Aum ShinrikyoOn an ordinary Monday morning in 1995, millions of Tokyo residents headed to work or school boarded trains on the world's second busiest subway. Only five people on the trains that morning knew that the events of March 20 would change the lives of nearly every commuter that day. Between 8:00 and 8:10 that morning, a simultaneous attack on five deferential cars, all destined to converge on Kasumigaseki station, a key location where several government ministries are located, killed 12 people and injured another 5,000. The attacks were carried out by members of a doomsday religious cult known as Aum Shinrikyo (Aum), and consisted of vials of the nerve agent Sarin wrapped in newspaper. The five men carrying the packages, eleven in all, placed them on the train floor and in the overhead compartments, pierced the vials with specially sharpened umbrella tips, and got off at the next stop. The liquid sarin leaked out and vaporized rapidly, making anyone nearby susceptible to blurred vision, eye pain, nausea, miosis, hyperemia, and nosebleeds (Seto, 2001). On that spring day in Tokyo, Aum succeeded in becoming the first non-state-sponsored terrorist group to carry out a large-scale indiscriminate chemical attack on a civilian population. The events of March 20, however, were not unprecedented. Aum engaged in various forms of biological and chemical attacks for five years before attacking innocent citizens on the Tokyo subway, however the signals were ignored and the group was able to continue developing deadly weapons and experimenting with delivery methods effective with significantly reduced government. and law enforcement suspicions until shortly before the 1995 attack. ... middle of the document ... especially noteworthy since the Japanese military is limited to a small self-defense force and any legitimate need to weapons entering the country was well documented. MSO operations focused on customs activities and shipments in and out of the ports of Vladivostok, Russia, and major seaports in northwestern Japan. When it comes to importing weapons and military equipment, the MSO is not the only effort that could have been helpful. Law enforcement agencies in the United States, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, were well informed about the threat of domestic terrorism. The liaison between American and Japanese law enforcement could have provided crucial information to local authorities on how to recognize illegal weapons imports and the significance of doing so..