Definition and Scope of Consequence Management

1

CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL, RADIOLOGICAL AND NUCLEAR

(CBRN) TERRORISM IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 (9/11) came as a complete surprise, but should not have been unanticipated. Throughout the 1990s terrorism analysts from both inside and outside government had been arguing that it was only a matter of time before the first act of mass destruction terrorism. Yet threat assessments had increasingly focused on acts of mass destruction terrorism involving CBRN weapons. This raises questions about why attention was focused on CBRN weapons when there was a greater potential threat from other forms of attack. The starting point in searching for the answer to that question is the history of CBRN terrorism, coupled with the nature of the public and political debates that have surrounded it. This historical narrative shows that some terrorist groups in the latter part of the twentieth century have always been interested in CBRN weapons, with the first decade of significant terrorist interest in CBRN terrorism being the 1970s.

CBRN Terrorism in the 1970s

Terrorism in the 1970s was dominated by ethno-nationalist separatist or independence groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Irish Republic Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland. It was also the decade when radical left- and right-wing political groups in Western Europe such as the Red Army Faction (RAF) also known as the Baader-Meinhof

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6 The Changing Face of Terrorism

gang, and the Red Brigades were operating at their peak. Despite the high levels of terrorist violence, particularly in the Middle East, security debates in the West were dominated by the Cold War. Concerns about terrorism and ethno-nationalist guerrilla movements assumed significance primarily because of concerns that the Soviet Union was using them as proxies to de-stabilize democratic regimes and spread communism.

Against this background of heightened terrorist activity, there was significant, albeit limited, interest among some terrorists groups in using CBRN weapons. These incidents can be divided into three broad groups: those where there was a threat to use CBRN weapons but no evidence that the group involved actually possessed them; incidents where a group possessed a CBRN weapon but it was never used; and incidents in which a CBRN weapon was actually used. In the majority of reported incidents in the 1970s there was no evidence that the group concerned actually possessed a CBRN weapon. Yet there were a small number of incidents in which a terrorist group acquired a CBRN weapon and apparently intended to use it.

A number of groups, such as the revolutionary left-wing group Weather Underground, attempted, but failed, to acquire CBRN weapons.1 But a number of groups and individuals did succeed in developing or otherwise acquiring CBW. These included left-wing groups, right-wing groups, an unspecified Arab group, and various individuals whose political affiliations are unknown. Perhaps the most significant of these incidents occurred in 1972 when members of the Order of the Rising Sun, a neo-Nazi group in the USA, were arrested in possession of 30–40kg of Typhoid bacillus and charged with conspiring to contaminate the water supplies of large cities in the USA.2 This case indicated that some terrorist groups had the technological capability to develop biological agents, and were interested in using them to indiscriminately kill large numbers of civilians. There was also one other alleged plot to indiscriminately kill civilians by poisoning water supplies, but in all of the other cases the targets were discriminate, these included President Gerald Ford, the Supreme Court and the Capitol Building in Washington.3 The threat from this small number of groups and individuals was neutralized by the success of the security forces in apprehending the culprits before they executed their attacks.

There were only three terrorist incidents involving the use of CBRN weapons in the 1970s. In November 1973 members of the left-wing revolutionary group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) killed California school superintendent Dr Marcus Foster and wounded Deputy Superintendent Robert Blackburn with cyanide-tipped bullets.4 In 1979 the Arab Revolutionary Army Palestinian Commandos injected Israeli oranges

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 7

that were being exported to Western Europe with mercury. More than a dozen people were poisoned by the oranges, and a number of children were killed. The following year, the same terrorist group threatened to poison other Israeli agricultural exports to Europe,5 whilst in Italy, the Red Brigades allegedly tried seven times to poison reservoirs, but were unsuccessful because the toxins were quickly diluted.6 This last incident was particularly worrying because of the intent to cause indiscriminate mass casualties.

A number of observations can be made from these incidents. The number of incidents involving the use of a CBRN weapon or in which the terrorist group acquired a CBRN agent but did not use it, was far outweighed by the number of unsubstantiated allegations, threats and hoaxes. The ‘weapons’ involved were crude, with the terrorists being restricted to using chemical or biological agents for individual assassinations or as contaminants. The nature of the plots raised a number of significant questions that remained unanswered. Foremost amongst them was whether terrorist use of these weapons was restricted by technical considerations, or whether some groups might have been deterred from using them for a range of moral, tactical, political or religious reasons.

These incidents fostered a small but well-informed debate on CBRN terrorism in the academic and policy communities. Writing in 1977, David Rosenbaum argued that individuals with the necessary skills to develop nuclear weapons are easily found, and that ‘most revolutionaries now however seem to consider indiscriminate slaughter a primary tactic and one of which they are proud’.7 Yet the debate was reasonably balanced, with analysts such as Brian Jenkins questioning terrorists’ ability and motivations to procure CBRN weapons: ‘nuclear terrorism is neither imminent nor inevitable … simply killing a lot of people is not an objective of terrorism’.8 It was argued that serious obstacles to CBRN terrorism existed, and that the political and strategic disincentives to perpetrating WMD attacks would be high. Studies assumed that terrorists needed political and material support, and aimed to raise awareness of their cause in order to build popular support for it. The view of many observers was that the use of CBRN weapons and particularly WMD, would stiffen the resolve of governments not to accede to the terrorists’ demands, and would alienate the potential supporters of terrorist groups.

As a result of the small number of attacks, and their limited impact, the debate on CBRN terrorism in the 1970s was not driven by events. CBRN terrorism was not a significant feature of mainstream terrorist activity and neither was it a major threat to the national security of any state. For governments, it remained marginal to other more immediate national

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8 The Changing Face of Terrorism

security concerns. Thinking about nuclear terrorism was merely an adjunct to broader debates about nuclear non-proliferation following India’s test of a nuclear weapon and the signature of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1974. As a consequence, the issue was lost sight of alongside the more immediate concerns of policy makers to contain proliferation and manage the Cold War. As a consequence, the issue failed to galvanize any significant response from governments. Overall, events in the 1970s served notice of emerging risks and challenges, but the spectre of WMD terrorism involving CBRN weapons still seemed to be a long way off.

CBRN Terrorism in the 1980s

Terrorist activity in the 1980s was similar to that in the previous decade. It was dominated by ethno-nationalist groups such as the PLO, the IRA, the Basque separatist group Euzkadi Ta As Katasuna (ETA), and the Ellalan Force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (the Tamil Tigers) in Sri Lanka. However, some of the political groups in Western Europe such as the RAF and Red Brigades were in decline by the end of the decade. The strategies and targets of many of these groups evolved as government counter-terrorism measures began to have an impact, but many of these groups still displayed an interest in perpetrating indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets.

