U.S. Intelligence Is Tracking New Terror Mastermind and His Network. When the bombs start falling in any war with Iraq, one of the prime targets will be a nondescript cluster of huts in the Kurdish hills, where an emerging terrorist mastermind is believed to be running a poison factory. Secretary of State Colin Powell has put the camp and its creator — a 36-year-old Jordanian named Abu Mussab al Zarqawi — at the heart of the U.S. justification for attacking Iraq. The camp, though located on Kurdish territory outside of Saddam Hussein’s control, is believed to house a poison laboratory whose very existence, Powell said, points to a “sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network.” U.S. intelligence believes al Qaeda experts at the lab have been training operatives to produce lethal substances like cyanide and ricin, the poison found in a recent raid in London. Powell said Zarqawi also had a “base of operations” in Baghdad from which his lieutenants — with Saddam’s blessing — were dispatching trained operatives to fan out across the Middle East and Europe. U.S. forces have targeted the camp and are tracking Zarqawi, but if they succeed in taking either of them out, they may not be striking against either al Qaeda or Iraq, sources have told ABCNEWS.com. Full Story
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