Al Qaeda 'plague' tied to botched WMD try

Washington Times:

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

...

The story sounds like a reasonable explanation for the "plague" deaths. Again the intercept of enemy communications is an important aspect of the story. We are fortunate that the terrorist rights Democrats failed in their attempt to limit our intelligence intercepts. It looks like things for al Qaeda got a little dizzy in Tizi.

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