Toxic Gas Purchase Raises Cloud of Doubt

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February 13, 2008 6:31 PM

New York City cops were able to purchase toxic chlorine gas with such ease and no proof of identity that it raises grave concerns over how well-protected the public is from the potential terrorist use of chlorine in a chemical attack, officials said Wednesday.

To obtain liquefied chlorine, the New York City police set up a fake business and purchased the chemical online -- and accepted delivery in a highly developed area -- all without proof of identity.

A video of the security exercise, "Operation Green Cloud," was shown Wednesday to private sector executives and members of the media to demonstrate the ease with which the chemicals were acquired.

And New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that a copy of the video had been sent to the Department of Homeland Security two weeks ago.

DHS is drafting regulations for security at chlorine manufacturing plants, and Kelly said he would hope that the new rules included "strict know-your-customer" protocols.

The video's narrator explained why, "Our objective is to defend the City in the most comprehensive, effective and innovative manner possible. Over the past year, the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau has intensified its investigation of potential terrorist threats involving weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear. What follows is a report on one recent NYPD investigation into the terrorist risk posed by one particular type of chemical weapon. The chemical we looked at was chlorine, a common industrial chemical that also presents grave toxic inhalation hazards. The investigation was called Operation Green Cloud. The primary objective was to assess the ease or difficulty with which a terrorist inside the United States could acquire large quantities of chlorine without being detected by law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Our principal finding was that, at the present time, few, if any, barriers stand in his way."

In his remarks, Kelly noted that al Qaeda in Iraq has made several attempts to use chlorine outdoors in an effort to increase casualties caused by their bombs.

To date the use of chlorine gas has not added to IED fatalities, however, when it is well properly used on a battlefield or in a confined space, the effects of chlorine can be lethal.

In the video, Elana DeLozier, an intelligence research specialist at the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau notes, "In World War I, the German Army released 168 tons of chlorine on French troops. Chlorine was used several more times in World War I, causing thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of casualties."

More recently, in the first half of 2007, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq used chlorine in conjunction with truck bombs on at least a dozen occasions, afflicting hundreds of people with chlorine-induced symptoms. To date, these chlorine attacks have only occurred in Iraq and have not produced mass fatalities.

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