Hijackers' Interest in Crop Dusters Still Puzzles Terrorism Investigators

One of the articles about the four journalists being killed brought up the Japanese terrorists putting sarin gas into a Tokyo subway system.

The author wrote that to test the gas, the terrorists drove down a small street 'spraying' the gas behind them.

Can Sarin Gas be sprayed from a crop duster?

"It would seem to me that mixing that anthrax with a liquid would defeat the object of the milling and anti-static coating that was applied to it ..."

If they used water, the anthrax would still be a danger once it evaporated. Everything in the area they spayed would be evenly coated. I still wonder what happened to the government crop duster that disappeared from the Keys.

Interesting new tidbits, I hadn't heard that they were asking about how far it would fly on a tank of gas before. I HATE crop dusters - we have one that buzzes the house every fall.

Crop dusters are some of the best stunt pilots there are. There is a company not to far from where I live and we see them all the time. Even when they aren't dusting. Just out for a fun flight. We take our lawn chairs out and watch the show. They are good. That could have been some of the interest of the terrorists..

One thing I'm not clear on, and somebody may be able to cast light on this issue, is whether crop-dusters would have any utility in spreading the anthrax sent to Daschle.

Yes, they would and all of those people telling you otherwise, including the so called experts in the media are wrong.

There have been numerous studies performed by the Department of Defense and by the World Health Organization that studied the effects of chemical/bio weapons being spread in the air. Many of these tests were performed using cropdusters and showed horrific results.

If you can still catch a show that I saw recently on the History Channel, something like The History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, It specifically showed cropdusters spreading both simulated Anthrax in tests and actually spreading mustard gas (I believe in Ethiopoia)

Given appropriate weather and wind conditions, 50 kilograms of anthrax released from an aircraft along a 2 kilometer line could create a lethal cloud of anthrax spores that would extend beyond 20 kilometers downwind. The aerosol cloud would be colorless, odorless and invisible following its release. Given the small size of the spores, people indoors would receive the same amount of exposure as people on the street.

There are currently no atmospheric warning systems to detect an aerosol cloud of anthrax spores. The first sign of a bioterrorist attack would most likely be patients presenting with symptoms of inhalation anthrax.

A 1970 analysis by the World Health Organization concluded that the release of aerosolized anthrax upwind of a population of 5,000,000 could lead to an estimated 250,000 casualties, of whom as many as 100,000 could be expected to die.

A later analysis, by the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, estimated that 130,000 to 3 million deaths could occur following the release of 100 kilograms of aerosolized anthrax over Washington D.C., making such an attack as lethal as a hydrogen bomb. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that such a bioterrorist attack would carry an economic burden of $26.2 billion per 100,000 people exposed to the spores.

IMHO, the terrorists wanted these planes for one and one reason only and that is to spread chemical/biological agents. No offense intended but the people who are suggestign that they may have wanted these particular planes simply so that they could load them with fuel and use them as small bombs must be ignoring the fact that it would be much easier to simply rent a standard prop plane equipped with a long range fuel bladder. This theory then does not hold up very well...

Anthrax