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An interesting morsel from the Wikileaks files: an allegation the Afghan insurgency, in conjunction with Pakistan’s ISI spy agency, tried to poison an American contractor working in Afghanistan though poisoning his beer.
The Christian Science Monitor details the plot, identifying the target as James Yeager, an American geologist. Yeager alleges he returned home one night to find his home burgled, with only a bottle of Corona beer left behind. Since Yeager didn’t like Corona, the beer left sit for sometime until, in a moment of boozy desperation, he cracked it open.
“I pulled it out and when I popped it there was no fizz and the cap was loose,” Yeager tells the CSM. “Because this one didn’t have fizz you wonder if it went rancid or not, and I just kind of sniffed it and I went ‘Oh, that doesn’t smell like beer.’”
Yeager identified the smell as sulfuric acid, which meshes with a report in the trove of documents released by Wikileaks this weekend, the contents of which allege that insurgents planned similar beer attacks. However, even with Yeager’s report, experts remain skeptical of the validity of the intelligence and warn that the plot should be “taken with a grain of salt.” (via the Christian Science Monitor.)