Activist Groups Compile How-To
Manual For Terrorists On Web

WASHINGTON — A gaggle of left-wing activists has put together a virtual tour map and operations manual showing potential terrorists where and how they can kill large numbers of Americans — and cause tremendous environmental damage in the process.

The information is handily compiled on an Internet website, gleaned from disaster-preparedness information that Clinton administration officials once avidly sought to disseminate and only belatedly realized could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

The hands, it turns out, of the administration's "green" allies.

The website advises, for example, that the greatest potential for disaster at Tropicana's Northeast operations plant in Jersey City, N.J. would be the ``complete rupture of the controlled pressure receiver which contains as much as 23,640 pounds of anhydrous ammonia,'' a farm fertilizer that can cause blindness, lung disease, burns, and death.

At the Solutia Delaware River Plant in Bridgeport, it would be ``the catastrophic failure of a 90-ton chlorine railroad tank car'' and subsequent formation of ``a plume that would travel with the prevailing wind direction.''

The information was amassed under government orders requiring manufacturers, wastewater treatment plants and chemical companies across the nation to compile worst-case scenarios such as these, spelling out the effects of hypothetical spills, explosions or other catastrophes.

Now, despite some last-minute second thoughts by federal officials concerned about terrorism, much of the information is available for public consumption with a few clicks of a computer keyboard.

The 1990 Clean Air Act required tens of thousands of facilities to file a so-called "Risk Management Plan," including a ``worst-case chemical action'' scenario. The plans were due to the Environmental Protection Agency by June 21, and under Clinton administration orders, were to be posted in detail on the Internet.

As that date approached, however, opposition mounted. Members of Congress, officials at the FBI and Justice Department, and industry groups including the National Association of Manufacturers argued that making such information available via the Internet — particularly estimates of the numbers of human casualties — would provide a road map to terrorists.

As a result, Congress passed legislation severely limiting access to the worst-case scenario plans and directing the White House to weigh the risks and benefits of releasing such information. The worst-case scenarios are thus exempted from the Freedom of Information Act for one year.

But two self-professed "public interest" groups discovered a loophole: executive summaries, which contain some worst-case scenario information, were not covered by the exemption.

That information is available at the Environmental Protection Agency's website (www.epa.gov) but is somewhat difficult to search. So the two activist groups, OMB Watch and The Unison Institute, compiled the reports in an easily searchable format on their ``Right to Know'' site on the World Wide Web (www.rtk.net).

Rick Blum, a spokesman for OMB Watch, justified his group's actions by claiming that members of the public should be fully informed about possible emergencies at industrial sites in their neighborhoods.

Many companies reported that worst-case spills or discharges would be fully contained within company boundaries. Others project effects outside the company property, but only vaguely: Amerchol Corp. in Edison wrote that a worst-case release of 93,700 pounds of ethylene oxide ``could impact off-site public receptors.''

But there are some specific details. Elan Chemical Co. in Newark noted that a new Essex County Correctional Facility is being built 300 feet from company property and would be within the impact area of a vapor cloud explosion stemming from a leak of ethyl chloride.

In reporting potential catastrophes, many companies noted that EPA requirements forced them to disregard elaborate security measures while assuming the worst possible meteorological conditions.

Tropicana, for instance noted that it runs ``a comprehensive emergency response program'' that includes annual full-scale drills. Solutia said its railroad tank cars have thick steel walls and are tested to withstand more than three times normal operating pressure.

Jeff Van, spokesman for the Chemical Manufacturers Association, said chemical manufacturers have supported the risk management program since the start because communities, including police and fire departments, should know everything they can about local facilities.

But, Van cautioned, ``It would be an error to focus on these worst-case scenarios, because everything has to fail — every system, every redundant system, everything.''

Overall, he added, ``there is very useful information contained in the risk management plans that will give people a very good sense of what a facility is doing to prevent accidents — and, heaven forbid — if an accident should occur, what systems they have in place to prevent the accident from becoming huge.''