Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Monday, Nov. 12, 2001

Incredibly, for unexplained reasons, none of the sites have been bombed, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Located in Derunta, near the Taliban stronghold Jalalaba, one of the plants is believed to have produced deadly cyanide gas.

According to intelligence officials, cyanide gas can be very difficult to turn into an effective large-scale terrorist weapon because it is not easily transported and would dissipate rapidly in a large open space. They add that they do not believe that al-Qaeda has found a way yet to make weapons from cyanide.

"They do have some primitive capabilities, but the problem is weaponizing," a senior official told the Times. "All of the evidence is that they have not been able to do that."

In addition to the Derunta chemical weapons site, American intelligence and military officials told the Times it is believed that a fertilizer plant in Mazar-i-Sharif under control of al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies may be capable of producing anthrax. The Northern Alliance captured that city on Friday, but it is not known if the plant had fallen into its hands.

Also of concern is another possible anthrax production site in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. According to the Times, that fertilizer plant was funded by the International Red Cross organization and was meant to work on preventing the spread of anthrax among livestock.

Government sources told the Times that al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and not the Red Cross, were in actual control of the site.

Intelligence sources told the Times that the Mazar-i-Sharif fertilizer plant is near a site used by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and it is believed they were been interested in the plant because it could be used to make either biological or chemical weapons.

A top military source told the Times that the fertilizer plant "is high on everybody's list" of sites suspected of involvement in al-Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts.

Another source within the Bush administration confided that there were concerns about reports of suspicious activity at the fertilizer plant for some time. It may have escaped being a target of U.S. bomb attacks in anticipation of a takeover of the city by the Northern Alliance.

Officially, the U.S. has said it believes that al-Qaeda has a "crude chemical – and possibly biological – capability." In addition to the small quantities of cyanide gas that it may have produced, al-Qaeda may also have experimented with other crude poisons such as chlorine and phosgene.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Bioterrorism
War on Terrorism

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