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The Mohave Valley Community Park Egg Drop in Arizona was supposed to be cute and endearing: a family Easter egg hunt capped off with candy raining from the sky for kids to collect. Instead, it turned into a genuine health scare, and not just because too many Peeps can make a kid constipated. No, it was because the candy was found to be potentially laced with herbicides. How did this happen, you ask? The low-flying plane used to drop the candy is regularly a crop duster, meaning that all of those literal plant-killing toxins were also covering the supposedly edible...

As the market for crop dusters converted into light surveillance and attack aircraft continues to expand, another contender has appeared on the market at the annual Paris Air Show at the French capital city’s Le Bourget Airport. However, potential customers might be turned off by the company’s already sordid reputation, which involves accusations of dubiously legal business practices, potential violations of international embargoes and sanctions, and a connection to infamous mercenary Erik Prince. On June 19, 2017, the first day of the show, a modified Thrush 510G agricultural aircraft sat out in the sun at Le Bourget. Bulgarian firm LASA...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Five crop-duster planes have crashed on the terror-plagued island of Mindanao in a short period of time. Annie Jacobsen says that while it may feel like Mindanao is half a world away, the island’s plantations are linked to the international food supply chain. Is it time to start worrying about what’s being sprayed on your bananas? Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers by Annie Jacobsen There have been five crop-duster plane crashes on the terrorist-plagued island of Mindanao in the Philippines in a 90-day period. The most recent incident happened on December 6. Three of the five crashes occurred on...

For those who continue to reject evidence of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMD programs, the document released yesterday by the FMSO DocEx project makes it a much more difficult proposition. Document CMPC-2003-004346 reveals that Dr. Rehab Rasheed Taha, otherwise known as Dr. Germ, prepared an analysis in 2002 of how to spread biological weapons material using an aircraft as the medium, and how far they had advanced on the application:

The Transportation Security Administration issued an advisory on Friday that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on Nov. 1. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qa'ida may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If you see the aircraft, the TSA says you should...

Law officers on both sides of the borders are on edge as Mexico is named as the preferred al-Qaeda route to launch a WMD attack on the American homeland, according to a report in Time Magazine. Two weeks ago a crop-duster aircraft was stolen south of San Diego by three men from southern Mexico who assaulted a watchman and then flew off in a southerly direction. The still missing plane can be used to disperse toxic substances and is just one episode that has captured the attention of officials. Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near...

The Transportation Security Administration issued an advisory on Friday that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on Nov. 1. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qa'ida may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If you see the aircraft, the TSA says you should...

The Transportation Security Administration has issued an advisory that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft (similar in appearance to the aircraft shown above) was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on November 1st, 2004. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qaeda may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If...

Hijackers' Interest in Crop Dusters Still Puzzles Terrorism Investigators By JOHN J. FIALKA, TOM HAMBURGER and GARY FIELDS Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- Seven months before he crashed an airliner into the World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta was asking crop dusters in Florida an odd question about their planes: How far can they fly? Such aircraft normally aren't flown long distances. But this summer, a Middle Eastern man who gave his name as "Sam" hung around crop-dusting firms in Saskatchewan, Canada, for days -- and asked the same question. And sometime before he was arrested ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top al Qaeda planners of the Sept. 11 hijackings might have canceled the attack had they known that Zacarias Moussaoui -- chosen by Osama bin Laden as one of the pilots -- had been arrested, the commission investigating the attacks said on Thursday. The commission said news of Moussaoui's Aug. 16, 2001, arrest did not reach bin Laden and top al Qaeda planners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before Sept. 11. "According to (attack coordinator Ramzi bin al-Shaibah), had bin Laden and KSM learned prior to 9/11 that Moussaoui had been detained, they might have canceled the operation,"...

<p>The government seems hell-bent in its effort to limit the suspects in the anthrax mystery to a domestic loner. First, the FBI's behavioral analysis came up with the profile of a lone wolf based on its "exacting handwriting and linguistic analysis" of one letter that contained 18 words and another that contained 27 words. It suggested that the writer of these two letters was a single disgruntled American, not connected to the jihadist terrorists of Sept. 11 (even though the letter used the plural pronoun "we" and began with an underlined "9-11").</p>

Sources tell TIME that U.S. officials suspect that bin Laden conspirators may have been planning to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting planes Saturday, Sep. 22, 2001 New York -- U.S. law enforcement officials have found a manual on the operation of cropdusting equipment while searching suspected terrorist hideouts, government sources tell TIME magazine in an issue out on Monday, Sept. 24th. The discovery has added to concerns among government counterterrorism experts that the bin Laden conspirators may have been planning — or may still be planning —to disperse biological or chemical agents from a cropdusting plane normally used ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has questioned more than 3,000 pilots and aircraft owners, most of them in the past year, amid persistent concerns that terrorists might use crop-dusting planes to mount a biological or chemical attack, newly released documents show. The interviews have not produced any arrests, according to a senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, but have resulted in terrorism investigations that are still under way. The effort, outlined in documents submitted to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, is more extensive than previously disclosed and underscores how seriously the threat is viewed...

Army Announces the Sixth Series of Weather Radar Tests March 17 to 23 3/15/2004 5:01:00 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To: City Desk Contact: Cynthia O. Smith of the U.S. Army, 703-697-5344 WASHINGTON, March 15 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The United States Army, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lincoln Laboratory, Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will commence the sixth in a series of tests designed to provide data for the development of an early warning system for chemical and biological events. The tests will be conducted in the Canadian River Valley March 17 - 23. During...

A BRITISH terror suspect held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay has confessed to plotting to kill Tony Blair in an anthrax strike on the Commons, it was claimed last night. Moazzam Begg, one of nine Britons detained at Camp Delta in Cuba, has agreed to plead guilty over an elaborate Al Qaeda plot as part of the deal returning him to the UK, his lawyer said. The 36-year- old father- of-three has allegedly confessed to planning to fly an unmanned plane from Suffolk to London and drop the bacteria over Westminster. The confession would be in exchange for a...

<p>WASHINGTON — The FBI is working on a theory that a previously unmentioned man was meant to be the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Fox News has confirmed.</p> <p>"We are fairly confident we know who No. 20 is," a top law-enforcement official told USA Today, which first reported the story.</p>

In early June 2003, a Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA") report concluded that the reason for Mohammed Atta's and Zacarias Moussaoui's inquiries into cropdusters was for the contemplated use in dispersing biological agents such as anthrax. An early September 2003 Newsweek article included a rumor by a Taliban source that at a meeting in April 2003 Bin Laden was planning an "unbelievable" biological attack, the plans for which had suffered a setback upon the arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM") the previous month in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.    Many people have argued that a US-based Al Qaeda operative is behind the earlier Fall...

A Second Attack Planned French Authorities: Moussaoui Plotted Another Series of Attacks By Brian Ross and David Scott Sept. 5— Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was part of a second wave of suicide hijackings planned for early 2002 in Europe and the United States, French intelligence authorities told ABCNEWS, and they say the U.S. Justice Department is making a mistake in identifying him as the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. <! -- begin print page / send page box --> Moussaoui is the only person charged by the United States government as an...

WASHINGTON - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant U.S. prosecutors have charged with complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, contends he was not part of that day's hijackings but was preparing for a later operation outside the United States, court papers revealed Tuesday. In a separate development in the case, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. ordered that the public and news media be admitted to portions of a June 3 court session to consider whether Moussaoui can interview an al-Qaida member also held as a prisoner. The government had argued the hearing should be closed because classified information would...