Michael Scheuer, the former CIA officer in charge of hunting Osama bin Laden and the author of Imperial Hubris, gave a chilling interview last week posted at Consortiumnews. Having searched and not found any reference to this interview here at kos, I am posting a link (I hope--this is my first attempt to post a diary) to the interview with a few comments of my own. The bottom line of the interview is that Scheuer expects al-Qaeda to attempt a nuclear weapon attack inside the US within the next six months.
Scheuer in
the interview
says in a nutshell that the recent bin Laden "truce" tape is consistent with Islamic precedent for such offers prior to attacks and that a similar offer preceded the London attack. He touches on the availability of nuclear weapons on the international black market and the near-total failure to secure our borders. He speculates that the mode of delivery will be by truck from Mexico and discusses the strategic aspects of target selection. Scheuer discusses the final preparations that have likely been made for such an attack, leading him to think it is imminent.
I have no means of verifying anything stated in the interview, other than to say that I found Scheuer's Imperial Hubris to be cogent and well-reasoned in addressing the reality of bin Laden's menace and that none of the stated bases for his current hypothesis seems glaringly wrong. He also appears to have no ulterior motive beyond wishing to wake up the political establishment to the gravity of the threat he perceives.
I am left with the same disturbing sense of impending catastrophe that I had after researching the inadequate hurricane defenses of New Orleans in the summer of 2004 when my son was living there at the time of the Ivan near-miss. I was struck then by the disconnect between the known immense threat to the city and the apparent lack of sufficient focused effort to avoid a disaster. Katrina, of course, closed that gestalt in 2005.