Feds: Al Qaeda Mata Hari Wanted To Poison Pres. Carter

August 13, 2008— -- Long before Aafia Siddique was arrested in Afghanistan last month, allegedly in possession of a list of New York targets and chem-bio weapons information, she had allegedly developed a plot, however improbable or amateurish, to kill Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush and to attack the White House. Siddique plotted to use weapons that included biological agents to contaminate former president Carter's water, according to multiple federal sources.

Those allegations, some contained in the federal complaint filed on July 31st by the US Attorney in Manhattan, the details expanded on by sources spoken to by ABC News, paint Siddique, 36, as a committed Al Qaeda operative, and one whose capture could hold the key to identifying other operatives and supporters both in the US and overseas.

But her lawyer, activist attorney Elizabeth Fink, says the entire government case against Siddique is a lie.

"They used the same stuff 40 years ago...against the Black Panthers, against the Attica Brothers...a list of targets in their possession...why would anyone be in Ghanzi, Afghanistan walking around with a list of landmarks of New York?," Fink asked. "These people are nuts and don't even know how to lie."

Fink, a protégé of now deceased firebrand William H. Kunstler, says that everything in Siddique's past points to a life completely different than the government has alleged in its criminal complaint.

"She graduates MIT summa cum laude. She gets her MS and her PhD from Brandeis -- Brandeis! Eating Kosher and living with the Jews; all of a sudden she turns into an Al Qaeda operative? If that's true this country is doomed. Doomed," said Fink.

According to the complaint, Siddique who attended MIT as an undergraduate and earned her PhD in neuroscience at Brandeis, was carrying detailed chemical-biological radiological weapon information when she was arrested in Afghanistan. ABC News sources say the information, including hand written notes, was of a kind that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases . In addition, Siddique allegedly was carrying a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News has learned.