An Unrealized Nexus? WMD-related Trafficking, Terrorism, and Organized Crime in the Former Soviet Union

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, powerfully advanced the notion that terrorist groups might acquire and use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or, more plausibly, radiological dispersal devices (RDD). Terrorist interest in weapons of mass destruction is ample. Al Qaeda has been on record as determined to acquire and use these weapons.

In 1995, several years prior to the September 11 attacks, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo sought to gain nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and it successfully used sarin gas. That same year, Chechen rebels planted but did not explode an RDD made of cesium-137 and dynamite in Moscow's Izmailovsky Park.

In 2004 the uncovering …