Al-Qaeda close to producing chemical weapons
The terror group is nearly able to produce deadly anthrax bacteria, according to notes seized from Osama's No. 3 man
WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda leaders - long known to covet biological and chemical weapons - have reached at least the threshold of production and may have manufactured some of them already.
According to evidence available to US officials, Osama bin Laden's terror network is close to being able to produce the deadly anthrax bacteria.
It has also assembled the material necessary to make the biological toxins botulinum and salmonella as well as the poison cyanide.
The officials gleaned much of the evidence from handwritten notes and computer hard drives seized when the authorities arrested suspected Sept 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan earlier this month.
Significantly, one official noted, Khalid was arrested at a home in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, that is owned by Abdul Quddoos Khan, a bacteriologist with access to production materials and facilities. Abdul has since disappeared.
Among the documents seized was a direction to buy bacillus anthracis, which causes anthrax disease.
The evidence shows that leaders at the top of Al-Qaeda's hierarchy are close to a feasible production plan for anthrax which kills 90 per cent of untreated victims if spread by inhalation and as many as 75 per cent of those treated when the first symptoms become evident.
Because of Khalid's central role in operations, one senior official said, his apparent connection to biochemical weapons is a 'very scary' sign that Al-Qaeda's efforts reach well beyond the hypothetical.
Government experts are also filling out their picture of Ayman Al-Zawahri, Al-Qaeda's second-ranking leader, as the central figure in overseeing and funding the biological and chemical weapons effort.
Since the late 1990s, investigators have known that in early experiments, Al-Qaeda killed animals with homemade contact poisons at its Derunta camp in Afghanistan.
That project fell under the command of Midhat Mursi, an Egyptian who uses the alias of Abu Kebab and is among the most-wanted Al-Qaeda operatives still at large. But Mursi is not thought to have sophisticated knowledge of biology.
What is new in the recent documents is the fact that Al-Qaeda had recruited competent scientists, including a Pakistani microbiologist whom the officials declined to name.
The documents describe specific timelines for making biochemical weapons and include a bar graph depicting the parallel processes that must take place between days 1 and 31 of production.
Included are inventories of equipment and indications of a readiness to grow seed stocks of pathogen in nutrient baths and then dry the resulting liquid slurry into a form suitable for aerosol dispersal.
Analysts suspect an ambition to poison the food supplies of US troops in Afghanistan, which are cooked in large batches and accessible to locally hired civilians.
Botulism or salmonella poisoning would kill relatively few healthy young men or women but would disable many for a time and render them vulnerable to other forms of attack. -- The Washington Post |
