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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
If terrorists strike a chemical plant just nine miles from Times Square, millions could die. But the chemical industry and its friends in Washington are blocking tough safeguards.
Mar 18, 2003 | Just nine miles from Times Square stands the comparatively unimposing cluster of white silos and modest buildings that make up the Kuehne Chemical Co. Most New Yorkers have surely never heard of the plant, nor do they have any idea how important the chemicals stored here could be to their lives.
Specifically, their safety depends very much on the security at Kuehne and other plants like it. And based on a random visit here last week, the security doesn't appear particularly intimidating if a terrorist has plans on doing more than just trespassing.
According to Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., chemical plants are indeed among the documented targets of al-Qaida. "There have been conversations that have been tapped into by intelligence operatives about attacking infrastructure and chemical plants," Corzine says. "One of those led to the February state of alert." A Department of Homeland Security bulletin that month warned that "Al Qa'ida operatives also may attempt to launch conventional attacks against the U.S. nuclear/chemical-industrial infrastructure to cause contamination, disruption and terror. Based on information, nuclear power plants and industrial chemical plants remain viable targets."
Which makes the parking lot of the Kuehne plant a uniquely scary place to stand. As the United States stands on the brink of war with Iraq, terrorism and Middle East experts warn us that al-Qaida is already using the prospective war as a rallying cause. Rohan Gunaratna, the author of "Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror," told Salon that a U.S. attack on Iraq, without United Nations support, could arouse terrorist "sleeper cells"; such an attack could seem like a war against Islam, and sleeper cells might rationalize, "'My God, we went and trained in Afghanistan, and now we must go and fight the infidels.'" And that's what contributes to making Kuehne a possible ground zero. Its lethal combination: proximity to a densely populated area and some of the deadliest chemicals around. A well-executed attack upon it could kill 12 million Americans.
"In the event of a total failure of a railroad tank car of chlorine which discharges its entire contents within a 10-minute time frame, the resulting cloud of chlorine vapor would be immediately dangerous to both life and health for a distance exceeding 14 miles." That's not propaganda from Greenpeace -- it's from the company's own risk management plan. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, of the 123 chemical plants in the U.S. that each put at least 1 million Americans at risk, Kuehne Chemical is No. 1 in terms of the number of people in its vulnerability zone. Security has been beefed up here since Sept. 11, Peter Kuehne Jr., tells me after I pull up unannounced to a sliding gate. "Before then, we were primarily focused on safety concerns," says Kuehne, the plant's chief operating officer, whose ancestors founded the firm in 1919 and whose father currently runs it. "No one ever thought that someone would actually come in and try to blow everything up."
But I wonder: Beyond the plant's relatively flimsy-looking electronic gates, its barbed-wire-garnished chain-link fence, and the bicycle locks that secure some of its gates, would it really be so difficult for me to infiltrate the Kuehne Chemical Co.? If I were driving an explosives-laden vehicle, I think I could crash through the fence. And what if I had one of those Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, like the al-Qaida operatives in Kenya? The security guards here -- one shuffles to the gate a minute or so after I arrive; another drives up in a black pickup truck shortly thereafter -- aren't that daunting. Kuehne Chemical still seems to be counting on reasonable attackers who wouldn't be willing to damage their cars or scuff a pant leg, much less perform an act of suicidal/homicidal jihad.
So why isn't the government imposing tougher restrictions on this, possibly our most vulnerable flank? Corzine has tried to, authoring a bill that quickly and unanimously passed a Senate committee last year. It seemed to be a no-brainer, especially after the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that in the spring of 2001, Mohamed Atta had been spotted on a possible scouting mission to a Tennessee chemical plant to find out just what chemicals they were storing. The EPA -- according to an early draft obtained by Salon -- appeared to be drafting its own tougher restrictions, in line with Corzine's suggestion.
But plans for mandated security at the most dangerous of these plants soon ran into a toxic cloud of special interest money from the chemical industry. Republican senators who had voted for the Corzine bill flip-flopped into opposition; Democrats, who -- lest we forget -- then ran the Senate, suspiciously froze the Corzine bill from the Senate floor. The bill went nowhere. To many observers, Corzine's experience spelled out a heartbreaking truth: Sept. 11 changed little about the legislative process in Washington, except for maybe creating previously unexplored heights of cynicism.
