Some commentators point to Aum Shinrikyo--the Japanese cult that released the nerve gas sarin in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000--to bolster their case for the likelihood of a bioterrorist attack in the U.S. in the near future. But in fact, Aum Shinrikyo is a better example for the counterargument. The cult repeatedly tried to produce and disseminate deadly biological agents--and each attempt failed.

This religious, apocalyptic cult with political aspirations had the time and the resources to make botulinum toxin and anthrax. Aum was a perpetual moneymaking machine with assets at one time estimated to be more than $1 billion. It recruited a small coterie of scientists who supervised a large number of lab technicians. It set up front companies to acquire the needed production equipment, organisms, and chemicals.

After months of preparation, Aum then attempted at least four times to release biological agents. Each time it failed to disperse an agent that harmed or killed humans either because it hadn't produced a virulent strain or couldn't deliver the agent in the form that caused respiratory infection. Most disturbingly, Aum went about its activities without the knowledge of Japanese authorities.

Aum's biological weapons program was its first foray into developing weapons of mass destruction. "Aum only went into chemical weapons development because it couldn't get its biological weapons to operate properly," explains Kyle B. Olson, an expert on the cult's activities.

Olson, program manager on Research Planning's (Falls Church, Va.) contract with the Justice Department's domestic preparedness program, says Aum's first bioweapons lab was set up in 1990 in its Kamikuishiki headquarters at the foot of Mount Fuji. Late in 1992, Olson says, the cult replaced its first lab with one in another part of the headquarters' facility and another in a midrise office building in Tokyo.

Initially, the cult worked on developing botulinum toxin. Its first test of the efficacy of the agent occurred in April 1990 when it released it from trucks circling office buildings near the Diet--the Japanese parliament--in Tokyo. Nothing happened: No one died or even became ill.

In June 1993, Aum made its second attempt, releasing botulinum toxin from a vehicle targeting the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The cult then drove the truck to the U.S. naval base at Yokosuka and released the agent near the base. Again, nothing happened at either location.

Because of its failures with botulinum toxin, the cult switched to anthrax. In late June and again in July 1993, Aum released anthrax from the roof of the building in Tokyo housing its lab. No one got sick, so the cult switched back to botulinum toxin for its next attempt.

Five days before its nerve-gas attack in 1995, Aum placed three cylinders containing botulinum toxin under escalators at the Kasumigaseki subway station--the one closest to key government buildings. As Olson tells C&EN, Japan's National Police Agency reports that the cult member responsible for filling the cylinders with the biological agent got cold feet and instead filled them with water.

Why did Aum fail so abysmally? "The cult was not terribly savvy," Olson says. "Its strength in the biosciences was not very deep, and it made rudimentary mistakes." For instance, it didn't have the correct strain of anthrax, and what strain it did have it released in a wet slurry, not as a more effective dry inhalable aerosol. And, Olson says, Aum chose to disseminate botulinum toxin in bright daylight, leaving it vulnerable to the sun's ultraviolet rays. It is also possible that Aum was working with a weak strain of the organism Clostridium botulinum, and thus released a weak toxin.

Biochemist Milton Leitenberg, who has investigated claims of the cult's biological prowess, tells C&EN that Aum "had only a vaccine strain of anthrax that would not make people ill." He says his Japanese sources have told him Aum couldn't produce botulinum toxin. And despite statements to the contrary, Leitenberg, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland's Center for International & Security Studies, has found no evidence that the cult acquired the organism that produces Q-fever, or the Ebola virus.

After the subway attack, the cult's activities were widely chronicled by the media and grabbed the attention of influential officials in the Clinton Administration and in Congress. Measures to counter the possibility of a similar event in the U.S. began to be put in place. But the fevered rhetoric immediately following the subway attack has continued unabated and has been cited as a cause for the myriad hoaxes now occurring nearly daily in the U.S.

It's important to remember, Leitenberg cautions: "Aum was not your typical terrorist group. It had at least four years of undetected activity, unlimited funds, a reasonable pool of people, and all the right equipment--and still it failed."

Olson, however, takes little comfort in Aum's failures. "A more sophisticated group--one that will not make the same mistakes that Aum did--may come along."

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