Federal authorities were searching for a third member of the "Army of God" accused of kidnapping and threatening to kill an abortion clinic operator and his wife unless they stopped performing abortions. Two men charged in the August kidnappings were arrested Sunday, three months after Dr. Hector Zevallos and his wife were released unharmed after eight days in captivity. Don Benny Anderson, 41, of Pearland, Texas, was still being sought.

Schwandner and Pera Jump Bail and Fly to Cuba

Once out on bond, Schwandner and Pera jumped bail and made their way to Jamaica where, on March 21, they hijacked hijacked a small plane owned by Jamaica Air Taxi Service, headquartered in Montego, and at gunpoint the two men forced pilot Marshall Greene to fly them to Cuba. Upon arriving in Cuba, Schwandner and Pera were held on hijacking charges. Fugitive warrants were issued in Chicago when they failed to show up for a March 29 court hearing charging them with conspiracy to committ murder.

The Cubans later arrested them for "counter-revolutionary activities," and sentenced Schwandner to six years in prison, and Pera to four. Pera returned to the United States in 1975 and voluntarily surrendered. Pera said he and Schwandner separated after arriving in Cuba. He said he believed Schwandner was either dead, or in a Cuban prison.

Pera said he contracted emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis and suffered from malnutrition and anemia during his stay in Cuba. He said he had lost about 130 pounds since he went to Cuba weighing nearly 300 pounds.

When arrested in Chicago in 1972, Schwandner and Pera were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. But when Pera returned to stand trial, the charge of conspiracy to commit murder was somehow dismissed, leaving only the bail jumping charge. After initially pleading not guilty to charges of conspiracy to committ murder, Pera negotiated a plea agreement with State's Attorney Richard Devine. Judge Frank Wilson sentenced Pera to five years probation.

Interesting is the fact that Judge Frank Wilson was known to take bribes to fix important cases.

 

In the late 1970s, before turning FBI informant, Mob-lawyer Robert Cooley passed $10,000 to Judge Frank Wilson in order to secure an acquittal for Harry Aleman, an accomplished Outfit assassin accused of murdering truck dispatcher and Teamsters Union steward William Logan in 1977.

On January 7, 1977 Pera's lawyer, Rick Halprin, filed a motion requesting that Pera's probation be terminated, which apparently it was at a court hearing on February 4, 1977 (Chicago Sun Times; Wisconsin State Journal; Bioterrorism & Biocrimes, 1972 preliminary hearing transcripts held at the office of Cook County State's Attorney Richard A. Divine).

Steve Pera, who in January 1972 had amassed an enormous cache of biological weapons and was just days away from carrying out a plot intended to kill emormous numbers of people and who after being caught jumped bail and hijacked a plane to Cuba, received no jail time for his crime and spent a mere two years on probation.

Where did Pera, an unemployed dropout get all that money to hire one of the best defense attorney's in the country? How was Pera able to come up with the financing, connections, and the perfect escape plan that allowed him and Schwandner to travel from Chicago to Cuba within days of making bail. And how did Pera and Schwandner carryout their perfect escape right under the noses of the Chicago police and State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan without tipping anybody off?

Hanrahan, seen as an anti-black, law and order conservative, was acquitted (Oct 1972) of conspiring to obstruct justice stemming from a controversial 1969 raid by his police on a Black Panther apartment, in which the groups' leader and a member were murdered and the evidence covered up by police. In November of 1982 - the City of Chicago, Cook County and the Federal Government entered into a settlement agreement that awarded $1.85 million to the nine survivors and the relatives of murder victims Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

 RISE Founder Beaten to Death in Cuban Prison

Chicago Sun Times - March 29, 1978

 

A former Chicagoan accused of conspiracy to poison the city’s water supply in 1972 was beaten to death in a Cuban prison in 1974, according to skyjackers kicked out of Cuba.

 

The death of Allan C. Schwandner was reported by six skyjackers who were ejected from Cuba last week, federal sources said Tuesday. Schwandner, then 19, and Steven Pera, then 18, were arrested here on Jan 18, 1972, when they were students at the Amundsen-Mayfair branch of the City Colleges of Chicago. They were charged with planning to introduce deadly bacteria into Chicago’s water as part of a fantastic scheme to create a master race by the mass murder of most of the world’s population.

 

Schwandner and Pera skipped bond in March of 1972 and reportedly hijacked a private plane from Jamaica to Cuba. Pera returned to Chicago and surrendered in January 1975, and was subsequently sentenced to five years’ probation. He said at the time that he and Schwandner split up as soon as they arrived in Cuba, but he said Cuban officials had told him Schwandner was being held in prison on an attempted murder charge.

But the man whose murder was witnessed by Garland Grant, and who FBI officials claimed was Alan Schwandner, was imprisoned for stealing a transistor radio, according to Grant.

 

Federal authorities said information supplied by the six hijackers virtually confirmed that Schwandner died in 1974 after a severe beating by the director of the La Cabana prison in Cuba.

 

"All the pointers are there," said a federal official who asked not to be identified. "If the guy who died in prison isn't

Schwandner, then I don't know who is."

In other words, this unidentified federal official had no idea who died in prison.

 

An American who returned to the United States from Cuba last week to face air-piracy charges gave an eyewitness account Sunday of the beating death of a man he knew as Allan "Lonnie" Switzer, an American who officials believe to have been Schwandner. Garland J. Grant, 27, of Milwaukee told from his jail cell in Jacksonville, Fla., of Switzer's slaying by the La Cabana prison director.

 

Grant said Switzer had told him he was from Chicago and had arrived in Cuba after hijacking a plane from Jamaica. Grant, who is to be returned to Milwaukee to face charges of hijacking a commercial airliner on January 22, 1971, said the prison director was drunk and asked Switzer what nationality he was. "Lonnie told him he was an American," Grant said. "Then he (the director) grabbed him and started banging Lonnie's head against a steel gate."

 

Grant said he and other inmates were told the next day that Switzer had died of a concussion.

 

One of the six, Garland J. Grant, said he saw the director attack a fellow prisoner in a drunken rage and beat the man’s head against a steel gate. Grant said a guard and other inmates told him the following day that the man had died of head injuries.

 

The six skyjackers were expelled from Cuba as troublemakers and dumped in Jamaica, where they were arrested by the U.S. marshal there and transferred to cells in Jacksonville, Fla. The story of Schwandner’s death came out when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents questioned them to gather intelligence on conditions in Cuba.

The outstanding arrest warrant for Schwander was quashed on March 22, 1983, apparently due to the statue of limitations.

Alphabet Bomber: On June 15, 1975, Muharem Kurbegovic mailed a postcard to each of the nine justices of the Supreme court. The postcards were intercepted at the Palm Springs post office on June 16, where canceling machines broke the tiny vials under the stamps. Kurbegovich admitted a few weeks later, in another threatening tape, that the postcards were a hoax and the liquid in the vials innocuous. But he knew it was the idea that sowed terror as much as the reality. However, at the time of his arrest in August 1974, Kurbegovich had acquired many of the components needed to make sarin gas.