The arguments about terrorist use of CBRN weapons that emerged in the 1970s continued to permeate the public debate in the 1980s. Grant Wardlow argued that, ‘The capability of killing on a grand scale must be balanced against the fear of widespread revulsion and alienating perceived constituents [supporters], of provoking a massive, publicly approved government crackdown’,9 whilst Konrad Kellen argued that because terrorists believe that their struggle is intended to better the human condition, mass killing is not likely to be attractive to most of them.10

At the beginning of the 1980s the main focus of governments and the policy community was on nuclear terrorism, which culminated in the convening of the International Task Force On the Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism, in 1985. The task force brought together experts from different fields to consider nuclear terrorism from the point of view of arms control, security, intelligence, civil nuclear programmes, crisis prevention and international law. Its seminal report was published in 1987.11 Chemical and biological terrorism was a much lower concern at that time, despite the fact that chemical weapons (CW) are easier to develop than nuclear weapons and most of the incidents in the 1970s involved CW. The threat of biological

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 9

terrorism was downplayed because the use of biological weapons (BW) was considered to be so morally repugnant that: no one would consider using them; the technology was too difficult for all but the most sophisticated laboratories to master; and the potential destructiveness of these weapons was simply too great for terrorists to consider using them.12

There was a slight increase in the number of actual attacks involving CBRN weapons during the 1980s, including a small number of serious incidents. Arguably the most important was the first case of BW terrorism. In September 1984, followers of the Rajneeshpuram Cult in the USA, infected the salad bars of restaurants in the town of The Dalles in Oregon with salmonella, causing serious food poisoning to 751 people. This attack had been preceded by a number of other failed attacks. In August, cult members had given water laced with Salmonella typhimurium to two local government officials and the bacteria was also used to contaminate produce at a local grocery store, and was smeared onto door and urinal handles in the county courthouse. On another occasion a cult member was instructed to contaminate the food in schools and nursing homes. Cult members then made two attempts to contaminate the water supply of The Dalles. It appears that they did not have enough Salmonella typhimurium and so probably used sewage mixed with dead rats instead. None of this contamination appears to have caused any illness. There are also reports that the group attempted to aerosolize HIV-contaminated blood, and also considered using hepatitis and giardia.13

The next incident occurred in 1985 in Israel, when the nerve agent carbamate was added to the coffee at an Israeli military dining hall, but there were no reports of casualties.14 This was followed in 1987 by the killing of 19 police recruits in the Philippines in what officials believed could have been a mass poisoning by either the communist New Peoples’ Army, or one of the Muslim separatist groups operating on the island of Mindanao.15

Following the successful contamination of Israeli oranges in 1979 there was also a large increase in the number of threats by different insurgent groups to contaminate the export products of a number of states. These threats were primarily intended to damage the national economies of those states and publicize the causes of the relevant insurgent groups. Examples include Uganda (coffee and tea), Sri Lanka (tea), South Africa (wine and fruit), the Philippines (pineapples), Israel (citrus fruits), Chile (grapes), and the USA (the pain killer Tylenol).16

An equally significant development was an increased number of incidents in which groups and individuals managed to develop a CBRN agent but did not actually use it. This provided a clear indication of an increasing interest

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10 The Changing Face of Terrorism

in CBRN weapons amongst terrorist groups. In 1981, a number of neo- Nazi arms caches uncovered by West German police were reported to have contained ‘various poisons including arsenic, strychnine and cyanide’.17 In 1982, it was claimed that Israel had captured a PLO representative in Lebanon, who was in possession of a CW. In 1983, the FBI seized 28g of ricin from two brothers in Springfield, Massachusetts, but it is not known why they had acquired it.18 There were also reports that in the early 1980s, French police raided a safe house in Paris belonging to a cell of the left- wing RAF (Baader-Meinhof gang), where they discovered a laboratory containing cultured Clostridium botulinum (which produces botulinum toxin), and notes about bacteria induced diseases.19

There were also a number of other incidents that served as indicators of a potential worsening of the situation in the 1990s. The first group of incidents involved the burgeoning extreme right-wing movement in the USA. This movement is comprised of a diverse mix of racist, Christian, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and anti-government groups. In 1983 a plot was hatched at a meeting of white supremacists from the USA and Canada at the Headquarters of the Aryan Nations, in Idaho, which included the ‘polluting of municipal water supplies’. Four years later, this resulted in 14 individuals being indicted for plotting to engage in indiscriminate mass murder by poisoning the water supplies of two major US cities.20 In 1985, police in the USA raided the compound of The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of Lord, a Christian, millenarian, neo-Nazi group, where they discovered 30 gallons of potassium cyanide that the group was intending to use to poison the water supplies of several cities.21 In 1988, members of a racist group called the Confederate Hammerskins were convicted of attacking the Jewish Temple Shalom and the Mosque of Richardson in Dallas, Texas. Former members testified that the group had planned to pump cyanide into Temple Shalom, through its air conditioning system. 22 The final CBRN terrorist incident of the 1980s passed almost unnoticed in 1989. In Japan, members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult murdered a lawyer and his family in the city of Yokohama, by injecting them with potassium chloride.23 It was a portent of a wave of CBRN attacks by Aum Shinrikyo in the early 1990s.

As was the case in the 1970s, a diversity of different types of terrorist groups threatened or attempted to acquire CBRN weapons in the 1980s. But again, no group managed to develop a WMD or even to effectively weaponize a CBW agent that it had acquired. This restricted them to using chemical and biological agents as contaminants. Security forces were the target of some of these attacks, but the majority of the attacks and planned attacks, were aimed against civilians, and there was an increase in the number

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 11

of plots that could potentially have resulted in mass casualties. Unfortunately, these incidents provided no further clarity to the uncertainties about the threat that had been identified in the 1970s. The relative influence of the various moral, technical, political, religious, tactical, and strategic factors that might impact on terrorists’ decision making on whether to acquire and use CBRN remained unknown. It was apparent that some groups with an intent to cause indiscriminate mass casualties lacked the technical expertise to weaponize CBRN agents, whilst others which might have had the technological capability seemed to lack interest. It also remains unknown whether those groups that actually had a CBW but were arrested before using it would ever have actually gone through with an attack.

CBRN Terrorism in the 1990s

The defining feature of the security environment in the 1990s was the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. These events fostered radical changes in international relations and changed the nature of security debates as a wave of nationalism and other ideologies and causes rose to prominence in a number of strategically significant regions of the world. The result was that the primary threats to international security were perceived to come from a greater number of smaller, more amorphous sources, such as regional states in pursuit of regional political ambitions, inter-ethnic civil wars, and transnational threats from non-state actors particularly terrorism, narcotics, and crime. To an extent these problems were interlinked, with many radical regimes in the developing world being profoundly anti-American, and actively seeking to limit the influence of the USA in their regions. This prompted allegations that these regimes were sponsoring terrorism as a means of pursuing their foreign policy goals. In particular, a significant increase in terrorist activity from groups with an Islamic fundamentalist or Islamist ideology seemed to confirm assessments that Iran was attempting to export its revolution throughout the Gulf region and the Middle East, threatening US strategic interests such as the security of Israel and oil supplies. These threats had always existed but had previously been dominated by Cold War issues. Now they rose to assume the primacy that the superpower confrontation had once held. It was at this time that al-Qaeda rose to prominence as a major facilitator of global jihad, with a number of high profile attacks on US targets.

