The biggest lesson of the 9/11 attacks was to wake the nation up to its institutional counterterrorism failings. Just as those failings missed what would now be quite easily identified footprints of a rising terrorist conspiracy, they would also have enabled a far more lethal strike on the American homeland.
We are lucky that al Qaeda did not believe that a strike involving nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons was possible. We are also lucky that al Qaeda chose to avoid targeting children, in contrast with Chechen Salafi-Jihadist organizations and disrupted Islamic State plots in Europe. Instead, Osama bin Laden’s group saw airliners as desirable weapons for two reasons. First, because they could simplify and amplify the use of explosive materials in creating lethal effect. Second, because they would cut to the heart of the U.S. economy and the American social expectation of easy and safe mobility.
But what if al Qaeda had made a more ambitious assessment? What if key plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had sought biological, chemical, and/or nuclear weapons?
Considering the extensive intelligence community and military special operations efforts that were in place in 2001 to monitor so-called “loose nukes,” it would have been very difficult for al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons. Even the corrupted former Soviet bloc military and scientific officials with access to those weapons weren’t stupid enough to sell them to jihadists. Still, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack showed that a committed and operationally secure cell of otherwise amateur scientists can produce highly lethal materials and then weaponize them.
The same basic principles would have applied to al Qaeda’s 2000-2001 pursuit of biological weapons. Highly contagious and lethal bioagents of concern here included smallpox and viral hemorrhagic fever. Also of concern are neurotoxic bioweapons a la botulinum, the precursor for Botox injections. Had al Qaeda prioritized its recruitment of scientific experts in these weapon fields, it could have trained the 9/11 cell in the transport and application of said weapons. The risks here should not be underestimated. The Soviet and contemporary Russian bioweapons program, some of which continues to be conducted covertly out of the Siberian VECTOR bioresearch facility, has modified bioagents to give them higher contagiousness, lethality, and antibiotic resistance.
Imagine the impact had al Qaeda’s 19 operational 9/11 hijackers each been given one of these weapons and deployed separately at heavily populated transit points across the nation?
Quietly releasing their weapons at airports, sports games, schools, theaters, or churches, they would likely have been able to overwhelm the nation’s public health capacity. Considering the many months it took for the nation to adopt mitigation tactics for the coronavirus pandemic, the risks here should be obvious. Even if outbreaks were controlled, the images of innocent people throwing up blood and going into organ failure would have been brutal on our society.
Yes, these weapons might have been detected at ports of entry. But considering the lax port controls in place — drugs get through, don’t they? — I doubt it. We also know that the detention of Zacarias Moussaoui just one month before the 9/11 attacks did not advance an FBI investigation into a broader conspiracy. So while the disruption of one individual found in possession of weapons of mass destruction would have provoked broader concern, it’s far from clear that the investigation would have found the entire cell.
Don’t get me wrong. The loss on that day was immense and continues to be felt by both the families of the fallen and those who still suffer and die from related medical effects. And, of course, on the part of those military families who have sacrificed so much since then. But 9/11 could have been much worse. Recognizing that truth should motivate our continued seriousness about counterterrorism strategy at home and abroad.