Though Kurbegovich had no organization and no outside support, he claimed to be Isak Rasim, military commander of a group he called Aliens of America. He was dubbed “The Alphabet Bomber” after he dropped off an audiotape at a CBS affiliate in the aftermath of the gory LAX attack. “The first bomb was marked with the letter A, which stands for airport,” he said. “The second bomb will be associated with the letter L, etc., until our name has been written on the face of this nation in blood.” After a grim panic seized the city, he sent a warning about the next device, planted in a Greyhound bus station, in a locker—thus L. When it was found and eventually defused, it was the most powerful explosive device the bomb squad had ever handled. “He had credibility,” the state prosecutor told Simon later. “He had the city of L.A. in fear.”

A quarter century before Osama bin Laden’s training camps taught holy warriors how to generate poisonous cyanide gas near the air-conditioning intakes of high-rise buildings, Kurbegovich bought 25 pounds of potassium cyanide and nitric acid to do just that. He hid it so effectively in his Los Angeles apartment that the police didn’t find the chemical stockpile until he told them about it—more than two years after his arrest.

On January 1, 1976, US postal authorities seized a small package that contained a small charge which was designed to explode a vial of nerve gas as the package was opened. The device was disarmed by U.S. Army experts. An Arab terrorist group was suspected (Terrorism Knowledge Base).

Under questioning from Federal agents, a former Chilean DINA agent (and assassin), Michael Townley admitted that he had smuggled sarin into the US in a chanel no 5 atomizer. It is believed that Townley intended to use the nerve agent in the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier. Ultimately he settled for a remote controlled car-bomb, a weapon with which he felt more comfortable. The assassination took place on February 21, 1976. The Letelier case is well documented in the literature.

Some time in January 1979, the general manager of the GE nuclear facility in Wilmington, North Carolina, received an extortion letter with a sample of uranium dioxide powder. The letter stated that the writer had two five- gallon containers of low enriched uranium dioxide that had been taken from the plant. The containers were identified in the letter by serial number and were subsequently authenticated as being missing from the plant. The letter demanded $100,000 or else the material would be dispersed in an unnamed U.S. city. An employee of a GE subcontractor was arrested and 68 kgs of uranium dioxide was recovered. The perpetrator was sentenced to fifteen years in prison (Database of Radiological Incidents and Related Events).

In 1979, two plant operator trainees at the Surry nuclear power station in Surry, Richmond, Virginia, entered the fuel storage building, which was locked and alarmed, and poured sodium hydroxide on 62 of 64 new fuel assemblies through manhole like openings in the floor (Database of Radiological Incidents and Related Events; Hirsch, 1987). The rods were not nuclear.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission discovered a “major degradation” of the backup power supply at the Nine Mile Point Unit I nuclear power plant in Oswego, New York. The diesel generators failed to start when they were tested apparently because of a deliberate closure of the drains on the fuel oil filters. The utility concluded that the problem was the result of tampering.

An unemployed radiographer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, incurred a self-inflicted radiation injury from an iridium-192 industrial radiography source, resulting in death. The individual, Douglas Crofut, had stolen the source in Tulsa, Oklahoma (Database of Radiological Incidents and Related Events).

A case involving a pellet-firing weapon, similar to that used to assassinate Georgi Markov, in London, is said to have occurred in the US. However reports vary widely as to what actually happened. According to the CIA, pellet firing weapons have been used in at least 6 assassination attempts in the US (see for instance Douglass and Livingstone, 1987; Eitzen and Takafuji, 1997; and Carus, 2002), including a successful attempt on Boris Korczak, a Lithuanian-born double-agent for the CIA. Douglas and Livingston (1987) report the official CIA position, in which Korczak was attacked in a shopping mall in Maryland. He was rushed to Fairfax hospital, at which point the CIA and the KGB struggled over custody of the body, in which the CIA received possession of the ricin-filled pellet, while the KGB received the body. There are number of problems with this story. Boris Korczak, is almost surely alive today. He was alive immediately following the incident and he was also alive at the time of follow-up interviews in 1997. Korczak claimed that he was attacked by the KGB in a mall in Tyson's Corner, Maryland, and a ricin-filled pelllet was recovered from his back. However clearly he was still alive. For obvious reasons the CIA's version of this story is almost surely false, but is unclear why the agency would concoct a story which is evidently false. The remaining five cases in which pellet firing weapons may have been used are too specualtive and are not discussed here (see for instance Douglas and Livingstone, 1987; Carus, 2002).

In August 1983, William Chanslor was convicted of plotting to murder his wife. As early as 1981, Chanslor had placed advertisements in paramilitary journals for an “expert in poisons & chemical agents with access to same.” In a sting operation involving the Houston police, Chanslor purchased what he thought to be two ricin tablets, as well as a surgical mask, gloves and tweezers to handle the poison. The tablets in fact contained vitamin C. Chanslor was sentenced to a three-year jail sentence and fined $5,000 (Carus, 2002).

In 1982 there was a reported arrest by Los Angeles police and FBI agents of a man "who was preparing to poison the city's water system with a biological poison" (source: Chemical and Biological Terrorism: The Threat According to the Open Literature).

Nuclear and Bio-Terrorism in the United States Post 1982 Tylenol Murders

In 1983, the FBI arrested two brothers for producing an ounce of pure ricin, after being tipped off by an informant. The material was destroyed at the U.S. Army laboratories at Fort Detrick.

In January 1985, a jury in Orange Country, Florida convicted Montgomery Todd Meeks for attempted murder and solicitation to murder in connection with a plot to kill his father using ricin (Carus, 2002). On October 21 one of Meek's classmates—Robert Peterson—purchased the ricin from a company in Louisville, Kentucky, known as Aardvark Enterprises. Peterson, however, was convinced by friends not to give the ricin to Meeks. Instead he provided Meeks with a vial of water. On October 24, Peterson gave the vial supposedly containing the ricin to Meeks. The next day, Meeks told Peterson that he had poured the substance into a glass of water that his father was about to drink. Meeks was arrested on a charge of solicitation to murder(Carus, 2002).

Rajneeshee cult: Shree Rajneesh ("Rajneesh") was an Indian mystic who developed a substantial following in Poona, India in the 1970s. In 1981, Rajneesh came to America with a number of his Western followers to found a spiritual community, known as Rajneeshpuram, in Central Oregon. From its inception, the community was highly controversial. The number of Rajneesh's followers living at the community eventually grew to approximately four thousand, with as many as 10-15,000 followers attending annual celebrations there. Rajneesh's disciples were known as "sannyasins," and a small group of the most trusted among them oversaw the community's business and spiritual operations. Ma Anend Sheela ("Sheela"), Rajneesh's principal secretary and spokeswoman, was in charge of day-to-day operations, and was entrusted with transmitting and executing Rajneesh's orders.

