Aum Shin Rikyo’s membership included sophisticated chemists, biologists, and nuclear engineers, who were encouraged to experiment with the use of all of these potential weapons. The group conducted tests, some affecting, some directly against, the local population. On July 2, 1993, more than 100 residents of the Koto district of Tokyo complained of noxious white fumes coming from buildings owned by the group. On June 27, 1994, seven people died from a sarin attack in the resort city of Matsumoto, 125 miles northwest of Tokyo. At least 264 people were hospitalized. A week later, residents of the small village of Kamikuishiki, near Mount Fuji south of Matsumoto, had the same symptoms, although all recovered. On September 1, 1994, more than 230 people in seven towns in Nara State suffered rashes and eye irritation from fumes. Authorities found a by-product of sarin in Kamikuishiki in December 1994.
Aum upped the ante for all terrorists in March 1995, when it attempted to kill thousands via a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Twelve commuters died and 5,511 people were hospitalized. Strict Japanese laws regarding the rights of religious groups, even those advocating violence, hampered the authorities’ investigation and response to the case, but eventually those responsible were brought to justice.
Incident: On March 20, 1995, Aum Shin Rikyo (Aum Supreme Truth), a fringe cult headquartered in Japan, simultaneously released sarin gas into 6 trains involving 16 substations of the Tokyo subway system during the 8:00 A.M. rush hour, killing 12 and injuring 5,511 people. Affected stations included Nakano-Sakane, Kasumigaseki, Tsukiji, Kamiyacho, Hongosanchome, Kodenmacho, Hibiya, Marunouchi, Ebisu, Yotsuya-Sanchome, Shinkoenji, Higashi Koenji, Ogikubo, Nakano Fujimicho, Hatchobori, Kayabacho, Ochanomizu, Kokkaigijidomae, Akasaka Mitsuke, Ningyocho, Korakuen, and Chiyoda. The three affected subway lines (Hibiya, Marunouchi, and Chiyoda) crossed each other at the Kasumigaseki terminus, site of the headquarters of several Japanese national government ministries.
Sarin’s chemical name is isopropyl methyl phosphoro fluoridate. It was developed by the Nazis in the late 1930s, but apparently not used by them in battle. It is one of the least persistent nerve agents, dispersing rapidly. It is fairly simple to manufacture.
The cult was led by Shoko Asahara, 40, self-described Venerated Master, who in 1985 wrote that he had conducted successful antigravity experiments. He had failed as an acupuncturist and health tonic salesman. During his career, he had railed against the Japanese military and the United States, predicted that the world would end in 1997, and said that it was now “time for death,” without specifying if it was for himself, his followers, or Tokyo subway riders. Asahara was born Chizuo Matsumoto, the fourth son of a tatami mat maker. He was jailed in 1982 for selling counterfeit medicines. He founded three cults. In 1982, he and his wife created the Heavenly Blessing Association. He next tried the Aum Divine Wizard Association, claiming that Buddhist principles would permit him to fly. In 1987, he came out with the Aum Supreme Truth, in which he praised the Hindu god Shiva (god of destruction and renewal), Buddhist saints, and Adolf Hitler. The cult has branches in the United States, Germany, Russia, and Sri Lanka.
On March 22, 1995, police raided Aum facilities in Kamikuishiki Village, Yamanashi Prefecture, and found a large quantity of peptone, used to culture germs. Police found germ-culture equipment, electron microscopes, and other experimental equipment used in germ research. The cult had purchased large quantities of botulinus bacillus. The next day, Japanese police seized huge supplies of sarin precursor chemicals, including phosphorous trichloride and sodium fluoride. Police also found atropine, a chemical agent antidote. Police found 22 pounds of gold ingots and $7 million in cash at Asahara’s mountain stronghold. Raids by 2,500 police at two dozen of their installations turned up gas masks and acetonitrile, which can dilute sarin. Police also found a Russian chemical agent detector and a Russian MI-17 helicopter capable of carrying 30 people. Fifty malnourished, drugged people, apparently being held against their will, were freed by police. Some were Aum members and refused medical assistance. Five people were arrested.