In conjunction with these changes in the international political system, the debate on CBRN and WMD terrorism gained heightened political prominence. This was due to a combination of increased levels of

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12 The Changing Face of Terrorism

terrorism and the continued proliferation of CBRN weapons and WMD, particularly by states that were alleged to sponsor terrorism. The 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent exposure of Iraq’s WMD programme provided conclusive evidence that the clandestine production of WMD is possible despite the existence of international arms control treaties. Concerns about Libya’s intentions were also raised after the identification of an alleged CW production facility at Tarhuna. These developments were linked into a broader set of concerns about the increasing ease with which terrorist groups could potentially acquire the technological expertise to develop CBRN weapons. There was particular concern that some scientists who had previously been employed in the WMD programmes of the former Soviet Union (FSU) might hire their services out to the highest bidder. But in general terms, it was also a time of rapid advances in biotechnology and genetic engineering, and of increasingly easy access to dual-use technology and scientific expertise. In 1996, former Director of the CIA John Deutch, summed up the situation by claiming that the ‘proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and their potential use by states or terrorists is the most urgent challenge facing the national security, and therefore the intelligence community in the post-Cold War world’.24

Terrorism in the 1990s was dominated by two underlying trends. The first was the increasing lethality of terrorist violence.25 On average, individual terrorist incidents were becoming more lethal. During the 1980s the number of international terrorist incidents was approximately 50 per cent greater than in the 1970s, and twice as many people were killed.26 During the 1990s the number of international terrorist incidents began to fall. A record 484 incidents occurred in 1991, which fell to 343 in 1992, then to 360 in 1993, to 353 in 1994 and finally to 278 in 1995. Yet as the figures fell, a greater percentage of these incidents resulted in fatalities.27 The evidence in respect of domestic terrorism is more problematic. In Algeria and Sri Lanka there were a significant number of attacks against civilian targets, whilst there was no significant increase in the number of casualties from attacks by groups such as the IRA and ETA.

Hidden within these statistics however, was a more dramatic trend that lies at the heart of the contention that the trend towards increasing levels of lethality in terrorist attacks will result in the increasing use of CBRN weapons. Writing in 1990, Professor Paul Wilkinson identified a trend that originated from 1982, of increasingly indiscriminate and lethal attacks in which civilians were targeted. He pondered:

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 13

How does one explain this increase in indiscriminateness? In part it results from the terrorists’ ever more desperate desire for publicity. With the media and the public satiated with reports of violence around the world, terrorist leaders have concluded that they must commit greater atrocities to capture the headlines. Another key factor is the growing attraction of soft targets to terrorists, increasingly aware of the greater risks that face them if they seek to attack high prestige targets … Some experienced observers have suggested that another major element may be a shift inside terrorist organizations away from the more pragmatic ‘politically minded’ terrorist leaders to fanatical hard men, obsessed with vengeance and violence.28

But despite these trends, terrorist attacks which sought to kill large numbers of people were actually quite rare.29 Between 1925 and 2000 there were only 16 terrorist incidents that resulted in more than 100 casualties.30 Nine of these attacks occurred in the 1980s, and only four in the 1990s. So statistically, attacks at the higher end of the casualty spectrum reached a high point in the 1980s and then declined in number. This shows that the generally increasing lethality of terrorist attacks does not automatically result in an increase in the number of the most lethal attacks. However, these figures do not include failed attacks, and attacks where there was an intention to kill large numbers but which failed to achieve that goal, such as the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993. The other main feature of these attacks is that many of the targets were discriminate in nature, such as the 1984 bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. But of the four attacks that occurred in the 1990s, half of them – the series of 10 bombs detonated in Bombay in 1993, and the destruction of a Moscow apartment block in 1999, were indiscriminate in nature. Therefore, even when terrorists seek to kill large numbers of people, they will not necessarily choose an indiscriminate civilian target, although there did seem to be a shift towards attacking such targets in the 1990s. This raises questions about the extent to which many terrorist groups are interested in perpetrating attacks that would cause indiscriminate mass casualties.

These figures in themselves do not prove that terrorists will attempt to procure CBRN weapons in order to perpetrate indiscriminate attacks resulting in mass casualties. What 9/11 proved is that it is possible to kill large numbers of people with conventional weapons, and in the 1990s, terrorists had not yet reached the full potential for mass killing using conventional weapons. This suggested that if greater numbers of terror groups are moving towards attacks intended to cause mass casualties, it

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14 The Changing Face of Terrorism

should initially have been manifest in a greater number of attacks involving conventional weapons. And this is exactly what happened, when an Islamist terrorist cell attempted to destroy the World Trade Centre in 1993 by detonating a massive bomb in its basement. The bomb exploded but failed in its intention to topple one of the towers into the other. It was a portent of things to come and provided clear evidence of some terrorists’ interest in perpetrating indiscriminate mass casualty attacks.

The increasing lethality of terrorist violence was perceived to be driven by the other main trend in terrorist violence in the 1990s: the growth of ‘religious’ terrorism. Many secular terrorist groups such as the IRA and the PLO are ‘religious’ to the extent that their members are drawn almost exclusively from one particular faith, but their ideologies and goals are political in nature. For a new generation of terrorists that first emerged in the late 1980s, their ideologies and objectives are a blend of politics and religion. This involves all of the world’s major religions, from extreme right-wing Christian groups, radical Jews, militant Sikhs, and Islamic fundamentalists or Islamists. These ‘religious’ terrorist groups operate all around the world, including Europe, North America, South Asia, and the Middle East. When the first of these modern ‘religious’ terrorist groups emerged in 1980, they comprised only two of the 64 active terrorist groups. By 1992 that number had risen to 11, comprising a quarter of all the terrorist groups that carried out attacks in that year. By 1994, the trend had accelerated, and 16 (or one- third) of the 49 identifiable groups could be classified as being religious in character or motivation. In 1995 that number had risen again to 25 out of 58 known active terrorist groups, or 42 per cent. These figures indicated that politico-religious ideologies were fast becoming one of the primary drivers of terrorism.31

But among these new ‘religious’ terrorists there are differences over the extent to which they are driven by theological imperatives. Many have clear political objectives such as the liberation of their homelands from occupation, or the establishment of a theocratic regime. In contrast, others have much less comprehensible nationalist or ideological motivations, embracing far more amorphous religious and millenarian aims, which in their eyes are divinely sanctioned. In some instances their aims go far beyond the establishment of some theocracy amenable to their particular deity, to embrace mystical, almost transcendental and divinely inspired imperatives, or a vehemently anti-government form of populism, reflecting far-fetched conspiracy notions, based on a volatile mixture of seditious, racial, and religious dictums.32

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 15

The linkage between the growth of ‘religious’ terrorism and the trend towards increasing lethality in terrorist attacks is evident from the fact that although ‘religious’ terrorists committed only 25 per cent of the recorded international terrorist incidents in 1995, they were responsible for 58 per cent of the fatalities, and carried out all of the attacks in 1995 which incurred more than eight fatalities.33 This is particularly apparent in the attacks that resulted in more than 100 casualties. All of the attacks in the 1990s which resulted in more than 100 casualties were perpetrated by ‘religious’ groups, whilst several of those in the 1980s, such as the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in 1988, were perpetrated by ‘secular’ groups. It was generally considered that the theological imperatives of the ideologies of these groups led them to place fewer constraints on the use of violence.

