Global Security Newswire

An apparent mishap during efforts to develop a biological or chemical weapon forced a branch of al-Qaeda to shutter a base in Algeria, a high-level U.S. intelligence official told the Washington Times on Monday (see GSN, Jan. 5).

The official could not say whether press reports that the accident had killed 40 terrorist operatives were accurate, but rejected the claim in the London Sun tabloid that the cause of death was bubonic plague.

An early January message between al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and top al-Qaeda officials in Pakistan indicated that a system to prevent the release of a chemical or biological agent had failed, the official said.

"We don't know if this is biological or chemical," the official added.

Al-Qaeda's efforts to develop a biological weapon date back at least to the late 1990s, according to U.S. and Western analysts. The network's program "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11" strikes, a U.S. commission on unconventional weapons said in a 2005 report.

Another panel of experts said last month that "terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon" (see GSN, Jan. 13).

"This is something that al-Qaeda still aspires to do, and the infrastructure to develop it does not have to be that sophisticated," said Roger Cressey, a former high-level counterterrorism official at the National Security Council (Eli Lake, Washington Times, Jan. 19).