The FBI has issued an order for American law enforcement agencies to be on the look out for the use of the toxin ricin as an assassination tool. This came after British police arrested a dozen al Qaeda connected North Africans who were apparently making ricin and had plans to use it. No information has been released on how the ricin would be used. The toxin is not known to be useful as a weapon of mass destruction, but al Qaeda is known to be interested in ricin for some reason. Documents and equipment captured in Afghanistan confirmed this. It's possible that the al Qaeda researchers were just confused. This has been seen to happen before when al Qaeda investigated high tech weapons or chemical and biological agents.