Yet despite the broad range of ‘religious’ terror groups, the high levels of lethality associated with this type of group were primarily due to the activities of Islamic fundamentalist and Islamist groups. In the 1980s and 1990s, Shi’a terrorist groups were responsible for over a quarter of the deaths from terrorism, and between 1982 and 1989 were responsible for 30 per cent of the total fatalities despite committing only 8 per cent of all attacks.34 However, Shi’a terrorist groups were not responsible for any of the significant terrorist incidents involving CBRN weapons in the 1990s. This illustrates that the linkages between the general trend of the increasing lethality of contemporary terrorism and the use of CBRN weapons, are equivocal at best.

One of the features of CBRN terrorism in the 1990s was a significant increase in the number of groups and individuals linked to extreme right-wing Christian groups in the USA, developing biological agents. There were eight incidents of US citizens developing, or attempting to develop ricin in the 1990s. Whilst the motives of some of the perpetrators are unknown, at least four of these incidents can be linked to wider networks of extreme right- wing Christian groups. The amounts of ricin that were discovered were small, with the largest amount being 130g, and none of the perpetrators had developed an effective delivery mechanism. The targets of most of these plots were discriminate in nature, and included judges, federal officials, and local government officials. In one of the plots in 1994 by a cell linked to the Patriots’ Council, the plan was to smear the ricin on the doorknobs of federal law enforcement officials, whilst another plot involved mailing ricin to the target.35 None of these plots resulted in an actual attack, but the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995, which

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16 The Changing Face of Terrorism

killed 169 adults and children, was seen as evidence of the interest of this type of group in perpetrating acts of mass murder.

Individuals linked to the wider networks of extreme right-wing Christian groups also showed an interest in other forms of CBW. In 1995, Larry Wayne Harris acquired bubonic plague virus from the American Type Culture Collection. Harris claimed to be writing a training manual for the Aryan Nations, and that he had purchased the virus to support his research on treatments for the plague. No evidence was ever discovered that he had any plans to use the virus.36 In 1998, members of a Texan independence group called the Republic of Texas were arrested for planning to murder federal agents, their families, and government officials. Investigators discovered that they possessed containers of HIV-infected blood, samples of the rabies virus, and anthrax spores, as well as instruction manuals, written threats, and production equipment. According to press reports the group were trying to develop a device to shoot barbs coated with anthrax, HIV, or rabies at President Clinton.37 In 1997, investigators discovered a cache of chemicals at the home of a libertarian extremist called James Dalton Bell. The cache included 500g of sodium cyanide, disopropyl fluorophosphate, as well as a range of corrosive acids and two precursor chemicals used in the manufacture of the nerve agent, sarin. Computer files revealed that Bell was also interested in purchasing castor beans (from which ricin can be produced) and cultivating botulinum toxin.38 There was also an attempt by white-supremacist skinheads to disperse toxic chemicals through the internal ventilation systems of buildings in Arizona.39

A common feature of all these incidents was that although these groups and individuals had the technical knowledge to develop biological agents, none of them proved willing or able to develop a delivery mechanism to weaponize the agent into a WMD. A further interesting feature of these incidents was that there were no actual attacks. It could be argued that the police prevented the attacks from taking place, but there is also no hard evidence that these individuals were actually preparing to carry out an attack. The reasons for this reticence remain unclear, since the fact that they had gone to the effort of acquiring chemical and biological agents is indicative of an intention to use them. However, there is no evidence that some of them were professional terrorists, and they could best be described as fantasists or criminals. As such, they may have been intimidated by the risk of being caught, or else felt that the time was not right to launch an attack.

In contrast to the reticence of extreme right-wing groups in the USA, the explosion of violence from the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult in Japan during the 1990s has been the single most important incident of CBRN terrorism ever. Aum Shinrikyo was the first non-state group to possess both the potential

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 17

capability to develop a WMD, and the intent to use them. Between 1990 and 1995 the cult was known to have been responsible for 17 CBW attacks or attempted attacks. Ten of these attacks involved the use of CW, four attacks used the nerve agent sarin, four used the nerve agent VX, one used phosgene and one involved the use of hydrogen cyanide. The cult also attempted to carry out seven attacks using biological weapons, four involved anthrax and three involved the use of botulinum toxin. But all of these attacks failed because the cult’s engineers had failed to produce virulent strains of either anthrax bacteria or botulinum toxin. During 1993 the cult attempted to use BW for indiscriminate mass casualty attacks, whilst it used CW for eight actual and attempted assassinations between 1993 and 1995. Because the attempted BW attacks in 1993 failed, the cult switched tactics in 1994 and 1995 to use sarin and hydrogen cyanide for indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets. The most serious attack perpetrated by the cult was the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995, in which cult members placed 11 bags of sarin on five different trains and punctured them with sharpened umbrella tips. The attack killed 12 people and injured over 5,000.40 The cult has also been linked with 19 other incidents that might have been CBW attacks, and is also suspected of murdering internal dissidents with sarin and VX. There is also evidence that the cult considered attacking the USA, and that it had attempted to procure the ebola virus and nuclear weapons.41

Overall, Aum Shinrikyo’s campaign of terrorism using CBW was a failure. Only two of the indiscriminate attacks against population targets succeeded. These two attacks using sarin, resulted in the deaths of 19 people. More surprisingly, only one of the assassinations, using VX, succeeded. It would have been cheaper, easier, and more effective for the murderers to have used a gun. Nevertheless, Aum Shinrikyo demonstrated the potential threat posed by terrorist groups that make a sustained effort to acquire and use CBRN weapons.

In contrast to Aum Shinrikyo, some other groups that seemed to be capable of developing CBRN weapons displayed a reticence about actually using them. In November 1995 Chechen separatists threatened to detonate radiological devices in and around Moscow. The Chechen guerrilla leader Shamyl Basayev informed the Russian television network NTV that he had hidden four cases of caesium in Moscow. NTV discovered a case in Izmailovsky Park that was emitting 310 times the amount of normal radioactivity. Basayev had frequently threatened to attack Moscow with nuclear weapons but Russian officials dismissed the threat, claiming that the material was caesium-137 (which is used in X-ray equipment), and that it was only capable of emitting 100 times the background amount

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18 The Changing Face of Terrorism

of radioactivity.42 In July 1995 and March 1996 Chechen separatists made further threats to use CBW on Russian territory. The Head of Russia’s chemical warfare troops, Stanislav Petrov, denied that the Chechens possessed modern CW, but admitted they could have stocks of chlorine and prussic acid, which are similar to agents that had been used as CW in the First World War.43 In December 1998, a radiological dispersal device was allegedly discovered in Chechnya.44 Following renewed fighting in 1999 and 2000 both sides claimed that the other had waged chemical warfare. These allegations stemmed from the bombing of tanks of chlorine near the city of Grozny. The Russian army claimed that the insurgents had blown up containers of toxic chemicals, and suggested that the insurgents might set off other bombs at what were suspected to be chlorine filled chemical plants on the outskirts of the city.45

Several other groups which attempted to use CBW lacked the technical sophistication of Aum Shinrikyo, consequently they were restricted to using often commercially available materials as contaminants. As was also the case in the 1970s and 1980s, the efforts of many terrorist groups to develop or use CBRN weapons appeared to be ad hoc decisions that were determined by opportunity and circumstances.46 But there was also an increase in the number of reports of terrorist groups and individuals persistently attempting to procure CBRN weapons, including from the former Soviet Union. This included numerous reports about al-Qaeda. The majority of these reports remain unsubstantiated and the fact that there were no attacks using CBRN weapons by Islamist cells linked to al-Qaeda indicates that these attempts failed.

