[Intelligence
officials say they have collected evidence that Qaeda operatives are trying to
move castor beans and processing agents to a hideaway in Shabwa Province , in one of Yemen ’s rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents. The
officials say the evidence points to efforts to secretly concoct batches of the
poison, pack them around small explosives, and then try to explode them in
contained spaces, like a shopping mall, an airport or a subway station.]
By Eric Schmitt And Thom Shanker
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
|
For more than a year, according to classified intelligence reports, Al
Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has been making efforts to acquire
large quantities of castor beans, which are required to produce ricin, a white, powdery toxin that is so deadly that just a speck
can kill if it is inhaled or reaches the bloodstream.
Intelligence officials say they have collected evidence that Qaeda
operatives are trying to move castor beans and processing agents to a hideaway
in Shabwa Province , in one of Yemen ’s rugged tribal areas controlled by
insurgents. The officials say the evidence points to efforts to secretly
concoct batches of the poison, pack them around small explosives, and then try
to explode them in contained spaces, like a shopping mall, an airport or a
subway station.
President Obama and his top national security aides were first briefed
on the threat last year and have received periodic updates since then, top
aides said. Senior American officials say there is no indication that a ricin
attack is imminent, and some experts say the Qaeda affiliate is still
struggling with how to deploy ricin as an effective weapon.
These officials also note that ricin’s utility as a weapon is limited
because the substance loses its potency in dry, sunny conditions, and unlike
many nerve agents, it is not easily absorbed through the skin. Yemen is a hot, dry country, posing an
additional challenge to militants trying to produce ricin there.
But senior American officials say they are tracking the possibility of a
threat very closely, given the Yemeni affiliate’s proven ability to devise
plots, including some thwarted only at the last minute: a bomb sewn into the
underwear of a Nigerian man aboard a commercial jetliner to Detroit in December
2009, and printer cartridges packed with powerful explosives in cargo bound for
Chicago 10 months later.
“The potential threat of weapons of mass destruction, likely in a
simpler form than what people might imagine but still a form that would have a
significant psychological impact, from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, is very, very real,” Michael
E. Leiter, who retired recently as director of the National Counterterrorism
Center, said at a security conference last month. “It’s not hard to develop
ricin.”
A range of administration officials have stated that the threat of a
major attack from Al Qaeda’s main leadership in Pakistan has waned after Osama
bin Laden’s death in May, on top of the Central Intelligence Agency’s
increasing drone assaults on Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s tribal
areas over the past three years.
But the continuing concern over a ricin plot underscores the menace that
regional Qaeda affiliates, especially Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula , now pose to the United States and American interests overseas.
“That line of threat has never abated,” said a senior American official,
who referred to the terrorist group by its initials. “That’s been taken
seriously by this government. What we know about A.Q.A.P. is that they do what
they say.”
Al Qaeda’s arm in Yemen has openly discussed deploying ricin and
other deadly poisons against the United States . “Brothers with less experience in the
fields of microbiology or chemistry, as long as they possess basic scientific
knowledge, would be able to develop other poisons such as ricin or cyanide,”
the organization posted to its online English-language journal, Inspire, last
fall, in an article titled “Tips for Our Brothers in the United States of
America.”
Senior administration officials say ricin is among the threats focused
on by a secret government task force created after the printer-cartridge plot.
The task force is working closely with Saudi intelligence officials and the
remnants of Yemen’s intelligence agencies, and it is using information gleaned
from the shipboard interrogation of a Somali terrorist leader with ties
to the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, who was captured by Navy Seal commandos in
April.
The intelligence reports indicating ricin plots by Al Qaeda’s Yemeni
affiliate were first uncovered during reporting for a book, “Counterstrike: The
Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.” It will be
published next week by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt & Company.
American officials now say that Al Qaeda’s most direct threat to the United States comes from the Yemeni affiliate. These
officials have also expressed growing alarm at the way the affiliate is
capitalizing on the virtual collapse of Yemen ’s government to widen its area of control
inside the country, and is strengthening its operational ties to the Shabab,
the Islamic militancy in Somalia , to exploit the chaos in both countries.
“It continues to demonstrate its growing ambitions and strong desire to
carry out attacks outside its region,” Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s
counterterrorism coordinator, said in a speech last month, referring to Al
Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.
The affiliate has also become a magnet for terrorists fleeing the
increasing pressure from drone strikes in Pakistan , and is recruiting specialists in
bomb-making and other skills. “These guys have got some notoriety,” said a
senior United States official who follows Al Qaeda and its
affiliates closely. “They have a natural, charismatic attraction value for
people who want to be jihadists and plot against the West.”
“A.Q.A.P.’s senior leaders are a lot like an organization that’s largely
a brain that exists on its own and has to recruit its arms and legs to actually
execute things,” the official continued.
Largely because of the Americans in the Yemeni affiliate’s top
leadership, including Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric born in New Mexico who is in
hiding in Yemen, American counterterrorism and intelligence officials fear the
affiliate’s innovative agility. “The fastest-learning enemy we have is
A.Q.A.P.,” said the senior United States official.
In recent months, as the Yemeni government has become nearly paralyzed, the
Obama administration has stepped up pressure on the Qaeda affiliate there. It
has escalated a campaign of airstrikes carried out by the Pentagon’s Joint
Special Operations Command with the C.I.A.’s help. The C.I.A. is building a
base in the region to serve as a hub for future operations in Yemen .
The Pentagon’s air campaign in Yemen was renewed in May after a nearly
yearlong hiatus; since then the military has carried out at least four
airstrikes in the country.
The ricin plots believed to be emanating from Yemen are the latest example of terrorists’
desire to obtain and deploy unconventional weapons in attacks. In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin nerve gas on
underground trains in Tokyo , killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000, and nearly
paralyzing one of the world’s leading economies for weeks.
In 2003, British and French operatives broke up suspected Qaeda cells
that possessed components and manuals for making ricin bombs and maps of the London subway system.
A ricin-dispersing bomb detonated in a major subway system or in a mall
or at a major airport would not result in mass destruction on the scale of the
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 , counterterrorism specialists said. But
it could inflict disproportionate psychological terror on big-city
transportation systems. “Is it going to kill many people? No,” said Mr. Leiter,
the former counterterrorism official. “Is it going to be a big news story and
is it going to scare some people? Yes.”
Months after the initial ricin intelligence reports surfaced last year,
Saudi intelligence officials revealed a twist to the ricin plot: Qaeda
operatives were trying to place the toxin in bottles of perfume, especially a
popular local fragrance made of the resin of agarwood, and send those bottles
as gifts to assassinate government officials and law enforcement and military
officers. There is no indication that Al Qaeda ever succeeded with this
approach, intelligence officials said.