Written by Valerie Plame for Newsweek After spending years trying to thwart the nuclear black market, a former CIA spy says the only way to prevent terrorists from getting the bomb is to eliminate all of the world’s nukes. The smoke was still drifting off the World Trade Center when the CIA discovered that Osama bin Laden had secretly met just a few days before the attack with a top Pakistani nuclear scientist, seeking help in building a nuclear bomb. Immediately, nuclear terrorism jumped to the top of the list of urgent threats to the civilized world. My clandestine work as a CIA operations officer became laser-focused on counterproliferation as we mobilized to prevent a nuclear 9/11. We knew that the horror of a nuclear bomb detonated in a major city would dwarf any catastrophe previously suffered by our country – the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands and the economic and social devastation sudden and catastrophic. Nine years later, who is winning this contest of wills between the civilized world and terrorist groups trying to buy, build, or steal a nuclear bomb? I would like to believe the bad guys are losing, but, in fact, time…
