U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent From Iraqis
Analysts: Chemical May Be VX, And Was Smuggled Via Turkey
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 12, 2002; Page A01
The Bush administration has
received a credible report that
Islamic extremists affiliated with al
Qaeda took possession of a
chemical weapon in Iraq last month
or late in October, according to two
officials with firsthand knowledge of
the report and its source. They said
government analysts suspect that
the transaction involved the nerve
agent VX and that a courier
managed to smuggle it overland
through Turkey.
If the report proves true, the
transaction marks two significant
milestones. It would be the first
known acquisition of a
nonconventional weapon other than
cyanide by al Qaeda or a member
of its network. It also would be the
most concrete evidence to support
the charge, aired for months by
President Bush and his advisers,
that al Qaeda terrorists receive
material assistance in Iraq. If
advanced publicly by the White
House, the report could be used to
rebut Iraq's assertion in a
12,000-page declaration Saturday
that it had destroyed its entire stock
of chemical weapons.
On the central question whether
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
knew about or authorized such a
transaction, U.S. analysts are said
to have no evidence. Because
Hussein's handpicked Special
Security Organization, run by his
son Qusay, has long exerted tight
control over concealed weapons
programs, officials said they
presume it would be difficult to
transfer a chemical agent without
the president's knowledge.
Knowledgeable officials, speaking
without White House permission,
said information about the transfer
came from a sensitive and credible
source whom they declined to
discuss. Among the hundreds of
leads in the Threat Matrix, a daily
compilation by the CIA, this one
has drawn the kind of attention
reserved for a much smaller
number.
"The way we gleaned the
information makes us feel confident
it is accurate," said one official
whose responsibilities are directly
involved with the report. "I throw
about 99 percent of the spot
reports away when I look at them. I
didn't throw this one away."
Like most intelligence, the reported
chemical weapon transfer is not backed by definitive evidence. The intended
target is unknown, with U.S. speculation focusing on Europe and the United
States.
At a time when President Bush is eager to make a public case linking Iraq to
the United States's principal terrorist enemy, authorized national security
spokesmen declined to discuss the substance of their information about the
transfer of lethal chemicals. Those who disclosed it have no policymaking
responsibilities on Iraq and expressed no strong views on whether the United
States should go to war there.
Even authorized spokesmen, with one exception, addressed the report on the
condition of anonymity. They said the principal source on the chemical
transfer was uncorroborated, and that indications it involved a nerve agent
were open to interpretation.
"We are concerned because of al Qaeda's interest in obtaining and using
weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, and we continue to seek
evidence and intelligence information with regards to their planning activity,"
said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Homeland Security Director Tom
Ridge. Johndroe was the only official authorized by the White House to
discuss the matter on the record.
"Have they obtained chemical weapons?" Johndroe said. "I do not have any
hard, concrete evidence that they have." Pressed on whether the information
referred to a nerve agent, Johndroe said "there is no specific intelligence that
limits al Qaeda's interest to one particular chemical or biological weapon over
the other."
One official who spoke without permission said a sign of the government's
concern is its "ramping up opportunities to collect more, to figure out what
would be the routes, where would they be taking the material, how would
they deploy it, how are they transporting it, what are the personnel?" The
official added: "We're not just sitting back and waiting for something to
happen."
A Defense Department official, who said he had seen only the one-line
summary version of the chemical weapon report, speculated that it might be
connected to a message distributed last week to U.S. armed forces overseas.
An official elsewhere said the message resulted only from an analyst's
hypothetical concern.
Prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, last week's "Turkey Defense
Terrorism Threat Awareness Message" warned of a possible chemical
weapons attack by al Qaeda on the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.
Incirlik is an important NATO facility from which a U.S.-led coalition in 1991
launched thousands of bombing runs to force Iraq to withdraw its army from
Kuwait. Turkey has given conditional agreement to its use in the event of a
new war with Iraq.
According to two officials, a second related threat report was distributed in
Washington this week. The CIA message, transmitted before the daily 3 a.m.
compilation of the Threat Matrix, described a European ally's warning that the
United States might face a chemical attack in a big-city subway if war breaks
out with Iraq. A U.S. government spokesman said the European ally offered
little evidence and "the credibility of the report has not been determined."
Among the uncertainties about the suspected weapon transfer in Iraq is the
precise relationship of the Islamic operatives to the al Qaeda network. One
official said the transaction involved Asbat al-Ansar, a Lebanon-based Sunni
extremist group that recently established an enclave in northern Iraq. Asbat
al-Ansar is affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization and
receives funding from it, but officials said they did not know whether its
pursuit of chemical weapons was specifically on al Qaeda's behalf.
