Sales of bomb ingredient unrestricted in rural America

Saturday, May 29th 2004, 3:33 pm

By: News On 6

WINTERSET, Iowa (AP) _ Visitors to this southwest Iowa town can visit the birthplace of John Wayne, tour the nearby bridges of Madison County _ or buy enough fertilizer to blow up an office building.

Ammonium nitrate is one of the most common farm fertilizers in the world, used primarily in the production of pasture crops. Increasingly, countries in Europe and other parts of the world are clamping down on its sale _ but not the United States, where rural feed stores like BB&P Grain Handlers in Winterset sell it for $240 a ton.

The product is deadly if soaked in kerosene or diesel fuel. Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 with about 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate bought at a farm store in Kansas. It was used in the October 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people in Bali, and other terrorist attacks around the world, including some attributed to al-Qaida.

While the Iowa Department of Agriculture licenses stores that sell ammonium nitrate, there are no restrictions on who can buy it. A fertilizer industry safety program warns sellers to beware of a customer who ``avoids eye contact'' or ``doesn't know much about farming.''

``Our clients are all people we know and have been doing it for years,'' said Paul Bruett, staff agronomist at BB&P. The store on the town's main commercial strip sells about 250 to 300 tons of ammonium nitrate a year.

``It's just something we'd notice,'' he said.

Some federal law enforcement officials and scientists are wondering if self-policing is enough in the wake of Oklahoma City and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Instructions for making ammonium nitrate-based bombs are readily available on the Internet.

``There's no question you can raise an enormous amount of hell with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil,'' said Edward Arnett, professor emeritus of chemistry at Duke University. ``One of my concerns is, if I were Osama, I'd be thinking of filling up a couple tour buses with this stuff and sending them to six of our biggest cities.''

In 1998, Arnett co-chaired a National Research Council committee on preventing illegal bombings. Among other recommendations to Congress, the group proposed requiring that consumers who purchase ammonium nitrate provide identification, and that stores keep extensive records of the purchases.

The recommendations have never been implemented. But one of the panel's members, Jimmie Oxley, a chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island, said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been lobbying Congress for greater controls on the sale of ammonium nitrate.

``The ATF is very hot to regulate this material,'' Oxley said.

Larry Scott, spokesman for the ATF in its Kansas City office, said it's not the bureau's role to lobby Congress, but that it is willing to provide testimony and information.

``I do not know if we've done it in this case,'' Scott said.

Terry Jensen, chief of the Iowa Department of Agriculture's fertilizer bureau, said ATF agents recently requested a list of the 50 stores in Iowa licensed to sell ammonium nitrate.

The ATF has worked with the Fertilizer Institute, an industry group that represents manufacturers and sellers, on its voluntary safety program. Kathy Mathers, spokeswoman for the institute, said the group has heard rumblings that the ATF is seeking tighter controls on the sale of ammonium nitrate.

``My understanding is the concern has come from some pretty high levels of government,'' Mathers said.

She said industry leaders have discussed keeping records of purchases and ``so far, it hasn't been met with opposition.''

Right now only two states, South Carolina and Nevada, require that sellers of ammonium nitrate keep such records. Under the South Carolina law, which passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks, stores that want to sell three kinds of ``restricted fertilizers'' must pay a $250 licensing fee, check the buyer's identification and keep sale information on file for several years.

``We're not naive enough to think that recording identification information is going to prevent someone from acquiring one of these products and using it for an unintended fashion,'' said David Howle, director of South Carolina's regulatory program. ``But if we have an incident, it gives us a way to trace it back.''

Bruett, the agronomist at the Winterset store, said regulatory programs sound like ``just another method to get taxed.'' He said BB&G actually applies to farm fields about 90 percent of the ammonium nitrate it sells, and that the store takes added security measures when the Department of Homeland Security raises the U.S. threat level.

The only other farm store in Winterset, Rolling Hills FS, stopped selling ammonium nitrate at the beginning of the year.

``We felt that this was something we could do to aid the homeland security effort,'' said John Knobloch, the store's general manager. ``I think you are going to be seeing this more and more.''

Knobloch said there are other fertilizers that are just as effective.

``Why put the community at risk if there are alternatives?'' he said.

Most of the 50 or so farm stores in Iowa that sell ammonium nitrate are in rural towns with fewer than 5,000 people. In 2003, sales of the fertilizer in Iowa totaled 21,356 tons _ enough to make nearly 9,000 of the bombs used by McVeigh.

Iowa ranked 21st of 50 states in the amount of ammonium nitrate sold. The top state was Missouri, with 288,322 tons.

Like most states, Missouri licenses dealers but places no restrictions on who can buy the fertilizer, officials said.

In all, 1,523,991 tons of ammonium nitrate was sold nationwide in 2003.

``What it comes down to is the freedom versus the security,'' said Oxley, the Rhode Island chemist, who said she wasn't as concerned as some of her colleagues on the national panel.

``The degree of regulation depends on the degree of threat _ that's something we Americans are having to decide, when do we start feeling threatened?''