Security concerns over cyanide transportation

UK: Three charged over terror plot

London, England (CNN) -- Three men have been charged with plotting to carry out a terror attack which police sources say included London's Underground rail network.

Scotland Yard police have refused to officially comment on claims in the Sunday Times newspaper that the planned attack involved releasing cyanide gas on a crowded carriage on the system, known as 'The Tube'.

CNN's Jim Boulden said: "The arrests have come after several months of investigations by British police.

"The men are believed to be north Africans and are due in court on Monday after being remanded in custody by magistrates earlier this week, charged under the Terrorism Act 2000."

Rabah Chekat-Bais, 21, Rabah Kadris, in his mid 30s, and Karim Kadouri, 33, all of no fixed abode, have been charged with possessing articles for preparing and carrying out acts of terrorism, the Press Association reported.

Unemployed Chekat-Bais appeared before Bow Street Magistrates Court, in central London, on Monday and Kadris and Kadouri, also both unemployed, appeared in court on Tuesday.

News of the charges came after Prime Minister Tony Blair said that security services were warning on an almost daily basis of terrorist threats to a wide range of targets in the UK.

But he said that if he had acted on every piece of raw intelligence during his time as premier, he would have shut down roads, rail links, airports, stations, shopping centres, factories and military installations "on many occasions".

Earlier this month, Interpol Secretary Ronald Noble warned that al Qaeda operatives were preparing simultaneous attacks in several countries

The Sunday Times report said that a group of north African men had been arrested on Saturday November 9 by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch in connection with the plot.

It said officers raided several addresses in north London, taking away items during searches.

Sunday Times assistant editor Nicholas Rufford told Sky News: "There were six arrests originally, three people were released, only three were charged.

"My understanding is that no chemical or bomb-making equipment was recovered. So that suggests that the equipment or the materials may still be out there and as far as I understand the investigation is continuing.

"The plan I believe was to bring the ingredients of a gas bomb into the country. As far as I know, as far as I understand, the materials never arrived.

"Certainly if they did arrive they haven't yet been found or intercepted."

Tokyo subway attack recalled Government sources insisted the case had nothing to do with Blair's warning, in his speech to the Lord Mayor's banquet.

Nor, the sources added, was the case connected to Home Secretary David Blunkett's Home Office warning that al Qaeda might be ready to use "a so-called dirty bomb, or some kind of poison gas."

Seven years ago a sarin nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 12 people and injured 5,000 others.

The attack by a Japanese religious cult, Aum Shinrikyo, focused world attention on the threat from chemical and biological weapons.

They left small perforated bags of sarin in subway terminals so that the gas would seep out and spread slowly in the confined spaces of Tokyo's underground during the rush hour.

A spokeswoman from London Underground would not comment on the Sunday Times report but appealed to passengers to be vigilant.

She said: "Over the past 30 years we have been exposed, like the rest of London, to the threats of terrorism.

"We take security advice from the police and the Home Office and all our staff are well trained to look out for the unusual."

Cyanide can cause death or make people suddenly lose consciousness if it is inhaled or swallowed.

Exposure to high levels of cyanide as a gas, liquid or white powder can cause irritation of the skin, headaches, dizziness, loss of coordination, nausea, vomiting,

gasping, increased blood pressure, loss of consciousness and death. Most people cannot smell cyanide until levels become dangerous, then it can smell like bitter almonds.

Even several years after exposure to low levels of cyanide it is possible to experience birth defects and nerve damage affecting hearing, vision, and muscle coordination.

Doctors can test urine for "thiocyanate" shortly after exposure to cyanide.

Cyanide gas can be found in industrial emissions and car exhaust, cigarette smoke and certain papers and plastics as they burn. It is used in metal cleaning operations, and as an industrial bug killer.

London's "Tube" is the world's oldest underground mass-transit system, according to the company's Web site. Its first line opened in 1863.

It has grown into a network of 275 stations connected by 400 kilometres (250 miles) of railway that carries about three million passengers each day, the site said.

Background Checks

A Wisconsin state lawmaker has proposed legislation requiring a federal criminal background check for drivers who haul hazardous materials.

Rep. Rob Kreibich (R-Eau Claire) is concerned no safeguards exist to prevent terrorists or criminals from hauling potentially deadly substances.

The bill would require those seeking hazmat endorsements to pay an extra $34 for a criminal background check and undergo additional checks every four years, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Kreibich, citing background checks for teachers and bus drivers currently done by the state, believes checks on truckers also would be a prudent step. To contact Rep. Kreibich's office, call (608) 266-0660.

Italy Arrests Four Moroccans with Cyanide, Maps

ROME (Reuters) - Italian police said Wednesday they had arrested four Moroccans in possession of large quantities of the deadly poison cyanide and maps of Rome highlighting the U.S. embassy and the city's water supply.

Police said they suspect the men, arrested early Tuesday in an outlying suburb as part of a covert operation, could have been plotting an attack on the embassy or to poison the city's water. They are probing possible links to Osama bin Laden . Seven Tunisians are on trial in Milan as part of a crackdown on groups suspected of having ties to bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. They are also suspected of plotting an attack on the U.S. embassy in January 2001.

"The embassy of the United States of America compliments the Italian police and security forces for their excellent work concerning the most recent security threat," said a statement from the U.S. embassy.

Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini hailed the operation: "We should be satisfied because this means that the police force is working hard and controlling our territory."

But police chiefs and Italy's leading anti-terrorist prosecutors, who were meeting behind closed doors Wednesday, told reporters that leaks regarding the case may have already caused irreparable damage.