Starting on 29 August, members of the Rajneeshees cult began sprinkling their Salmonella typhimurium in personal drinking glasses, on doorknobs and urinal handles, on produce at the local supermarket, and on salad bars in eleven restaurants. In July or August an Albertson's grocery store was attacked while a group of Rajneesees were in town scouting future targets.

Soon, a steady stream of patients were reporting to local physicians and hospitals with symptoms ranging from nausea and diarrhea to headache and fever. In total, 751 fell ill. Wasco county commissioners and ordinary citizens were among the victims. Within four days, local health care providers were able to identify the Salmonella typhimurium as the source , but over a year passed before there was confirmation that a single strain caused all of the illnesses and the Centers for Disease Control filed its report. No one died in this test to see if a ballot box could be fixed, but the Bhagwan reportedly observed that one should not worry if a few perished. Law enforcement authorities thought that the Rajneeshees were practicing to poison the water system of The Dalles. Cult members had already put dead rodents and perhaps raw sewage and salmonella salsa into The Dalles’ water supply.

Several cult members were involved in the planning and execution of the salmonella attacks, but only two of the Baghwan’s chief lieutenants were prosecuted. This pair pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the salmonella case and other charges and received five-year sentences for. According to one analyst who studied the Rajneeshees carefully, the cult did not work its way up the ladder of violence to bioterrorism. Rather, the Rajneeshees appear to have abruptly embarked on their salmonella spree as a means to a specific end.

Left behind, following the sea of criminal investigations of murder plots, poisoning, wiretapping and arranged marriages that led to the abandonment of the 64,000 acre Rancho Rajneesh, is a central Oregon valley community, once trusting and innocent, now bitter and suspicious. 

Looking out on a spread that's been in her husband's family for five generations, Rosemary McGreer says she has lost her innocence about lawsuits and depositions and subpoenas - the weapons the Rajneeshees used against those who disagreed with them.

"When they first came, people out here were very trusting," she says. "You didn't worry about the legality of things - your word was your bond. What people learned was that life would never be that simple again."

McGreer and others also say they have a new-found distrust of the government which, at the time, they thought was slow, ineffective and frightened off by money and the Rajneeshees' claim to be a religious group.

"This was a terrible, terrible time," says McGreer. ". . . I will always be bitter about it, because so many people let so much happen that didn't need to happen."

Back then, though, the Antelope residents didn't know anything about most of those crimes. They knew they were at war, they say, even though it seemed that the outside world considered them a bunch of rednecks who were persecuting a group of highly educated, articulate people who only wanted to follow their "new religious movement."

They remember how Rajneeshees armed with assault weapons monitored and patrolled their city 24 hours a day - for the townspeople's own protection, the Rajneeshees told them. Visitors' license plates were recorded and photos were taken of anyone coming or going. Those who opposed the Rajneeshees were sued - for everything from alleged civil-rights violations to slander.

Eventually, enough Rajneeshees moved into town to vote themselves onto the City Council, and the town was theirs. They changed the name to the City of Rajneesh and took control of the curriculum at the town's only school.

CSA planned to poison water supply: In 1986, 200 FBI agents raided a compound of a group called the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA). The cult, which was founded in 1971 by a former fundamentalist minister James Ellison, was a paramilitary survivalist group with of anti-Semitic and racist ideals. The raid by the FBI yielded a cash of weapons, including bombs and anti-tank rockets. In addition a 33 gallon barrel of potassium cyanide was discovered. According to Mullins (1992), the leader of the Ellison intended to use this chemical to contaminate the water supply of major US cities (also see Purver, 1995).

1986 Tylenol murder: In February 1986, Diane Elsroth, 23, died instantly after taking two Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. Investigators determined that her death was the result of ingesting cyanide. Following a recall of Tylenol from area stores, another tainted bottle was found in Westchester County, New York.

Cyanide laced Excedrin: On June 11, 1986, Sue Snow died after taking two extra-strength Excedrin. Eleven days earlier, Bruce Nickell had also died suddenly after taking Extra-Strength Excedrin capsules. While originally Mr. Nickell's cause of death had been attributed to emphysema, a test of his blood serum later showed that cyanide was present.

On September 1, 1986, Louis Denber died after consuming Lipton Cup-a-Soup laced with cyanide. Denber was the 11th fatality cyanide-tainted product in the United States.

Chilean fruit: A call placed to the FDA on March 2, claimed that Chilean fruit bound for the US and Japan had been spiked with cyanide. The Food and Drug Administration later confirmed traces of cyanide in a small sample of grapes that had arrived from Chile. Since the acid in fruit quickly decomposes the poison, the original amount injected could have been much greater (Terrorism Knowledge Base).

Poisoned Sudafed: On February 2, 9, and 17, 1991, three people in Washington fell ill after ingesting Sudafed capsules that had been laced with cyanide. Two of the three people died (CDC Report).

In 1993, Thomas Lavy was arrested along the Alaskan-Canadian border, apparently driving back to his home in Arkansas. Canadian customs officials discovered racist literature, several weapons, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, a lot of cash, and 130 grams of what was later found to be ricin (one gram could kill well over a thousand people). When, sometime later, federal authorities came to arrest Lavy at his Arkansas home they found castor beans along with books that included The Poisoner's Handbook and Silent Death. What Lavy's intentions might have been will never be known, because he killed himself in his jail cell several days after his arrest.

In March 1995 four members of the Minnesota Patriots Council - LeRoy Wheeler, Douglas Baker, Dennis Henderson, and Richard Oelrich - were convicted in federal court of conspiracy to use ricin, a deadly toxin, to kill federal agents and law enforcement officers. The would be assasins had enough ricin to kill 1,400 people.

On May 13, 1995, Larry Wayne Harris was arrested for allegedly buying bubonic plague bacteria by mail from the food testing lab where he worked in Lancaster, OH. In a search of his residence, police found freeze fried bacteria along with hand grenade triggers, homemade explosive devices and detonating fuses. Harris pled guilty to one count of wire fraud in November 1995.

Less than two years later, in February 1998, Larry Wayne Harris was arrested for carrying several vials of anthrax enough to “wipe out” Las Vegas. Harris, a micro-biologist obtained the anthrax from The American Type Culture Collection, in Rockville, MD. Harris was known to be allied with a racist, anti-Semitic religious sect. known as Christian Identity. The sect teaches amongst other things that Jews are the “children of Satan” and blacks are “subhuman mud people.” Harris was convicted on a fraudcharge rather than possession of a weapon of mass destruction. - False Patriots

In March 1998, Efren Saldivar, a respiratory therapist at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Los Angeles confessed to killing between 40-50 patients using morphine, as well as pavulon, or succinylcholine chloride. He later retracted the confession and it is not clear how credible the original confession was (Carus, 2002).

On December 29, 1999, an Indiana nurse, at the Vermillion County Hospital, was charged with six counts of murder (later this was amended to seven counts). Orville Lynn Majors is said to have poisoned her patients with potassium chloride, but also with adrenaline. It is suspected that Majors may have been involved in as many as 100 deaths (Carus, 2002).

