Annie Jacobson on Aafia Siddiqui and an Alleged Bioweapons Plot

One of which involves an Al-Qaeda terrorist that was captured.

She's actually now in Texas in a mental institution

for the rest of her life.

Her name is Afia Siddiqui.

She's an MIT-trained biologist related by marriage to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

OK? And she was leading the biological weapons program.

This is according to the CIA officers.

She was trained at MIT?

She was trained at MIT and then she went back to Pakistan.

She was the first woman on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list.

How come they have her in a mental institute?

Because they caught her.

And then this part is reported.

They caught her and somehow,

again the air quote, somehow she got a hold of a Marine's rifle and was firing at the FBI agents interviewing

her. This is all public.

And she was shot.

They take her to the United States, gave her a trial, decided she was insane, put her in a mental institution.

But what had never been revealed before my book is that in her handbag,

she had plans to create a genetically modified pathogen that mixed rabies with chicken pox.

Think about that.

Imagine airborne rabies.

Rabies-like pneumonic plague is one of the only other pathogens that has 100 percent death rate

without countermeasures. And rabies, like when you see it in animals, I've

never actually encountered a rabbit animal in the wild as much as I know.

But when you see them, they want to infect something else.

They get hyper aggressive. They want to bite you.

So they bite you. They give it to you,

which is really crazy.

Like this disease makes them throw their own safety out the window and just go after people and try to bite them.

I mean it's like rabies is now its own rabid animal.

You think of it, it's so visceral.

It's going to come at you with its infected saliva.

I almost went with the rabies scenario because I always in these scenarios tie them to actual events that have happened so that

readers don't go like this is Annie Jacobson's dystopian imagination as much as they say oh she's following what you know science.

This is science fact not science fiction.

And so when I learned about that plan for the genetic modification of rabies in chicken airborne rabies.

But then I thought.

How far did she get along with this?

That is classified Annie you know.

But I did get a second person David Relman who's the advisor to the president on biodefense to confirm with me that that was actually located in her handbag and caused serious concern.

And I imagine if they never found her, they never caught her and she completed that.

I mean it's really terrifying.

It wipes out most of the country.

And also just in the most horrific way.

I mean you know like having to like look at your pet and be like is my pet rabid.

It's just. She did catch it too.

Another project.

Oh she had another project?

Multiple projects.

She had collected materials on viruses for biological warfare and one of her projects is finding its way to infect America's poultry supplies with an antibody that would allow chickens to pass salmonella onto humans more easily.

She later destroyed her work after suspecting Abu Lubab was hoping to double cross her and turn her into the United States authorities.

This is a long Wikipedia with quite a bit of twists and turns.

I'm surprised it's not a movie.

It's a lot going on.

Oh my God. And

that's one person that we caught.

Now that's not like this is the only time they thought of that.

This is the only person that they tried to recruit to do this kind of stuff.

There's probably someone out there right now.

Hence, your book.

Danielle Pletka I mean, I interviewed this guy, very famous legendary CIA officer named Rolf Moat Larson, and he led the counter WMD team, right?

So he would go to places basically like with a bunch of ground branch guys, CIA paramilitary guys behind him.

He was kind of like the intelligentsia at the front to try to negotiate with Al-Qaeda weapons makers,

biological weapons makers, and say like, you can't do this.

It's going to kill all of us.

And he told me a couple stories and I write them like history lessons in the book.

Once he went to Sudan and met with the top biological weapons maker for Al-Qaeda.

And like, you know, it's just chilling.

It's basically you get the feeling like that Rolf said, I got them to agree to stop temporarily.

Temporarily.

Sorry, Joe. This is the nightmare stuff.