Attorney/Researcher Ross Getman has posted me a quote from George Tenet's recent book, which I'll reproduce here as a comment on his last post:
"Over time, we were able to link the top echelon of al-Qa'da's leadership to the group's highly compartmentalilzed chemical, biological, and nuclear networks. This group included al-Qa'ida's operational chief Sayf al-Adl; the group's logistics chief, Hafs; Jemaah Islamiya chief Ruidin Isomuddin (Hambali); 9/11 planners Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Rambzi bin al-Shibh; Egyptian CBRN expert Abu Khabab al-Masri; self-described "CEO of anthrax," Yazid Sufaat; and explosives expert and "nuclear CEO," Abdel al-Aziz al-Masri. As we researched the information we were slowly gathering from myriad sources, we unlocked a disturbing secret: the group's interest in WMD was not new. They had been searching for these weapons long before we had been looking for them. As far we know, al-Qa-ida's fascination with chemical weapons goes back to the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 by a group of religious fanatics called the Aum Shinrikyo. Twelve people died in that attack, but had the dispersal devices worked as planned, the death toll would have been higher. Al-Qai'da leaders were impressed and saw the attack as a model for achieving their own ambitions. (In retrospect, the Tokyo attack also foreshadowed al-Qa'ida's interest in subway and railway systems, which later manifested itself in attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004; in London on July 7, 2005; an a planned attack against the New York City subway in fall 2003 that was called off by Ayman al-Zawahiri in the last stages of preparation -- "for something better.") George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, at 260-261. |
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