SpyTalk

Anyone who doubts Al Qaeda still has designs on unleashing a chemical, biological or radiological weapon upon the West should find the career of Muhammed Moumou, killed in a gun battle with U.S. troops this month, instructive.

Moumou, the Moroccan-born Swedish citizen who operated under several aliases, was reputedly the top Sunni insurgent leader in Iraq when his luck finally ran out in Mosul Oct. 5. He had been arrested in Denmark years back but then deported to Sweden, where he slipped loose again. 

You had to read all the way to the bottom of news accounts about his death, however, for what may have ben the most chilling item on his resume: According to a Dec. 7, 2006 U.S. Treasury Department report, he was AQI's European liaison on chemical and biological weapons.

And, according former CIA operative Charles "Sam" Faddis, he was also a part of Ansar al Islam,  the Al Qaeda affiliate in Kurdish Iraq in 2002-2003, many of whose members escaped because of Pentagon dithering.

 

"This is the organization which we had in our sights in the Summer of 2002, but which the Bush Administration failed to act against. When we finally went in about eight/nine months later, it was too late. Everyone saw the attack coming, and the top targets had fled," Faddis told me.