January 19, 2005
by Gordon Thomas
Britain's intelligence chiefs have launched urgent checks on all foreign students studying chemistry and biology at our universities after a top Pentagon expert warned Osama bin Laden is recruiting scientists to prepare weapons for biowarfare attack.
The warning came from Raymond Zilinskas, one of the Pentagon's leading biowarfare consultants. It was reinforced by John Bolton, US under-secretary of state.
"The overwhelming bulk of our evidence is that his efforts are focussed in such an attack," said Bolton.
Long reputed as a world leader in science, Britain has a reputation for producing scientists for whose skills al Qaeda are prepared to pay huge sums.
Already Porter Goss, the new chief of the CIA, has warned the head of MI6 that Britain is now a prime target for such an attack.
The threat has been reinforced by Meir Dagan, the tough-minded head of Israel's Mossad.
A study which Dagan helped to co-author entitled "The Future of Bioweapons", which was circulated in the New Year to Scarlett and other European intelligence chiefs, states:
"Al Qaeda could soon be in a position to create artificially engineered biological agents that could spread disease on an unparallel scale. The same science that is taught in universities can now be adapted to become the world's most frightening weapons".
Porter Goss has already despatched agents to South America to track reports that scientists working in heroin-producing labs have been recruited to use their skills to manufacture bio-chemical weapons.
"But our prime focus is that bin Laden is focussing on young scientists in university departments in the same way he sent his September 11 hijackers to US flying schools. We have no doubt that he has planted some of those scientists in British campuses", said one of Porter Goss's senior aides.
Fears of a biological attack have increased with the publication of a religious decree titled: "Rules for the Use of WMD Against the Infidels".
The author is a leading Muslim religious theologian, Nasser bin Hamad al-Fahd. He is currently awaiting trial in Riyadh for helping to organise attacks on Saudi Arabia.
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