Today U.S. intelligence agencies say weapons of mass destruction may be spilling into some of the world's most dangerous places through black markets that we know little about. Stories • Local Response: Strides made in readiness, officials say • Historical perspective: From crude to high-tech, weapons can be devastating • The Top Threats: 4 countries that could trigger a nuclear crisis • Defining the debate Graphic Budding nuclear programs threaten world stability Multimedia Where in the world is WMD? Find out about the weapons and the countries that possess them by clicking icons on an interactive Flash map. Welcome to Pink Zone U.S.A. The residents of Anniston, Ala, live with the fear of chemical weapons every day. Find out why in this Flash photo story. Tomorrow There are eight locations nationwide, including sites in Kentucky and Indiana, where the U.S. military is destroying or plans to destroy its arsenal of chemical weapons.

WASHINGTON — Long before the war against Iraq and its disputed weapons of mass destruction, the world's superpowers were waging a successful campaign to draw down the planet's nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals.

Over the past 12 years, the United States and Russia, which control more than 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, have defused some 7,000 nuclear warheads, decommissioned 1,400 ballistic missiles, destroyed 180 tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and re-employed 50,000 weapons scientists in peaceful work.

The former adversaries also are eliminating their chemical and biological weapons. As a result, humans have far fewer weapons of mass destruction now than during the Cold War.

Why then would CIA Director George Tenet come to Capitol Hill and deliver one of the most unnerving threat briefings in recent years based largely on the dangers Americans face from those weapons?

Because numbers don't tell the story.

The problem isn't raw proliferation but rather the spread of existing technologies and loosely guarded arsenals.

A Gannett News Service analysis of CIA and military intelligence reports and interviews with dozens of experts, military commanders and diplomats bears out the details of Tenet's broad-brush assessment.

Tenet's conclusions are based largely on undisputed intelligence, unlike the information on Iraq's weapons program that has been questioned. Tenet's assessment comes from the United Nations, eyewitness accounts and consensus opinion. In some cases, intelligence about weapons of mass destruction is backed by admissions from nations developing the weapons — such as North Korea — that border on braggadocio.

The evidence all points to the very real danger that mass-destruction weapons are spilling into some of the world's most dangerous places through black markets U.S. intelligence knows little about. Or weapons filter through legal conduits where deadly technology can be broken down into equipment that appears legitimate, then transported and reassembled.

Production and procurement is rising fastest along fault lines of conflict and instability, often aggravated by religious zealotry.

Almost two dozen countries — as advanced as Russia and as poor as Cuba — make or harbor chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Many are either hostile to the United States, barely stable enough to control their arsenals or both.

Consider the chilling example of South Africa, which amassed huge amounts of biological and chemical weapons to use against the black population during the 1970s. The weapons programs were shut down, but many of the weapons and scientists remain unaccounted for. Last year, one of the government's chief scientists, Daan Goosen, flew to the United States peddling a genetically engineered bio-weapon smuggled into the country in a toothpaste tube.

Gannett News Service/Russian Army Archives A Russian soldier, shown in this image from file videotape, examined one of thousands of artillery shells filled with lethal nerve gas at the Russian chemical weapons storage site near Shchuch'ye.

Anecdotal evidence like that and a body of electronic and human intelligence have produced near consensus among experts that the United States at some point will be the target of a terrorist attack involving chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"It's going to happen at some point and then you're going to have a lot of people saying, `I'm surprised it didn't happen before,'" said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace.

The lure of weapons of mass destruction

Most worrisome, according to CIA reports, is the burgeoning desire for nuclear weapons among small countries, confronting the world with the likelihood of new regional arms races.

Over the past year, North Korea, Iran and Libya all have tried to obtain equipment to produce weapons-grade nuclear materials. This sends tremors of instability worldwide as additional countries may conclude they have no option but to seek nuclear, chemical or biological weapons as a deterrent.

Chemical and biological weapons are already commonplace in the Middle East, where they are viewed as the best available defense against Israel's formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons. Israel refuses to confirm or deny having nuclear weapons, but U.S. intelligence sources believe the country has close to 200 warheads.

"We're looking very closely to see whether or not Iran is committed to creating an indigenous fuel cycle so that they would not need outside help." — Secretary of State Colin Powell

Syria and Iran, which support Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, both have chemical arsenals. Highly reliable intelligence indicates Iran has sought nuclear weapons under the guise of a rapidly advancing nuclear energy program. Iran's recent agreement to halt efforts to enrich uranium and to submit to inspections may be only a temporary solution.