Those arrested were found with about 10 pounds of cyanide and a map pinpointing the embassy, charts of Rome's water network and about 100 counterfeit resident permits, police said. At least two of the men were illegal immigrants.

The Moroccan embassy said it would only comment after Italy confirmed the identities of the men arrested. "We want to see if they are really Moroccan since in Italy, anyone of color is called a Moroccan," an embassy source said.

The U.S. embassy, prominently located on Rome's famed Via Veneto, has been a suspected target for attack on several occasions in recent months.

Even before the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities, the embassy was forced to shut for three days after an intelligence warning of a possible bombing.

Following the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the State Department warned again that American symbols in Italy could be targets.

Italy entered the international spotlight in the fight against bin Laden after U.S. investigators said they believed Milan's Islamic cultural center was al Qaeda's main European logistics base. Muslim leaders in Italy have denied the charge.

The four Moroccans, aged 30 to 40, had been followed by police for days and their detention was related to the arrest of three more Moroccans last week, police said.

The Tunisians on trial in Milan have been charged with intent to commit crimes ranging from the trafficking of arms, explosives and poisonous chemicals to trading in false documents and helping illegal immigrants enter Italy.

Police believe bin Laden sent them to Europe to supervise attacks, including the possible bombing of the U.S. embassy in Rome last January.

Italian justice sources last year released transcripts of telephone conversations in which one of the men on trial in Milan indicated that he was planning chemical attacks in Europe.

In one conversation, the Tunisian told a Libyan associate that there was a plan to "try out" a drum of a "liquid" in France. "This liquid is more efficient because as soon as it opens, people are suffocated," he was quoted as saying.

Chemical Plants Go well beyond "well prepared"

Nov. 5 issue -- Pathogens may have to be "weaponized" to turn them into agents of mass destruction, but industrial chemicals already are. They "provide terrorists with effective and readily accessible materials to develop improvised explosives, incendiaries and poisons," concluded a 1999 federal study of dozens of facilities. Yet security ranges "from fair to very poor," the analysis found. Key employees are not subject to background checks, barge terminals that handle chemicals are accessible and rail and truck facilities typically have no security beyond staging areas. Rail cars with cyanide compounds, flammable liquid pesticides, liquefied petroleum gases, chlorine, acids and butadiene park by residential areas. The office that produced the report, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, has now pulled it from its Web site.

LAW-ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES knew long before Sept. 11 that chemical facilities offered an inviting target: in the late 1990s the FBI foiled a plot by the Ku Klux Klan to blow up a Texas gas refinery. But as companies beef up security by issuing new ID badges and increasing the number of security officers at gates and on patrol--and as the government pitches in with, for instance, air surveillance by the Texas Air National Guard over refineries and chemical plants--they are falling short. This month infiltrators in frogmen suits slipped into the ship channel that flows past a Sterling Chemicals, Inc., plant in Texas City. Silently climbing out near the facility, they gained access (Sterling spokesman Mark Kahil declines to detail how, for obvious reasons). The frogmen were cops testing security at the plant, which manufactures styrene (which can cause respiratory irritation and mutations), acrylonitrile (headache, nausea, cancer), acetic acid (lung damage), sodium cyanide (death) and tertiary butylamine (eye and lung irritation, convulsions). Sterling's recent security upgrades--prisonlike watchtowers, security cameras, concrete barricades at all entrances and additional guards--had not kept them out. "The police said they had to work harder to get in" than during the last drill, Kahil says. Despite such lapses, says Jim White, director of emergency preparedness for Harris County (which includes Houston), "I think the companies are as well prepared as can be. They have put forth a great deal of effort and expense."

The consequences of a chemical release would depend on what got out, whether it stayed airborne and where the wind took the "vapor explosion cloud." For years the nearly 15,000 facilities that produce or store toxic chemicals have been required to file, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reports specifying what could happen in a "worst-case scenario." After Sept. 11, the EPA removed the reports from its Web site. But, NEWSWEEK has learned, hundreds of sites reported that a worst-case release could spread a toxic cloud 14 miles. A release from any of more than 2,000 facilities could affect upwards of 100,000 people. If all the wrong conditions come together, a terrorist attack could kill hundreds and injure tens of thousands with anything from inflamed eyes to permanent lung damage. Many of the sites with highly toxic substances are located near schools and homes. And they are not all obvious "chemical facilities": many water-processing plants store large tanks of chlorine.

Chemical facilities are limited to the EPA's 15,000. Pipelines carrying hazardous liquids and natural gas spread across 489,862 miles, mostly underground and through populated areas. Joe Caldwell, who in 1970 established the Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) in the Department of Transportation, says that a terrorist attack on a pipeline would be "a piece of cake." The lines are usually only three to four feet down. Their locations are a matter of public record, though OPS has now deleted the information from its Web site, too.

Toxic Chemicals' Security Worries Officials

Last February, environmentalists concerned about security problems in the chemical industry made their point by scaling the fence of a large Dow Chemical plant near Baton Rouge, La., and gaining access to the control panel that regulates potentially dangerous discharges into the Mississippi River.

The plant manufactures and stores large quantities of chlorine, a highly toxic chemical that could kill many if released as a gas through an explosion or fire. The Greenpeace activists who organized the foray said it was a snap because there were no guards or security cameras along the plant's lengthy perimeter and because the door to the wastewater discharge control room was unlocked. Though some industry officials played down the raid's significance, experts say it underscores another serious homeland security vulnerability after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Industry and government officials alike are looking for ways to make sure that, like commercial airliners, another component of U.S. technology isn't turned into a horrific weapon against Americans.

