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Cyanide Gas Plot Not Much of a Threat, Experts Say
Experts said the device al-Qaeda developed to disseminate fatal cyanide gas in the New York City subway system was not likely to inflict many casualties, United Press International reported today (see GSN, June 20). “What you would get, in all probability, is a big bang, a big splash but very little gas,” said Milton Leitenberg, of the University of Maryland. Leitenberg is a 40-year veteran in arms control and chemical and biological weapons issues. He said that in “a best case scenario” for the terrorists, the weapon might kill most riders in one subway car. However, “every calculation (one can make about casualties) relies on a whole series of assumptions. … It’s basically a guessing game.” Ron Suskind wrote in The One Percent Doctrine that, “In the world of terrorist weaponry, [the cyanide dispersal device] was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot and then kill everyone in the store.” “That is the stupidest statement I have heard in many years,” Leitenberg retorted. He said the concentrations of the main chemicals in household products were so minimal that by using them “you would get next to nothing.” “You would have to obtain the ingredients from a chemical supplier” or steal them from a laboratory, he said. One counterterrorism official said, “If this is such an amazing weapon, and the design for it is out there, why has no one every used it?” The chemical reaction involved in such a weapon could actually destroy the device, Leitenberg and other scientists said (Shaun Waterman, United Press International, June 26).
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