its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, and its support for terrorism. I do not plan to go into these matters in detail, but I would like to summarize some of the key points.

• Iraq has in place an active effort to deceive UN inspectors and deny them access. This effort is directed by the highest levels of the Iraqi regime. Baghdad has given clear directions to its operational forces to hide banned materials in their possession.
• Iraq's BW program includes mobile research and production facilities that will be difficult, if not impossible, for the inspectors to find. Baghdad began this program in the mid-1990s - during a time when UN inspectors were in the country.
• Iraq has established a pattern of clandestine procurements designed to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. These procurements include - but also go well beyond - the aluminum tubes that you have heard so much about.
• Iraq has recently flight tested missiles that violate the UN range limit of 150 kilometers. It is developing missiles with ranges beyond 1,000 kilometers. And it retains - in violation of UN resolutions - a small number of SCUD missiles that it produced before the Gulf War.
• Iraq has tested unmanned aerial vehicles to ranges that far exceed both what it declared to the United Nations and what it is permitted under UN resolutions. We are concerned that Iraq's UAVs can dispense chemical and biological weapons and that they can deliver such weapons to Iraq's neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States.
• Iraq is harboring senior members of a terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a close associate of Usama Bin Ladin. We know Zarqawi's network was behind the poison plots in Europe that I discussed earlier as well as the assassination of a US State Department employee in Jordan.
• Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al-Qa'ida. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al-Qa'ida associates; one of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.

Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources. And it is consistent with the pattern of denial and deception exhibited by Saddam Hussein over the past 12 years.

Proliferation

Mr. Chairman, what I just summarized for you on Iraq's WMD programs underscores our broader concerns about of proliferation. More has changed on nuclear proliferation over the past year than on any other issue. For 60 years, weapon-design information and technologies for producing fissile material - the key hurdles for nuclear weapons production - have been the domain of only a few states. These states, though a variety of self-regulating and treaty based regimes, generally limited the spread of these data and technologies.

In my view, we have entered a new world of proliferation. In the vanguard of this new world are knowledgeable non-state purveyors of WMD materials and technology. Such non-state outlets are increasingly capable of providing technology and equipment that previously could only be supplied by countries with established capabilities.

This is taking place side by side with the continued weakening of the international nonproliferation consensus. Control regimes like the Non-Proliferation Treaty are being battered by developments such as North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT and its open repudiation of other agreements.

The example of new nuclear states that seem able to deter threats from more powerful states, simply by brandishing nuclear weaponry, will resonate deeply among other countries that want to enter the nuclear weapons club.

Demand creates the market. The desire for nuclear weapons is on the upsurge. Additional countries may decide to seek nuclear weapons as it becomes clear their neighbors and regional rivals are already doing so. The "domino theory" of the 21st century may well be nuclear.

With the assistance of proliferators, a potentially wider range of countries may be able to develop nuclear weapons by "leapfrogging" the incremental pace of weapons programs in other countries.

Let me now briefly review, sector by sector, the range on non-nuclear proliferation threats.

In biological warfare (BW) and chemical warfare (CW), maturing programs in countries of concern are becoming less reliant on foreign suppliers - which complicates our ability to monitor programs via their acquisition activities. BW programs have become more technically sophisticated as a result of rapid growth in the field of biotechnology research and the wide dissemination of this knowledge. Almost anyone with limited skills can create BW agents. The rise of such capabilities also means we now have to be concerned about a myriad of new agents.

Countries are more and more tightly integrating both their BW and CW production capabilities into apparently legitimate commercial infrastructures, further concealing them from scrutiny.

The United States and its interests remain at risk from increasingly advanced and lethal ballistic and cruise missiles and UAVs. In addition to the longstanding threats from Russian and Chinese missile forces, the United States faces a near-term ICBM threat from North Korea. And over the next several years, we could face a similar threat from Iran and possibly Iraq.

Short- and medium-range missiles already pose a significant threat to US interests, military forces, and allies as emerging missile states increase the range, reliability, and accuracy of the missile systems in their inventories.

