On October 11, 2001, one month after the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush faced a terrifying prospect. At that morning's daily presidential intelligence briefing, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, informed the president of reports from a CIA agent code-named Dragonfire that al-Qaeda terrorists possessed a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb, evidently stolen from the Russian arsenal. According to Dragonfire, the weapon was in New York City.

The government dispatched a nuclear-emergency support team. Under a cloak of secrecy that excluded even Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, these experts searched for the bomb. On a normal workday, half a million people crowd the area within a half-mile radius of Times Square. A noon detonation in midtown Manhattan would kill them all. The wounded would overwhelm hospitals and emergency services. Firemen would fight a ring of uncontrolled blazes for days afterward.