US: An al-Qaeda plan for a gas attack on the New York subway system, a "second wave" that could have been more destructive than 9/11, was called off just weeks before it was due to be carried out in early 2003, according to a new book.
US officials learned of the plan after it was cancelled by Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claims. The officials do not know the fate of the al-Qaeda cell that travelled to the US to carry out the attack. Some fear its members are still in the country.
The plan, details of which were found on a laptop computer captured in Bahrain, called for the simultaneous release of hydrogen cyanide in several carriages on the New York subway and other strategic locations in the city, Suskind says in his book, The One Percent Doctrine. A form of hydrogen cyanide was used by the Nazis in the concentration camps.
The plan caused particular alarm among US officials because it used a device known as a mubtakkar, meaning "initiative" or "invention". The device, the size of a tin of paint, could be easily concealed and would allow the remote release of the deadly gas.
Suskind describes the panic in the higher echelons of the US government on learning of the plan.
He quotes President George Bush as voicing concern about the group's motives for calling off the attack. "I mean, this is bad enough. What does calling this off say about what else they're planning? What could be the bigger operation Zawahiri didn't want to mess up?"
Suskind speculates that the attack was called off because it would not be sufficiently destructive or eye-catching, even though it would cause thousands of deaths and widespread panic in New York.
"Al-Qaeda's thinking is that a second-wave attack should be more destructive and more disruptive than 9/11," the author said in an interview with Time magazine, which published an extract from the forthcoming book. "That would create an upward arc of terror and anticipation between the second and ostensibly a third attack."
- (Guardian service)