"No one needed to convince us that we could be -- and indeed would be -- a target at some future date," said Frederick L. Webber, president of the American Chemistry Council, an industry group representing 180 major companies including DuPont, Dow, and BP Chemical. "If they're looking for the big bang, obviously you don't have to go far in your imagination to think about what the possibilities are."

Industrial chemicals such as chlorine, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid potentially provide terrorists with "effective and readily accessible materials to develop improvised explosives, incendiaries and poisons," according to a 1999 study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Yet the report, which focused on West Virginia and Nevada as a way to sample the situation nationwide, found that security at chemical plants "ranged from fair to very poor."

"Most of the security gaps were the result of complacency and lack of awareness of the threat," the report stated. "Chemical plant security managers were very pessimistic about their ability to deter sabotage by employees."

Some of the chemicals used or produced in plants throughout the country -- and transported by rail through densely populated areas including Baltimore and Washington -- have the potential to match or exceed the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, in which a methyl isocyanate gas leak at a Union Carbide Corp. pesticide plant killed at least 2,000 people and injured tens of thousands.

"I think that if one had to think about what is the next level of potential targets, you would have to think about major chemical and oil facilities," said Fred Millar, a consultant on chemical accident prevention.

Immediately after the United States began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, the railroad industry took the precaution of imposing a 72-hour moratorium on carrying toxic or dangerous chemicals. But the shipments were resumed after the chemical industry argued that chlorine was essential to the continued operations of sewage treatment plants and that there was no evidence the shipments were being targeted by terrorists.

Chemical industry officials say that, long before Sept. 11, plants had begun to tighten security and put in place safeguards including well trained and equipped hazardous materials response crews, vapor suppression equipment and barriers around chemical storage tanks. Since the attacks, the industry has issued tough new site security guidelines, and officials say they are in daily contact with the FBI and other federal authorities to prepare for a direct threat against a chemical plant. So far, there hasn't been one.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who has met several times with industry leaders, said Friday, "I don't know that you could get any higher awareness than we have today on the importance of directing resources to those efforts of securing chemicals on site."

"So they are doing as good a job as they can do right now, and they're very aware of where their vulnerabilities might be," she added.

But Paul Orum, director of the Working Group on Community Right-to-Know, a national clearinghouse on hazardous risk information, said the chemical industry "continues to maintain excessive volumes of extremely hazardous substances in heavily populated areas, materials that if they get loose can cover schools, hospitals and residential areas with toxic fumes at dangerous levels."

"The industry has been in denial about the need to reduce those hazards and set measurable goals and time lines," Orum added.

Chlorine is a telling example of the complexity of the problem. While potentially a lethal weapon, it is also a safeguard: Among other uses, it is a key ingredient in Cipro, an antibiotic used to treat anthrax exposure. "Chlorine is the first line of defense against bioterrorism," said C.T. "Kip" Howlett Jr. of the Chlorine Chemistry Council, as he strongly defended the widespread use and storage of the gas.

Last year, U.S. chemical companies and related industries reported 32,435 fires, spills or explosions involving hazardous chemicals to the National Response Center, an extensive but incomplete federal record of mishaps involving oil or chemicals. At least 1,000 of these events each year involve death, injury or evacuation. Combined data from additional federal sources suggest that in 1998 -- the last year for which full data were available -- there were more than 100 deaths and nearly 5,000 injuries, according to Orum's group.

A single accident at any of the nearly 50 chemical plants operating between Baton Rouge and New Orleans potentially could put at risk 10,000 to 1 million people, according to "worst-case" scenarios that companies are required by law to file with the EPA.

Those scenarios provide an estimate of the radius of a dangerous cloud of escaping gas and how many people it could affect. The Dow Chemical plant targeted by Greenpeace reported as its potential "worst case" the release of 800,000 pounds of hydrogen chloride, a suffocating gas that would threaten 370,000 people. Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace toxics campaign, said that the ease with which his group infiltrated that plant "shows the absolute porous nature of these facilities" and their vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

Environmental and hazardous chemical experts say that serious security problems also persist to varying degrees at chemical manufacturing centers in Texas, New Jersey, Delaware, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Last July, a CSX train derailment and fire in a Baltimore tunnel paralyzed the city for five days while hydrochloric acid and other toxic chemicals contained in the tanker cars burned off or seeped into storm drains that flowed into the Inner Harbor.

Around Washington, the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority's Blue Plains Waste Water Treatment Plant houses one of the region's largest supplies of toxic chemicals, including liquid chlorine and sulfur dioxide. Since Sept. 11, Blue Plains plant operators have stepped up security and considered ways to disperse, shelter or eliminate the need to maintain a stockpile of chemicals.

Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) introduced a bill last week that would order the EPA and the Justice Department to impose tough new regulations to guard against the threat of a terrorist attack at high-risk chemical facilities.

These are only some of the articles on the search engine
http://www.google.com qaeda + cyanide = 1,130 hits

Al-Qaeda's cyanide tests

Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network had tested biological weapons on animals, according to a Times report. Documents found by the paper in a number of Al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul indicate that the outfit was studying how to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people.

The group had gone far enough to manufacture and test certain types of chemical weapons on rabbits, including cyanide gas, which was allegedly used by Saddam Hussein on Kurds in 1988.

