A former National Police Agency executive regrets failing to raid Aum Shinrikyo bases before the doomsday cult mounted its sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system 30 years ago.

"We didn't expect an attack," Takashi Kakimi, former head of the NPA's Criminal Affairs Bureau, said in an interview before the 30th anniversary on Thursday of the 1995 sarin attack. "We were completely behind."

Kakimi assumed the bureau's top post in September 1993. "At that time, we did not recognize the group as a dangerous organization," he said.

He changed his view in August 1994, about two months after a sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.

He received a report from the Nagano Prefectural Police, then investigating the incident, that "a company linked to the religious group was buying large amounts of raw materials for sarin."

In November 1994, residual substances of sarin were detected in soil in Kamikuishiki, a now-defunct village in Yamanashi Prefecture, where Aum facilities were located.

"It would be very dangerous if (the group) had sarin. We had to do something about it," Kakimi said.

Police soon stepped up discussions on a possible full-scale investigation into the cult.

On Dec. 15, 1994, senior police officials held a meeting, including with the NPA commissioner-general and Kakimi, but when to conduct the raids was not decided.

"Our conclusion was that facts had not been sufficiently elucidated," he recalled.

At that time, the Yamanashi, Nagano, Miyazaki and Kanagawa prefectural police were investigating the cult.

On Feb. 28, 1995, the abduction of a notary public occurred in Tokyo, prompting the Metropolitan Police Department, which has much greater resources, to launch probes into the cult.

The NPA and the MPD repeatedly discussed how to proceed with the investigations and decided to conduct simultaneous searches of the cult's facilities in Kamikuishiki on March 22, 1995.

Considering the possibility that Aum members would use sarin to resist, police procured protective suits.

The group carried out the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway system around 8 a.m. on March 20, 1995, two days before the planned police raids. The attack killed 14 people and injured more than 6,000.

Kakimi got off a subway train at Kasumigaseki Station immediately after the attack and went to work at the NPA. He was deeply shocked.

"I have little memory of that day," he observed.

"I thought that if sarin had been sprayed, Aum had done it," he said.

On whether the attack could have been prevented, Kakimi said that at the time that the NPA believed that evidence must be secured before launching a full-scale investigation.

"As I think about it now, there might have been an option to conduct the investigations a little earlier," he said.

It was certain that the police would come under harsh criticism if the raids ended in failure, because there was no evidence that the cult produced or possessed sarin.

Still, he said, "We might have been able to search the Aum facilities earlier if I had been prepared enough to lose my job."

On March 22, 1995, about 2,500 members of the MPD and other police searched 25 locations, including the cult's facilities in Kamikuishiki. They found chemicals and chemical plants needed to produce sarin.