NEFA Series "Target America": The New York City Subway Poison Gas Plot
By Evan Kohlmann
The NEFA Foundation has released the twelfth in its "Target America" series of reports examining the multitude of threats directed at the United States since 9/11--this time focusing on the plot by a Bahrain-based cell to launch a cyanide gas attack on the New York City subway system. According to former CIA Director George Tenet, when the cell asked Al-Qaida’s central leadership for permission to launch the attack, “word came back from [Al-Qaida number two] Ayman al-Zawahiri himself in early 2003 to cancel the operation and recall the operatives, who were already staged in New York - because ‘we have something better in mind.’” The NYPD reports that “surveillance of the subway stations” had already been “undertaken.”
A leaked DHS-FBI bulletin on the chemical dispersal device the operatives planned to utilize is also available for download from the NEFA Foundation website.
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