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Rolf Mowatt-Larssen

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen

Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Contact:
Telephone: 617-496-6131
Email: rolf_mowatt-larssen@hks.harvard.edu

 

 

By Publication Type

 

December 2, 2008

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen Named Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center

Press Release

By Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications and Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy and former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's WMD and terrorism efforts, will join the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center as a senior fellow on January 19, 2009.

 

June 6, 2011

The U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment of Nuclear Terrorism

Report

By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom, Yuri Morozov, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Simon Saradzhyan, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Viktor I. Yesin and Pavel S. Zolotarev

Researchers from the United States and Russia have issued a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences. The first joint threat assessment by experts from the world’s two major nuclear powers concludes: “If current approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the question will become not if but when, and on what scale, the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs.”

 

 

AP Photo

April 30, 2009

Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: A Global Intelligence Imperative

Report

By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

"The biggest obstacle to multilateral intelligence cooperation is leadership and finding the courage to work together. Group think and risk aversion must be overcome in the name of urgency."

 

AP Image

July 7, 2009

"Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Securing Pakistani Nuclear Weapons"

Testimony

By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

"The problem is not the quality of Pakistan's nuclear security efforts. The problem is that the standard for success is so unforgiving. In a world in which terrorists are actively seeking weapons of mass destruction, there can be no breakdown in security that enables terrorists to obtain a nuclear bomb."

 

AP Photo/IntelCenter

November 12, 2010

Al Qaeda's Religious Justification of Nuclear Terrorism

Working Paper

By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

"...Bin Laden would develop an idea that would breathe life back into Zawahiri's dreams: the United States must become the target of the jihad. If the Americans could be provoked into war, they could be defeated like the Soviets, and expelled from Muslim lands for good. The fall of the U.S. superpower would lead to the overthrow of secular Arab states. This insight led to successive Al Qaeda strikes against the U.S., including the unsuccessful bombing of the World Trade Center (1993), bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa (1998), and the bombing of the USS Cole (2000).  It was not evident at the time, but the road to 9/11 began on the day Al Qaeda was formed."

 

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