The threat from within.

From the NYT:

Our Enemies at Home
By DANIEL LEVITAS

ATLANTA

In April, as Baghdad fell and American soldiers began searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, federal officials uncovered a cache of deadly chemicals much closer to home — in the eastern Texas town of Noonday. The stockpile included a fully functional sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing hundreds, as well as neo-Nazi and antigovernment literature, illegal weapons, half a million rounds of ammunition, and more than 100 explosives, including bombs disguised as suitcases.

William Krar, a 62-year-old manufacturer of gun parts and a right-wing extremist who had rented the storage locker in which the cache was found, has pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing a chemical weapon and faces a possible life sentence. Two others — Judith L. Bruey, Mr. Krar's companion, and Edward Feltus, a member of a parmilitary group called the New Jersey Militia — are awaiting sentencing.

An isolated incident involving a few Americans on the far-right fringe? Most people probably assume so, but federal authorities served more than 150 subpeonas in the case, and are still searching for others who may have been involved.

The Noonday case shows just how serious a threat we face from domestic terrorists. Consider this year's other high-profile incident involving rightist causes: the arrest of Eric Rudolph, accused of bombing abortion clinics and the 1996 Olympics. During his five years in the wilderness, he was often viewed by the public and press as a lone fugitive. But law enforcement officials have linked him to two national movements: the Army of God, a biblically inspired underground network of anti-abortion extremists; and the Christian Identity movement, whose members believe that Jews are the literal children of Satan, nonwhites are sub-human, and that Anglo-Saxon Christians are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. More...

Thanks to Dave Neiwert at Orcinus for the heads-up.

Now here is where someone with a background in toxicology would be of assistance. That person is not me. I am a VLSI(Very Large Scale Integration..ya know..semi-conductors) Engineer, with an interest in many things.

In various news accounts, the Sodium Cyanide device has been memtioned as being able to kill even thousands of people. If this is not a binary weapon(see below), the far greater danger comes from the immediate explosion and schrapnel than from the Cyanide. Sodium Cyanide(NaCN) is a crystalline powder, and while acutely toxic, is not likely to cause large numbers of additional injuries or death in and of itself. Purely a terror device.

I am always in search of truth, and I cannot help but wonder if the device in question is a binary device. A binary device is one that uses a reaction immediately prior to, or during delivery combining two chemical, into one with much more lethality. A binary device using NaCN plus another agent could easily produce Hydrogen Cyanide, as was used in Nazi Germany to kill millions. It is the liberation of HCN that would prove most worrisome.

I am heartened by law enforcement's abilities to stop home-grown terrorists. Read the entire NYC article.

ON Edit: It just occurred to me how much these homegrown terrorists have in common with those that attacked us on 9/11. They both have expressed desires to see a theocratic state, use violence in an attempt to achive those goals, and are very pronounced racists. Just a few random thoughts.