IT BEGAN as a rumor, and then it became a fact. The fact became an alarm. And the alarm became a touchstone for a multimillion-dollar federal program that has ricocheted out of control.
Kenneth Starr's investigation of Bill Clinton? No, it's the federal budget for countering a doomsday attack by terrorists armed with chemical and biological weapons.
The rumor in this case was that terrorists had put sodium cyanide into the February 1993 World Trade Center bomb that killed six people, injured more than 1,000, blasted a seven-story-deep hole beneath the twin skyscrapers and created panic in the streets of lower Manhattan. The blast would have turned the sodium cyanide into hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous cloud that could have instantly killed hundreds of thousands more people - had the cyanide been added.
But, according to a thorough, unpublished study of the incident by the Monterey Institute, an arms-control think tank, there is "no evidence" to support the long-swirling assertion about the cyanide. It first surfaced in the solemn pronouncement of a respected federal judge, made its way into scores of newspaper articles and was mentioned by leading senators in their support of anti-terrorist initiatives that have amounted to billions of dollars - many of those dollars unaccounted for, according to a recent investigation by congressional auditors.
The blast at the World Trade Center, along with a Japanese cult's sarin nerve-agent assault on the Tokyo subway two years later, galvanized federal efforts to prepare for all kinds of domestic terror attacks. But the unfounded rumor of cyanide in the bomb at the World Trade Center clearly fueled congressional alarm and funding for a wide array of federal anti-terrorism programs, many of which have been questioned for possibly being useless.
John Parachini, a Monterey Institute fellow, made available a copy of his study after word of his findings began circulating among Washington terrorism experts.
"I'm not against spending money for defending against chemical and biological weapons," Parachini said in an interview, "but we ought to know why we're spending for it, and to get the facts straight."
In his study, Parachini noted that the World Trade Center bombers considered using chemical weapons but did not - an important fact for government terrorism specialists to ponder.
"Examining the motivations and behaviors of terrorists who would have used a chemical weapon if it was available, but did not, may offer important lessons about how to thwart such attacks in the future," he wrote.
Parachini traced the origins of the cyanide gas story to the first trial of the World Trade Center bombers in 1994, when federal prosecutors raised the specter of a chemical bomb, no doubt to darken the jury's view of the defendants. The theme was picked up by presiding federal Judge Kevin T. Duffy in his sentencing statement to the stone-faced defendants.
"You had sodium cyanide around, and I'm sure it was in the bomb," the judge intoned. "Thank God the sodium cyanide burned instead of vaporizing. If the sodium cyanide had vaporized, it is clear that what would have happened is the cyanide gas would have been sucked into the north tower and everybody in the north tower would have been killed. That to my mind is exactly what was intended."
The judge might have been "sure it was in the bomb," but the defendants were never charged under anti-terrorism statutes that make the possession of potential chemical and biological weapons a federal crime, Parachini noted.
The rumor that the bombers included a chemical component in their weapon began when the FBI raided a New Jersey storage shed rented by the suspects. The agents found one sealed bottle of sodium cyanide in aqueous form.
Aqueous sodium cyanide is used in photography and can cost less than three dollars per pound, Parachini noted in his study, after consulting chemical experts. But it is sodium cyanide in solid form, usually briquettes costing many hundreds of dollars, which can be effective as a chemical weapon after they are converted to hydrogen cyanide gas by a blast.
Nevertheless, the federal prosecutor in the initial World Trade Center trial raised the specter of a chemical bomb when questioning a senior FBI chemist, Steven Burmeister, about the consequences of mixing sodium cyanide with other chemicals present in the bomb. Burmeister testified, "If you breathe that gas, I'm afraid you've breathed your last breath."
Despite this "chilling testimony," "Burmeister never suggested during the trial that his investigation had led him to believe that the bomb actually contained sodium cyanide," Parachini wrote.
In addition, an FBI chemist who participated in the case told Parachini flatly, "There is no forensic evidence indicating the presence of sodium cyanide at the bomb site."
Judge Duffy's statement to the contrary bolstered the notion that the defendants had made - or tried to make - a chemical bomb.
Maj. Gen. George Friel, the former head of the U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command, told Gannett News Service that the "1993 World Trade Center bombers may have tried to mix a toxic agent, probably arsenic, with the homemade bomb they planted in the skyscraper's garage."
That was a new one to federal investigators. At the trial, neither FBI agents nor prosecutors mentioned arsenic as a bomb ingredient.
Judge Duffy's charge was next picked up by two influential senators, Indiana Republican Richard Lugar and now-retired Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, who called the charge a "warning bell."
"The trial judge at the sentencing of those responsible for the World Trade Center bombing pointed out that the killers in that case had access to chemicals to make lethal cyanide gas I and probably put those chemicals into that bomb that exploded," Nunn said during a 1996 floor debate on a multibillion-dollar bill aimed at bolstering U.S. defenses against weapons of mass destruction.
Lugar also mentioned Judge Duffy's statement as evidence of "how close we have come to witnessing acts of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction directed toward the United States."
"Listen to Judge Duffy," he urged his Senate colleagues, comparing the World Trade Center bomb to the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway by Japanese cultists and the placement of a radioactive package in a Moscow park.
Next to pick up Duffy's theme were the media. A typical story, in the Los Angeles Times in July 1996, stated, "The World Trade Center bombers had sodium cyanide, which if used I would have released poison gas, vastly increasing the fatalities in New York, intelligence officials said." Syndicated columnist Trudy Rubin referred to Judge Duffy in the course of applauding "some farsighted lawmakers trying to confront the unthinkable." As recently as last winter, the influential journal Foreign Affairs published an article mentioning the cyanide canard.
The Nunn-Lugar bill, which included $235 million for training local "first responders" to a chemical or biological attack, passed 100-0. But that was merely the gateway to a mushrooming federal anti-terrorism crusade that costs up to $1 billion a year - and perhaps twice that, according to some experts - and that last week led to the creation of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which will "spend hundreds of millions of dollars in research for bettor sensors and technology to detect biological and chemical weapons," according to the Associated Press.
Counterterrorism might be the magic word for funding programs in Washington, but a withering audit by the General Accounting Office has raised questions about where the money is going.
"More money is being spent to combat terrorism without any assurance of whether it is focused in the right programs or in the right amounts," said Richard Davis, a GAO auditor specializing in weapons of mass destruction.
"I Further, no government-wide spending priorities for the various aspects of combating terrorism have been set."
Past studies have cautioned that while chemical or biological weapons might be cheaper and easier to make than nuclear bombs, terrorists have shied away from using them.
Ramsi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the World Trade Center blast, made the point while flying back in custody from Pakistan, where he was captured in 1996, the Monterey Institute study noted.
"Yousef I revealed to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian Parr that the WTC bomb did not contain sodium cyanide or any other poison, but that he had planned to use 'hydrogen cyanide in some other form of a bomb, not as large a bomb, but a different type of bomb to disperse that [poison] in the Trade Center,'" according to the study.
"Yousef told Parr that he had decided not to take this approach because 'it was going to be expensive to implement.'"
Jeff Stein covers national security issues for the online magazine Salon, where an earlier version of this story appeared. He is a frequent contributor to Perspective.
Pub Date: 10/18/98