Photostat copies of documents written in Urdu, Arabic and Russian were sent by the paper to British professionals for translation and to experts in the field of weapons of mass destruction, including John Large, a nuclear consultant. He says that Al-Qaeda would not have been able to make a large-scale missile or nuclear device, but it was obvious from the documents they were prepared to use such weapons. Al-Qaeda's understanding of bomb-related electronic circuitry matched the expertise of the IRA, the paper said.

Tapes Reveal Al-Qaeda Cyanide Plan for Europe

SECRETLY recorded tapes have revealed plans by followers of Osama Bin Laden for a chemical weapon attack in Europe using a poisonous invisible gas that security sources say was cyanide.

A gang of terrorists active in Britain, Germany and Italy plotted to use tins of tomatoes to transport "a liquid that suffocates people". The plan was foiled after a Libyan at the centre of the plot was arrested in Munich on Wednesday.

The evidence is the first that Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organisation was preparing to use weapons of mass destruction. The tapes were made by Italian anti-terrorist police, who bugged an apartment outside Milan that the gang thought was a safe house. The suspects discussed getting 10 litres of the poison, enough to kill thousands if released indoors.

One theory is that the group planned to spread the poison in an American government building in London or Rome. A witness who trained in one of Bin Laden's camps said he was instructed how to put cyanide in a building's ventilation system.

The tins of tomatoes could have been used to transport cyanide crystals before they were dissolved into a liquid, which could then be dispersed through the ventilation ducts. If large quantities were available, the vapor produced could kill many occupants of a building within 10 minutes.

The transcripts are part of evidence compiled by Stefano Dambruoso, an Italian prosecutor, against five suspected members of the Salafist Group for Faith and Combat, a militant offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), backed by Bin Laden. The five are in custody in Milan. At least two had links to Britain.

Last Friday the US Treasury named the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan, to which cell members were linked, as "the most important base of Al-Qaeda in Europe". It said the institute was used by Bin Laden's organisation "as a station from which weapons, men and money travel the whole world".

The clandestine recordings were made in March and April, when gang members were becoming impatient to receive instructions from Bin Laden and to be told the target. They also reveal claims that female followers of Bin Laden were being trained as potential suicide attackers.

The most chilling conversations took place between Ben Heni Mohamed Lased, a 32-year-old Libyan arrested in Munich last week, and Essid Sami Ben Khemais, 31, a Tunisian, believed to be the leader of the Italian cell, who was arrested in Milan in April. Khemais is believed to have met Mohammed Atta, one of the 19 hijackers behind the American attacks.

Khemais and Lased spent a week in an apartment near Milan to plan terrorist atrocities, unaware it was bugged. Lased is heard trying to teach Khemais to conceal a bomb in a personal cassette player, to which Khemais responds by asking about chemical weapons: "I'd like to learn how to use the medicine, I'd like to see what effect it has when someone breathes it in. The Libyan has the formula; he's a chemistry professor."

Another activist said: "What's going on - you are putting down your guns and taking up industrial products?" Lased replied: "There's a liquid which is extremely efficient because it suffocates people. Do you want to try it?" The other man said: "Yes, why not. A few barrels."

In another conversation, Khemais urges Lased to get in touch with "the sheikh", believed to be Bin Laden, about recruiting attackers.

"Talk to the sheikh. I need two people who I have already got in mind, the Libyan and the Kurd from London. What I need is not an army but two people who have got a brain, training and nothing to lose or to gain. They spread the gas and say goodbye. I only need a barrel of 10 litres and a few documents. God is with us."

On the evening of March 9, Lased confided: "Believe me, the sheikh is planning something. He has an objective and he wants to realise it, just like he has achieved all his desires. It's not a little thing."

Predicting the success of Bin Laden's terror campaign, Lased said: "God loves us because Europe is now in our hands. Now we are emigrant fighters, that's the task we've got to carry out with honour. We have to be like snakes. We have to fight and then hide."

Lased also explains how to reach Bin Laden's training camps by obtaining a visa from Iran's London embassy, ostensibly for visiting Mecca. "In Iran there is an organisation which helps mujaheddin brothers to cross the border. There's total collaboration with the Iranians," he said.

Khemais talked about trips to Afghanistan during which he saw Bin Laden's weapons, including captured US cruise missiles launched against the camps in 1998 but which failed to explode.

"The Americans are probably convinced that bombing the sheikh's training camps was a victory, but the truth is it was a defeat. Most of the weapons didn't even explode and they have enriched the sheikh's arsenal," he claimed.

Chemical weapons plot in Europe linked to al-Qaeda

MILAN, Italy (AP) -- The men spoke in code of a mysterious "drug" they wanted to try on people. One referred repeatedly to the substance as "tomato cans" and said he wanted to see what effect it would have on someone breathing it in. The conversation between suspected members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was cryptic, but authorities in Italy think they know what the men were talking about: obtaining cyanide, a poison used to make deadly chemical weapons.

A tape of the conversation, recorded in March, is part of evidence gathered in an investigation into an apparent plan for chemical attacks by groups linked to bin Laden, raising fears that they intended to use unconventional weapons to inflict casualties on a large scale.

Suspicion emerged last December when German authorities arrested four suspected terrorists in a raid on two apartments in Frankfurt, Italian prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso told The Associated Press last week.

German authorities seized conventional arms and explosives in the raid and found a manual on how to make chemical weapons, Dambruoso said.

The four suspects in Germany were accused of plotting to bomb an outdoor market in Strasbourg, France, at the end of 2000. Several of them had been in contact with Essid Sami Ben Khemais, later identified by Italian authorities as a top al-Qaeda operative in Europe who headed a terrorist cell in Milan, Italy.

