I think you would agree, though, that they definitely sought to prioritize their experiments given the small product available for testing. You better than me, could lay your hands on the quote by the keeper of the product, that it pained him to give up a little more, as there was so little left.
I agree, and I assume that they did prioritize their experiments. The problem is that a lot of experiments require that the tiny sample be destroyed in one way or another, and often a single test is insufficient for a scientific finding. So, they have to destroy tiny sample after tiny sample. (That doesn't mean there are debates over the findings, it just means that often many tests are required to make sure there will be no debates in court.)
Here are brief excerpts from the new lengthy investigative piece today by Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post about AQ’s bio program and a US-based operative. The Qatar safe haven she mentions that was given to KSM dates to when he was in a cell with Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin. See also December 4, 1998 PDB from CIA to President Clinton reporting that Islambouli was travelling to the US to plan aircraft and other attacks.
On the trail of an ‘enemy combatant’
Details emerge on Marri’s alleged role in ‘second wave’ of al-Qaeda attacks
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19859636/
Use of poisons
U.S. intelligence officials believe that Marri trained for two years in Afghanistan, among other things receiving instruction in the use of poisons and toxins at the Derunta camp near Jalalabad, sources said. He is believed to have trained under Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Egyptian specialist in chemical and biological weapons who was killed ...
One of those acquaintances, a former Qatari government official, told The Washington Post that Marri came home with CDs of al-Qaeda training lectures and propaganda, as well as a phony California driver’s license.
***
U.S. authorities allege that Marri had gone to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster for the Sept. 11 plotters.
***
The Islamic Assembly of North America, an organization that the government accused of creating Web sites to promote violent jihad, contributed $10,000 to the mosque, according to documents filed in federal court in a 2003 terrorism case. Several members of the Macomb mosque’s board had dealings with the group, those records show.
***
Marri had been calling other numbers, in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, according to the complaint. Intelligence and law enforcement sources say he was calling senior al-Qaeda operatives.
The government’s interest in Marri was soon heightened further. In mid-November 2001, al-Qaeda’s senior military commander, Muhammad Atef, was killed in a U.S. rocket attack on an Afghanistan safe house. The CIA discovered a wealth of information among his possessions and on his computer.
“When he was killed, we found out there was a huge al-Qaeda interest in chemical and biological weapons,” said an intelligence source knowledgeable about the investigations of both Atef and Marri. That prompted “a very energetic effort to identify people doing chem-bio.” Materials recovered from Atef’s safe house, the source said, revealed that Marri might be one of them. He and Atef had “shared contacts,” the source said.
***
The feeling was he was engaged in operational research, identifying targets and materials,” the intelligence source said. “We think al-Marri was here to carry out attacks, as part of a second or third wave.,