Is al Qaeda Anthrax and Biological Weapons Program A Concern

by Thomas Joscelyn

As I explained in my piece yesterday, Peter Bergen, a CNN commentator and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, does not believe the intelligence Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) gave up on al Qaeda’s sleeper agents was all that important. The facts and evidence, as accumulated by American intelligence and law enforcement officials, show otherwise. Bergen’s reading of this evidence is simply mendacious. Bergen’s reading of the intelligence KSM gave up on al Qaeda’s anthrax program is also horribly skewed.

Months prior to KSM’s arrest, an al Qaeda operative named Yazid Sufaat was arrested in Malaysia. Authorities did not know Sufaat’s role as al Qaeda’s chief anthrax scientist at the time. After he was captured on March 1, 2003, KSM gave up intelligence on Sufaat and two others involved in the anthrax program. When confronted with this intelligence, Sufaat then admitted his prominent role. This story is partially told in a recently declassified CIA analysis dated July 13, 2004 and titled “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Preeminent Source on Al Qaeda.”

While the CIA found this intelligence important, Bergen thinks it was close to, if not entirely, worthless. Why? Bergen says al Qaeda’s anthrax program was harmless. In a piece for Foreign Policy, Bergen wrote: “In fact, al Qaeda’s anthrax program was a big dud that never produced anything remotely threatening, a point that the CIA report is silent on.”

The CIA’s report is silent on this point because it is completely wrong. In fact, here is what Bergen wrote in his book Holy War, Inc. (emphasis added):

Al Qaeda also explored the possibility of deploying biological weapons: diagrams of a balloon dispersing anthrax were discovered at an al Qaeda safe house in Kabul, and CIA director Geroge Tenet testified before Congress in February 2002 that documents discovered in Afghanistan “show bin Laden was pursuing a sophisticated biological weapons program.”....

.... Indeed, al Qaeda’s biological weapons program was far more sophisticated than U.S. intelligence analysts had figured prior to the war in Afghanistan. This was especially true with respect to a pathogen the intelligence community calls “Agent X.” As a March 31, 2005 report by a presidential commission on America’s intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction programs explained: ....