The increased number of CBRN terrorist incidents during the 1990s provides a considerable amount of additional information from which to draw conclusions about the potential threat from CBRN terrorism, and many unknowns remain. No terrorist group was able to develop a WMD but there is still a lack of clarity about the factors which were either preventing or deterring these groups from using CBRN weapons. However, a number of general observations can be made. There was a correlation between the increase in terrorist activity by ‘religious’ terrorist groups and the increased acquisition of BW in the 1990s because of the number of cases involving cults and extreme right-wing Christian groups in the USA. However, this did not tie in very strongly with the trend of increasing lethality in terrorist attacks, since extreme right-wing Christian groups do not have a history of systematic campaigns of violence against indiscriminate civilian targets. Islamic fundamentalist and Islamist groups are primarily responsible for the increasing lethality of ‘religious’ terrorism, but apart from al-Qaeda’s failed

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 19

efforts to procure CBRN weapons, they did not feature prominently in the history of CBRN terrorism. Another significant observation was that the increased use of CBRN weapons did not contribute to the trend towards increasing lethality in terrorist attacks, although many of the intended targets of the actual and planned CBRN attacks were indiscriminate in nature.

These developments, coupled with major conventional terrorist attacks such as the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and the bombing of the US embassy in Kenya in 1998, heightened perceptions of societal vulnerability to terrorism. For US citizens, vulnerability to terrorism became ‘America’s Achilles heel’.47 This galvanized the media and political debate on CBRN terrorism, prompting knee-jerk reactions from legislators in the USA, which blew the threat out of proportion.

These incidents made terrorism a national security priority and challenged accepted beliefs and assumptions about terrorist activity in the USA. They prompted Senator Richard Lugar to argue that ‘from the tragedies of Oklahoma City and the World Trade Centre to the first act of nuclear terrorism requires but one small step’.48 Following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 President Clinton declared that ‘one thing we owe those who have sacrificed is a duty to purge ourselves of the dark forces which give rise to this evil. They are forces that threaten our common peace, our freedom, our way of life’.49 However, the defining incident which brought the issues of terrorism and proliferation together was the Aum Shinrikyo attack on the Tokyo subway. It made the issue policy-relevant, transforming what was previously considered to be a potential threat into something that was real and imminent. In the immediate aftermath of the attack President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 39, ‘US Policy on Counter-Terrorism’, which stated that:

The development of effective capabilities for preventing and managing the consequences of terrorist use of nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) materials or weapons is the highest priority. Terrorist acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is not acceptable and there is no higher priority than preventing the acquisition of such materials/weapons or removing this capability from terrorist groups.50

Similarly, Congress declared in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996) that ‘international terrorism is among the most serious transnational threats faced by the United States and its allies, far eclipsing the dangers posed by population growth and pollution’.51 Yet a reasoned

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20 The Changing Face of Terrorism

analysis of the extent and impact of international terrorism at that time did not support this statement.

In many respects the arguments that dominated the public debate in the early 1990s were not dissimilar to those that were first developed in the literature from the late 1970s, but from the mid-1990s the debate was marked by an emphasis on worst-case analysis, and the sense of balance within the debate was lost. The debate in the USA in particular generated apocalyptic visions of terrorist attacks involving WMD, spawning a whole new terminology of ‘super terrorism’, ‘catastrophic terrorism’, ‘ultimate terrorism’, and ‘ultraterrorism’.52 Senator Sam Nunn argued that, ‘the threat of terrorist attack on American cities involving chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons has reached a point where a bold and vigorous effort is required. This is a clear and present danger to the American people that requires a timely response’.53 Similarly, Kyle Olsen argued that ‘people must recognize that the threat from bioterrorism is not a curiosity but a grim reality as we enter the next century’.54 Oliver Revell, a former FBI Investigations Chief, suggested that there is a new style of terrorism, which ‘wants nothing more than the overthrow of the West, and since that’s not going to happen, they just want to punish; the more casualties the better’.55

This change in the tone of the debate was due to the political context within which the debate was taking place, as well as the trends in terrorist activity which, it was argued, were pointing towards the increasing use of CBRN weapons by terrorists. One of the underlying reasons for the change in the public debate on CBRN terrorism in the 1990s was the nature of the ideologies of the active terrorist groups at that time. During the 1970s, the conclusions about CBRN terrorism were drawn from an analysis of the strategies and objectives of secular terrorists. In the 1990s the focus shifted to ‘religious’ terrorists. The perceived differences between the two types of groups contributed to the different tenor of the debate. Bruce Hoffman argues that the different characteristics, justifications, and mindsets of ‘religious’ and ‘quasi-religious’ groups suggest that they might be the most likely types of group to use CBRN weapons, because they have radically different value systems, mechanisms of legitimization and justification, concepts of morality, and world view.56 It became a commonly held belief that a CBRN attack was probably not likely to come from a typical terrorist group, but it was more likely to emanate from a group who have placed themselves above conventional morality. The RAND Corporation argued that,

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 21

Terrorist groups with more millennial aims, as opposed to those operating on behalf of concrete political programmes, may be less constrained in their actions and hence more willing to cause or risk mass casualties. These more fanatical and extreme terrorist groups tend to hold apocalyptic views, devoid of specific political content and seek the creation of new and continuing disasters as the precondition for the emergence of a new heavenly order on earth.57

This emphasis on ‘religious’ terrorism highlighted three principle groups of suspects: Islamic fundamentalists and Islamists; extreme right-wing Christian groups in the USA; and religious cults.

The sheer volume of work on this issue in the 1990s was significantly higher than in other decades. More importantly, the issue became a debate in its own right, rather than remaining an adjunct to the broader debates about proliferation and terrorism. Activist legislators in the USA seized on the issue and demanded action. The cumulative pressure from the debate in the policy community and the Congress led to significant policy responses from the administration, which were replicated in other states. President Clinton was noticeable in making strong public statements on the issue. In January 1999, he went on record as stating that the USA would be subject to a terrorist attack involving chemical or biological weapons within the next few years,58 whilst William Cohen, the US Secretary of Defence, stated that ‘the question is no longer if this will happen, but when’.59 This contrasted with the much more discreet approach of European leaders, who rarely made public comments about the threat.

