A Growing Fear of Toxic Terrorism

There’s a lot of hate talk swaggering through certain corners of society these days. Talk about taking down the government.

So when the FBI seized anthrax from two men in Las Vegas last week, experts who follow American extremist movements blanched.

That anthrax turned out to be a harmless veterinary vaccine. But as scientists point out, the real stuff is frighteningly easy to get. Other toxins are, too.

And while the Las Vegas case was a false alarm, experts say biological weapons may well be attractive to a small cadre of home-grown terrorists who think they can save the nation only by striking out--with horrific drama--against a government they feel is corrupt.

“The threat is here. The threat is real,” said Robert Blitzer, chief of the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit. “A couple of guys with a lot of hate can get together” on the Internet and make a biological poison. “That’s what scares us more than anything else.”

Guns and homemade bombs will continue to be the weapons of choice for most terrorists, authorities say.

But most anyone with a bit of ingenuity and some biology know-how can obtain lethal toxins--and grow them in the kitchen. What’s more, the microbes can be transported in a test tube, tucked away in a shirt pocket or briefcase. They won’t set off metal detectors or raise alarms at airport security controls.

“It becomes very, very difficult to control the movement of these organisms,” said David Huxsoll, a former commander of the U.S. Army’s effort to develop defenses against biological weapons. “If someone is really bent on getting them, it’s fairly easy.”

Deadly anthrax microbes, for instance, can be scraped off the flesh or extracted from the blood of animals infected with the disease. The microbes can even be scooped up from the ground--if an infected cow dies, for instance, the spot where it falls may crawl with anthrax for decades. Anthrax, which pops up occasionally in animals in the United States and more frequently in other countries, is a lethal bacteria that can kill humans in even microscopic amounts.

Even more simple to obtain--and even more toxic--is ricin, an extract of the castor bean plant. In 1995, four members of the Minnesota Patriots Council were convicted of conspiring to kill federal agents by smearing the deadly powder on doorknobs. They had accumulated enough ricin to murder 1,400 people.

The threat is real enough that the National Defense Panel urged the Pentagon in November to put more resources into defending against terrorist attacks at home--attacks that could come from international hitmen or homegrown extremists.

Huxsoll knows and fears both brands of terrorists. He has served on three international inspection teams to scour Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. But as the Las Vegas anthrax saga unfolded, he found himself wondering just what domestic terrorists could be cooking up in their kitchens. “It’s something we really have to be concerned about,” he said.

In fact, law enforcement officials have been concerned for years.

That’s why FBI agents moved so quickly against Larry Wayne Harris, the Ohio microbiologist who allegedly boasted to an informant that he had enough anthrax to wipe out the city of Las Vegas.

Harris was convicted in 1995 of fraudulently obtaining bubonic plague bacteria--yet another toxin that authorities believe is easy to get and thus tempting for use in domestic terrorism. Harris also had boasted to a university professor last summer that he could take out 100,000 people by spewing anthrax from a crop-duster plane.

So when the FBI’s tipster mentioned Harris in connection with anthrax last week, agents swarmed in to arrest him and seize biological materials. The Las Vegas charges against Harris were dropped Monday, but the FBI’s domestic terrorism chief remained wary.

“It just scares the hell out of you,” Blitzer said. “You just cannot ignore the fact that we’re moving toward the millennium and there’s a lot of nut-heads out there.”

Just how many, no one knows.

In an interview with an Ohio State University journalism professor last year, Harris boasted that “thousands” of people around the country have their hands on anthrax or bubonic plague. “The biological genie is out of the bottle,” he warned. “A biological attack is inevitable.”

Law enforcement officials and academic experts are not willing to go quite that far. They won’t venture to estimate how many would-be terrorists are trying to concoct biological weapons to use against their own country. All they can say--and say with alarm--is that such activity is going on.

“Without a doubt,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College in New Jersey. “I guarantee you.”

Many authorities speculate that the biggest terrorist threat comes from right-wing extremists. But that’s a frustratingly vague description. It encompasses dozens of different philosophies, from the survivalist theories of militia members to the racist rantings of white supremacists.

The one thing that binds these diverse groups together is suspicion--in particular, an intense suspicion of the federal government. “They see a government plot to destroy liberty and impose tyranny,” said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with the Political Research Associates think tank outside Boston.

“From their point of view, they’re going up against this sinful, evil bureaucracy . . . so destroying it is an act of patriotism,” Berlet said.

In that framework, he points out, committing an act of terrorism would seem laudable, a sensible “preemptive strike” to shake up the government before it could impose a repressive New World Order.

