Paul Harris reports from Noonday, Texas, on how the FBI stumbled upon right-wing cyanide bombers
Sunday March 21, 2004
The Observer
William Krar and Judith Bruey appeared a perfectly normal couple. Certainly Teresa Staples thought so. She remembered a polite, sociable couple who always paid their rent on time for the three garages they rented from her.
So when the FBI showed up in the tiny Texas hamlet of Noonday demanding access to the garages, Staples thought they had made a mistake. But a few hours later, more FBI agents turned up, this time wearing biochemical warfare suits. 'When those guys showed up in spacesuits, I just knew something very bad had been found,' Staples said.
She was right. Among a terrifying arsenal of guns, bullets and bombs, the FBI found a chemical cyanide bomb. Used in a shopping mall, a stadium or a subway, it could have killed thousands. 'I was terrified. I live here with my children and they had that terrible stuff in there,' Staples said.
The FBI fears that other chemical bombs, built by Krar, may already be in circulation.
I always felt racial profiling for Muslim terrorists opens the door for other radical extremists. Focusing on Al Queda types is foolish and can be quite dangerous.
Mark