This change in political context was paralleled by developments in science and technology which served to broaden the debate. Concern about nuclear terrorism revived in the early 1990s when it became evident that there was a haemorrhage of nuclear materials from insecure nuclear facilities in the states of the former Soviet Union. However, the most likely threat was still considered to be from CBW. By the mid-1990s, developments in education and technology had made the development of all forms of CBRN weapons relatively easier for non-state actors. But it was the explosive growth of the biotechnology industry, which coupled with the potential casualty levels that BW can cause, combined to put biological terrorism at the forefront of concern for the USA. In 1998, Richard Betts argued that ‘Biological Weapons should now be the most serious concern, with nuclear weapons second and chemicals a distant third’.60

By the late 1990s the debate in the USA was again becoming more balanced, with an increasing number of analysts downplaying the likelihood

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22 The Changing Face of Terrorism

of a catastrophic attack involving a WMD, whilst accepting that it was a theoretical possibility. This was summed up best by Richard Falkenrath, who argued that WMD terrorism was ‘a low-probability, high-consequence threat’. Falkenrath concluded that there has been a general aversion amongst most terrorist groups to causing mass casualties. He suggested that this was not necessarily due to the inability of terrorist groups to develop CBRN weapons, but rather to a conscious decision on the part of many terrorist groups to kill fewer people than they potentially could have. He identified the main reasons for terrorists making such decisions as being a fear that such attacks would undermine their political support, raise the risk of unfettered government reprisal, and generally because such violent attacks do not make it easier for terrorists to achieve their aims.61 Whereas at the beginning of the decade, analysts focused on the factors which made CBRN terrorism more likely, by the late 1990s a larger number of analysts were emphasizing the factors which would inhibit CBRN terrorism. Yet despite this, the US Commission on National Security still claimed in 1999 that ‘the most serious threat to our security may consist of unannounced attacks on American cities by sub-national groups (such as drug cartels, cults, or criminal gangs) using genetically engineered pathogens’.62

The Threat from CBRN Terrorism at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

At the turn of the twenty-first century there was little evidence to indicate any significant worsening of the threat of CBRN terrorism. Despite this, the world officially moved into the realm of mass destruction terrorism on 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, speculation about further mass casualty attacks including with CBRN weapons and WMD flooded the media and assumed a heightened prominence in the policy debate. 9/11 also heralded an abrupt upturn in the trend of attacks causing large number of casualties. Since 2001, there have been 19 terrorist attacks which have resulted in more than 100 deaths, 16 of which were perpetrated by Islamist or Islamic fundamentalist groups.63 This reversed the decline in the most lethal attacks that occurred in the 1990s.

The fears of al-Qaeda using CBRN weapons were seemingly confirmed in October 2001 when anthrax was posted in seven letters to a number of media providers as well as Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. By late October the attack seemed to be escalating out of control when two postal workers in Washington died, and a number of other postal workers in facilities that processed contaminated letters in Washington and New Jersey

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 23

also contracted anthrax. Only about 10g of anthrax in total was posted in the letters but it disseminated widely causing significant cross-contamination. Despite being sealed in envelopes an aerosol of anthrax was released during the processing of the mail.64 Spores were found in Washington area postal facilities, as well as all the offices of all major government departments including the Supreme Court and the State Department, and congressional offices. Contaminated letters also turned up across a wide geographical area, including New York, Florida, Washington, Nevada, and Connecticut, and spores were even carried to US diplomatic missions abroad in diplomatic pouches. The crisis petered out after a few months and the last case of infection was reported on 7 November 2001. A total of 22 people contracted anthrax during the course of the attack of whom four died, and a massive environmental decontamination was undertaken.65

The reasons why the perpetrator stopped sending the letters remain unknown. It is conceivable that the perpetrator had achieved his objective, or had wanted to escape before being detected. Perhaps as important was the fact that the letters had passed their peak effectiveness once counter- measures to screen post and decontaminate postal sorting offices had been put in place. The origins of the anthrax are also uncertain, but it was evident that the perpetrator possessed considerable technical skills because the weaponization process that had been used was extraordinarily effective. The concentration and purity of the spores coupled with a coating on the spores and a special form of silica identified in one of the samples was characteristic of what is known as the ‘optimal US process’. It caused considerable concern because the anthrax had been designed and milled to a very fine size specifically to stay in the air, increasing the chances of infecting people with the respiratory form of the disease.66

Al-Qaeda was initially the prime suspect, but the fact that the letters stopped suddenly while the war in Afghanistan was continuing suggests that it was not the culprit. The technical sophistication of the anthrax raised the question of whether a state had sponsored the attack. Many commentators and political figures were quick to point the finger at Iraq. But no evidence of Iraqi involvement was ever discovered, and previous Iraqi attempts to weaponize anthrax had been significantly cruder than the samples contained in the letters. In November 2001, the FBI announced that that they suspected that the letters were the work of a lone individual.67 By December an official close to the investigation confirmed that a government insider or someone with links to such an individual was ‘the most likely hypothesis … it’s definitely reasonable’.68 This seemed to confirm the fears raised in the 1990s, that lone operators represented one of the principle threats of CBRN

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24 The Changing Face of Terrorism

terrorism, and also confirmed fears of the potential role of ‘insiders’ from national CBRN weapon development and defence infrastructures. It was not until 2008 that the FBI closed the case, when Dr Bruce Ivins, a former microbiologist at the biological defence facility at Fort Detrick, committed suicide. Ivins was reported to have had a history of mental illness69 and has not been linked with any known terrorist organization.

A number of observations can be drawn from the attack that are pertinent to the assessment of future BW threats. Despite the prevailing fear of BW causing mass casualties, the letters were singularly unsuccessful in killing many people. Thousands of people were screened for anthrax, but very few were found to be infected, and the majority of those were successfully treated with antibiotics. An alternative explanation is that the objective of the attack was not to actually kill people but rather, to create disruption and public anxiety. There is some evidence for this hypothesis in the fact that the letters themselves warned of the anthrax and the need to take antibiotics which enabled those who handled the letters to protect themselves. A number of hoaxes sent before the genuine letters also fit into this explanation by heightening the sense of public awareness. Although several postal workers were killed, it is conceivable that the perpetrator did not anticipate that the mail sorting process would expel spores from the letters and cause such extensive cross-contamination and collateral casualties.70 Since there is no reason to believe that the perpetrator did not possess more anthrax it can be assumed that he must have achieved everything he wanted with the small number of letters that he did send.

One of the main impacts of the attack was the short-term disruption to everyday life. Despite the persistent sense of unease during those months, everyday life quickly resumed as people adapted. The attacks brought temporary halts to the work on Capitol Hill, at the Supreme Court, and at the Postal Service, but once the buildings were decontaminated and technology was brought in to screen incoming post, work continued as normal. The speed with which people adapted was aided by the fact that attacks were targeted rather than random in nature and the anthrax was contained in letters rather than released directly into the environment.

