After initial reports in a British tabloid that Al-Qaeda in North Africa (otherwise known as AQ in the Islamic Maghreb, whose emergence we first told you about way back in July 2007) had suffered an outbreak of bubonic plague in one of its training camps, some more specific and credible details are beginning to emerge. And they aren't pretty: for Al-Qaeda (reportedly as many as 40 dead) or for the West. From the Washington Times' irrepressible Eli Lake:
An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.
The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.
He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.
"We don't know if this is biological or chemical," the official said.
The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe's population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.
Whether biological or chemical, it's clear that Al-Qaeda remians hell bent on acquiring--and using--WMDs. Here' s more, from Lake:
The late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was suspected of developing ricin in northern Iraq. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to the poison in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that sought to lay the groundwork for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Roger Cressey, a former senior counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told The Washington Times that al Qaeda has had an interest in acquiring a poisons capability since the late 1990s.
"This is something that al Qaeda still aspires to do, and the infrastructure to develop it does not have to be that sophisticated," he said.
That's one reason intelligence and security experts are always concerned about a possible biological attack on a major event like today's Presidential inauguration. The potential of mass deaths and mass hysteria such an attack would cause add up to a perfect storm for Al-Qaeda.