CBS Evening News/Terrorist

[Guest guest]

Did anyone watch the 2 day segment on Terrorist, (EYE ON AMERICA) and the

money being spent to combat it? It was really interesting. Tucker

summed it up very well!

http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,158295-412,00.shtml

A Realistic View Of Terrorism?

Study: Terrorists More Likely To Use Bombs

(CBS) The U.S. government's has a $10 billion plan to stop terrorists from

obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

CBS News Correspondent Jim investigates whether it's money well

spent or a huge expenditure on a terrorist scenario threat that isn't real.

It's the scenario that scares counter-terrorism experts the most - that

somehow, someone figures out a way to load a helicopter or plane with nerve

gas and sprays a plume of death over America. It happened on a smaller scale

in Japan, after all. Imagine the effect if a plane load were dumped on Times

Square, say planners.

" You'll see panic, I believe. I think people will be running and wanting to

break through and get away, get out of there, " says G. Kemble ,

director of the emergency training center at Texas A & M University.

But consider this: It took the Japanese cult that attacked a Tokyo subway

with nerve gas in 1995 millions of dollars, a sophisticated lab and years of

research to finally produce a few plastic bags of the stuff. It was a

terrible thing, say experts; but keep it in perspective.

" They killed 12 people. But you can kill 12 people with a pipe bomb so this

did not rise to the level of mass casualties, " says Bremer of the

Advisory Panel on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

In fact, here's a question that often gets lost as Congress prepares to

spend $10 billion on counter-terrorism this year: Do you know how many

people have died in chemical or biological terrorist attacks in America in

the last 100 years?

The answer is one. He was Oakland School Superintendent Marcus , who

was shot by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1973. His case counts only

because the bullet was tipped with cyanide. The fact of the matter is that

making a weapon of mass destruction from scratch is extraordinarily

difficult.

" It simply is not a matter, as the popular press has sometimes said, 'Well,

you just go in your garage and mix up some things, and you've got a

wonderful chemical weapon. Or go into a dark cellar and grow Anthrax and

throw it around,' " says Bremer.

Take sarin nerve gas, for example. A Pentagon study found it would take 220

pounds of the stuff to kill even 500 people in an open area. Remember that

it took 80 scientists in the Japanese cult $30 million to manufacture less

than an ounce of it. And Anthrax, the most likely biological weapon, is no

less difficult to deal with, say experts, because it requires special

equipment to grow and disperse it.

Tucker of the Monterey Institute for International Studies is

co-author of a critically acclaimed study that claims the threat of weapons

of mass destruction is overplayed and that terrorists are far more likely to

use plain old fertilizer and fuel oil bombs, as they did at Oklahoma City,

and that Washington has overreacted.

" This is not off-the-shelf equipment, " Tucker says. " This is specialized

military equipment that would not be available, for example, to domestic

terrorists. "

" It seems that every agency is developing its own response teams - the

military, the FBI, Health and Human Services - so there's enormous

redundancy, " he adds.

This is a reality that seems unlikely to change. Name one public official

who would ever say out loud, " Oh, that'll never happen here. "

For more information, read Jim 's prior report: Fighting Back Against

Terrorism.

Copyright 2000, CBS Worldwide Inc., .

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