U.S. official: We’re not worried about assaults on Pakistani nukes

CQ‘s Jeff Stein has given us permission to repost the following item, which picks up on Peter Bergen’s blog post from Monday about little-noticed attacks on Pakistani nuclear facilities:

Recent jihadist attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities did not threaten the security of the weapons inside, an American intelligence official says.

A report in the July issue of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which has prompted blaring headlines in the Indian media but drawn little attention elsewhere, said that "home-grown terrorists" had attacked three Pakistani nuclear facilities over the past two years.

"These have included an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly sites," Shaun Gregory, Director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, wrote in the CTC Sentinel.

"The significance of these events is difficult to overstate," Gregory said.

But a U.S. intelligence official, speaking in exchange for anonymity because he was not authorized to articulate an official view on the matter, downplayed Gregory’s conclusion.

None of the attacks, he said, posed a real threat to the security of the nuclear installations, much less the weapons inside.

"These are large facilities. It’s not clear that the attackers knew what these bases might have contained," he said.

"In addition, the mode of attack was curious. If they were after something specific, or were truly seeking entry, you’d think they might use a different tactic, one that’s been employed elsewhere — such as a bomb followed by a small-arms assault.  

"Simply touching off an explosive," he added, "outside the gate of a base — with no follow-up — doesn’t get you inside. For those reasons, I wouldn’t extrapolate from these incidents any kind of downgrade in the security of the Pakistani nuclear arsensal."

Gregory himself made note of Pakistan’s multi-layered web of security methods to prevent the unauthorized use of the weapons.

"I don’t know how much this is hyped," said a prominent nonproliferation expert who asked not to be identified because he was also not authorized to speak on the issue. "It might be slightly, but this is worrying, even if half true."

"While many are aware of the careful stewardship of the Pakistani Army in general," he added, "the pattern of such incidents is beginning to be disturbing."

The New York Times‘ The Lede blog has also picked up this story.

Gregory, by the way, has signed up as an AfPak channel contributor; his remarks on the situation in Kandahar can be found here.