The anthrax letters were not the breakthrough in biological terrorism that people had feared and the attack is better characterized as a criminal rather than a terrorist act. But whilst al-Qaeda and its affiliates were not the perpetrators, significant evidence of al-Qaeda’s efforts to develop CBRN weapons was discovered in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This was coupled with a sharp increase in the number of reports of Islamist terrorist groups either talking about, or planning

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 25

to use, CBRN weapons. However, it is extremely difficult to differentiate fact from fiction in many of the often sensationalist media stories about al-Qaeda and CBRN weapon plots, many of which are based on dubious sources and were subsequently discovered to be untrue. But a small number have been confirmed and have resulted in convictions.

According to the 9/11 Commission, al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan were considering ways of using WMD prior to 2001. This included using mustard gas and cyanide against Jews in Iran, ‘forcing Russian scientists to fire a nuclear armed missile against the US’, and using air conditioning systems in buildings to pump poison gas.71 But the first actual incident occurred in February 2002, when a cell of four Tunisians was convicted in Italy of conspiring to traffic in false documents, weapons, explosives, and chemical weapons.72 Police in Rome and Milan had intercepted telephone conversations involving the leader of the cell in which he had discussed the use of chemical substances in terrorist attacks. Some reports suggest that he discussed how to hide chemical poison in cans of tomatoes, whilst other reports suggests that the cell simply used ‘tomato cans’ as a codeword for cyanide. However, there is no indication that they actually possessed any chemical agents.73 The same month, police in Rome foiled an attack by a cell of Moroccans who possessed a cache of potassium ferrocyanide with the intention of poisoning the water supply in the neighbourhood around the American embassy.74

In 2003, US intelligence sources allege that al-Qaeda came within 45 days of launching a cyanide attack on the New York subway system, after details of the plot were found on a computer belonging to members of the cell who had been arrested in Bahrain. The attack was apparently called off by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, for unknown reasons.75 The same year, al-Qaeda operatives allegedly delivered an unspecified poison to Afghan cooks who were working for the US armed forces in Afghanistan, with the intention that they kill American servicemen. Some sources suggest that the Islamist group Ansar al Islam was involved and that the poison in question was ricin.76

Since 2001 a number of Islamist terrorist cells in the UK have discussed, or planned to use, CBRN weapons. One cell allegedly planned to kill Members of the European Parliament and officials by releasing sarin into the European Parliament building,77 but the veracity of this report is questionable given that there is no evidence of al-Qaeda ever having produced sarin. In January 2003 however, police discovered a primitive production facility along with castor beans and instructions for manufacturing ricin at an apartment in north London. Despite sensational media reporting of the discovery, no

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26 The Changing Face of Terrorism

ricin was ever found.78 In 2004, UK police arrested an Islamist cell which had developed a plan to detonate a radiological weapon in a major city, whilst another cell discussed poisoning hamburgers or beer at a soccer stadium. British intelligence sources also claimed to have prevented a CW attack using conventional explosive and osmium tetroxide.79 Despite the interest of these three cells in using CBRN weapons, the key feature of all of these plots was that they were at a preliminary planning stage, and none of them possessed the necessary CBRN agents or materials.

Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it was discovered that Ansar al Islam had successfully developed ricin. Ansar al Islam is generally considered to be an affiliate of al-Qaeda, although the extent of the links between the two groups are a matter of considerable speculation. There is no evidence that Ansar al Islam had actually used ricin, but Kurdish intelligence sources indicated that it was intended for use in assassinations.80 This added credence to the USA’s intelligence assessments of al-Qaeda’s CBRN weapon development. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2003, the former Director of the CIA George Tenet claimed that al-Qaeda was seeking materials to develop CBRN weapons and re-iterated concerns that al-Qaeda had a sophisticated BW capability having acquired both the expertise and equipment in Afghanistan.81 But despite these reports, it is evident that al-Qaeda had failed to develop CBRN weapons (al-Qaeda’s efforts to develop CBRN weapons will be explored in greater depth in Chapter 2).

The willingness of Islamist terror groups to use CBRN weapons was illustrated by a spate of chlorine bomb attacks on Shi’a civilian targets in Iraq in early 2007. In these attacks chlorine cylinders were packed around explosives in car bombs, causing casualties from both blast and chemical effects.82 In 2004 US forces also discovered 3kg of cyanide at a house in Baghdad which insurgents were going to place in construction bricks and then use to attack US troops.83 However, these attacks were ad hoc in nature, and betrayed the lack of technological capability within the insurgency to develop effective CBRN weapons.

Whilst al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups have been responsible for the majority of terrorist incidents involving CBW since 9/11, other types of groups have also experimented with using CBW. In 2001, rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) fired improvised CW mortar shells at police, killing four and injuring one.84 This was a significant departure for the FARC, which has been fighting the Columbian government since the 1960s but had not previously been linked with any CWB attacks. And in 2007, a right-wing extremist in the

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 27

UK was convicted of possessing ricin.85 This illustrates how groups with no previous interest in CBRN weapons can suddenly decide to experiment with them. Although these seem to have been isolated incidents, rather than the beginning of systematic campaigns by these groups to develop and use CBW.

The twenty-first century has therefore also seen a confluence of two significant trends in terrorist activity that emerged in the 1990s. Islamist groups that are responsible for a significant increase in the most lethal terrorist attacks, including an act of mass destruction, are also responsible for the increase in the attempted acquisition and use of CBRN weapons. However, this increase in the attempted acquisition and use of CBRN weapons by Islamist terror cells, was matched by a corresponding decrease in the attempted acquisition of CBRN weapons by extreme right-wing groups in the USA. Similarly, since the Aum Shinrikyo attacks in the early 1990s, there has been no indication of religious cults seeking to acquire CBRN weapons. Unlike the groups and individuals linked to the extreme right wing movement in the 1990s however, Islamist terror groups have displayed a greater willingness to actually use whatever agents or weapons they can acquire.

As a consequence of the activities of al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups, and partly fuelled by government pronouncements, the nature of the policy debate on CBRN terrorism changed completely to assume that a WMD attack involving a CBRN weapon would only be a matter of time. The prevailing attitude was summed up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who declared that,

These dangers can strike at any time. At the moment barely a day goes by without some new piece of intelligence coming via our security services about a threat to UK interests. Today’s breed of terrorist knows no bounds – of geography, of humanity, of scale. They are looking for evermore dramatic and devastating outrages to inflict on the people they claim to be their enemy.86

Highlighting the threat in this way serves the interests of the police and security services in heightening public awareness and encouraging the population to watch out for suspicious activity, but publicity of this sort can also have negative repercussions. Terrorists will generally monitor political and social developments in their target state carefully, and will adapt their strategies and tactics accordingly. The nature of the public and political debate on CBRN terrorism indicates that this is a threat which the

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28 The Changing Face of Terrorism

West particularly fears. This in itself could encourage some groups to try and develop CBRN weapons, which is why many governments used to downplay the issue.

