rnment area, which is close to many Ministries, and the National Police Agency (NPA) Headquarters. Some commentators began to think that the attack was targeted on NPA officers. Some commentators evidently anticipated that the Tokyo attack was a prelude to the issuing of demands by the criminal. Commentators also expressed surprise that, given the toxicity of sarin and the nature of the target, the casualty had not in fact been much higher. Others suggested that the agent may simply have been impure, perhaps deliberately diluted either self-protection of the attackers or to keep the number of fatalities low. This theory appeared confirmed by the discovery early on the traces of another substance, acetonitrile (or methyl cyanide), which it could have been used to dilute the gas. Some Unexplained Incidents:In the days following the subway attack, as the casualty toll continued to rise, the Amu Shinri Kyo (or Supreme Truth), whose leader- Shoko Asahara, had in the past shown an interested in chemical and biological warfare. Two days after the attack, large numbers of police officers began massive raids on the sects many facilities throughout Japan, on the pretext of searching for kidnap victims (since there was no immediate evidence linking it to the subway attack). At one location particular, a compound or commune at Kamikuishiki in the surroundings of Mount Fuji 100 km west of Tokyo, they discovered extensive facilities for the manufacture of chemical weapons and huge stockpiles of the chemicals themselves, including all of the necessary ingredient for the manufacture of sarin. However, despite repeated searches over many days, the authorities were unable to come up with a smoking gun linking the sect directly to the Tokyo Subway Attack.But there had been a series of unexplained incidents leading up to the subway attack that might have suggested that terrorists were experimenting with poisonous gas. The most significant of these occurred...
