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establish a ―branch‖ office or school within their local community. By engaging in such
practices, the cult succeeded in gaining leverage through extortion, coercion, theft, and
murder as forms of fund-raising for the cult.xii
Asahara and his closest followers planned to defend themselves against the coming
Armageddon by creating a formidable arsenal that would enable Aum Shinrikyo to survive
and become the most powerful group in the world. Despite high expectations and several
attempts at local elections, Asahara and other leaders failed to gain a seat in the Japanese
parliament. Due to these unmet expectations about changing Japan‘s political culture,
Aum‘s leadership became more radical and the group‘s goals began to alter. Asahara would
later preach that it was ―the duty of Aum members to hasten Armageddon,‖ and subsequent
efforts to attack the Japanese legislature also were indicative of Aum‘s disappointments with
the democratic system.xiii
While the group‘s most notorious act involved the release of sarin gas, Aum attempted to
acquire various types of other weapons, including biological, nuclear, and radiological
material. The cult‘s close relationship with followers in Russia seemingly gave it the
opportunity to leverage its vast wealth and contacts with Russian security forces and the
black-market to acquire weapons-grade fissile material yet it failed.iv Aum remained open
to all alternatives for possessing a WMD capability, but in the end chose to develop chemical
weapons. Yet, the cult‘s failure to acquire a nuclear capability was not from a lack of desire
or effort. Aum invested a great deal of time and resources in its attempt to purchase
advanced weapons. According to a recent RAND study, Hayakawa Kiyohide, a senior Aum
leader, made eight trips to Russia in 1994 and with a budget of $15 million sought to
acquire a nuclear bomb.xv
Despite efforts to bribe senior Russian officials with exclusive access to foreign technologies
markets, Aum failed in its quest to purchase a nuclear weapon.xvi Aum actively sought to
recruit scientists and employees from Russia‘s Kurchatov Institute and Moscow State
University to join the cult.xvii At one point, Aum leaders requested but were subsequently
denied a meeting with the then Russian Energy Minister, Victor Mikhailov, to discuss the
purchase of a nuclear warhead. Undaunted, the group later pursued efforts to build a
nuclear weapon by collecting required materials and mining uranium in Western Australia
from land purchased by the group.xviii Their objective was to construct a bomb in Japan with
plans to enrich the uranium through the use of laser technology. Despite Aum‘s vast wealth
and contacts, Shoko Asahara and his followers eventually abandoned their efforts and chose
to pursue a less difficult, less costly chemical option, which was also less destructive.
Between 1990 and 1995 and prior to the Tokyo subway attack, Aum made several attempts
at chemical attacks, but with limited results. Prior to the subway attack, Asahara and his
core leaders discovered that, local authorities and law enforcement personnel had plans to
conduct police raids against cult facilities and offices. Up to this point, Aum had succeeded
in exploiting Japan‘s extensive legal protections for religious organizations, which enabled
Aum to operate in a highly permissive environment without much interference from the
state.xix But by March 20, 1995, Aum‘s leaders realized that the Japanese authorities‘ case
against their group threatened its leaders. Asahara became convinced that his arrest along
with other senior cult members was imminent. He believed that the only strategy that
remained was a pre-emptive attack to strike fear as a last act in order to ensure the group‘s
survival. Despite having limited success in its previous efforts with chemical agents, Aum
believed that a successful attack would have enough psychological impact to secure the
group‘s future. In the end, what remains clear is that Aum displayed a great deal of resolve
in its effort to employ tactics that would cause mass casualties.xx
Asahara‘s fear of Japanese authorities compelled him and his inner circle to go deeper
underground. From Aum‘s perspective, this act improved the cult‘s chances for survival

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while reducing the likelihood of death or capture, particularly among the group‘s leaders.
Going underground would also isolate the movement from the outside world and would limit
the opportunity to add new recruits or replenish losses. Additionally, this act had the added
effect of further radicalizing the group‘s tactics and ideology. As a result, Aum‘s behavior
began to reflect the internal dynamics of the organization rather than the pursuit of a
specific strategic objective.xxi The group began to develop a tight identity, social
connections, interpersonal bonds, and a sense of cohesion. The move towards greater
isolation intensified the group‘s resolve to shift toward more violent activity.xxii The
organization‘s decision-making began to reflect the group‘s internal dynamics as groupthink
eliminated dissent within the leadership‘s inner core. Loyalty to the peer group took on a
more profound meaning and became an important motive as activists shifted toward a
deepening commitment to the cause of group survival.xxiii
What began as an apocalyptic strategy, however bizarre in nature, degenerated into an
irrational act of mass violence that reflected the paranoid desperation of the group‘s
leadership. The leadership abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons and opted for a less
catastrophic chemical weapon—a weapon of mass disruption, rather than mass destruction.
The Tokyo subway attack, then, was not so much an ―act‖ of terrorism linked to a strategic
objective of hastening Armageddon through weapons of mass destruction as it was a violent
―acting out‖ of a leader‘s psychopathological need to hurt the countrymen who had
frustrated his grandiose and delusional goals.
The group was renamed in 2000 to Aleph (meaning ―to start anew‖), but it has yet to
relinquish its ties with Shoko Asahara. According to a New York Times article, when asked
about its relationship with Asahara, Aleph‘s current leader Fumihiro Joyu, stated that "Just
like you wouldn't stop your connection with physical fathers and mothers who commit a
crime, we will not sever our connection with our spiritual father."xxiv The psychological bond
to the charismatic leader endures, despite his utter failure to bring about the changes that
he once promised to his followers.
Al-Qaeda
Like Asahara, Osama bin Laden developed antisystem frames to provide an ethical
justification for Al Qaeda‘s violence against civilians. For example, on 23 Feb 1998, Osama
bin Laden released his Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders, where he states his three
major grievances with the United States: first, the occupation of ―the lands of Islam in the
holiest places, the Arabian peninsula‖ second, ―the crusader-Zionist alliance‖ third, ―[the
United States‘ intent] to fragment all the (Arab) states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to
guarantee Israel‘s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the
peninsula.‖xxv Released by the World Islamic Front, al Qaeda‘s fatwa ―became the manifesto
of the full-fledged global Salafi jihad‖ and heralded bin Laden‘s call to carry out the jihad
against ―far enemy.‖xxvi
By tapping into a populist pan-Islamic theme, bin Laden attempts to draw support from the
broader Muslim community. His message strives to appeal to a wider global audience and
rally a Muslim population of over 1 billion people to al Qaeda‘s cause. His effort is intended
to reduce the psychological cost of participating in an extremist cause. Bin Laden‘s words
seem to echo della Porta‘s observation that ―The ideology of the terrorist organizations
offered (1) a justification of political violence, including murder (2) an image of the
external world that masked the failures of the armed struggle and (3) a positive evaluation
of the role of individual action.‖xxvii Similar to Aum, al Qaeda has drawn support from those
sympathetic to its cause. Although Aum‘s idiosyncratic framing of its cause limited its
appeal, Bin Laden leveraged common cultural and religious frames to serve the group‘s
strategic ideological objectives and thereby gained much wider support than Aum.