FBI Warns: New al-Qaida WMD Threat

The FBI issued a bulletin to 18,000 law enforcement agencies this week warning that al-Qaida has made new threats to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. targets.

ABC News reported late Tuesday that intelligence sources have confirmed that al-Qaida plans to release a new video on the web sometime tomorrow. U.S. intelligence believes the terror group will advise its "jihadists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West."

An FBI spokesman confirmed the threat "calling for the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against civilians." The U.S. has no "intelligence of any specific plot or indication of a threat to the U.S.," the Bureau spokesman said. Still, the FBI has taken the precautionary step of alerting other agencies of the potential threat.

Such threats are not unusual for the Bureau. Earlier this year, Dr. Vahid Majidi, the bureau’s assistant director in charge of the WMD Directorate, told Newsmax that the FBI gets at least several dozen cases a year involving weapons of mass destruction.

The Bureau takes such threats seriously.

In a separate interview with Newsmax's Ronald Kessler last year, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group were actively seeking to obtain nuclear devices with the intent to explode them in American cities.

Mueller conjectured how al Qaida might acquire one or more nuclear devices. "One is to obtain a nuclear device that's already been constructed from one of the former Iron Curtain countries, and the other way is to put together the fissile material and the expertise and do an improvised nuclear device," Mueller said.

"And there's no doubt that al Qaida, if it had the capability, would go down either route to get a nuclear device."

Mueller also had little doubt as to al Qaida's likely targets.

"It would be someplace in the United States, in most likely Washington and or New York, depending on how many devices they have. Or both cities," Mueller said.

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