Italian investigators said there is also evidence that the Milan cell was linked to chemical weapons.

An Italian investigative report, part of which Dambruoso allowed the AP to review, contains excerpts from wiretapped conversations among members of the Milan cell, including Ben Khemais. Italian, Spanish and French prosecutors have identified Ben Khemais as a top al-Qaeda operative who helped supervise operations throughout Europe.

In one phone call, excerpts of which were among the material reviewed by AP, Ben Khemais spoke of an unspecified "drug," also referring to it as "tomato cans," according to the report.

"I'd like to learn how to use the drug and see the effect on someone breathing it," he said in the taped conversation.

Italian authorities say they believe the phrase 'tomato cans' -- which was repeated many times throughout several conversations -- was code for cyanide, an easily obtainable poison that can be used as a chemical weapon. Dambruoso would not say what specific evidence authorities have that the weapon being discussed was cyanide.

"Do we have hard evidence they possess chemical weapons? No. Is it very possible they have them? Yes," Dambruoso said. The conversations were recorded in March, a month before Italian police arrested Ben Khemais and four other suspected members of the group, all Tunisian. The five are expected to be brought to trial in December.

Bin Laden has hinted that his group has chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have said al-Qaeda probably has crude chemical or biological weapons but not a nuclear bomb.

"This is a real threat, and it has to be treated as such," said Walter Purdy, a board member of the Terrorism Research Center in Washington.

Journalists in Afghanistan have found documents relating to deadly chemicals and bacteria in houses abandoned by al-Qaeda in the capital, Kabul. And in neighboring Pakistan, investigators have interrogated two nuclear scientists about whether they helped bin Laden make chemical weapons with anthrax.

Purdy said it's uncertain if any al-Qaeda cells have developed the ability to deliver the chemicals in a way that would produce mass casualties.

But the bin Laden-chemical weapons connection is growing.

"I can't tell you that they have this particular biological or chemical weapon, but I know that they have the capability and some of those people in the Europe theater were very interested in procuring devices you would need to actually launch an attack," Purdy said.

Deadly chemicals found at al Qaeda site

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Anti-Taliban fighters discovered low-grade uranium, cyanide and other poisonous chemicals in an underground al Qaeda storage facility near the Kandahar airport after they captured it two weeks ago, according to a senior Afghan commander and senior U.S. officials.

"I saw it with my own eyes," Haji Gulalai, Kandahar's security and intelligence chief, said Friday. "There were large machines, and those things were inside sealed containers. We gave it to the Americans because it was very dangerous, and we do not know about such things."

The U.S. officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said they have concluded that al Qaeda intended to use the uranium-238 found in the complex to make "dirty bombs," which use conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a wide area.

In addition to killing people in the bomb blast and poisoning others with radiation, the officials said, such a bomb could render large zones unusable and require lengthy and expensive cleanup efforts.

Uranium-238, the isotope of the element that U.S. officials said was discovered by the anti-Taliban forces, is used to fuel nuclear reactors and in some medical devices, but it cannot be used to make nuclear weapons.

So far, the officials said, there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden's organization was able to procure either weapons-grade uranium or plutonium -- which can be made from U-238 in specialized facilities -- to make a nuclear device.

Nevertheless, the officials said, Afghan, U.S. and other fighters have found extensive evidence that bin Laden was trying to make a nuclear weapon with help from at least one Pakistani nuclear scientist.

But the officials said that experts in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and in the Department of Energy have concluded that al Qaeda could not have constructed a "viable nuclear device" from the plans and specifications found so far in Afghanistan.

"If they had gotten their hands on the stuff they needed, like plutonium, they probably would just have poisoned themselves," said one official.

Al Qaeda, however, could readily have made both "dirty bombs" and chemical bombs using the materials found near the airport, said the officials, and there is evidence that the group was experimenting with both at a camp near Darunta, about eight miles east of Jalalabad.

The U.S. officials said it isn't clear where al Qaeda got the materials, but they said the former Soviet Union and Pakistan are possible sources.

Gulalai said the tunnels where the uranium, cyanide and other poisons were stored were located at Kandahar International Airport, a sprawling complex of several hundred acres about 12 miles south of the city. The al Qaeda camp known as Turnak Farms is located only a mile or two away.

Gulalai said the tunnels were discovered the day anti-Taliban fighters captured the airport after a 10-day battle with al Qaeda forces.

"They were big tunnels," he said, saying a large truck could drive into each. "It is a big tunnel with many rooms, and every one was filled with bombs and ammunition and these containers."

During a swing through the region last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld alluded to significant finds at Turnak Farms pertaining to potential weapons of mass destruction.

Marine Corps spokesmen Capt. David Romley and Maj. Chris Hughes said they did not know about the find or the tunnels.

"If there are tunnels that we've found out about pertaining to weapons of mass destruction, I don't know anything about it," Romley said.

A nuclear, biological and chemical weapons detection team swept the area around the airport last week, but it is not known if they removed any materials when they left

Al-Qaeda studying weapons of mass destruction: report

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network has been investigating the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and tested chemical weapons on animals, the Times newspaper today.

Citing a range of documents uncovered in abandoned al-Qaeda homes in Kabul last month, the paper said that the network was looking into how to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people.

Hundreds of pages, written in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, Persian, English, Mandarin and Russian, were sent to British-based professional translators and to experts in weapons of mass destruction.