Conclusion

Despite 30 years of CBRN terrorism, worsening threat assessments, and the continuing interest of Islamist terrorist cells in these weapons, the nature and extent of the current threat from CBRN terrorism remains unclear. The most recent incidents of CBRN terrorism are not fundamentally different from those in the 1980s. The majority still involve the crude dissemination of chemical and biological agents, particularly as contaminants. Despite the larger number of incidents linking terrorists to CBRN weapons, only a small proportion of them actually led to the use of a CBRN weapon. In 1999, the Monterrey database of terrorist CBRN incidents identified 282 such incidents, but only 26 per cent of them involved the actual use of a weapon.87 Although there are also a number of cases where a group or individual acquired an agent or pathogen but were arrested before being able to use it.

Nevertheless, these previous incidents suggest that further terrorist incidents involving CBRN weapons are probably inevitable. But it does not establish a case that a terrorist incident involving a WMD is inevitable or even likely, since no terrorist group has ever posed a credible WMD threat. Aum Shinrikyo’s success in developing sarin and VX remains an isolated case, and it never managed to develop a WMD. The most significant development in respect of CBRN terrorism in the 1990s was the increasing acquisition of chemical and biological agents by terrorist groups. Yet attacks have been rare enough to suggest that they will remain occasional isolated incidents. However, the setting of key precedents such as the use of CBW against indiscriminate population targets, has been a highly significant development. But weighed against this are indications that some technologically capable groups and individuals have previously been deterred from using CBRN weapons.

Of the incidents in the twentieth century which did not result in an attack there are difficulties in differentiating between what are genuine cases of terrorists attempting to acquire CBRN weapons with a serious intent to use them; cases where groups made threats with no intent to either develop or use such weapons; and reports which are little more than hearsay. Some incidents are supported by a body of facts, but unsubstantiated reports comprise over half of the recorded incidents. But even uncorroborated

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 29

reports cannot be dismissed as mere hearsay since the security forces in a number of states may well have prevented some attacks but not released full details. It is now commonly assumed that terrorists will use CBRN weapons, if they can acquire them.

In the twentieth century, incidents involving CW constituted approximately 52 per cent of the previous cases of CBRN terrorism,88 but there have been many more threats and conspiracies than cases where terrorists actually managed to execute an attack using a CW. There was an increase in both the number of plots and threats, and also the number of times that terrorists have actually acquired or used CW, in the 1990s. The increase in the number of cases of acquisition and use was due almost entirely to the large number of attempted attacks by Aum Shinrikyo in the twentieth century. Incidents involving BW constitute approximately 26 per cent of the previous cases of CBRN terrorism.89 There have only ever been five confirmed cases of terrorists actually using BW, although the increasing trend of successful acquisition of BW in the 1990s is even more pronounced than is the case with CW. There has been a much lower incidence of radiological and nuclear terrorism than is the case with CBW, (approximately 4 per cent of previous cases of CBRN terrorism).90 There is no evidence that a terrorist group has ever even attempted to develop a nuclear weapon, and there have been only a few reports of groups attempting to purchase a nuclear device or fissile material.

Equally as significant is the fact that the targets of many of the planned CBW attacks highlighted in this chapter were, or were intended to be, discriminate in nature, against individuals or the occupants of specific buildings. The targeting of individuals or specific buildings means that many of these attacks were not intended to cause indiscriminate mass destruction. But even so, a significant number of the other planned attacks were intended to cause indiscriminate mass casualties, although none of them actually succeeded. However, in the cases where the agent was not used it is sometimes impossible to determine what the target actually was, or whether the group would actually have gone through with the attack. There is, however, a significant number of cases where the intent was to cause casualty levels sufficient to be labelled ‘mass destruction’, principally through contaminating the water supplies of cities. Whatever the feasibility of achieving this objective through contaminating water supplies, the intent of the perpetrators is what is important.

Most importantly, no group has ever developed a WMD. Only Aum Shinrikyo has ever manufactured a nerve agent, or got close to engineering a CW into a WMD, but their inability to achieve this was due to its inability

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30 The Changing Face of Terrorism

to mass produce sarin of sufficiently high purity and to develop an effective delivery system. Most of the attacks by other groups have had to rely on using chemicals in a discriminate fashion, or as contaminants, particularly in food and drink, which has greatly restricted the potential casualties that they could cause. In terms of BW, the various individuals or groups linked to extreme right-wing groups in the USA who managed to develop biological pathogens or toxins also had to rely on using them as contaminants. Aum Shinrikyo also attempted to engineer biological agents into a WMD but failed, although it is not known how close it actually was to successfully developing and weaponizing their pathogens. This raises questions about the technological problems that terrorists face in developing and using CBRN weapons and WMD. The principle significance of the Tokyo subway attack was as an indicator that non-state actors were getting closer to developing a WMD. But significantly, it remains an isolated case.

A wide spectrum of groups, including nationalist separatist movements, Islamic fundamentalists, Islamists, religious cults, and various extreme right wing groups, have at some time shown an interest in acquiring and using CW, and interest is by no means restricted to ‘religious’ groups. However, there does appear to have been a gradual shift in the type of groups attempting to procure BW, from predominantly secular and ethno-nationalist groups in the 1970s and 1980s to predominantly ‘religious’ groups in the 1990s. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of these developments is the fact that, unlike with CW, it is not entirely due to the activities of Aum Shinrikyo, because of the number of extreme right-wing Christian groups and individuals in the USA who successfully developed ricin, as well as the Rajneeshees’ use of Salmonella typhimurium. Religious cults have been responsible for the largest number of incidents or attacks where actual possession of a chemical or biological weapon has been involved, followed by extreme right-wing Christian groups and individuals in the USA. Some Islamic fundamentalist groups along with some national liberation movements such as the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) have been responsible for some isolated incidents. Since 2000, the situation has reversed, with Islamist groups being responsible for the majority of incidents. Whilst this indicates that some groups might pose more of a threat than others at any given time, it also indicates that a threat could theoretically come from any quarter. Therefore, whilst a correlation has been identified between terrorists with a politico-religious ideology and CBRN weapons, it is important to avoid generalizations about ‘religious’ terrorists and CBRN weapons. The past history of CBRN terrorism shows that not all ‘religious’ terrorist groups are interested in CBRN weapons. In fact, only a small number of groups have ever made a systematic attempt to

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CBRN Terrorism in Historical Context 31

procure them. This suggests that alternative explanations need to be sought to explain the interest of specific terrorist groups in CBRN terrorism.

Therefore, whilst the trends in terrorist activity suggest broad directions in terrorist activity, they are of little use for determining the nature and extent of the future threat of CBRN terrorism. Instead, the nature of the future threat can be determined in greater detail only by exploring key themes in terrorists’ decision making in greater depth. These include the technical opportunities and constraints faced by terrorists attempting to develop CBRN weapons, their potential motivations to use these weapons, the likely disincentives to using these weapons, the strategies and tactics which different terrorist groups use, the personal motivations of individual terrorists, and the dynamics of decision making within different terrorist groups.

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