"The example of new nuclear states that seem able to deter threats from more powerful countries simply by brandishing nuclear weaponry will resonate deeply among other countries eager to enter the nuclear weapons club," Tenet said.

Admission into the weapons of mass destruction club is rapidly becoming easier.

The black market for such technology is thriving and U.S. intelligence in this netherworld is murky at best. A paucity of spies in Arab countries has left U.S. intelligence agencies desperate for the kind of human information necessary to at least keep track of stealthy weapons shipments.

"There's no evidence we understand how these transnational networks function," said Carnegie's Cirincione.

In the mid-1990s, unknown to U.S. intelligence at the time, Pakistani scientists provided North Korea access to a network of companies selling nuclear equipment. In return, Pakistan was sold Korean-made Nodong missiles, many of which are now aimed at India, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

Further complicating the problem are dual-use technologies, which can be used to make either weapons or legitimate products such as agricultural chemicals. Taiwan recently seized 158 barrels of phosphorus pentasulfide, which can be used to make both pesticides and nerve gas, from a North Korean freighter.

"The globalization of R&D- (research and development) intensive technologies is according smaller countries, groups and individuals access to capabilities previously limited to major powers," said Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Dangerous places, loose nukes

Nowhere is Jacoby's assessment more evident now than in Iran.

The Islamic state that funds terrorists and sits atop massive oil reserves has built the infrastructure for what it claims is a civilian nuclear energy program.

The problem is a uranium enrichment facility that would be able to produce weapons-grade nuclear material if it came online. Tehran insists the fuel would be for its energy reactors. But Russia has agreed to supply all of Iran's fuel, so why the need to make it domestically? Because that would enable Iran to produce weapons without any help.

Iran has said it doesn't want to be reliant on a foreign source of atomic fuel, but U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials are convinced this is an attempt to make bomb-grade material.

"We're looking very closely to see whether or not Iran is committed to creating an indigenous fuel cycle so that they would not need outside help," Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

Just a Middle Eastern problem? Not if U.S.-backed Israel is drawn in.

Israel considers a nuclear Iran an immediate threat and might respond as it did to the prospect of a nuclear Iraq in 1981 when it demolished a reactor at Osirak in a pre-emptive air strike. Such a strike against Iran now would send the entire region reeling.

That said, an Iranian nuclear weapons program constructed under the guise of a civilian power program would establish a dangerous model for other countries.

In Pakistan, if President Pervez Musharraf's tenuous hold on power collapses, 50 to 80 nuclear warheads could fall into the hands of Islamic radicals with possible links to al-Qaida.

Perhaps the greatest threat comes from one of the United States' closest allies in the war on terrorism, Russia.

"The example of new nuclear states that seem able to deter threats ... by brandishing nuclear weaponry will resonate deeply among other countries." — CIA Director George Tenet

More than half of Russia's nuclear material and many of its chemical and biological weapons labs are inadequately protected, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office. Russian authorities say they have broken up hundreds of nuclear smuggling plots.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is desperate for cash and has shown he will peddle advanced weapons, heroin and counterfeit currency to raise it. Would he go so far as to sell technology or weapons from his fledgling nuclear program?

"North Korea has sold drugs and missiles," said Ambassador John Holzman, foreign policy adviser to the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. "So, yes, there is a real concern Kim would pass along fissile material."

War, diplomacy or policing players

Combating such a diffuse threat has become the most daunting and pressing priority for the Bush administration's foreign policy.

The options are war, diplomacy or policing the most dangerous players, and the Bush administration is trying all three.

Thus far, the administration has chosen diplomacy with Iran and North Korea, both of which have been trying to use talks to buy time.

Interdiction has been easy to elude.

When U.S. forces stopped a North Korean freighter with Scud missiles bound for Arab ports, they had to let the vessel go because the cargo was legal. Those missiles could easily be tipped with chemical or biological weapons.

The use of pre-emptive war to eliminate a weapons of mass destruction threat in Iraq might well turn out to be an absolute failure.

As U.S. forces look in vain for chemical and biological weapons, the inspectors who found them in Iraq in the 1990s fear the war might actually have flushed the weapons out of Iraq and into the very hands the Bush administration was hoping to deny.