They prove, according to the paper, that al-Qaeda cells were examining materials for a low-grade nuclear device; had a high level of understanding of bomb-related electronic circuitry; and were training activists to assassinate Middle East leaders deemed too pro-Western.

Much of the information in the documents, which The Times said were found a day after the Afghan capital fell to Northern Alliance forces on November 13, is publicly available, for instance via the Internet.

Some of it may have been wishful thinking on behalf of the group believed to have been behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

A supersonic missile fitted with a nuclear warhead, detailed in notes written on paper from a hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, was cited as one such flight of fancy.

Although the experts concluded that al-Qaeda's research into biological and chemical warfare was crude, the intent was clear, the paper added.

One document described how chemical weapons were tested on rabbits, once by cyanide gas being dispersed in the air, another time by injecting the animals with a form of sodium.

In both cases death followed in seconds.

The Times said another document amounted to a recipe book for chemical and biological weapons such as botulism, ricin and cyanide.

Measurements were included for a botulism device "sufficient to kill 2,000 people" within "a killing time of three days to six days".

Al-Qaeda: A journalist with the London Times found instructions for producing ricin, one of the most toxic biological agents on earth, in an abandoned al-Qaeda house in Kabul yesterday. The documents described the necessary doses for killing adults and children, the effects of the poison on a dying victim and the necessary equipment for working with the poison, such as wearing gloves and a face mask

WASHINGTON --The government put nuclear power plants on high alert last week, acting on a tip from an Al Qaeda operative that terrorists may be planning an airplane attack on a power reactor, government officials said Thursday.

On Wednesday, U.S. officials released an unclassified report that said they had uncovered rudimentary diagrams of nuclear weapons in a suspected Al Qaeda safehouse in Kabul, providing further evidence of Al Qaeda's efforts to acquire such weapons to use in terrorist attacks. said Thursday.

The unclassified report, submitted by CIA Director George Tenet to Congress, said that the "diagrams, while crude, describe essential components ó uranium and high explosives ó common to nuclear weapons." said Thursday.

The report added that the terrorists aren't believed to have a functional weapon. said Thursday.

Other evidence obtained in Afghanistan shows that Al Qaeda operatives have fallen for a number of scams in their attempts to acquire nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, a senior government analyst said. said Thursday.

Much of the terrorists' interest centers on chemical weapons, such as cyanide salts, that could be used to contaminate food and water supplies and assassinate individuals, the Tenet report says. said Thursday.

Fox News' Carl Cameron and The Associated Press contributed to this report. said Thursday.

Sunday's Nov. 18, 2001, Milw. Journal Sentinel article (by Eric Pianin, Washington Post) entitled "Formula for trouble at chemical plants?" addressed the possibilities of terrorism attacks on chemical manufacturing plants and the risks involved in the transportation of these chemicals.

"Industry and government officials alike are looking for ways to ensure that, like commerical airliners, another component of U.S. technology isn't turned into a horrific weapon against Americans."

"No one needed to convince us that we could be - and indeed, would be - a target at some future date, said Frederick Webber, president of the American Chemistry Council, an industry group representing 180 major companies, including DuPont, Dow and BP Chemical. "If they're looking for the big ban, obviously you don't have to go far in your imagination to think about what the possibilities are."

Industrial chemicals such as cholrine, sulfuric acid and hydrochoric acid potentially provide terrorists with "effective and readily accessible materials to develope improvised explosives, incendiaries and poisons," according to a 1998 study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry.

"I think that if one had to think about what is the next level of potential targets, you would have to think about major chemical and oil facilities," said Fred Millar, a consultant on chemical accident prevention.

Last year, U.S. chemical companies and related industries reported 32,435 fires, spills or explosions involving hazardous chemicals to the National Response Center, an extensive but incomplete federal record of mishaps involving oil or chemicals.

In July, a CXS train derailment and fire in a Baltimore tunnel paralyzed the city for five days while hydrochloric acid and other toxic chemicals contained in the tanker cars burned off or seeped into storm drains that flowed into the Inner Harbor.

FBI Alerts Hazardous Material Haulers

Authorities have charged 20 people with fraudulently obtaining licenses to haul hazardous materials, including some who may have links to the terrorists who staged the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Justice Department officials said yesterday.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the arrests and other information investigators have developed show that the United States must be on alert for attacks.

"Terrorism is a clear and present danger to Americans today," he said.

Ashcroft's remarks and the disclosure of the new charges focused attention on the prospect of a new terrorist threat -- not in the skies, but on the roads. Congress and the Bush administration have been moving to tighten security at commercial airports, and the Federal Aviation Administration has twice grounded crop-dusters for fear that they could be used in chemical attacks.

But the FBI and the Department of Transportation also warned the trucking industry to watch for suspicious activity in connection with hazardous chemicals, including radioactive waste and other substances that can be used to create weapons of mass destruction.

On Monday, the FBI also asked mosquito-control personnel to take an immediate inventory of their trucks and other equipment and report any missing or stolen pieces.

As the FBI continued its sweep yesterday for possible accomplices in the Sept. 11 airliner hijackings, documents unsealed in federal court showed that prosecutors are holding an Alexandria man. His name and phone number were found in a car left by suspected hijackers at Dulles International Airport who boarded the flight that slammed into the Pentagon.

Mohamed Abdi, 44, is being held on unrelated forgery charges while authorities try to determine if he is connected to the attacks. Nearly 7,000 people are missing and presumed dead after two hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon and a fourth crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.