One day before the subway incident, leaflets publicizing Asahara’s book Disasters are Approaching the Country Where the Sun Rises, which hinted at the Tokyo gas attack, were distributed in the Ginza shopping area. Three months after the Matsumoto attack, a threatening letter sent to news organizations hinted at the use of organic solvents in the subway.
On March 27, 1995, police found a hidden chemical lab behind a secret door behind a huge Hindu statue of Shiva in the group’s main building near Mount Fuji. Police found 40 kinds of chemicals, including those used to make sarin and tabun, glycerine compounds for explosives, and drugs precursors.
On March 29, 1995, Japanese police searching the Mount Fuji site found 160 barrels of peptone, suggesting that the Aum was also experimenting with biological warfare agents. Police had earlier discovered a powerful ventilation system that could have removed toxic gases and agents during the experiments. Police found an incubator and a library of 300 books on bacteriological research. Police discovered empty syringe vials of sarin. Police said that the sarin production facilities were “seemingly larger, more sophisticated, and of better quality than Iraq’s chemical gas plants, and are good enough to produce highly-purified sarin,” according to the Mainichi Shimbun.
By April 1, 1995, police had confiscated 650 drums filled with enough chemicals to make 5.6 tons of sarin. The group had purchased huge quantities of a sarin antidote from a Tokyo hospital.
On April 1, 1995, police found a major heavy machine maker’s classified document on uranium enrichment technology among the belongings of an Aum member who had been arrested in Shiga Prefecture.
On April 13, 1995, police arrested Tomomitsu Nimii, Aum’s home affairs minister, on suspicion of kidnapping a nurse who had tried to leave the cult. During the previous week, police had arrested the ministers of defense, finance, and treatment, the latter who drugged dissenters into submission.
On April 14, 1995, police arrested Masanobu Iwao, 35, for breaking and entering the facility of Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, on November 6, 1994. The facility is the firm’s major laser research lab. Aum was allegedly interested in laser weapons.
On April 15, 1995, thousands of police officers raided 130 Aum buildings, removing 53 children from the group’s main compound. Many of the children, ages 3–14, were wearing head gear with wires that Aum members claimed sent brain waves from Asahara. Some of the children were malnourished; eight were hospitalized. Police found a Russian military helicopter, gun-making materials, biological warfare supplies, and chemical warfare plants.
On April 19, 1995, police arrested Kiyohide Hayakawa, 45, Aum “construction minister” and allegedly number two in Aum. He reportedly was involved in attempts to purchase six Russian tanks.
Police at Los Angeles International Airport apprehended two Japanese Aum members a few days before Easter, who were carrying information on sarin manufacture. Police believed they were planning an attack on Disneyland.
Kyodo reported that 58 present and former members of the Self-Defense Forces had been Aum members. On May 25, 1995, police announced the arrest of Aum adherent Sgt. Tatsuya Toyama, on charges of trespassing at a research facility operated by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan’s largest defense contractor.
On April 23, 1995, Hideo Murai, Aum’s minister for science and technology, was stabbed to death in front of Aum’s Tokyo headquarters by a man who claimed to be a rightist.
On April 26, 1995, police arrested Masami Tsuchiya, 30, Aum’s top chemist. Tsuchiya told police that he produced sarin.
On April 28, 1995, the Japanese Self Defense Force announced that two army sergeants who are Aum members had tipped off the cult’s leaders in advance of the March 22, 1995, raid, permitting group members to escape with incriminating evidence. One of the sergeants also admitted throwing a Molotov cocktail at the group’s Tokyo office in an attempt to distract police and win public sympathy.
On May 6, 1995, guards thwarted a cyanide ga
s attack in a Tokyo subway station, defusing a device in a restroom.
Australia announced on May 11, 1995, that Aum had tested sarin on livestock at a sheep ranch in Western Australia. Police found sarin residue in the carcasses of 24 sheep and on the soil of a 48,000 acre sheep ranch that Aum had purchased in 1993.
By May 14, 1995, police had arrested 200 Aum members.
On May 16, 1995, police arrested Asahara, who was hiding with his wife, Tomoko Matsumoto, 36, and 6 children at the Mount Fuji complex. Police had to search for three hours in the underground tunnels and secret passages before finding him in his meditation chamber.
