Well, if they had, Clinton would have surely gone after them, right? According to Richard Clarke, Clinton made terrorism a top priority.
I am sure he would have sent Jamie Gorelick out there to personally find those chemical weapons.
Yes--got a link on that somewhere as I was just reading about that a few days ago, I'm about to head out but I'll post it when I get back, if someone else hasn't done so by then.
Correct. The first WTC bomb included a significant amount of cyanide, I believe it was.
However, the heat of the explosion consumed the cyanide, rendering this feature harmless.
Surely, the terrorists were aware of this failure and had taken steps to correct it -- either a different chemical or some kind of dispersal system. It would be worth knowing what, exactly.
Solomon Bell, QUAGMIRE OF SPIN: SADDAM’S LINKS TO AL QAEDA
We know that Ramzi Yousef, the convicted bombmaker in the plot, was known by his fellow conspirators as “Rashid the Iraqi”. We know that the other known bombmaker, Abdul Rachman Yasin, was an Iraqi living in Baghdad just before the bombing and that he was harbored back in Iraq soon afterwards. We know that Yasin is an expert in a notorious Iraqi specialty—souping up the post-blast killing power of bombs by lacing them with hydrogen-cyanide gas—which is exactly what he did with the Trade Center bomb. Only a miscalculation in the force of the blast, which resulted in most of the gas being incinerated upon detonation, saved untold lives when smoke filled the tower.
I'm not sure of the reliability of that source as I'm not too familiar with the site, so here's a couple other references:
The bomb: Yousef's complex 600 kilogram bomb was made of urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. He added sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers. The van that Yousef used had four 6 m (20 ft) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yousef calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he would use a cheap cigarette lighter to light the fuse. He wanted to prevent smoke from escaping the towers, therefore, catching the public eye by poisoning people inside. He foresaw Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast would occur.
The main explosive charge consisted primarily of approximately 1,200 to 1,500 pounds of a home-made fertilizer-based explosive, urea nitrate. . .through toll records and receipts, a safe house or bomb factory was located on Pamrappo Avenue, in Jersey City. A search of this bomb factory revealed that acids and other chemicals had been used at that apartment to manufacture explosives. Traces of nitro-glycerine and urea nitrate were found on the carpet and embedded in the ceiling. It appeared that a chemical reaction involving acid had occurred in the apartment. At the same time, telephone toll records from Salameh and Ayyad showed that calls had been made to a self-storage center not too far from the bomb factory. . .During the search of the storage room rented by Salameh, many chemicals and items of laboratory equipment were located. Among the items seized was 300 pounds of urea, 250 pounds of sulfuric acid, numerous one-gallon containers, both empty and containing nitric acid and sodium cyanide, two 50-foot lengths of hobby fuse, a blue plastic trash can, and a bilge pump. While examining the trash can and bilge pump, a white crystalline substance was found. A chemical analysis identified urea nitrate. While inventorying the materials in the storage center, six 2-quart bottles of brown liquid were discovered. The liquid was identified as home-made nitro-glycerine, very unstable in the condition in which it was found.
BTW, while I was searching for that first link, I found this article I'd forgotten about:
Yes; theirs was a large bomb with cyanide as the secondary killer. But the heat of the bomb burned away the cyanide.