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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Jim Walsh

Aired November 11, 2001 - 08:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: A Pakistani newspaper reporting Osama bin Laden claims to have nuclear and chemical weapons. U.S. officials say they don't believe him, but should they?

Joining us by phone now from Boston to talk more about this, Jim Walsh, a Harvard University Political Scientist who has done research on weapons of mass destruction.

Thank you Mr. Walsh, for joining us this morning. Good to have you.

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Thank you, Martin.

SAVIDGE: There are a lot of interesting details about this statement, both in the English and Urdu version. But let's talk first about the broad claim, and that is, Osama says he has access to nuclear and chemical weapons. Do you buy that?

WALSH: Well, first, it's not exactly clear what bin Laden means. He says, quote: "We have the weapons as deterrent." Now, it's not clear which weapons he's referring to. Is he referring to chemical weapons, to nuclear weapons, or to both? We can't say for sure based on the interview transcript.

SAVIDGE: This was a Pakistani newspaper reporting it. It was published in Urdu, that is the language of Pakistan. That version didn't mention nuclear or chemical weapons, but the English version did. Do you find that interesting?

WALSH: Well, I -- I think it raises some questions. The reporter, however, claims that the Urdu version was an incomplete version, an abbreviated version, and that the full Urdu version will be appearing in "Dawn" -- that's the Pakistani publication -- in "Dawn"'s magazine at a later point. So once that appears, we may be able to compare the full transcripts. So we'll just have to wait and see on that score.

SAVIDGE: Well if we stretch it a little farther on the nuclear question, what kind of nuclear weapons would it be possible he might have?

WALSH: Well, we would imagine that there would be three possibilities. The first is he might have stolen a nuclear warhead. Again, I think this is highly unlikely; but it is not impossible that he would steal a warhead. Now if he stole a warhead, it would have to be a warhead or another device that lacked any safety or deactivation features. And most Russian and American nuclear weapons, for example, have these features which prevent people who are unauthorized from detonating them. So he'd have to get a usable nuclear weapon, and that would be quite a challenge.

The second alternative is that he might steal nuclear materials, the highly enriched uranium and plutonium that you use to make a bomb. But even if he did that, it would be quite a technical challenge to take that raw material and turn it into a nuclear weapon.

The third alternative, which is the most likely of the three, but the least threatening, is a radiological weapon, also known as a dirty bomb. This is simply a conventional bomb, and when it goes off, rather than scattering shrapnel, it scatters little bits of radioactive elements. It does not cause a nuclear explosion -- the mushroom-cloud type thing that we're all used to seeing on television. But it would scatter radiation. It wouldn't kill many people, but it would be a scary event if it happened.

SAVIDGE: What about these so-called suitcase bombs of the former Soviet Union? Do we know their whereabouts? And, also, there has been talk that Osama bin Laden was looking for people with expertise on that. Why would he want them if he doesn't have the suitcase?

WALSH: Well, first things first. And that is, in this business -- in the nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction business -- there are a lot of claims, a lot of rumors, a lot of innuendo. I've followed this now since the 1950s, and you periodically get claims that someone has acquired a nuclear weapon, or a country has a nuclear weapon, and almost in every case these claims turn out to be false.

So we have to listen to those reports and -- with a grain of salt, and not always buy what we hear on the foreign newspaper or on TV -- CNN excluded, of course.

SAVIDGE: Jim, I'm going to have to interrupt you, Mr. Walsh, because the president is now speaking in New York. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

(INTERRUPTED BY CNN COVERAGE OF A LIVE EVENT)

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