Secret Files Found on ISIS Laptop
BLITZER: Providing chilling insight into ISIS and its tactic -- talking about black Dell computer found in a safe house in Syria containing thousands of files. It details everything from instructions on turning the bubonic plague into a weapon and making ricin, car bombs, plastic explosives. Brian Todd has been digging into this story which is worrisome. What are U.S. officials telling you?</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are told they are aware of the capture of this laptop but they don't have a lot of other detail on it. What we're hearing from them and from other experts is there's no evidence necessarily that ISIS has the capability of dispersing biological weapons. It takes a lot to do that. What we do know, according to "Foreign Policy" magazine -- they accessed this computer. They talked to the person in a moderate Syrian rebel group who was with that group when they captured this laptop in an ISIS safe house in northern Syria. The house was abandoned. But an ISIS fighter that joined Syria and studied chemistry and physics in Tunisia had this on his laptop and he took off and left but they got the laptop and files in it. In the files, as you mention, there were instructions on how to make biological weapons and how to weaponize the plague from infected animals. One of the documents says, quote, "The advantage of biological weapons is that they don't cost a lot of money while the human casualties will be huge." They have at least thought about this. They have maybe some designs on possibly doing this. But again, what we're told by experts is it takes a lot of technical know-how and money and facilities, labs, things like this to weaponize this material and disperse it over a wide area. No evidence that ISIS has that capability.</s>BLITZER: It reminds me of that "Inspire" magazine --</s>TODD: Right.</s>BLITZER: -- a slick, English language, online publication put out by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and an article entitled, "How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."</s>TODD: Right. They do that all the time in "Inspire" magazine, these instruction manuals. That's the kind of things that were in this laptop. And these were detailed files on how to make this stuff. How to make ricin. This was, again, a jihadi who studied chemistry and physics. This was a guy with some scientific and technological know how. Another thing, Wolf, that is disturbing is in big cities in Iraq, like Mosul and Erbil -- Erbil is not captured by ISIS but Mosul is. They have universities and labs. Those areas are under the control of ISIS. Could they get into a lab and explore this stuff? Sure they could. That's what's concerning.</s>BLITZER: Mosul is the second-largest city in Iraq under control of ISIS terrorists, and an army, if you will, nearly two million people there. A lot of sophisticated potential to do damage coming from Mosul. It also shows this laptop. The progression of someone being radicalized.</s>TODD: That's right. It talks about -- it shows pictures of this guy that is called Mohammad S. -- they don't have a last name -- about how he was a normal guy up until about 2011. He was kind of a college student type, wearing Western clothes, listening to Western music and things like that, and then around 2011 he changed. What happened in 2011 was the Arab Spring in Tunisia. And he came under the radar of the Tunisian government and they were worried about him. We don't know where he is now. It did show the progression of how he became a radical and how he changed a little bit. We'll look into this stuff in "The Situation Room" at 5:00 and laptop and what it shows and some of the things they could have designs on that are disturbing. Again, whether they have technical know how, they're a long way from that.</s>BLITZER: All right. Thanks very much. Still ahead, Islamic State is not only a threat to the United States but many countries around the world. We'll take a closer look at the global fight to stop this radical group.