Prosecutors indicted Asahara and six followers on murder charges on June 6, 1995, saying that he masterminded the attacks. Prosecutors said that the Aum members packed the sarin into 11 sealed plastic bags and used umbrellas with sharpened tips to puncture them in five subway cars. Another nine Aum members were indicted on charges of “preparation for murder” for building the chemical plants where sarin was produced.
On June 6, 1995, the government announced that it would move to disband Aum, revoke its status as a religious corporation, and not permit it to enjoy tax advantages or own property in its own name. It would still be able to make converts and hold meetings.
On June 14, 1995, Asahara was also charged with ordering the strangling of Kotaro Ochida, 29, a pharmacist in a cult hospital. He was killed by Hideaki Yasuda, a former Aum member, in January 1994. Yasuda told police that Asahara and 10 other senior cult members witnessed the strangling at the commune at Kamikuishiki.
On July 5, 1995, Asahara was charged with ordering the production of LSD, truth serums, amphetamines, and other illegal drugs.
On October 30, 1995, a Tokyo District Court judge ruled that the cult must forfeit its status as a religious corporation, which could lead to a liquidator selling the group’s holdings, estimated at between $300 million and $1 billion.
On October 31, 1995, U.S. Senator Sam Nunn reported that Aum tried to purchase material for nuclear and chemical weapons in the United States and Russia, and had developed numerous front companies. The cult tried to obtain a $500,000 laser system and 400 Israeli-made gas masks, along with Russian nuclear materials.
On December 4, 1995, Asahara was served a warrant for involvement in the VX gas murder of Osaka businessman Tadahito Hamaguchi, 28, on December 12, 1994.
On May 26, 1998, Ikuo Hayashi was sentenced to life in prison for murder. The same day, court testimony indicated that Aum had conducted at least nine germ attacks in the early 1990s in an effort to kill millions of people throughout Tokyo and thousands of American service people and their families at a nearby military base. The group sprayed pestilential microbes and germ toxins from rooftops and trucks at the Diet, the Imperial Palace, the surrounding city, and the U.S. base at Yokosuka. In June 1993, cult members sprayed anthrax from the top of their building, but no one became ill. The group also sprayed anthrax via a truck around central Tokyo and sprayed botulinum toxin in the Kasumigaseki Tokyo subway in 1995.
On September 29, 1999, Aum announced it would close its branches and cease using that name.
Between 1998 and 2000, courts sentenced to death Kazuaki Okazaki, Masato Yokoyama, Yasuo Hayashi, and Satoro Hashimoto.
Asahara was sentenced to death on February 26, 2004.
April 19, 1995
Oklahoma City Bombing
Overview: The public wants to know. So analysts shuffled before television cameras and radio microphones speaking hurriedly and so soon after an incident and can be way off the mark in surmising what is really going on. From the famous Dewey Beats Truman headline to the fog of war, pundits frequently speculate beyond the data and miss the call. So it was in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing—and the later bombings of Madrid subways in 2004. Pundits rushed to judgment and declared that the mass casualty bombing had all the hallmarks of al Qaeda and that Middle Eastern terrorism had come to the heartland of America. Cursory investigation soon put the lie to that theory, as authorities determined within hours that the bombing was the handiwork of a small band of right wingers inspired by racist literature. The case of a decorated army veteran dragged on for years but ultimately led to the execution of bomber Timothy James McVeigh and the jailing of his coconspirators.
Incident: On April 19, 1995, a bomb in a 1993 Ford truck exploded at 9:02 A.M. at the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building at Fifth and Hudson Streets in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 169—including 19 children—and injuring over 500. Among the dead were 15 children who were in the America’s Kids day care center, which was destroyed when the second story of the building collapsed. Two people were found dead in a neighboring building that had been damaged. People heard the blast from 50 miles away. At least 75 buildings were condemned and at least 312 damaged. Ten buildings collapsed. Damage estimates ranged from $750 million to $1 billion.
The dead included Baylee Almon, 1, who was carried away bleeding by a fireman. The photo, sent worldwide, became a symbol of the horror of the bombing.
