U.S. Suspects Opiate in Gas Used in Theater

By JUDITH MILLER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
© New York Times, October 29, 2002


American officials said yesterday that they suspected the Russian security police who raided a Moscow theater early Saturday might have used an aerosol version of a powerful, fast-acting opiate called Fentanyl to knock out Chechen extremists and prevent them from killing the 750 hostages they were holding.

The gas killed all but one of the 117 hostages in the Russian assault to retake the theater.

The senior administration officials said their suspicions were tentative, because Russian authorities had refused to provide American officials in Moscow with information about the drug used in the assault. Nor has the United States been able to test the gas or take samples from hostages exposed to it, they said.

But a senior American official did say intelligence sources had indicated that the Russians probably used an aerosol form of Fentanyl, "or a derivative that has a narcotic effect," by itself or in combination with another compound, in their desperate bid to free the hostages.

In interviews yesterday, senior American authorities and private experts said the agent used by the Russians was probably similar to one of a small arsenal of nonlethal weapons that the United States is quietly studying for use by soldiers and police officers against terrorists. Scientists said the United States had conducted research on Fentanyl, a well-known drug with many medical applications, as a human incapacitant for nearly a decade.

One former intelligence official theorized that the agent was developed by the Soviet Union's chemical and biological warfare program. He said Soviet scientists worked hard on "bio-regulators," agents that could alter mass behavior, and even put entire cities to sleep.

In the 1980's, the official said, American intelligence suspected that the Soviets had used chemical agents to incapacitate Afghan soldiers instantly, but could never verify such reports.

Reports yesterday from Moscow about the gray gas that was pumped into the Moscow theater bear out the assertions of American medical experts that Fentanyl is dangerous to children under 12. Survivors and relatives of victims said that at least 10 of the dead were children.

One senior law enforcement official said the use of an incapacitating agent to free hostages was unprecedented. "I'm aware of no hostage situation anywhere in the world where such an agent has been used," the official said.

But a senior administration official said that if the drug used in the incident was Fentanyl, that would probably not constitute a violation of a 1997 treaty banning the use of lethal chemical weapons. Many experts, both Russian and American, argue that the treaty permits the use of nonlethal chemicals for law enforcement and riot control purposes.

Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said that at least four Americans were believed to have been in the theater, and that one of them had died.

Officials said the United States, through its embassy in Moscow, was pressing Russia to be forthcoming about the agent.

Russian officials are "being very Soviet," said Elisa Harris, a chemical weapons expert at the University of Maryland who served on the Clinton administration's National Security Council. "They are reverting to form and being very secretive. It is in their interest to dispel concerns about their activities and disclose the nature of the compound they used."

Alan P. Zelicoff, an expert on unconventional weapons at the Sandia National Laboratory, described Fentanyl as an "inhalable opiate" that is a "short acting, rather potent, narcotic." He said it was now used for treating chronic pain. "The clinical utility of this drug is that it acts very quickly," he said.

Another American scientist said the compound was often used as a veterinary anesthetic, injected into animals to put them to sleep. Later, it was abused as a recreational drug.

Meanwhile, according to private experts, the incapacitating agents under investigation by the American government include sedatives that inhibit the central nervous system and derivatives of such drugs as Prozac and Valium, and the weapons under development to disperse the agents include an 81-millimeter mortar with a range of nearly two miles.

The work is described in dozens of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Sunshine Project, a private group in Austin, Tex., that opposes the work. "It's the U.S. equivalent of the Russian program that developed the gas that was used there," said Edward Hammond, the project's director.

Marine Corps Capt. Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, denied that it was conducting research on nonlethal chemical weapons. He refused to be specific but did concede that other American groups were pursuing the topic.

The military has long sought weapons, including chemical incapacitating agents, to make war more "humane." The American military did much research on them during the cold war, but judged the results unsatisfactory and scrapped the effort. As of 1997, according to "Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare," a top military text, "incapacitating munitions are no longer in our armamentarium."

Since then, said Mr. Hammond of the Sunshine Project, government documents show that Washington has begun a new effort to master nonlethal chemicals. The current budget for them at the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, he said, is $1.6 million. By 2005, he added, the funding is to rise to $3.2 million.

Some of the research, he said, is sponsored by the Department of Justice, including work on an aerosolized mixture of tranquilizing drugs and pepper spray, a commonly used crowd-control agent.

Mr. Hammond said the overall research focuses on so-called "calmatives," a military term for mind-altering or sleep-inducing chemical agents. Other agents mentioned in the documents as potentially useful, he said, are convulsants, or drugs that induce cramps, and pharmaceuticals that failed development trials because of harmful side effects.

A main contractor in the work is the Institute for Emerging Defense Technologies at Pennsylvania State University. Andrew Mazzara, the institute's director, said that nonlethal weapons "are used for peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, noncombatant evacuation, hostage rescue, and domestic law enforcement and corrections facilities."

An October 2000 report by the Penn State researchers reviewed the medical literature and advances and concluded that "the development and use of nonlethal calmative techniques is achievable and desirable."

The report's cover showed Fentanyl. "It's like heroin times 1,000," Mr. Hammond said. The report's text said Fentanyl might be used in combination with droperidol, an anxiety-reducing drug.

Many of the effects that Russian health officials have attributed to the gas — including slowed breathing and heartbeat — are typical of opiates. More revealing, however, is the antidote that Russian doctors were told to use on gas victims: Naloxone, a prescription drug used primarily to restore breathing to victims of heroin overdose.

Law enforcement officials in the United States, and chemical weaponry experts, said that in general the American police have a fairly limited set of chemical tools — primarily old-fashioned tear gas and an increasingly popular choice, pepper spray. The latter, they said, has become far more sophisticated and can now be delivered in a large-scale aerosol delivered from a shotgun-like device. It can temporarily blind and incapacitate at a distance.

A spokesman for the Houston Police Department, John Leggio, said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the department had gone through extensive training and chemical education programs — both in tactics and in responding to an attack.

"We've become versed in the different tactics available for use in a worst case scenario," he said. "We maintain a dialogue with the Army and the part of the federal government that has this kind of weaponry, and we would ask for assistance should those situations develop."

Hugh McGowan, who retired earlier this year after 13 years as the commanding officer of the New York City Police Department's hostage negotiation team, said the problem with almost all of the various chemicals was dosage control. A dose that puts one person to sleep, he said, could put another in a coma.

"If somebody could come up with a wonderful drug or gas that we could use, it would solve a lot problems," he said. "But they haven't."

Mr. McGowan said that other than tear gas, he wasn't aware of any chemical agent that the New York City police could, or would, turn to in a hostage situation.

But he added, "We never faced a situation such as the Russians did."

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