T riders: Stay alert

REVERE – They ride the Blue Line from Wonderland station to Boston every day, but commuters like Christine Lander said the latest terror threat is a reminder for police and riders to stay vigilant.The sobering assessment released this week said the United States can expect a terror attack using nuclear or, more likely, biological weapons before 2013.”It is frightening. You get lulled into a sense of security but we should be vigilant,” Lander said.The report delivered Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden suggests that the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists.”Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing,” stated the report.The report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism acknowledges that terrorist groups still lack the needed scientific and technical ability to make weapons out of pathogens or nuclear bombs. It warns that gap can be overcome easily if terrorists should find scientists willing to share or sell their expertise.”The United States should be less concerned that terrorists will become biologists and far more concerned that biologists will become terrorists,” the report states.Blue Line rider Michael Aquino dismissed the report, calling it a scare tactic lacking practical assurances and recommendations.”What it is, is people trying to make other people scared,” he said.The commission believes biological weapons are more likely to be obtained and used before nuclear or radioactive weapons because nuclear facilities are more carefully guarded. Civilian laboratories with potentially dangerous pathogens abound, however, and could easily be compromised.”The biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device,” the report says.It notes that the U.S. government’s counterproliferation activities have been geared toward preventing nuclear terror. The commission recommends the prevention of biological terror be made a higher priority.Al-Qaida remains the only terror group judged to be actively intent on conducting a nuclear attack against the United States, the report notes. It is not yet capable of building such a weapon and has yet to obtain one. But that could change if a nuclear weapons engineer or scientist were recruited to al-Qaida’s cause, the report warns.The report says the potential nexus of terrorism, nuclear and biological weapons is especially acute in Pakistan. Lander hopes the holiday season will remind everyone there is only one solution to ending terrorism.”We’ve got to hope for peace,” she said.Associated Press material was used in this report.