Approximately 250 children lost one or both of their parents in the blast.
Among the injured was a man on a Russian ice-dancing team, which had been camping out on the floor of the YMCA across from the federal building.
The bomb likely contained at least 4,800 pounds of explosives, probably including fuel oil and ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer ingredient.
Federal employees in the building worked for the Social Security Administration; the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Housing and Urban Development; the Secret Service; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the General Services Administration; the U.S. Customs Service; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and the General Accounting Office.
Rebecca Anderson, 37, a nurse helping at the scene, was killed by falling rubble. Her heart was transplanted into a 55-year-old Oklahoma man.
A caller to Brussels RTL-TVI claimed membership in the Nation of Islam and said it was responsible. He gave his name as Mohammed Ali. Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza denied involvement. The FBI received hundreds of calls claiming credit for the blast.
Federal facilities around the country were evacuated when several hoax bomb threats were received. Calls were received at federal buildings in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, at a county office building in San Diego, and at city halls in Riverside, Anaheim, and Santa Ana. Banks, post offices, and businesses received similar calls. The John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston was evacuated after an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee found several doors open that should have been locked. Federal buildings in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; Wilmington, Delaware; New York City and Rochester, New York; Cincinnati, Dayton, and Steubenville, Ohio; Miami, Florida; Spokane, Washington; Washington, D.C. (including the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Capitol buildings); Omaha, Nebraska; Kansas City; Portland, Oregon; and Boise, Idaho were also evacuated after phone threats.
Pundits initially suspected Middle Eastern terrorists after a man flew to London with bags in Rome checked on to Jordan was found carrying what appeared to be bomb-making materials. U.S. citizen Abraham Abdullah Hassan Ahmad, 31, had flown to Chicago on an American Airlines flight and was to go from Chicago to Rome and Amman on an Alitalia flight. Customs officials in Chicago questioned him for so long he missed his flight. Italian authorities opened his luggage, which contained needlenosed pliers, spools of electric wire, kitchen knives, photographic materials, a video recording device, aluminum foil, and silicon that could be used in making a bomb. Also included was a photo album with pictures of military weapons, including missiles and armored vehicles. Police also found three gym suits similar to those worn by a person seen near the site of the bombing. British authorities returned him to the United States. After questioning, he was released. On November 9, 1995, he filed a $1.9 million suit against the federal government. The FBI issued an all-points bulletin for three
men seen speeding from the city in a brown pickup truck.
Attorney General Janet Reno announced a $2 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the bombers.
On April 21, 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice reported the arrest of McVeigh, 27, a member of the right-wing Michigan Militia, which views the U.S. government as the enemy of the common man. McVeigh was angry with the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, two years earlier, in which scores died. Eight minutes after the bomb went off, he was picked up in a 1977 Mercury Marquis 20 miles from the bombing site on a traffic offense; federal authorities did not know until later that he was in custody. Police found residue of ammonium nitrate and high explosives inside the car.
According to records unsealed on November 3, 1995, McVeigh was also carrying political documents and a note citing the right to kill political oppressors. The package included a copy of the Declaration of Independence, material on the Branch Davidian raid, material on the battles of Lexington and Concord, an antigovernment leaflet, and quotations from political philosophers, including 17th-century philosopher John Locke.
McVeigh had served in the army, and was decorated for his service as a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle in Desert Storm. After returning from the Gulf War, an injury prevented him from successfully competing for a position with the Green Berets. He was discharged as a sergeant on December 31, 1991. He developed contacts with various militia groups in Michigan and Arizona, and stayed with his friends, the Nichols, on their Dexter, Michigan, farm. He supported himself buying and selling guns as “T. Tuttle.”
The truck used in the attack was rented from the Ryder rental agency in Junction City, Kansas, by two white men using aliases. John Doe One, later identified as McVeigh, was described as 5 feet 10 inches tall, of medium build, weighing about 180 pounds with light, close-cropped hair, and right-handed. John Doe Two was of medium build at 5 feet 9 inches tall, 175 pounds, with brown hair and a tattoo on his lower left arm, and possibly a smoker. Months later, investigators were uncertain of his identity, or whether he even existed.
The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks Page 16
