Posted on 07/05/2003 11:45:35 PM PDT by ex-Texan
CIA: Al-Qaeda worked with ex-Pak scientists [Al-Qaeda has nukes! ]
Despite repeated Pakistani denials, US intelligence agency CIA has said international terrorist outfit al-Qaeda was working with two former Pakistani scientists and is currently capable of conducting attacks with chemical, biological, radiological or even nuclear weapons.
The CIA in a May 2003 report entitled 'Terrorist CBRN: Materials and Effects' named former scientists of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission as Bashir Ud-din Mahmood and Abdul Majeed saying al Qaeda was working with them. These charges have been denied by Pakistani officials.
Handwritten documents uncovered in Afghanistan suggest that Al-Qaeda's specialists did have nuclear physics and weaponisation knowledge that exceeded the type of information available via open and declassified sources, the study reported in 'Jane's Intelligence Digest' said.
The report said the Al-Qaeda, and to a lesser extent other terrorist groups, are currently capable of conducting attacks with biological or even nuclear weapons and that it was "a high probability" that it would be in the next two years.
The US assessment claims that any such CBRN attack would probably be "small-scale", incorporating relatively crude delivery means and easily produced or obtained chemicals, toxins or radiological substances.
Much of the evidence for these claims is drawn from documents, diagrams and other material found at around 40 sites in Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda operated training camps for its militants.
The authors of the CIA report believed Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to be capable of making an "improvised nuclear device" that would be "intended to cause a yield-producing nuclear explosion".
The report claims that the group's experts could make such a weapon with "diverted nuclear-weapons components", by modifying an already assembled nuclear weapon or by using a self-designed weapon.
As has been emphasised by both scientists and intelligence community sources, the nuclear threat from terrorists is more likely to be from radiological weapons than from a nuclear device, and that materials for such weapons - such as caesium 137, strontium 90 and cobalt 60 - are widely used in hospitals, universities and various industries.
Al-Qaeda is also claimed by the CIA report to have "crude procedures" for making mustard agent, sarin and VX, as well as access to toxic cyanides and less dangerous industrial materials, such as chlorine and phosgene.
Members of Al-Qaeda cells are alleged to have attempted to launch 'poison plot' attacks in Europe with chemicals and toxins. The relatively easy availability of many common chemicals which could have dual-use adds credibility to this assertion, the CIA report added.
I, too, know the gist of those scenarios is true and have had the foreboding feeling since about '99.
But I have no idea if the events come to fruition in one day from now or 100 years.
The Lord must be aghast at some of the stuff going on today.
Many people ask this and it is an obvious and realistic question. Why wasn't a nuke or other major WMD used on 9/11 if they possessed one? I remember shortly after 9/11 Oliver North said "That was their best shot" (meaning the hijacked planes).
We all have to hope that is true. However, in the terrorists' minds there was a job left undone from '93 (destroying the WTC). Given their great persistence and single-mindedness on that target, it is easy to understand why those two buildings were more important as an immediate goal than killing an even larger number of Americans elsewhere.
With each day that goes by without another major terror attack in the U.S., I have to allow for the ghoulish possibility that the probability of a really large attack increases. The goal to kill the infidels hasn't changed and they aren't going to wait 2 or 5 or 10 years just to pick off a few Americans with a sniper or something like that.
Kind of a step between the rest and nuclear weapons. A big step. An infinitely huge step. Once it has progressed to nuclear weapons, the rest do not matter. The step is not to be dismissed casually like this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.