On December 18, 1999, seven students at a law school in Springfield, Massachusetts, became ill after drinking water from a cooler that had been contaminated with potassium cyanide. Some faculty and staff at the school suspected a connection between this incident and swastiki like grafiti around the water cooler (Cameron et. al., 2000).

Pate et. al. (2001) report an incident in which a cloud of ammonia was released from a liquid storage facility in Pleasant Hill, Montana in 2000. This incident may actually have taken place in Missouri, where approximately 1000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia was released after someone intentionally opened a valve at a fertilizer dealer. The ammonia released caused 300 residents to be evacuated and two people needed to be treated for respiratory irritations.94 In February 1969 a similar incident at Crete Nebraska involving release of liquefied ammonia resulted in 6 fatalities and 35 injuries.

On February 28, 2000, Patrick Riley, a biotechnology entrepreneur, was shot in the face. Riley survived, but two days later, his business partner Doctor Larry C. Ford shot himself after he learned that he was suspected by the police for ordering the hit. A series of phone calls received by the police after Ford’s death alleged that Ford had stored a cache of weapons, including bio-weapons such as anthrax in his backyard. On March 9, authorities searched Ford’s premises. The search revealed guns, ammunition and explosives. In addition, police discovered vials of cholera, botulinum, salmonella and typhoid, as well as some technical delivery devices, such as an altered umbrella that injected a poison called silatrane. Police found evidence that Dr. Ford was working with the apartheid government in South Africa in the 1980s on their chemical and biological weapons program—Project Coast. In addition, there were indications of some connections to both the army's bio warfare program and the CIA. Some patients of Dr. Ford claimed that they had been deliberately infected.

Activists protesting the meeting of the International Society for Animal Genetics conference on July 24, in Minneapolis, Minnesota were linked by the FBI to two separate incidents involving cyanide. In one of these incidents two young men spilled cyanide on the floor at a local McDonald's restaurant about a mile south of the protests. McDonald's staff noticed residue on the floor and tried to clean it up, when it began emitting noxious gas. Several people felt short of breath, and the police and fire departments were called and four people were treated at the scene. There were 15 customers and nine employees in the store at the time. FBI tests confirmed the presence of cyanide however no one was hurt.

On September 12, 2000 in Jacksonville, Florida, two seventh graders contaminated the school cafeteria’s salsa with rat poison, affecting 34 students (Pate et. al. 2001).

On October 3, 2000, in Hernando, Tennessee, seven employees of a company were hospitalized after drinking coffee contaminated with rat poison (Pate et. al. 2001).

On October 27, 2000, a small group of students at a school in East Montpelier, Vermont, allegedly placed rat poison pellets in rice that was to be cooked for a home economics class (Pate et. al. 2001).

Anthrax Attacks: A letter containing a granular substance was sent to the NBC News Office in New York. The letter postmarked September 18, 2001, originated from Trenton, New Jersey. Days later an assistant to Tom Brokaw, Erin O’Connor, an employee at NBC developed a raised lesion on her chest, which tested positive for cutaneous anthrax. On October 12, the letter was recovered and confirmed as containing B. anthracis. On October 25, the CDC reported a second suspected case of cutaneous anthrax in a 23-year-old woman who also handled a suspicious letter postmarked September 18.

A letter containing a granular substance was sent to the New York Post. The letter postmarked September 18, 2001, originated from Trenton, New Jersey. Three workers at the Post develop the cutaneous form of anthrax, although only one of these cases can be confirmed by the CDC. For both of the other two cases, the symptoms described are consistent with the onset of cutaneous anthrax.

On October 1, 2001, Teresa Heller a mail carrier for the US Postal service sought medical care for a 4-day history of worsening skin lesions on her right forearm (UCLA Department of Epidemiology).114 Later tissue samples taken from the patient tested positive for B. anthracis. Two other employees, Richard Morgan, a machine mechanic, and 54-year old mail sorter, at the same postal facility in New Jersey are believed to have also contracted cutaneous anthrax. The probable source of the contamination is believed to be the letters postmarked September 18 sent to the Post and NBC News.

On October 5, 2001, Robert Stevens, an employee of American Media, Inc., died after contracting inhalation anthrax. The date of onset is placed between September, 28 and September, 30. While the source is unclear, co-workers recalled that Mr. Stevens came into contact with a piece of stationary containing a white powdery substance on September 19. This date is consistent with the September 18 postmark on the letters sent the Post and NBC and it also implies an "incubation period that is consistent with the modal incubation period of ten days reported in the Sverdlovsk outbreak (Bush et. al. 2001). An anthrax laced-letter or letters was (were) never found, however an EPA inspection of AMI's facilities revealed that 84 of 462 swab samples taken from floors, desks and air ducts, tested positive for anthrax spores, where most of the spores originated from near the mailroom (Associated Press, November 30, 2001). Two other employees at AMI, Ernesto Blanco and Stephanie Dailey (both mailroom workers) also contracted inhalation anthrax, however they survived.

A biopsy obtained on October 16, 2001 based on a serum specimen collected from the seven-month old child of an ABC-employee test positive for B. anthracis. It is believed that the child came into contact with anthrax-spores on September 28, when his mother took the child with her to the ABC offices in Manhattan. Although an anthrax-laced letter, such as the ones sent to the offices of the New York Post or NBC News was never found many more spores were found in the building when the location was inspected for anthrax contamination

Between October 19 and October 22, 2001, four workers at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington DC were hospitalized for symptoms related to inhalation anthrax. The probable source of the infection is believed to be the Daschle or Leahy letters. Both of these letters were postmarked October 9 however the Leahy letter was mistakenly forwarded to the State Department on October 14. The exact source or the date of infection is unclear—the CDC estimates the date of onset in each case to be October 16. Two of the four patients died.

Two employees at the Hamilton Township mail center, New Jersey, developed inhalational anthrax and two developed cutaneous anthrax: all survived. It is believed that the source of the infection is either the Daschle or the Leahy letters postmarked October 9, 2001.

Cross-contaminated letters are believed to be behind a case of inhalational anthrax in a 94-year old woman residing in Seymor, Connecticut. The letters arrived at the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford from the Trenton, New Jersey postal facility on October 11. The patient probably contracted anthrax on October 12, 2001 (UCLA Department of Epidemiology). She became ill on November 14 and died on November, 21. Tests revealed spores on mail-sorting equipment at the Wallingford distribution center.

On October 15, 2001, a letter containing approximately 2 grams of powder comprised of 200 billion to 2 trillion anthrax spores (UCLA Department of Epidemiology) was opened by an aide to Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle at his office in the Hart Building in Washington, DC. The letter, postmarked October 9, was sent from Trenton New Jersey. Nasal swabs from 23 Senate staffers for Daschle and three members of Senator Russell Feingold's staff indicated they had been exposed to the bacteria. In addition, five Capitol security officers also tested positive for exposure (CNN October 17, 2001). No one however contracted either the inhaled or the cutaneous form of anthrax.

