Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Here we go again, TX man busted selling cyanide to FBI informant...

evil_lurker - 15-5-2008 at 13:47

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/FedCrimes/story?id=4856904

So dude got this drum of briquettes and was going to trade it off for a pound of meth (which BTW the NaCN would make a LOT of meth).

Anyhoos, he ends up selling to an FBI undercover dude posing as some white supremacist or some other nonsense and manages to record himself talking about how many people it can kill.

Wonder what sort of knee jerk reaction the gov't is going to propose in response to this?

MagicJigPipe - 15-5-2008 at 14:19

Cyanides are already virtually impossible to obtain. There goes alkali cyanides, IMO.

12AX7 - 15-5-2008 at 14:36

Good riddance to white trash.

Polverone - 15-5-2008 at 15:15

The weird thing (though this could easily just be bad reporting) is that the guy who tried to sell the material is being charged with possession with intent to use a chemical weapon. Yet from the article it doesn't sound like the seller intended to use it for anything; he was talking up his product to the people that he thought would use it for something nefarious. I don't know how conspiracy charges work though; maybe if you sell a killer a gun, knowing what it's to be used for, you'll be charged same as the user. Is there a crime "possession of a chemical weapon" without intent to use, and if so can you be charged with it simply for owning toxic lab chemicals (azides, cyanides, dimethyl sulfate, etc.)?

AFAIK there's no federal-level legislation that requires licensing for cyanide possession or sale. They seem to be relatively unregulated, though most vendors self-police to a high degree so cyanides are pretty difficult for a hobbyist to buy. It's pretty frightening if prosecutors can call someone's reagents "chemical weapons" and prosecute the owner for possession without showing intent to use as a weapon. I don't know if that's actually something that could happen, though. The few people I've read of charged with crimes relating to cyanide possession seem to have actually had bad intentions and weren't just victims of zealous prosecutors.

ShadowWarrior4444 - 15-5-2008 at 15:27

It seems that according to the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, possession of any substance that could be used as a chemical weapon, or in the making of a chemical weapon is illegal unless one can prove a legitimate use for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention

HCN is listed Schedule 3 under this convention, but not NaCN. It may still be affected as it is a salt of HCN. There is also the possibility that it is the media itself, or a ploy for the media attention that it is being labeled as a "Chemical Weapon." Nothing quite helps to make a prosecutors career like putting away the bad bad chemical-weapon-meth-head-terrorist.

7he3ngineer - 15-5-2008 at 15:37

It looks to me that this 'chemical weapons convention' has absolutely nothing to do with what individuals possess, but rather entire nation. The article has a section titled "Known Stockpiles (of Chemical Weapons)" and lists US, Russia, India, Albania, Libya and South Korea. This is about bringing down 'dangerous' counties, not individuals.

Josh

evil_lurker - 15-5-2008 at 15:41

Yes I agree, this guy deserves to be charged if indeed he was aware of the intentions of the supposed buyer.

And there are registration requirements in place if you have more than 10lbs of cyanides on site. The EPA, DHS, and other various "Letter People" all have a hand in things as well.

Criminal? Honestly I don't know... the regulations are buried in a mountain of red tape.

MagicJigPipe - 15-5-2008 at 16:36

I believe beyond a doubt that, in the right circumstances, a hobby chemist could be charged with possession of a "chemical weapon" or something similar.

If we were completely safe we shouldn't have to limit the way we talk about what we do in public and to certain people. I know you guys think I'm paranoid but I can provide proof that I was nearly charged with a crime simply for having some glassware and a couple of non-meth related chemicals. Oh yeah, also they assumed I was making explosives because I had a thermostat (which happend to contain two mercury switches) in my electronics toolbox.

You can never take too many precautions when it comes to avoiding LE whether or not you are doing anything wrong or actually breaking the law.

Who knows, maybe the fact that the guy was a "white supremecist" and a methhead were just added in for shock effect. It's not like it has never happened before. I never completely believe things like this right off the bat (at least how the "criminal" is described).

