Sarin

It is an alarming scenario: terrorists unleash deadly gas in the food court of a crowded mall. Rescue workers rush in and are overcome by toxic fumes. The injury and death toll climbs.That was the script for a Defense Department training film being shot yesterday at the Harford Mall in Bel Air.The film is part of a $42.6 million national program to teach police, firefighters, medics and other emergency workers how to recognize and deal with the possible terrorist use of chemical and biological weapons.

GULF WAR Gassed 15,000?" ran a banner headline atop the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Ah, the old newspaper trick of using a question mark to get away with anything. How about: "Ross Perot: Space Alien?"Actually, that last one may be true. But we can say without a doubt that absolutely no allied troops were "gassed" in the gulf. Furthermore, reports that as many as 100,000 of our soldiers were "exposed" to Iraqi nerve gas are simply meaningless.Yet many consider this the smoking gun proving that the huge panoply of symptoms known as Gulf War Syndrome, of which I've counted over 80, is real.

WASHINGTON -- A preliminary CIA computer model shows a plume of sarin nerve gas drifted over elements of seven U.S. Army divisions after American engineers blew up Iraqi munitions containing 4.8 tons of poison at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to administration officials.More than 130,000 troops were in these front-line units in southern Iraq and Kuwait that routed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait during the weeklong ground war.But U.S. officials say poor record-keeping by the Pentagon has prevented CIA analysts from making an accurate estimate of how many troops were exposed to the cloud of sarin that drifted more than 62 miles south from an Iraqi bunker complex called Khamisiyah.

WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities claimed yesterday that they foiled an apparent terrorist plan to unleash a Japanese-style gas attack on visitors to Disneyland during its crowded Easter weekend festivities.The plot was thwarted when authorities at Los Angeles International Airport apprehended two Japanese travelers a few days before Easter with information in their possession about how to make the highly toxic nerve gas sarin, The Sun has learned.The two were allegedly members of the Japanese cult that released the same type of poison gas into the Tokyo subway system last month, killing 12 people, the officials added.

TOKYO -- Abundant information has emerged in the last week indicating that the Japanese media and the police had reason to be concerned about a poison gas attack, like the one that hit Tokyo subway riders last week.Particularly, they had reason to be concerned about the No. 1 suspect in the case, the Aum Shinri Kyo religious sect.As early as September, explicit warnings of gas attacks were delivered to Tokyo news organizations, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest paper. The warnings targeted the city's subway; its major baseball park, the Tokyo Dome; and its major concert hall, the Tokyo Budokan.

TOKYO -- The police search of a religious sect's properties focused yesterday on a three-story building that believers say is one of the organization's most holy sites but that authorities say contains a sophisticated chemical laboratory capable of producing large quantities of nerve gas.As snow fell on the placid village where the sect had its main complex, near the foot of Mount Fuji, about 1,000 police officers conducted their search and carted off...

TOKYO -- The police have found evidence that may link the Aum Shinri Kyo religious sect to the poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway system on Monday, the Kyodo News Agency reported today.While the sect has frequently been mentioned in connection with the attack on five subway cars, the police have not formally said that the sect's leaders are suspects or that they have found any evidence tying them to the attack.Kyodo's dispatch did not describe the evidence that may link Aum to the subway attack, in which 10 people died and more than 5,000 were injured.

Chemical warfare experts at Aberdeen Proving Ground have been swamped with calls from officials of U.S. cities seeking information about the nerve agent sarin, similar toxic chemicals and how to deal with them.As a result of the suspected nerve agent attack Monday in the Tokyo subway, said James M. Allingham, spokesman for the Army Chemical and Biological Defense Command at Aberdeen, officials from more than a dozen municipalities have asked how to respond to a similar event -- how to equip emergency personnel and what types and quantities of medical supplies to have.

The nerve agent linked to the Tokyo subway system poisonings is odorless, tasteless and doesn't irritate the skin. But it can kill within seconds if its vapors are inhaled.Sarin, or what the U.S. Army refers to as Agent GB, is a straw-colored liquid that to date has been developed for military use only, though it has similar properties to commercially produced insecticides such as malathion and parathion.And, apparently, it is not difficult to manufacture."That's one reason they call chemical weapons the poor man's atom bomb," said James M. Allingham, spokesman for U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command, headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

One of the nation's leading AIDS researchers was convicted by a federal jury in Baltimore yesterday of embezzling money he received for AIDS testing.Prem S. Sarin, 57, a former researcher and deputy chief at the National Cancer Institute's tumor cell biology lab in Bethesda, could receive a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis scheduled sentencing Oct. 16.The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for nearly four hours before returning guilty verdicts on one felony count of embezzlement and two felony counts of filing false statements against Sarin.