On October 22, 2001, a State Department postal worker contracted inhalational anthrax after coming into contact with an anthrax-laced letter addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy. The letter was misrouted due to an error reading the hand-written zip code—20510. The Leahy letter, which was opened on December 6, contained about 1 gram of anthrax spores.

A 61-year old woman, Kathy Nguyen, died of symptoms related to inhalational anthrax on October 31, 2001. The date of onset was probably October 25. Although the source of the infection is unknown. There is some speculation that the victim came into contact with the anthrax-laced letters postmarked September 18. However the CDC and the New York Health Department have suggested that the Ms. Nguyen probably contracted anthrax from cross-contamination from the second wave of letters sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy.

A final case of cutaneous anthrax related to the anthrax-mailings arose on March 1, 2002. The incident occurred in one of the private laboratories contracted by CDC to analyze environmental samples that arose from the contaminated letters (UCLA Department of Epidemiology).

Dr. Chaos: Joseph D. Konopka, also known as “Dr. Chaos,” was a computer system administrator turned terrorist, responsible for numerous acts of terrorism. Between 1998 and 2001 Konopka attacked power grids, disrupted transmission towers, disabled air traffic control software and caused numerous headaches for authorities within the state of Wisconsin. In March, 2001, Konopka was arrested and charged with storing 0.9 lbs of sodium cyanide and 0.25 lbs of potassium cyanide.

When combined the two compounds could be used to produce a deadly gas. The chemicals were being stored in an underground locker in the Chicago subway system. Konopka pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of chemical weapons and in March, 2003, he was sentenced in federal court to 13 years in prison. The additional charges, for acts of vandalism in Wisconsin, were thrown out by the court of appeals in 2005.

In Denver, Colorado police arrested an apartment complex manager after discovering over 153 different chemicals, including potassium cyanide, arsenic, an unidentified, potentially lethal anesthetic, chloroform, and sodium azide. According to a former tenant, the manager had made threats that he was going to put radioactive devices in the Denver police ventilation system. He also said that he was mixing chemicals in the hopes of creating a “dirty bomb” (Turnbull and Abhayaratne 2003).

A supermarket employee, Randy Jay Bertram, 39, of Byron Center, was sentenced to nine years in a federal prison for poisoning about 250 pounds of the store's ground beef with an insecticide known as "Black Leaf 40," which has high concentrations of nicotine. The County Health Department's supervisor said she knew of 111 people who fell ill after eating the meat that hand been contaminated with an insecticide. Tests revealed that a quarter-pound burger made from the beef contained a potentially lethal amount of nicotine.

On April 3, 2003, in Maine, 16 people suffered acute poisoning, and one man died, from drinking coffee and eating snacks that had been spiked with arsenic at Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Walter Reid Morrill, 78, died the next day. Maine police stated that the arsenic was placed in the coffee deliberately and Morrill's death was being treated as a homicide. Later officials stated that a suicide note found at the home of one of the church parishioners, Daniel Bondeson, 53, linked him and possibly others to the poisoning. The contents of the suicide note have never been revealed, however in recent book which airs the community gossip and seeks to offer a resolution to the case—Bitter Brew—Christine Young quotes detectives as saying that Bondeson indicated that he didn't mean to kill anyone he "just wanted to give some people a bellyache like they gave me." Moreover, Young continues that the Bondeson underlined that he "acted alone."

Sometime in November 2003 a ricin-laced letter, addressed to the White House, was intercepted at a mail sorting office. The letter contained a fine powdery substance which tested positive for ricin but was not sufficiently potent to be considered a health risk. The letter was disposed of safely, however news of the attack was not disclosed until a discovery of ricin in the Senate office building in February 2005. The letter to the White House was signed “Fallen Angel.” A similar letter, addressed to the department of transportation, was intercepted at the sorting office in Greenville, South Carolina. The government claims that they did not make the incident public because the ricin posed no "public health risk." The letter containing the substance was signed by "Fallen Angel" the same author of a similar ricin-laced letter intercepted in October. Both letters complained about pending federal trucking regulations.

A white powdery substance, which tested positive for ricin, was found in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in Washington, DC. The substance, which didn't harm anyone, was found on the south side of the fourth floor of the Dirksen Senate (Terrorism Knowledge Base).

CYANIDE TERRORISM

Enhancing Preparedness for Cyanide Terrorism

International Emercency Medical and Disaster Specialists, Chicago, IL 

Although US government agencies consider a terrorists cyanide attack probable, the United States is ill prepared mass-casualty incidents involving cyanide... Read full report

The Risk

Because cyanide possesses many of the characteristics of an “ideal” terrorist weapon, the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security, consider it to be among the most likely agents of chemical terrorism.

Exposure to cyanide can occur through several methods. Most often discussed is the release of hydrogen cyanide gas into an enclosed space such as office building, subway or stadium. But cyanide salts also could be introduced into pharmaceuticals or the food and water supply.

Chemical Terrorism

A number of authors have also expressed concern about the possible theft of chemical weapons from military installations or disposal sites in the US (a threat which is presumably even greater in the states of the former Soviet Union). According to Livingstone, "the U.S. government [has] acknowledged that a small amount of its inventory of VX is presently unaccounted for" (1982: 111). Clark charges that "There have been known instances of its being rather casually offered for sale in New York City," and goes on:

Mullins agrees with this assessment:

Also on this theme, Marshall goes so far as to claim that "Chemical weapons in particular are relatively easy to purchase on the black market, particularly since they were so widely deployed during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s" (1990: 372). Joyner also emphasizes the danger that

Finally, the literature is replete with references to the possibility of rogue states supplying chemical weapons to terrorist groups. Those potential culprits mentioned most often are Libya, Iraq, Iran, Russia (or the former Soviet Union), Syria, North Korea, and Cuba (Alexander 1990: 10; OTA 1991: 52 and 1992: 34; Ketcham and McGeorge 1986: 31; Jackson 1992: 520; Kupperman and Kamen 1989: 99-100; Revell 1988: 16; Mullins 1992: 109; APN 1988: 16; Joyner 1990: 138-9). According to Jackson: "There is now considerable evidence of Soviet-derived chemical arms having been deployed in several regional conflicts throughout the Third World, ranging from hybrid chemical/explosive toxic 'firebombs' with a phosphine base to weapons with traces of organic cyanide and strontium" (1992: 520)⁸². McGeorge reports that "Iraq allegedly turned over control of Soviet supplied agents to known PLO members" (1986: 60), although Douglass and Livingstone maintain that the exchange occurred in the opposite direction, with Moscow making use of the PLO as an intermediary to transfer chemical and biological agents to Iraq (1984: 18).