In a car registered to alleged hijacker Nawaq Alhazmi, authorities found a Washington road map that contained Abdi's name, a cashier's check made out to a Phoenix flight school, four drawings of a 757 cockpit and a box-cutter knife similar to ones authorities believe were used in the hijackings, according to the affidavit unsealed in federal court in Alexandria.

On the map, someone had written "Mohumed" and a phone number that authorities traced to Abdi's apartment, the affidavit said.

The developments came as authorities released a San Antonio radiologist they had arrested in the belief he had important information about the attacks. His attorney said he was prevented from speaking to lawyers for six days.

Law enforcement agents also pressed their investigation in several nations abroad. In France, anti-terrorist police detained several people early yesterday in connection with a suspected planned attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris and other U.S. interests, according to police and media reports.

Federal investigators in the United States began to focus on hazardous waste permits after the arrest of Nabil Almarabh, a former Boston cabdriver with ties to an associate of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Almarabh had recently obtained a Michigan permit to haul hazardous waste.

Further investigation revealed about 20 men who allegedly obtained such permits through fraud, law enforcement officials said.

"The concern is that there is the potential for a problem because of the sheer size of the industry," said Mike Russell, spokesman for American Trucking Associations Inc., a trade group. "It's hard to keep our eye on every single truck."

Justice officials yesterday declined to specify how many of the 20 people may have connections to the suspected terrorists.

In the Virginia case, law enforcement sources said they have not determined why Abdi's phone number was in the alleged hijackers' Toyota, and said that Abdi was refusing to cooperate with investigators. One source cautioned that the 19 suspected hijackers left behind many phone numbers.

Abdi, a U.S. citizen who came to this country from Somalia, works as a security guard and has six children. He has been charged with forgery for allegedly failing to turn over 13 rent-subsidy checks to his landlord, forging the landlord's signature and cashing them instead. Abdi's lawyer declined to comment.

In other developments yesterday:

• Authorities released Albader Al-Hazmi, 34, the San Antonio radiologist who had been held as a material witness. He had been on an FBI "watch list" of people who might have information about the events leading up to the attack.

• Canadian officials issued orders yesterday to seize or freeze the assets of fundraising groups connected to bin Laden. The amount of known money and assets was not released.

• In Toronto, a Yemeni man arrested by Canadian authorities after the Sept. 11 attacks, Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohamed al-Hadi, was given time by a court to find a lawyer for a hearing on his extradition to the United States. Federal prosecutors in Chicago have charged al-Hadi with two counts of passport fraud. The FBI is trying to connect al-Hadi with Almarabh.

• In San Diego, law enforcement sources confirmed that three men were detained over the weekend as material witnesses because of their possible relationships with the suspected terrorists who lived in San Diego last year. Mohdar Abdallah, Osama Awadallah and Yazeed Al-Salmi were friends and one-time roommates of another man, Omer Bakarbashat, who was detained as a material witness last week and flown to New York for questioning.

• The FBI today will turn over control of the crash scene at the Pentagon to the Defense Department. The move means the agency has removed all evidence it could recover from the area and will no longer protect it as a crime scene, officials said.

• Administration officials said they now doubt whether there actually was a telephone threat made against Air Force One on the day of the attacks, which prompted the Secret Service to keep President Bush away from Washington for hours, the Associated Press reported.

Chemicals were hidden in Chicago's transit system

A Wisconsin man who calls himself "Dr. Chaos" and is wanted in several counties on charges of vandalizing power stations and radio towers was charged Monday in Chicago with hiding deadly powdered cyanide in the city's underground mass transit system.

Joseph Konopka, 25, formerly of De Pere, was accused in federal court of taking over a Chicago Transit Authority storage room under the downtown district and storing sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide there. He is suspected of being the leader of a Wisconsin group of vandals known as the "Realm of Chaos."

Officials said Monday they didn't want to speculate on why Konopka had the chemicals. It was unknown whether he intended to use the lethal chemicals on commuters.

Chicago authorities discovered seven containers, including two marked as cyanide. One container had about one-quarter pound of potassium cyanide and the other had a little less than a pound of sodium cyanide, the FBI said.

The potassium cyanide would be of most concern to authorities, said Phillip Certain, dean of the College of Letters and Science and professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It is that compound, combined with hydrochloric or sulfuric acid, that would produce the highly lethal hydrogen cyanide gas, the same gas used in gas chambers to execute prisoners.

Konopka is well-known to the FBI, law enforcement officers and district attorneys in at least six counties in Wisconsin, where he was charged with numerous acts of vandalism, including starting a fire on a gas pipeline, shorting out a power substation, and burglarizing radio and television stations.

Late Monday, several prosecutors said they were relieved to hear he was in custody.

Door County District Attorney Tim Funnell, who issued an arrest warrant for Konopka after he failed to appear in court on charges of vandalizing radio towers in 2000 near Sturgeon Bay, said Konopka reminded him of the Unabomber.

Ted "Kaczynski just had this manifesto that was sort of rambling on about how society is more or less corrupt in this way and that way. That's sort of the mold Mr. Konopka fits into," said Funnell.

"By all accounts, his IQ is extraordinary; he's intelligent and very capable of accomplishing some destructive things," Funnell said.

An FBI affidavit filed in federal court says University of Illinois-Chicago police arrested Konopka and a juvenile Saturday night on allegations of trespassing. They were found in a steam tunnel under the UIC Education Building, according to the FBI.

When he was arrested, Konopka was carrying a vial containing a powder that was determined to be sodium cyanide-sodium carbonate, the FBI said. Konopka, who is unemployed and has no permanent address, reportedly had been living in the Chicago subway for several weeks.

