Terrorists linked to al-Qaida may have tested biological weapons at a small facility in northern Iraq known to American intelligence, a U.S. official said Monday. U.S. intelligence agencies had reason to suspect that the facility, in a part of northern Iraq not controlled by President Saddam Hussein's government, was a kind of laboratory for chemical and biological weapons activity that included testing on barnyard animals and at least one man, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials believe the terrorists tested a biological toxin known as ricin, a deadly poison made from the castor bean plant.

The Pentagon has reviewed possibly taking military action because any time there is intelligence about production of weapons of mass destruction all options are considered, including military, a U.S. counterterror official said in Washington.

The Bush administration considered a covert military operation against the facility in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, but President Bush did not approve military action, ABC News' "World News Tonight" reported Monday.

Citing unidentified intelligence officials, ABC News said that as U.S. surveillance of the weapons facility intensified, Bush administration officials concluded it was too small and crude to be worth risking American lives and the outcry among allies that might follow any U.S. action inside Iraq.

At the White House, a spokesman for Bush's National Security Council refused comment.

"As a matter of policy, we don't discuss whether something was or was not briefed to the president," spokesman Michael Anton said in Washington. "We don't discuss military targeting - whether something is, was or might be a military target."

The official who privately discussed U.S. knowledge of the facility said it was operated recently by a small number of people connected to terrorists in Ansar al-Islam, an Arab organization with links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. The official would not say whether the facility was still in operation.

U.S. intelligence agencies have no evidence that Saddam is linked to the operation, the official said.

The revelations put the Bush White House in an uncomfortable position, with the president promising to almost every audience he addresses - to much applause - that his administration will "hunt the killers down one by one" and prevent America's enemies from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

"With the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, along with ballistic missile technology, freedom's enemies could attain catastrophic power. And there's no doubt that they would use that power to attack us and to attack the values we uphold," Bush told a group of conservative leaders from the International Democrat Union at a White House dinner in June.

"We will oppose the new totalitarians with all our power. We will hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice."

PHOTO CAPTION

Stills released by CNN August 19, 2002 come from a video which appears to show al Qaeda members testing chemical weapons on a dog. The tapes, believed to have been made before the September 11 attacks and recently obtained by CNN will be examined by U.S. officials to see if they contain any useful intelligence information, the White House said. Photo by Reuters (Handout) combination image allegedly shows the gas being released (top photo, lower L) and the dog reacting (R). CNN on Sunday broadcast the excerpts, of a total of 64 videotapes made over a decade, nearly all of them shot before the Sept. 11 attacks on America last year blamed on the group led by Osama bin Laden. U.S. forces who invaded Afghanistan last year to topple the then Taliban rulers and try to crush al Qaeda seized documents and other evidence they said showed that bin Laden was trying to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It is not known whether bin Laden survived the U.S. operation in Afghanistan.
- Aug 19 4:42 PM ET