Casey Hosts Film Screening, Will Moderate Q&A on Nuclear Threats

U.S. Senator Robert P. Casey Jr. will be on campus Nov. 19 for the free public screening of the 2005 film Last Best Chance, directed by Ben Goddard. Casey will introduce the docudrama—which shows the threat posed by vulnerable nuclear weapons and materials around the world—at 3:30 p.m. in the Assembly Room of the William Pitt Union.

Following the screening of the 45-minute film, Casey will moderate a question-and-answer session with a panel featuring Michael Hurley, a counterterrorism special advisor to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and commentators from Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA).

The special event is sponsored by GSPIA, the GSPIA Student Cabinet, and the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies.

In Last Best Chance, al Qaeda operatives organize three separate operations aimed at obtaining nuclear weapons. The material is then fabricated into three crude nuclear weapons by small groups of trained terrorists, who have recruited bomb-making experts to help them manufacture their weapons. Governments around the world discover clues to the plot, but are unable to uncover the scheme before the weapons are en route to their destinations.

According to the film, the hardest job for terrorists is gaining control of a nuclear weapon or material. In the opinion of the filmmakers, because the governments had failed to take sufficient action to secure or destroy the nuclear weapons material, they are helpless to prevent an attack. For more information on the film, visit www.lastbestchance.org.