After officials arrested him, they were led to an underground subway passageway underneath Dearborn St. in downtown Chicago, where they discovered more chemicals and belongings.

As a precaution, authorities shut down the CTA's Blue Line for several hours Saturday night and closed a portion of Dearborn St. Authorities said there was no immediate danger to subway riders.

Konopka was being held pending a court appearance in Chicago on Wednesday. At least three Wisconsin district attorneys said they plan to seek his extradition once prosecutors in Chicago are finished with him.

Among the Wisconsin charges, Konopka is accused of:

• Throwing coiled barbed wire into an electrical substation in Marquette County and causing a power failure to 1,700 homes. "Which . . . is a lot," District Attorney Richard Dufour said Monday.
• Removing a gauge from a gas pipeline in Shawano County and placing chemicals underneath the pipeline to ignite a fire. "The idea was to get the flames to ignite the gas," said District Attorney Gary Bruno. "The problem was the gas was coming out at such a great speed, it blew the flames out."
• Burglarizing radio towers and stealing equipment in Door County.

He also has been charged with or convicted of various acts of vandalism and other crimes in Kewaunee, Brown and Waukesha counties.

Authorities said Konopka recruited juveniles through the Internet, where his computer sign-on was "Dr. Chaos," to commit vandalism.

"He's sort of an anarchist," said Funnell. "He's disillusioned with society and wants to wreak havoc on government systems."

But his grandmother said that doesn't sound like the grandson she raised from a young boy.

"He was always well-behaved around here," Marian Konopka said in an interview Monday night. "I never had any problems with him. He was sort of a homebody. I had no idea any of this stuff was going on."

Calling her grandson "brilliant," Marian Konopka said he never knew his father.

"When he finished eighth grade, he wouldn't go back to school," she said. "They couldn't teach him anything new. It was boring to him."

She said her grandson earned his high school diploma while in jail in Waukesha and later became the lead technician for a technology firm in Green Bay.

Until June, he had been staying with his grandmother in De Pere but disappeared after his mother posted $15,000 bail in connection with one of the recent incidents, Marian Konopka said.

Even though no one was injured, authorities said people could have been killed by some of the incidents Konopka is accused of committing in Wisconsin.

Doug Day, a spokesman for Hudson-based Nuclear Management Co., said Konopka is known as a menace among plant security officers.

The company operates the Point Beach nuclear power plant near Manitowoc and the Kewaunee nuclear power plant near Kewaunee. Day said it was unlikely that Konopka could have any measurable impact on major Wisconsin power plants, however.

"With the level of security at a nuclear plant, he wouldn't even be in a position to get on site," said Day.

Journal Sentinel reporter Lee Hawkins and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

         

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- Federal authorities Monday charged an unemployed man with possession of chemical weapons for storing more than a pound of powdered cyanide in an underground passage that is part of Chicago's subway system. But officials said the arrest was not related to any terrorism.

"It's a serious situation," said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. "But we don't want to blow it out of proportion so that people are afraid to ride the subway." FBI spokesman Ross Rice downplayed any terror links to the case. "This is not a terrorist plot," Rice said. "I don't think it's a big deal."

The charge unfolded after Joseph Daniel Konopka, 25, was arrested Saturday by University of Illinois at Chicago police for allegedly breaking into tunnels beneath the UIC Education Building, authorities said Monday.

Upon his arrest, UIC police recovered a vial containing powder that lab tests identified as sodium cyanide/sodium carbonate, p oisons that also have industrial uses, officials said.

The school's police called the Chicago Police Department, which found that Konopka was wanted in Wisconsin for failing to appear on state charges alleging vandalism against utility systems, the Department of Justice said in a news release.

The suspect, who has no known address and told police he was unemployed, was then turned over to the FBI.

The FBI's Rice said Konopka told agents that he had been living in the subway system for several weeks.

FBI agents, the Chicago police and Fire Department hazardous materials teams searched Chicago Transit Authority tunnels over the weekend, shutting the Blue Line on Sunday, authorities said.

In an underground storage room whose lock Konopka had changed, authorities found seven containers marked as holding various chemicals, the officials said.

Two containers were marked as containing cyanide compounds, stored among other belongings in an underground Chicago Transit Authority, they added.

Tests determined Monday that one held 0.9 pounds of sodium cyanide and the other held nearly 0.25 pounds of potassium cyanide, the release said.

Officials have found no work-related reason for Konopka to posses the cyanide, which can be used to clean metal. Both compounds can kill humans if ingested or converted to gas.

Konopka also told the FBI he had keys to various CTA substations, and that he had been involved in acts of damage to power, water, cell phone and sewer facilities in Wisconsin, Rice said.

A spokeswoman for the Door County Sheriff said she would not have a comment until Tuesday.

Konopka faces a preliminary hearing in U.S. District Court on Wednesday morning.

If convicted, possession of chemical weapons carries an indeterminate prison term, with no set maximum sentence, as well as a fine of up to $250,000, according to a statement from the FBI.

"The system worked, and that's the bottom line," said Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard.

Chicagoans should not fear riding the subways Tuesday, he said. "Why should they be scared? At no time was the safety of any citizen in this city compromised, none whatsoever."

Asked what Konopka might have been planning to do with the compounds, Hillard said, "I'm not a psychiatrist."

Officials did not say how long the chemicals might have been stored underground.

"Cyanide is a dangerous chemical. That's why it is a crime to possess it without a peaceful purpose," said U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald.