Domestic and transnational terrorism was ramping up, as illustrated by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivans bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Holder's 'disgraceful' history

The next year the Tokyo subway was hit with a sarin gas attack, and in 1996 China launched missiles into waters near Taiwan, a few dozen miles from Japanese territory.

FORBES: The Front Line

The Japanese cult-group Aum Shinrikyo is best known for its 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, but it is believed that it also planned to use biological weapons against American troops in Japan.

ECONOMIST: Biowarfare could be the worst terrorist threat of all

Even though the cult's members killed 12 people and injured several thousand in a 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the government decided last year on the basis of a narrow interpretation of the law that it could not ban the group--to the incredulity of many Japanese.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia

The US government had previous funded MIT to do research into how carbon nanotubes could be used to detect nerve toxins including Sarin following a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway which killed 12 people in 1995.

BBC: MIT pencil 'draws' gas sensors onto paper