But while many in these movements may talk approvingly of striking out at the government, few are prepared to take action. As Berlet put it: “A considerable amount of it is just bluster.”

Indeed, spokesmen for the militia movement have repeatedly and emphatically insisted they have no interest in terrorism. “How can we recruit our fellow Americans if we’re out there maiming and killing them?” asked John Trochmann of the Militia of Montana. “We do not advocate any kind of violence. We advocate putting our nation back together.”

The problem, experts say, is that the fierce anti-government rhetoric underpinning such groups may inspire more radical members to take matters into their own hands--no matter how often their leaders publicly renounce violence.

Chuck Fenwick, a former military medic who teaches survivalist techniques, points to a recent newsletter he received from one militia group announcing that its members had been approached by someone “who advocates that ‘patriots need biological [weapons] capability’ which he can help them obtain.”

The newsletter advises members to turn down such offers by saying, “I have no intention of doing that. I don’t think you should, either.” But that rather tepid rejection by the militia leadership might not deter a member from translating his group’s philosophy into violence.

“I consider this a major threat,” Fenwick said.

Even more of a threat are the loners who don’t belong to any group--but who absorb the extremist movement’s rhetoric over the Internet, at survivalist expos, on shortwave radio and through videos. Authorities cite Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski as examples of loners with deadly ideologies.

“You don’t need a mass movement,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who tracks extremist movements at the Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles. “You just need a couple of people who are tuned in and turned on by this stuff. Reading it all gives them a sense of empowerment and community.”

Those are just the people the FBI is most concerned about, because, by definition, they’re much harder to track. They also may hold the most hard-core views, and may be most intent on making a splash with a new kind of weapon. After all, to put it crudely, 20 deaths from anthrax would be a lot more horrifying than 20 deaths from yet another pipe bomb explosion.

“You usually think of terrorists wanting the big bang of fire, smoke and visible damage,” Huxsoll said. “But once they see the reaction to a biological event, terrorists will be turned on by it. . . . We’re going to have copycats all over the place.”

Information about how to obtain and grow biological toxins is increasingly available online.

Some potential weapons, such as bubonic plague bacteria, can be obtained only if someone is able to gain access to scientific labs--or if he is able to persuade a mail-order microbe business to ship him a sample by posing as a reputable scientist, as Harris did.

Other toxins, however, are open to abuse by do-it-yourselfers. There are manuals explaining how to crush castor beans to extract ricin. And from biology books, would-be terrorists can learn where to look for anthrax and how to grow it by nourishing it with animal blood. They don’t need high-tech equipment or even college degrees to wreak havoc.

“It doesn’t take a microbiologist to culture bugs, and you don’t necessarily have to be a chemist to put together a toxin,” the FBI’s Blitzer said.

Since 1984, when officials of the Rajneesh sect in Oregon pleaded guilty to poisoning 750 residents by sprinkling salmonella bacteria in salad bars, “we keep getting small eruptions of chemical and biological” terrorist plots, Blitzer said.

He emphasized that not all are connected with far-right extremists; the salmonella incident, for example, aimed to sway local elections, and other plots seem to be devised for revenge against a personal enemy.

While scientists agree that biological toxins are easy to produce, they caution that it’s harder to figure out an effective way to deliver them as weapons of mass destruction.

Anthrax, for instance, is easy to cultivate in liquid form. But dumping the liquid on a street corner probably will not kill anyone. Terrorists must figure out a way to spray the anthrax in fine particles that victims will inhale.

Even the classic terrorism scenario of dumping a vial of poison into a municipal water supply wouldn’t work with anthrax--it would take tons of the poison to cause illness, according to Bill Patrick, who led the U.S. effort to develop biological weapons in the 1950s and ‘60s.

That said, however, Patrick acknowledged that biological weapons can be employed with devastating effectiveness on a smaller scale. Just a few grains of ricin can kill if pressed against the skin.

Patrick also points out that biological weapons are almost impossible to defend against because they are hard to detect until they begin their deadly work. Antibiotics can treat anthrax poisoning if prescribed immediately, but by the time symptoms develop it’s often too late.

Patrick regularly travels the country to give lectures, carrying simulated toxins and dissemination devices in his briefcase. He said he has never been stopped at airport security. “The offense,” he said, “has all the advantages over the defense.”

Times staff writer Ronald Ostrow contributed to this report.

* CHARGES DROPPED: Federal charges in Las Vegas incident are dropped. A3

* PROBLEM FOR CITY: Larry Harris’ arrest is dilemma for Lancaster, Ohio. A5