Incidents of Past Use or Threat

A considerable number of threats or incidents involving the terrorist use of chemical agents have been reported in the open literature⁸⁸. As in the previous section concerning biological agents, these may be ranked in terms of seriousness or severity (in ascending order) as follows: (1) threats to use CW, without any evidence of actual capabilities; (2) unsuccessful attempts to acquire CW; (3) actual possession of CW agents; (4) attempted, unsuccessful use of such agents; and (5) their actual, "successful" use. In the first category, the following cases have been reported:

• a 1992 "plot" by neo-Nazi "skinheads" to pump hydrogen cyanide gas into a synagogue (Kupperman and Smith 1993: 37). According to the US House Armed Services Committee, this "plot," which it dates to 1991, was "thwarted" by "German authorities" (1993: 26);

• testimony by an undercover agent at the conspiracy trial of the "Chicago Seven" that one of the defendants had

• a November 1984 claim by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in the UK to have contaminated Mars candy bars with rat poison, to protest their manufacturer's funding of research using monkeys. This was later determined to be a hoax, but in the meantime "Millions of the bars were withdrawn and checked after notes were found inside candy wrappers in six English towns" (Smith 1992: 2);

• November 1991 threats by ALF (UK) to contaminate the popular drink, "Lucozade." In response, the manufacturer ordered more than five million bottles of the drink (none of which were found to be contaminated) withdrawn from stores, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars (Smith 1992: 2; Business Insurance 1991: 2);

• a 3 January 1992 claim by the Animal Rights Militia (ARM) that it had injected one cc of liquid oven cleaner into each of 87 "Cold Buster" bars on store shelves in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta, because their developer was believed to have used animals in his research. The incident was later deemed a hoax, with the only contaminated bars (injected with a non-poisonous saline solution) being two sent to the media. Smith describes the incident as follows:

• claims by the Animal Rights Militia in notes sent to two supermarket chains and to the media in the Vancouver, B.C. area in December 1994 that it had injected Christmas turkeys with rat poison, "in the name of turkey rights avenging the senseless slaughter of millions of turkeys." Thousands of birds were immediately withdrawn from shelves and freezers or later returned by customers, although no evidence of contamination was found (Reuters 1994c and 1994d);

• a claim by an un-named animal rights group in Fredericton, New Brunswick, to have poisoned five packages of hamburger meat, causing three Sobey's grocery stores in that city to recall their supply (CTV 1995);

• a "threat to overfly Cyprus by microlight in order to saturate the area with aerosol poisons" (Jackson 1992: 520). It is unclear if this is the same threat mentioned by Bremer, who refers to a "threat to poison the air" in a Mediterranean nation other than Israel which, though "later proven specious—initially caused grave concern" (1988: 8). According to another source, this incident, dated at 1987, involved a threat by a group identifying itself as "Force Majeure" to release dioxin gas over Cyprus unless the government of the island paid $15 million. It resulted in the arrest by "anti-terrorist police" of four Cypriot nationals in West London (Ottawa Citizen 1987: A6);

• various unspecified threats to dump LSD or nerve gas into US urban reservoirs (Livingstone 1982: 112; Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 29; Mengel 1976: 448). Clark highlights the 1968 "much-publicized Weathermen-Yippy threat (attempt?) to 'space-out' the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and everyone else in Chicago as well, by dumping LSD into Lake Michigan, the city's water source" (1980:110). Of course, given what was said earlier about the dilution of chemicals in large reservoirs, it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have taken this threat seriously! An apparently more serious threat, to contaminate New York City's Kensico Reservoir with nerve gas in 1972, was reported by the New York Daily News in February 1977. According to Clark, it was "taken seriously by the FBI" and "brought city officials to the verge of declaring a 'health emergency'" before being discounted on the advice of the Army that it would require tons of nerve gas to carry out (Clark 1980: 113);

• a July 1994 threat by Moldavian General Nikolay Matveyev to contaminate the water supply of the Russian 14th Army in Tiraspol, Moldova, with mercury. The general was said to have stored about 32 kilograms of mercury at his battalion command. However, after he was dismissed from his office as Deputy Minister of the Interior, the mercury could no longer be found;

• the August 1974 claim by the "Alphabet Bomber" that he possessed nerve gas and was coming to Washington to kill the President. According to Douglass and Livingstone, the authorities "were convinced that there was a 'high probability' that the threat was real," launched "one of the most intensive manhunts in the nation's history," and arrested a man in Los Angeles. Kupperman and Kamen report: "Whether or not he had finished assembling the nerve agent remains an open question. Some reports suggest he had. Others suggest that he had assembled all but one of the critical ingredients and had made arrangements to pick up the remaining substance on the day he was arrested" (1989: 101);

• a 1972 terrorist "plot" to use chemical agents in an attack on a US nuclear weapons storage site in Europe (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 183);

• 1980 threats received by several embassies in Europe of terrorist use of a mustard agent against them (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 185);

• a May 1983 Israeli government report that it had uncovered a plot by Israeli Arabs to poison the water in Galilee with "an unidentified powder" (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 186);

• a 1977 report that an anti-Amin group in Uganda had threatened to poison that country's coffee and tea crops, in order to deny it foreign exchange. According to Kellett, "observers doubted the credibility of the threat" (1988: 57);

• similar threats by Tamil separatists in 1986 to poison the tea crop in Sri Lanka. According to Jenkins: "They did not, insofar as we know, carry out the threat" (1989: 2). An identical case was reported in September 1994, when the Sri Lanka Tea Board announced that threats to poison the island's tea exports had been proven a hoax. A Tamil group called the "Ellalan Force" had claimed in faxes to news agencies, foreign embassies, and trade associations that it had mixed arsenic in tea bags destined for export. Subsequently, the United States, Germany, and Italy were reported to be checking their tea imports from Sri Lanka. However, while calling for precautionary measures and tightened security, the Tea Board had been unable to find any traces of arsenic in 200 random samples tested over a period of two weeks (Reuters 1994a);

• a September 1986 claim by the terrorist group "Direct Action" that two bottles of South African wine, in Vancouver or Victoria, had been poisoned. Reportedly, all South African wines were removed from the shelves and tested, but no evidence of contamination was found (Canadian Press 1986);

• 1988 claims by the ALF (UK), which remained unconfirmed, that eggs had been injected with mercury; 

• various threats by anti-apartheid groups in Europe and North America to poison South African products (Jenkins 1989: 2). On 2 July 1986, a group in Canada identifying itself as the Azanian Peoples Liberation Front (APLF) threatened to inject imported South African fruit with an unidentified toxic chemical, in an attempt to prevent such imports. Reportedly, "subsequent testing failed to locate any fruit that had been contaminated," but in the meantime South African oranges and peaches had been withdrawn from some stores in Toronto and Montreal (Kellett 1988: 57; Ward 1989); and

• a report that proposals were made at an early February 1993 meeting of fundamentalist groups in Tehran, under the auspices of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, to poison the water supplies of major cities in the West "as a possible response to Western offensives against Islamic organizations and states" (Haeri 1993: 8).

