Aum Shinrikyo: Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons

In 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo unleashed terror on the Tokyo subway system with a highly-publicized sarin gas attack. However, less is known about the group’s development of biological and chemical weapons and about their prior attacks using these weapons.

At an event on July 28, 2011, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released a major report, Aum Shinrikyo: Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons, with never-before documented information on the group and its operations.

The CNAS report Aum Shinrikyo will culminate a multi-year project led by Richard Danzig, former Secretary of the Navy and Chairman of the CNAS Board of Directors; with Marc Sageman, Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army on the Insider Threat; Terrance Leighton, Senior Staff Scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and Chief Scientist at Science Applications International Corporation; Lloyd Hough, Senior Research Scientist at Battelle in International Technology Assessments; Zachary Hosford, Research Associate at CNAS; and two Japanese colleagues investigating these issues. Through personal interviews and correspondence with former members of Aum Shinrikyo’s leadership, the authors have compiled new insights into the secretive organization. The observations from this study have wide-ranging applications for terrorist groups worldwide.