Terror Weapons In The Cupboard?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Terror Weapons In The Cupboard?
WASHINGTON, April 3, 2003
The FBI says terrorists could use common household items to improvise
chemical or biological weapons and then hide them in food.

Using materials available at stores, on the Internet or through mail-order
firms, terrorists could make cyanide compounds, grow salmonella bacteria and
botulinum toxin, or distill the poison ricin from castor beans, the FBI said
Wednesday in its weekly bulletin.

The memo, sent to 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies, said
there is no specific threat or indication that an attack is imminent. But it
detailed several past attacks using such weapons, including an Oregon cult's
contamination of local restaurant salad bars with salmonella bacteria that
sickened 751 people in 1984.

Yeast, infant formula, sugar, Epsom Salts, cheesecloth, blenders, masks and
gloves are among the items widely available that terrorists could use to set
up a laboratory to make crude chemical and biological weapons, the bulletin
said. Some are available in grocery stories; others must be obtained from a
medical supply house.

A key tool is the agar plate, which is used by scientists and doctors to
grow cultures. 

"Large numbers of agar plates can be inoculated and harvested by an
individual possessing minimal training," the FBI bulletin says. "These agar
plates could produce sufficient quantities of bacteria to sicken or kill
large numbers of people."

Detection of these home-made labs is often difficult because so many
household products can be used in production, reports CBS News Correspondent
Stephanie Lambidakis, and the recipes are readily available on the Internet.

The FBI last week warned that terrorists could make simple chemical and
biological weapons with materials available nationwide. That bulletin noted
that the capture of al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has
provided fresh evidence of the terror network's experiments with such
weapons. 

"Little or no training is required to assemble and deploy such a device due
to its simplicity," the FBI said then.

Officials at the National Institutes of Health are also worried about the
threat from botulinum toxin, which occurs naturally.

War with Iraq has underscored those fears because of past acknowledgment by
President Saddam Hussein that Iraq had made 5,000 gallons of the toxin and
loaded it onto bombs and missiles.

In addition, the Agriculture Department and Food and Drug Administration are
urging the food industry to increase security because of the heightened risk
of terrorist attack.
©MMIII CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press
contributed to this report.

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