Al Qaeda's Bio Threat - Not So Much

I caught this snippet of information on the "success" of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation tactics" (a.k.a. torture) - mainly that it didn't do that much to stop al Qaeda's BW program. Not because the tactics weren't harsh enough, but rather because the program was bullshit from the start.

The 2004 CIA report, titled "Khalid Shaykh Muhammad: Preeminent Source On Al-Qa'ida," stated that "reporting from KSM has greatly advanced our understanding of al-Qa'ida's anthrax program," in particular about the role of a Malaysian scientist named Yazid Sufaat who was recruited by al Qaeda to research biological weapons. Sufaat, a biochemistry graduate of California State University, Sacramento, set up Green Laboratory Medicine Company for al Qaeda in southern Afghanistan in 2001 as a front company through which it was hoped that the terrorist group would acquire anthrax and other biological agents that could be used as weapons.

But what the CIA did not say in its 2004 report is that Sufaat was never able to buy or produce the right strain of anthrax suitable for a weapon. And so though KSM might have helped the CIA understand something of al Qaeda's anthrax program, either he had little understanding of the science of biological weapons, and/or agency officials who wrote the report were also similarly handicapped. 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.

For all the bullshit we have to hear about bioterrorism and "it's not a question of if but when" and how we're going to see a bioattack in the next five years, it's just amazing how there's no actual evidence or intel to support the rhetoric. And that pretty much kills the BS justification for torturing detainees in the first place.

UPDATE: George Smith reminds us that this is not new news - most of us legitimate CBRN professionals understood this basic fact in 2006 (if not earlier).

Comments

[Kilo]

"For all the bullshit we have to hear about..."

It's hard to top al Nashiri, under torture, getting asked about aQ having nukes and him agreeing that they do though.

That's it. If anyone had the balls to report that, that's all that would need to be said on the topic of EITs. You can get a guy to claim that the Shining Path has a space program if you torture them long enough.