The following reported cases fall into the second category, of unsuccessful attempts by terrorists to acquire chemical agents:

• an attempt by anti-Castro Cubans in the US to obtain sarin from the Chilean intelligence organization, DINA (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 184); and

• a report that in 1975 "German entrepreneurs were apprehended in Vienna, attempting to sell Tabun to Palestinian terrorists" (Kupperman and Kamen 1989: 101). There is a similar report that in 1976, "one kilogram of a precursor of sarin was produced by a chemical engineer in Vienna and offered to bank robbers for 14,000 DM" (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 184). Finally, according to Jackson, sometime in the 1970s and '80s "underground nerve agent manufacturing facilities were discovered in Austria" (1992: 520). That these varying reports may in fact refer to the same incident is suggested by the following account of Jenkins and Rubin: "In February 1976, police in Vienna and Berlin arrested members of a gang involved in the manufacture of nerve gas. A quantity of the toxin was seized. According to various reports, the gang was attempting to sell the gas to bank robbers or terrorists." "The gang's motives," they add, "were apparently purely economic" (1978: 228). This also appears to have been the case cited by Mullen (1978: 69 and 88), and erroneously attributed to "Australian," rather than "Austrian," police (!), in which large quantities of diisopropyl fluorophosphate (DFP), stored in capsules, spray cans and bottles, were seized in Vienna. According to the newspaper account, the gas "probably was produced by gang members in Berlin," who intended "probably to sell [it] to the underworld" (Ottawa Citizen 1976). According to Mullen, the "criminal organization" had "packaged the DFP in aerosol cans for use as assassination weapons" (1978: 88). Thornton simply attributes the possession to "an Austrian chemist" arrested after attempting to supply the substance on the black market, but apparently takes this as an "indication that European...terrorists...have access to chemical weapons" (1987: 7).

Into the third category, reports of the actual possession of chemical agents by terrorists, fall the following:

• the reported discovery in West Germany in 1980 of an RAF faction safe house in which "authorities found several hundred kilograms of organophosphorus compounds that they speculated were being accumulated as part of the terrorist group's drive to create a chemical-biological warfare capability" (Livingstone and Arnold 1986: 4). Douglass and Livingstone put the date of this incident at 1978-1979, and specify that "400 kg of intermediated compounds that could be used for organophosphorus nerve agents" had been discovered (1987: 184);

• the theft of 53 "steel bottles" or "canisters" of mustard gas from a US ammunition bunker in West Germany in 1975 (Alexander 1990:10; Jenkins and Rubin 1978: 228; Kupperman and Kamen 1989: 102; Mullins 1992: 107). Subsequently, according to Jenkins and Rubin: "West German authorities received threats that unless the government granted immunity to all political prisoners, the gas would be used against the population of Stuttgart, where the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof gang were about to go on trial" (1978:228). In referring to this incident Kupperman and Kamen maintain that "terrorists successfully stole canisters of this agent from U.S. stocks in West Germany" (1989: 102). Mullins also implies that the terrorists were responsible for the theft and had thereby actually acquired the agent in question when he writes that "Fortunately, German police arrested the terrorists before the chemical could be released" (1992: 107). However, Jenkins and Rubin state that "It is not known whether this threat was authored by the same people who took the gas," adding: "Some but not all of the canisters were later found" (1978: 228)⁸⁹. That the threats may have been made on more than one occasion and against a number of different targets is suggested by Kupperman and Trent, who report simply that "In 1975 and 1976 the Baader-Meinhof Gang in West Germany threatened to use chemical agents against German cities" (1979: 46 and 51);

• a June 1987 arrest of a man with a canister of CS gas during the trooping of the colour in the UK;

• claims by the Minuteman leader and veterinarian Robert De Pugh to have experimented with home-made nerve gas on a dog, to establish the minimum lethal dose (Berkowitz et al. 1972: VI-5, citing Jones 1968: 37). Berkowitz also reports that "Although the details are somewhat ambiguous, a group within the Minutemen organization were allegedly involved in a plot to introduce hydrogen cyanide gas into the air conditioning system of the United Nations building in New York" (Berkowitz et al. 1972: VI-5);

• reports in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera of 27 September 1992 that 19 kg of cyanide—"sufficient...to poison almost the entire population of the CIS"—had disappeared, apparently on 25 September 1992, from a chemical factory in Kirghizistan. The newspaper also reported that a month previously, over 5 kg of cyanide "intended to be used for terrorist purposes" had been "seized by the Kirghiz police from a courier whose identity has not yet been revealed, while a further 200 kg, unrecorded and without documentation concerning its destination, was discovered in the depot of the Kirghiz factory";

• a report that "Force 17, a terrorist body with special operational responsibility in Yasir Arafat's Fatah...had been trained in chemical weapons" (Alexander 1990: 10);

• a report that in late 1976, the counterterrorist unit of the San Francisco Police Department "apprehended a terrorist with homemade nerve gas" (Clark 1980: 117). According to Ponte, however (presumably referring to the same incident), the individual in question had not quite succeeded in manufacturing the agent. Ponte quotes "the specialist in charge" of anti-terrorist activities for the SFPD as saying that the terrorist "was close to successfully manufacturing nerve gas when he was apprehended" (1977: 79);

• a report in the 27 June 1993 edition of the Croatian newspaper Vjesnik that 23 aircraft bombs filled with nerve gases and other chemical agents "of a slightly older manufacture, but nonetheless lethal and dangerous" had been stolen by the PFLP in Lebanon and supplied to the Bosnian Muslims via Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. It is noteworthy that, if true, this would constitute yet another case of a terrorist group passing on CB weapons to another party (in this case, a group engaged in open and organized military conflict);

• a 1989 report that "In recent years Israeli security agents and police found canisters of a potent poison, presumed to have been brought in by terrorists, at a safe house in Tel Aviv" (Kupperman and Kamen 1989: 101);

• the more vague allegation that "as far back as 1975, Palestinian terrorists were known to have access to nerve agents" (Kupperman and Woolsey 1988: 5). Thornton states that "Reportedly, Palestinian groups have been stockpiling nerve agents for several years" (1987: 7);

• various press reports that a small quantity of sodium cyanide (500 grams) was found in the locker used by the World Trade Center terrorists to store bomb-making materials (the chemical was not used in the attack, however);

• a 1986 raid by the FBI on the "heavily armed" compound of a group calling itself the Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA), in which "agents found large quantities of potassium cyanide (an extremely lethal poison)." According to Mullins: "The leader of the CSA, Jim Ellison, had made plans to use this chemical in poisoning the water supplies of several major U.S. cities" (1992: 95); and

• the 1976 smuggling into the US of the nerve agent sarin in a Chanel No.5 atomizer by Michael Townley for use in an assassination plot against former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 183; McGeorge 1986: 60).

A number of cases are reported of apparently unsuccessful attempts by terrorists to actually use chemical agents:

• an effort by Huk terrorists in the Philippines to poison Dole pineapples destined for export (Livingstone 1982: 113; Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 30). According to Douglass and Livingstone: "The plot, however, was discovered and the contaminated pineapples were destroyed before they could harm anyone. The whole incident was then hushed up before it affected sales" (1987: 30);

• the discovery on 28 March 1992 of lethal concentrations of potassium cyanide (50 mg per litre) in the water tanks of a Turkish Air Force compound in Istanbul. Fortunately, it was discovered before anyone was poisoned. The Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) claimed credit (Chelyshev 1992);

• a report in the Bulgarian newspaper The Duma of 29 July 1993 referring to an attempted assassination of the Director of the Bulgarian National Intelligence Service and the presidential spokesman using benzol. The report indicates that the two victims were indeed poisoned, but that the dose used was not fatal;

• a 1981 attempt by an East German Stasi agent, Peter Haack, to kill a dissident and his family by poisoning their hamburgers with the chemical thallium. The attempt failed, although the dissident in question was described as having been "extremely sick for weeks." On 28 November 1994, Mr. Haack was sentenced by a Berlin court to 6 1/2 years in jail for the attempt (Reuters 1994b);

• the "Alphabet Bomber" of Los Angeles, apart from plotting to assassinate the US President with homemade nerve gas, is said to have "also sent toxic material through the mail to at least one Supreme Court Justice" (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 31) (apparently with no effect);

• the July 1994 sending by the UK Animal Liberation Front (ALF) to the Secretary of the National Front (an extreme right-wing party) of a package containing Capsaicin, a derivative of pepper;

• the 1976 seizure by US postal authorities of a "suspicious small package....found to contain a small charge designed to explode a vial of nerve gas when the package was opened," and for which "an Arab terrorist group was suspected" (Jenkins and Rubin 1978: 228; see also: Alexander 1981: 346); and

• undated and unspecified reports that "terrorists have tried to poison urban water systems" (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 29).

The successful use of chemical agents by terrorists (but without inflicting "mass destruction") has been reported in the following cases:

• the contamination by Palestinian terrorists or their sympathizers of Israel citrus fruit exports to Europe with liquid mercury, variously reported to have occurred in 1977, 1978, or 1979 (Alexander 1990: 10; Livingstone 1982: 113; Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 30; Jenkins 1989: 2; McGeorge 1986: 61). Poisoned oranges were reportedly discovered in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. Douglass and Livingstone provide the most detailed account of this incident, which they date at February 1978:

Alexander adds that, as a result of the incident, "Israel had to cut back its orange exports by 40%" (1990: 10);

• a similar incident on a smaller scale in April 1989 (Alexander 1990: 10; Jenkins 1989: 2). According to Jenkins: "In Rome, a group calling itself the 'Organization of Metropolitan Proletariat and Oppressed Peoples,' claiming support for the Palestinian uprising on the West Bank, warned Italian authorities that it had injected poison into grapefruit imported from Israel. Contaminated grapefruits were found in Rome and Naples" (1989: 2). The Italian Health Ministry subsequently ordered the seizure of all grapefruit and banned sales throughout Italy, although there were no reports of deaths or sickness (Chicago Tribune 1988: 17);

• in December 1984 four people in England were charged with injecting a weed killer containing mercury into a turkey at a Grimsby store. Earlier, an anonymous caller purporting to represent the ALF had claimed responsibility. Similar threats were received at stores in London, Northampton, Coventry, and Bristol (in the latter case claiming the use of rat poison) (United Press International 1984 and Reuters 1984). This is presumably the incident cited in Jenkins 1989: 2;

• the January 1987 case of anti-hunting protesters in England being blamed for poisoning five foxhounds in Worcestershire;

• Douglass and Livingstone refer vaguely to swimming pools having been poisoned in California and supermarket products having been laced with cyanide (1987: 29), without, however, indicating whether terrorists or simple criminal extortionists were responsible for these unspecified incidents, and what effects resulted;

• a reference by Douglass and Livingstone to a "still-secret 1984 chemical warfare incident in which the nerve agent carbamate was added to the coffee at an Israeli military mess" (1987: 29) (in their appendix, they date this incident to 1985) (1987: 187);

• the reported use by the Symbionese Liberation Army of "cyanide-dipped bullets" (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 30; Jenkins and Rubin 1978: 228; McGeorge 1986: 61);

• a January 1994 report by a Turkish TV station (but denied by that country's foreign minister) that the PKK had mounted a gas attack on a village in Eastern Turkey, killing 21 people;

• various, unsubstantiated press reports claiming that Sikh and Kashmiri militants in India were using chemical weapons;

• a 1987 incident in the Philippines in which 19 police recruits died and about 140 were hospitalized after accepting water and sweets from an unknown person;

• the New Year's, 1994, deaths of at least nine soldiers and six civilians in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, after drinking cyanide-laced champagne on sale next to military compounds housing members of a Russian-led peacekeeping force. Another 53 people were reported hospitalized, including eleven civilians in intensive care. Two sellers of the drink were arrested for what the Itar-Tass news agency described as "a premeditated terrorist action against Russian servicemen" (Reuters 1995a and AFP 1995);

• various reports over the years of the poisoning of Iraqi dissidents through the contamination of drink or food with the chemical thallium. For example, an Iraqi who ran a printing house in London is said to have died in 1988 of thallium poisoning, described as "a familiar modus operandi for Iraqi assassins" and "a favourite weapon the Iraqi government used against opponents." Two defectors from the Iraqi Army were reportedly treated for thallium poisoning in London in 1992. And in January 1995, it was reported that an Iraqi emigre activist had died of thallium poisoning in Syria, while three other victims were undergoing treatment in either London or Syria (Reuters 1995b and Security Intelligence Report 1995);

• March 1989 claims, through telephone threats to the US Embassy in Santiago, that Chilean grapes imported into the US had been laced with cyanide. After minute traces of cyanide (insufficient to poison an adult) were indeed discovered in two Chilean grapes in Philadelphia, the US, Canada, Japan, Denmark, Germany, and Hong Kong all suspended fruit imports from Chile, and existing stocks were ordered pulled from grocery shelves. Fears were expressed that Chile would suffer up to $1 billion (US) in lost fruit exports as a result (Ottawa Citizen 1989);

• the March 1989 poisoning of a British soldier's wife by milk contaminated with mercury;

• the May 1981 discovery of herbicide contamination of food items in British grocery stores (Douglass and Livingstone 1987: 185); and

• the June 1977 contamination of a North Carolina reservoir. According to Clark: "Safety caps and valves were removed, and poison chemicals were sent into the reservoir....Water had to be brought in" (1980: 113-14).

There have, of course, been many other reported instances of product contamination, perhaps the most notorious being the 1982 Chicago case of cyanide being placed in capsules of the pain remedy Tylenol, which resulted in seven deaths (Kellett 1988: 57). However, the vast bulk of these acts have apparently been committed with no political motivation in mind, and hence should not be classified as "terrorist" in nature. Furthermore, even where a political motive has been present, as Jenkins reminds us: "In none of these latter cases was it the intent of groups to cause death. Their weapon was the alarm that would be caused and the consequent loss of revenue. This is true in most cases..." (1989: 2).

In sum, there is sufficient evidence in the public domain to indicate that terrorist groups have indeed displayed an interest in acquiring chemical agents; have made threats to use such agents; have in some instances actually succeeded in acquiring such agents; have at times attempted to make use of them; and in some cases actually "succeeded" in such attempts, though without inflicting mass casualties in the process.