The government is also uncertain whether the transaction involved a chemical
agent alone or an agent in what is known as a weaponized form --
incorporated into a delivery system such as a rocket or a bomb. The latter
would be a more efficient killer, but chemical weapons are deadly in either
form. Among the reasons for suspecting VX was involved is that it is the most
portable of Iraq's chemical weapons, capable of inflicting mass casualties in a
quantity that a single courier could transport.
After initial denials, Iraq admitted in the 1990s that it had manufactured tons
of VX and two less sophisticated nerve agents, Sarin and Tabun. Its
remaining chemical arsenal was limited to blister agents, such as mustard gas,
that date back to World War I.
First developed as a weapon by the U.S. Army, VX is an oily, odorless and
tasteless liquid that kills on contact with the skin or when inhaled in aerosol
form. Like other nerve agents, it is treatable in the first minutes after exposure
but otherwise leads swiftly to fatal convulsions and respiratory failure. The
United States, a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, destroyed
the last of its stocks of VX and other chemical agents on the Johnston Atoll,
825 miles southwest of Hawaii, in November 2000.
U.S. military forces, hazardous materials teams and some ambulance systems
carry emergency antidotes. They usually come in autoinjectors containing
atropine and an oxime -- drugs that reverse the neuromuscular blockade of a
nerve agent. Atropine-like drugs have other uses, such as in anesthesia and in
treating cardiac arrest, and are often stocked in hospitals.
During inspections by the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, in the
1990s, Iraq denied producing any chemical weapon other than mustard gas.
Faced with contrary evidence, it eventually acknowledged the manufacture of
3.9 tons of VX and 3,859 tons in all of lethal chemicals. The Baghdad
government also admitted filling more than 10,000 bombs, rockets and missile
warheads with Sarin. It denied having done so with its most potent agent, VX,
but an international commission of experts assembled by UNSCOM said the
scientific evidence suggested otherwise.
UNSCOM said in its final report, in January 1999, that it could not account
for 1.5 tons of the VX known to have been produced in Iraq, and that it
could not establish whether additional quantities had been made.
The U.N. Security Council ordered Iraq in April 1991 to relinquish all
capabilities to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as
long-range missiles. The declared basis for the present threat of war is the
U.S. view, shared by the Clinton and Bush administrations, that the Baghdad
government never came close to complying.
In 1998, the Clinton administration asserted that Iraq provided technical
assistance in the construction of a VX production facility in Sudan, undertaken
jointly with al Qaeda. In retaliation for al Qaeda's August 1998 truck
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton
ordered the destruction of the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum,
Sudan's capital.
Clinton's advisers released scant public evidence about al Shifa, and the
Tomahawk missile attack was widely regarded as a blunder. Top Clinton
administration officials, and career analysts still in government, maintain there
was strong evidence behind the strike but that it remains too valuable to
disclose. During last year's New York trial of the embassy bombers,
prosecution witness Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a onetime operative who broke
with al Qaeda, offered limited corroboration. He named al Qaeda and
Sudanese operatives who had told him they were working together to build a
chemical weapons plant in Khartoum. He said nothing about Iraqi support for
the project and named a site near, but not in, the al Shifa plant.
Only once has a chemical weapon been used successfully in a terrorist attack.
During the morning rush hour on March 20, 1995, the Japanese cult Aum
Shinrikyo placed packages on five subway trains converging on Tokyo's
central station. When punctured, the packages spread vaporized Sarin
through the subway cars and then into the stations as the trains pulled in.
In all, the Sarin contaminated 15 stations of the world's busiest subway
system, putting 1,000 riders in the hospital and killing 12 of them. Though the
attack spread great terror in Japan, it took fewer lives than its authors
expected because the Sarin reached many victims in a form that was not
sufficiently concentrated.
"Psychologically, use of nerve agent in the United States would send people
over the deep end, but it probably wouldn't kill very many people," said an
official whose responsibilities have included the assessment and disruption of
the threat.
Others said the panic induced could have serious economic consequences,
rendering many Americans unwilling to enter a facility of the sort that had
suffered a chemical attack.
In general, al Qaeda's pursuit of chemical and biological weapons is well
known to U.S. intelligence. A central player in the effort has been Midhat al
Mursi, an Egyptian who is among the most-wanted al Qaeda operatives but
who remains at large. He ran a development and testing facility for lethal
chemicals in a camp -- in Derunta, Afghanistan -- that was eventually
renamed "Abu Kebab" after Mursi's nom de guerre.
The Derunta operation is not thought to have progressed beyond
unsophisticated poisons, including the cyanide used in videotaped experiments
on dogs. Unconsummated plots by al Qaeda and its allies in Jordan just
before the turn of the millennium, and in Britain last month, also involved
cyanide.
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