Lab Tech's Suicide Raises Terror Concerns Over Easy Access to Cyanide

Published September 13, 2010 FoxNews.com

By Edward Mason Boston Herald

A Northeastern University lab tech’s suspected suicide by cyanide -- 30 miles away from campus -- is raising public safety fears over easy access to deadly chemicals days after the ninth anniversary of 9/11.

The 30-year-old NU lab tech -- identified by the school as Emily Staupe -- was found dead early yesterday morning in her Milford bedroom along with what initial tests show was a plastic bag filled with crystallized cyanide, according to Milford and state police.

Neil Livingstone, a Washington, D.C., terrorism expert, said Staupe’s apparent method of suicide shines a light on the problem of lax security at universities across the country.

"This should be a wake-up call," said Livingstone, president of ExecutiveAction. "What if her name were Mohammed Atta (a leader of the 9/11 plot) instead?

"If she’d been a bad guy and gotten hold of a significant amount of cyanide...who knows?" Livingstone said. "Cyanide is a good weapon of assassination or for killing a small number of people."

David Procopio, a spokesman for the state police, which is probing Staupe’s death, said it’s unclear how Staupe got the cyanide to Milford.

Click here to read more on this story from the Boston Herald

This isn't anything new. It's fairly common knowledge that with the right academic credentials you can get your hands on all kinds deadly substances.

(09-13-2010 02:38 PM)moe24 Wrote:  This isn't anything new. It's fairly common knowledge that with the right academic credentials you can get your hands on all kinds deadly substances.

You can buy toxic chemicals that contain fatal concentrations of cyanide at Home Depot.

You can get pretty much anything you need to cause a "little mischief" there, at Lowes, Ace, etc.

You just have to know what to do with it.

(09-13-2010 02:57 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

(09-13-2010 02:38 PM)moe24 Wrote:  This isn't anything new. It's fairly common knowledge that with the right academic credentials you can get your hands on all kinds deadly substances.

You can buy toxic chemicals that contain fatal concentrations of cyanide at Home Depot.

You can get pretty much anything you need to cause a "little mischief" there, at Lowes, Ace, etc.

You just have to know what to do with it.

Good point.

We can't 'securitize' every damn thing.

I am getting less and less patient with this country's security apparatus and the ridiculousness of what American citizens are subjected to in the name of 'security' and 'terrorism' and the 'war on drugs'.

Maybe, just maybe, this poor young troubled women deserves more than to be a poster child for some new TSA or Homeland Security directive?

Boogey boogey, terrorists can get cyanide. Boogey boogey, the terrorists can blow up planes with liquids, boogey boogey that man taking a picture of the building is scoping out weak points, boogey boogey this, boogey boogey that.

A small little part of me is now willing to say that the terrorist have won. We've retreated from our grandness as a republic to a security prosituting plutocracy hell bent on frisking grandma, terrified of a 13th religion based in the dunes and mountains of east Asian, and at political war with itself generaled by the extremes on both sides.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

Argh.

(09-13-2010 03:06 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  A small little part of me is now willing to say that the terrorist have won. We've retreated from our grandness as a republic to a security prosituting plutocracy hell bent on frisking grandma, terrified of a 13th religion based in the dunes and mountains of east Asian, and at political war with itself generaled by the extremes on both sides.

A small part? There's a BIG part of me willing to say the terrorists have won.

And as long as we respond the way we have so far, they will continue to win.

We need to quit trying to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi and Afghan people, and focus instead on making sure that the bad guys of the world know full well that if they mess with us we will be blowing them to smithereens. To do that, we've got to blow a lot more bad guys to smithereens than we have so far. The idea that we can succeed in defeating them through some combination of western-style warmaking and nation-building is simply absurd beyond belief.

We can't make people like us. But we can make them respect us, and if necessary fear us. And what we can do is what we ought to be doing.

It's true, you do not have to go to a university lab to obtain toxic chemicals that contain fatal concentrations of cyanide, I only have to sleep at a Holiday Inn Express.