Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

696 • WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTIONcal, radiological, and nuclear weapons (CBRN), these are weaponsdesigned to kill large numbers of targeted combatants or civilians.The U.S. Department of Defense, in its Dictionary of Military andAssociated Terms (Joint Publication I-02, 12 April 2001), definesWMD as “weapons that are capable of a high order of destructionand/or of being used in such a manner as to destroy large numbersof people. Weapons of mass destruction can be high explosives ornuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons, but excludethe means of transporting or propelling the weapon where suchmeans is a separable and divisible part of the weapon.” The civil legaldefinition of WMD under Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 2332a, considersWMD to be “(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, grenade,or rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces [113grams], missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of morethan one-quarter ounce [7 grams] or mine or device similar to theabove. (2) Poison gas. (3) Any weapon involving a disease organism.(4) Any weapon that is designed to release radiation at a level dangerousto human life.” Although there are several international treatiesaddressing different types of WMD, there is no single authoritativedefinition; the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 of28 April 2004 condemns as unlawful the use of nuclear, chemical,and biological weapons but without providing a generic definition ofWMD in its footnotes. Analysts distinguish between nuclear weaponsproper, which include fission or fusion thermonuclear devices intendedfor use either as strategic or tactical weapons, and radiologicalor “dirty” bombs, consisting of highly radioactive isotopes or wasteproducts made part of a conventional bomb to cause radioactive contaminationor poisoning of places or people targeted by such bombs.Biological weapons include not only bacteriological weapons, suchas self-reproducing lethal bacteria or viruses, but also poisonouscompounds that can only be obtained from living biological sources,such as botulinum and ricin.Prior to the Tokyo subway attack, there were only two otherinstances in which radical or terrorist groups had used chemical orbacteriological weapons: In 1984 followers of cult leader BhagwanShree Rajneesh contaminated a salad bar in The Dalles, Oregon, withsalmonella bacteria to prevent people from voting in an election thatthe cult wanted to disrupt. As a result, 751 people became sick withfood poisoning. In 1990 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam