By AMY HARDER
Vice President-elect Joe Biden and Homeland Security nominee Janet Napolitano will be briefed this afternoon on a new report released today that projects a nuclear or biological attack will occur somewhere around the world by 2013.
The report, conducted by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, aims to serve as road map for President-elect Barack Obama's administration to prevent biological and nuclear terrorism. In its findings, the report focuses on the "poorly governed parts of Pakistan" where the commission concluded the risks to the U.S. are increasing.
Former Sens. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Jim Talent, R-Mo., have led the commission's efforts, which built upon findings by the 9/11 Commission, another congressionally mandated study. The group has conducted more than 200 interviews with national security experts, held eight major commission meetings and took several trips to regions deemed risks, such as Russia, since May.
The timing of the report's release, in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks last weekend, further drives home the risk of all types of terrorism. "If those people had access to a biological or nuclear weapon they would have multiplied by orders of magnitude the deaths they could have inflicted," Graham told an AP reporter.
The report predicts that terrorists will more likely attack with biological, rather than nuclear, weapons because nuclear facilities are more closely guarded. "The commission believes that the U.S. government needs to move more aggressively to limit the proliferation of biological weapons and reduce the prospect of a bioterror attack," the report states.
