[Raj_Copi_Jin]

In the late 1980s, Aum’s team of trained scientists spent millions of dollars to develop a series of state-of-the-art biological weapons research and production laboratories. The group experimented with botulinum toxin, anthrax, cholera and Q fever and even tried to acquire the Ebola virus. The group hoped to produce enough biological agent to trigger a global Armageddon. Its first attempts at unleashing mega-death on the world involved the use of botulinum toxin. In April 1990, the group used a fleet of three trucks equipped with aerosol sprayers to release liquid botulinum toxin on targets that included the Imperial Palace, the National Diet of Japan, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, two U.S. naval bases and the airport in Narita. In spite of the massive quantities of toxin released, there were no mass casualties, and, in fact, nobody outside of the cult was even aware the attacks had taken place.

When the botulinum operations failed to produce results, Aum’s scientists went back to the drawing board and retooled their biological weapons facilities to produce anthrax. By mid-1993, they were ready to launch attacks involving anthrax; between June and August of 1993, the group sprayed thousands of gallons of aerosolized liquid anthrax in Tokyo. This time, Aum not only employed its fleet of sprayer trucks but also used aerosol sprayers mounted on the roof of their headquarters to disperse a cloud of aerosolized anthrax over the city. Again, the attacks produced no results and were not even noticed. It was only after the group’s successful 1995 subway attacks using sarin nerve agent that a Japanese government investigation discovered that the 1990 and 1993 biological attacks had occurred.

Biological Weapons Production
Aum Shinrikyo’s team of highly trained scientists worked under ideal conditions in a first-world country with a virtually unlimited budget. They were able to travel the world in search of deadly organisms and even received technical advice from former Soviet scientists. The team worked in large, modern laboratory facilities to produce substantial quantities of biological weapons. They were able to operate these facilities inside industrial parks and openly order the large quantities of laboratory equipment they required. Yet, in spite of the millions of dollars the group spent on its biological weapons program — and the lack of any meaningful interference from the Japanese government — Aum still experienced problems in creating virulent biological agents and also found it difficult to dispense those agents effectively.

Today, al Qaeda finds itself operating in a very different environment than that experienced by Aum Shinrikyo in 1993. At that time, nobody was looking for Aum or its biological and chemical weapons program. By contrast, since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States and its allies have actively pursued al Qaeda leaders and sought to dismantle and defang the organization. The United States and its allies have focused a considerable amount of resources in tracking and disassembling al Qaeda’s chemical and biological warfare efforts. The al Qaeda network has had millions of dollars of its assets seized in a number of countries, and it no longer has the safe haven of Afghanistan from which to operate. The chemical and biological facilities the group established in the 1990s in Afghanistan — such as the Deronta training camp, where cyanide and other toxins were used to kill dogs, and a crude anthrax production facility in Kandahar — have been found and destroyed by U.S. troops.

Operating in the badlands along the Pakistani-Afghan border, al Qaeda cannot easily build large modern factories capable of producing large quantities of agents or toxins. Such fixed facilities are expensive and consume a lot of resources. Even if al Qaeda had the spare capacity to invest in such facilities, the fixed nature of them means that they could be compromised and quickly destroyed by the United States.

If al Qaeda could somehow create and hide a fixed biological weapons facility in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas or North-West Frontier Province, it would still face the daunting task of transporting large quantities of biological agents from the Pakistani badlands to targets in the United States or Europe. Al Qaeda operatives certainly can create and transport small quantities of these compounds, but not enough to wreak the kind of massive damage it desires.

Al Qaeda’s lead chemical and biological weapons expert, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, was reportedly killed on July 28, 2008, by a U.S. missile strike on his home in Pakistan. Al-Sayid, who had a $5 million dollar bounty on his head, was initially reported to have been one of those killed in the January 2006 strike in Damadola. If he was indeed killed, his death should be another significant blow to the group’s biological warfare efforts.

Of course, we must recognize that the jihadist threat goes just beyond the al Qaeda core. As we have been writing for several years now, al Qaeda has undergone a metamorphosis from a smaller core group of professional operatives into an operational model that encourages independent grassroots jihadists to conduct attacks. The core al Qaeda group, through men like al-Sayid, has published manuals in hard copy and on the Internet that provide instructions on how to manufacture rudimentary biological weapons.

It is our belief that independent jihadist cells and lone-wolf jihadists will almost certainly attempt to brew up some of the recipes from the al Qaeda cookbook. There also exists a very real threat that a jihadist sympathizer could obtain a small quantity of deadly biological organisms by infiltrating a research facility.

This means that we likely will see some limited attempts at employing biological weapons. That does not mean, however, that such attacks will be large-scale or create mass casualties.

The Bottom Line
While there has been much consternation and alarm-raising over the potential for widespread proliferation of biological weapons and the possible use of such weapons on a massive scale, there are significant constraints on such designs. The current dearth of substantial biological weapons programs and arsenals by governments worldwide, and the even smaller number of cases in which systems were actually used, seems to belie — or at least bring into question — the intense concern about such programs.
While we would like to believe that countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia have halted their biological warfare programs for some noble ideological or humanitarian reason, we simply can’t. If biological weapons were in practice as effective as some would lead us to believe, these states would surely maintain stockpiles of them, just as they have maintained their nuclear weapons programs. Biological weapons programs were abandoned because they proved to be not as effective as advertised and because conventional munitions proved to provide more bang for the buck.

In some ways, the psychological fear of a “super weapon” — undetectable, microscopic, easily delivered and extremely deadly — shapes assessment of the threat, more so than an objective understanding of actual capability and intent (not to mention the extreme difficulties of ever creating some sort of a super bug). Conventional weapons systems, and unconventional tactics, continue to be the most cost-effective and proven methods of warfare, whether between state actors or between state and nonstate actors. Nuclear weapons have also been shown to have true weapons of mass destruction power.

To help keep the cost-benefit calculation of a biological warfare program in perspective, consider that Seung-Hui Cho, the man who committed the shooting at Virginia Tech, killed 32 people — more than six times as many as were killed by the 2001 anthrax letters. John Mohammed, the so-called “D.C. Sniper,” was able to cause a considerable amount of panic and kill twice as many people (10) by simply purchasing and using one assault rifle. Compare Mohammed’s effort and expenses to that of the Aum Shinrikyo anthrax program that took years of work by a huge team and millions of dollars to develop but infected no one.

Now, just because biological weapons are not all they are cracked up to be does not mean that efforts to undermine the biological warfare plans and efforts of militant groups such as al Qaeda should not continue or that programs to detect such agents or develop more effective treatments and vaccines should be halted. Even though an anthrax attack probably will not kill huge numbers of people, as we saw in the case of the anthrax letters, such an attack can be quite disruptive. Cleaning up after such an attack is expensive and takes considerable time and effort. Like a dirty bomb, an anthrax attack will more likely serve as a weapon of mass disruption and not a weapon of mass destruction.

Due to the disruption and the potential for some deaths as a result of an anthrax attack, the threat against the United States does remain a significant concern. However, the threat it represents is not as great as that of conventional attacks using firearms and explosives against soft targets, and it certainly does not rise anywhere near the level of a threat posed by a terrorist attack using a nuclear weapon.