United States:  Anniston Workers Find Another Leaking Rocket

Employees at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama discovered a fourth rocket leaking chemical weapons last week, the Anniston Star reported Friday (see GSN, May 15).

News of the latest leaking rocket follows last Monday’s discovery of three rockets that were leaking the deadly GB nerve agent.  Officials verified the fourth leaking rocket May 14, according to the Star.

No GB nerve agent leaked from the tubes that hold the faulty rockets, depot officials said.  The leaking munitions were placed in larger containers and moved to a larger holding area that is inspected daily, the Star reported.

“They’ve got them canned,” said depot spokeswoman Cathy Coleman (Sara Clemence, Anniston Star, May 16).

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North Korea:  Nerve Gas Component May Have Been For North Korea

German officials intercepted 30 tons of sodium cyanide, which can be used to develop chemical weapons and might have been headed to North Korea, Pakistan’s Daily Star reported today (see GSN, May 16).

A German company was sending the cargo to a warehouse in Singapore, and U.S. officials requested the shipment be intercepted.  Washington believed the chemical was actually ordered by North Korea.  Sodium cyanide, commonly used in the treatment of metals, can also be used to make the nerve gas Tabun (Pakistan Daily Star, May 19).

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United States:  Anniston Officials Find Leaking Chemical Rockets

U.S. officials discovered three rockets leaking GB nerve agent Monday at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, the Anniston Star reported (see GSN, March 3).

The nerve agent did not escape from the weapons’ metal storage tubes, according to Army spokeswoman Cathy Coleman, adding that the workers who discovered the problem were conducting a routine examination for “leakers.”

The storage facility where the leaking weapons were found is “where most of our leaking rockets come from,” Coleman said.

Officials also discovered a leaky rocket in February.  Approximately 860 leaking munitions have been discovered at the plant since 1982, the Star reported.  The depot holds 2,254 tons of GB nerve agent.

Meanwhile, officials at a chemical destruction facility in Aberdeen, Md. discovered traces of mustard agent near a storage container that had been drained, the Star reported.

“There were no injuries, there was no danger to anyone outside the building,” said Jeff Lindblad, a spokesman for the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

Nine workers who were in the area when the traces were discovered donned protective gear and left the area.

“You’re talking about a very low level,” Lindblad said (Sara Clemence, Anniston Star, May 14).

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Russia:  Lewisite Destruction Line Begins Testing

Russian officials have begun to test a lewisite disposal line at a chemical weapons destruction plant in Gorny, ITAR-Tass reported Monday (see GSN, July 29, 2002).

The “testing is being carried out using a neutral medium, without pumping in war gases,” a spokesman for the Saratov region’s information and analysis center on safe storage and destruction of chemical weapons said.

Officials will begin to destroy small amounts of lewisite in the second half of May, and the line will be launched in June, according to ITAR-Tass.  Russia is expected to destroy 20 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile by 2007 (ITAR-Tass, May 12 in FBIS-SOV, May 13).

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U.S. Response:  Customs Bureau Trains Canine Chemical Detectors

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is training dogs to detect chemical weapons, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Oct. 29, 2002).

The Homeland Security Department’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection — which began the program with a budget of $2 million — has reportedly encountered success with the program, which oversees the training of Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and Belgian Malinois.

“There had been some initial research that suggested that canines might be effective with chemicals,” said Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner.  Dogs provide “portability, and they also allow you to detect chemical weapons before they are released,” he added.

Dogs have often been used to detect explosives or narcotics, but the use of dogs in chemical weapons detection is groundbreaking, according to Jim Watson, secretary of the North American Police Work Dog Association.

“Dogs can detect compounds that the human nose could never pick up at the same concentration: the concentration can be a hundred- or a thousand-fold weaker,” said Charles Wysocki, a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

The dogs are being trained to detect nonlethal components of chemical weapons.  When a specially trained dog finds a suspected chemical weapon, it will be trained to give certain signals, such as snapping its head back or perking up its ears, according to the Times.

“The idea is this:  If I’m looking for a Big Mac and I know that Big Macs are deadly, I’m looking for the special sauce that is not lethal,” said Lee Titus, director of the Customs Bureau’s canine enforcement program (Philip Shenon, New York Times, May 13).

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CWC:  East Timor Ratifies Treaty

East Timor last week ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (see GSN, March 5).  When East Timor’s accession takes effect June 6, it will become the 152nd party to the treaty, which aims to eliminate chemical weapons by 2007 (Agence France-Presse, May 12).

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