Yes, I remember that. Wasn't he caught in Rome in the middle of a trip from Egypt to Canada?
...My guess is the heavy bulky washer was the stand in for a nuke in a test run.
Could be. Or maybe something could have been hidden in the washing machine.
I'm reminded of the refrigerators in an article from the March 25, 2000, issue of The New Yorker containing the following [the boldface is my emphasis]:
A year later, there was a new development: Othman told Jawad to smuggle several dozen refrigerator motors into Afghanistan for the Iraqi Mukhabarat; a cannister filled with liquid was attached to each motor. Jawad said that he asked Othman for more information. "I said, 'Othman, what does this contain?' He said, 'My life and your life. ' He said they"-the Iraqi agents-"were going to kill us if we didn't do this. That's all I'll say.
"I was given a book of dollars," Jawad went on, meaning ten thousand dollars-a hundred American hundred-dollar bills. "I was told to arrange to smuggle the motors. Othman told me to kill any of the smugglers who helped us once we got there." Vehicles belonging to the Taliban were waiting at the border, and Jawad said that he turned over the liquid-filled refrigerator motors to the Taliban, and then killed the smugglers who had helped him.
Jawad said that he had no idea what liquid was inside the motors, but he assumed that it was some type of chemical or biological weapon. I asked the Kurdish officials who remained in the room if they believed that, as late as 2000, the Mukhabarat was transferring chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda. They spoke carefully. "We have no idea what was in the cannisters," the senior official said. "This is something that is worth an American investigation."
When I asked Jawad to tell me why he worked for Al Qaeda, he replied, "Money." He would not say how much money he had been paid, but he suggested that it was quite a bit. I had one more question: How many years has Al Qaeda maintained a relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime? "There's been a relationship between the Mukhabarat and the people of Al Qaeda since 1992 ," he replied.