The Baltimore-based Maldon Institute, whose worldwide staff consists mostly of retired intelligence officers, and the Times of India's Washington-based Foreign Editor Chidanand Rajghatta both report attempted nuclear thefts that have been tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at the University of Bradford in Britain. The first such attack against the nuclear missile storage facility was on Nov. 1, 2007, at Sargodha; the second, by a suicide bomber, occurred Dec. 10, 2007, against Pakistan's nuclear air base at Kamra; and the third and most alarming was launched Aug. 20, 2008, by several suicide bombers who blew up key entry points to a nuclear weapons complex at the Wah cantonment, long believed to be one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly points, where warheads and launchers come together in a national emergency.
Right now, the Taliban are playing a low odds game in trying to get a nuke or twelve.
But should they succeed in grabbing nukes, we'll be the ones trying to draw to an inside straight by using air strikes, special forces, and even entire airborne brigades to destroy them or get them back if the Pakistanis don't show us in a matter of a few hours that they can do the job themselves.
The Pakistanis say their nukes are secure. This is serious stuff and I'm surprised to just be reading about this now. We better have a plan to drop serious forces inside Pakistan if some of those nukes walk off.
UPDATE: So how credible are those reports?
Rumors that the Taliban had made unsuccessful attacks on Pakistani bases holding nuclear weapons, proved to be untrue, or at least unproven. American and Pakistani officials came out and insisted the Pakistani nukes were safe.
There is a great difference between unproven and untrue.
And American and Pakistani assurances that the nukes are safe does not deny there were attacks. both also have high motivation to minimize threats to the nukes.
Plus, were I a nutball jihadi, I'd take a shot at the nukes.
So I'm not reassured at this point.
