ABSTRACT
The specter of terrorists or a terrorist state using a nuclear or radiological device or chemical or biological weapons against Americans has prompted the development of numerous programs designed to head off a calamitous attack and cope with the consequences if one should take place. Terrorists already have used huge conventional explosives, such as the truck bombs that destroyed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 American military personnel. Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal ofce building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, killing 168. Al-Qaeda used, in effect, a huge explosive by ramming jet passenger liners heavily loaded with fuel into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11, as well as Flight 93 (presumably intended for the White House or the Capitol), killing more than 3,000 and causing mass destruction.
