Understanding Ricin

How often is ricin used as a weapon in this country?
On our Web site we have a list of about 30 cases in which groups or individuals have acquired and/or used ricin for criminal or terrorist purposes.

What are some of the most egregious examples?
A large number of right-wing militia and patriot groups have produced crude preparations of ricin. In the mid-1990s the Minnesota Patriots Council, a militia organization in Alexandria, Minn., produced ricin as part of a plot to kill U.S. marshals, IRS agents and deputy sheriffs in the community. They were not highly educated, but some of them worked as carpet cleaners, so they were familiar with solvents and could follow the recipe from a right-wing publication that told them how to extract ricin. They ordered the beans from an ad in a right-wing magazine. The individual who placed the ad was Maynard Campbell, from Oregon, who is a well-known figure in the militia movement.

Was this Minnesota group prosecuted?
Yes. They were, in fact, the first to be prosecuted under the 1989 biological weapons antiterrorism act passed by Congress, and they were convicted in 1995. Four members were convicted. [Campbell, who had already been imprisoned for threatening federal officials in a 1992 standoff, was murdered by a fellow inmate in 1997.] One of the four men spent 48 months in prison. They got a pretty severe punishment. They never actually used ricin; they just acquired the toxin.

Any other examples?
The most famous case involved the Bulgarian dissident living in London who was killed by the Bulgarian secret police, who were supplied with ricin in a sophisticated delivery system by the Soviet KGB. It was an umbrella rigged to inject a tiny pellet containing ricin under the skin of the victim, and it was designed to kill without evidence of assassination, [as if he had died] of natural causes. But they also targeted someone else some weeks later, a dissident living in Paris who survived because the pellet was fired through layers of clothing. After that they looked at the first one and determined he had been killed in the same way. This was the real cloak-and-dagger use for ricin. There was also the case in 1995 when Thomas Lewis Levy was arrested for possessing 130 grams of ricin, which he was attempting to smuggle from Alaska into Canada. He ended up committing suicide in his prison cell before the trial. His motives remain mysterious. There was also the famous case in January 2003 when six Algerians were arrested in London on charges of plotting a terrorist attack. Authorities in that case discovered traces of ricin in a northern London apartment as well as castor beans and equipment. Just trace quantities.

What are the most recent cases in the United States involving ricin?
The latest high-profile incident before the current one in Las Vegas was in February 2004, when trace amounts were found in a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. No one was exposed or got sick.

Was there any post-9/11 legislation that made it tougher to acquire ricin or make it tougher on those who do?
Yes. Select agent regulations were strengthened in 2002. These regulations now require any lab that is using it for research to report possession of the substance to the Centers for Disease Control and report any transfers from one lab to another. Fail to report possession or transfer, and you face a severe punishment.

How long has ricin been around?
The U.S. government looked at ricin as a possible biological weapon of warfare many years ago. Iraq investigated ricin as biological weapon during the 1980s, prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But they did not produce ricin; they instead produced anthrax bacteria, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin, produced by fungal mold. No one knows why they produced that third one. Iraq looked at ricin in artillery shells, but it proved to not have good applications for the military. But it is nonetheless a potent poison.