And several countries of concern remain interested in acquiring a land-attack cruise missile (LACM) capability. By the end of the decade, LACMs could pose a serious threat to not only our deployed forces, but possibly even the US mainland.

Mr. Chairman, I turn now to countries of particular concern, beginning, as you might expect, with North Korea.

The recent behavior of North Korea regarding its longstanding nuclear weapons program makes apparent to all the dangers Pyongyang poses to its region and to the world. This includes developing the capability to enrich uranium, ending the freeze on its plutonium production facilities, and withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty. If, as seems likely, Pyongyang moves to reprocess spent fuel at the facilities where it recently abrogated the 1994 IAEA-monitored freeze, we assess it could recover sufficient plutonium for several additional weapons.

North Korea also continues to export complete ballistic missiles and production capabilities along with related raw materials, components, and expertise. Profits from these sales help Pyongyang to support its missile and other WMD development programs, and in turn generate new products to offer to its customers.

Indeed, Mr. Chairman, Kim Chong-il's attempts this past year to parlay the North's nuclear weapons program into political leverage suggest he is trying to negotiate a fundamentally different relationship with Washington - one that implicitly tolerates the North's nuclear weapons program.

Although Kim presumably calculates the North's aid, trade, and investment climate will never improve in the face of US sanctions and perceived hostility, he is equally committed to retaining and enlarging his nuclear weapons stockpile.

Mr. Chairman, I want to mention our renewed concern over Libya's interest in WMD. Since the suspension of sanctions against Libya in 1999, Tripoli has been able to increase its access to dual-use nuclear technologies. Qadhafi stated in an Al-Jazirah interview last year that Arabs have "the right" to possess weapons of mass destruction because, he alleges, Israel has them.

Libya clearly intends to reestablish its offensive chemical weapons capability and has produced at least 100 tons of chemical agents at its Rabta facility, which ostensibly reopened as a pharmaceutical plant in 1995.

China vowed in November 2000 to refrain from assisting countries seeking to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, and last August Beijing promulgated new missile-related export controls. Despite such steps, Mr. Chairman, Chinese firms remain key suppliers of ballistic- and cruise missile-related technologies to Pakistan, Iran, and several other countries.

And Chinese firms may be backing away from Beijing's 1997 bilateral commitment to forego any new nuclear cooperation with Iran. We are monitoring this closely.

We are also monitoring Russian transfers of technology and expertise. Russian entities have cooperated on projects - many of them dual-use - that we assess can contribute to BW, CW, nuclear, or ballistic- and cruise- missile programs in several countries of concern, including Iran. Moscow has, however, reexamined at least some aspects of military-technical cooperation with some countries and has cut back its sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle assistance to Iran.

We remain alert to the vulnerability of Russian WMD materials and technology to theft or diversion. Russia has the largest inventory of nuclear materials that - unless stored securely - might be fashioned into weapons that threaten US persons, facilities, or interests.

Iran is continuing to pursue development of a nuclear fuel cycle for civil and nuclear weapons purposes. The loss of some Russian assistance has impeded this effort. It is also moving toward self-sufficiency in its BW and CW programs.

Tehran is seeking to enlist foreign assistance in building entire production plants for commercial chemicals that would also be capable of producing nerve agents and their precursors.

As a supplier, Iran in 2002 pursued new missile-related deals with several countries and publicly advertises its artillery rockets, ballistic missiles, and related technologies.

I should also note, Mr. Chairman, that India and Pakistan continue to develop and produce nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. ...

On the Pakistan-India border, the underlying cause of tension is unchanged, even though India's recent military redeployment away from the border reduced the danger of imminent war. The cycles of tension between Indian and Pakistan are growing shorter. Pakistan continues to support groups that resist India's presence in Kashmir in an effort to bring India to the negotiating table. Indian frustration with continued terrorist attacks - most of which it attributes to Pakistan - causes New Delhi to reject any suggestion that it resume a dialogue with Islamabad.

Without progress on resolving Indian-Pakistani differences, any dramatic provocation - like 2001's terrorist attack on the Indian parliament by Kashmir militants - runs a high risk of sparking another major military deployment. ...

Back to the Top of the Page

© 2003 The Acronym Institute.