EDIT
I wonder what they are going to do with the x cyanide? Probably destroy it. That sucks. They should just give it away to hobby chemists, ha!

[Edited on 5-15-2008 by MagicJigPipe]

JohnWW - 16-5-2008 at 00:07

There is a quite legitimate industrial use of NaCN or KCN in mineral processing, namely, treatment of crushed precious-metals ore to dissolve the Au and Ag in it as soluble anionic cyano-complexes, which are also made for use in Au and Ag plating. In fact, it is used here in New Zealand, at gold/silver mines near Thames and on the West Coast of the South Island.

There is also a legitimate use for the stuff in organic chemistry, namely, in SN2 substitution reactions with alkyl halides RX (most often obtained from an alcohol ROH + HX) to add an extra C atom to the alkyl group as the nitrile, R-CN, which is usually then either hydrolysed with an aqeous acid to a carboxylic acid R-COOH, or catalytically hydrogenated to an amine R-CH2-NH2, or after hydrolysis reacted with a Grignard reagent R'MgX in a polar aprotic solvent to form a ketone R-(C=O)-R'.

Another industrial use of cyanide is in the manufacture of Prussian blue (or Turnbull's blue, or Berlin blue), ferric ferrocyanide, as a dyestuff, paint and ink pigment, optical bleach, and biological/pathological stain, by reaction of a Fe(III) salt with K4[Fe(CN)6]. Besides in making the precursor of this, KCN is also used in at least one colorimetric analytical procedure for dissolved metals in water, involving production of a similar intense color. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_blue

But if all these excuses fail, you could claim that you simply want to use it to kill some rats or insect pests. For further info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B (HCN)

[Edited on 17-5-08 by JohnWW]

JohnWW - 16-5-2008 at 00:29

Quote:
Originally posted by MagicJigPipe
You can never take too many precautions when it comes to avoiding LE whether or not you are doing anything wrong or actually breaking the law.
Who knows, maybe the fact that the guy was a "white supremecist" and a methhead were just added in for shock effect. It's not like it has never happened before. I never completely believe things like this right off the bat (at least how the "criminal" is described).

The combination of the undercover FBI Pig's claims to be BOTH a "white supremacist" AND a "methhead" (presumably meaning a methamphetamine addict, not a drinker of methylated spirits) should have instantly aroused the suspicions of the "dude" offering to sell the NaCN, sufficiently to call the deal off. Although the Pigs are, indeed, mostly white supremacists (the memberships of the American Nazi Party and KKK include substantial numbers of Pigs), the two are practically incompatible, due to Fa$cist white supremacists (who BTW include Bu$h & Cheney) almost always being also paranoidally anti-drug. This is mainly because of the association, since the 1960s, of recreational drugs with peace, alternative lifestyle, and other radical and left-wing movements, rather than because of any genuine harm from taking the drugs

Besides, by looking up the symptoms of methamphetamine addiction on Google and such sites as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine , it should have been obvious to the seller of the NaCN that the Pig definitely could not have been an addict. Our local NZ Pigs (amongst whom a lot of corruption has been exposed in recent years) also have a lot about the stuff on their website, e.g. http://www.police.govt.nz/safety/meth.html ; also http://www.nzdf.org.nz/methamphetamine .

It can be seen from such sites that methamphetamine addicts usually are psychotic, manic (often violently so), malnourished, dirty, and have badly decayed teeth ("meth mouth"). In any case, they are quite incapable of holding down a Pig's job, and would prefer to keep their drugs rather than exchange it for something like NaCN.

[Edited on 17-5-08 by JohnWW]

12AX7 - 16-5-2008 at 01:11

Quote:
Originally posted by JohnWW
The combination of the undercover FBI Pig's claims to be BOTH a "white supremacist" AND a "methhead" (presumably meaning a methamphetamine addict, not a drinker of methylated spirits) should have instantly aroused the suspicions of the "dude" offering to sell the NaCN, sufficiently to call the deal off. Although the Pigs are, indeed, mostly white supremacists (the memberships of the American


It was riiiiight.... here when I realized whose post I was reading.

Hey John, didn't everyone tell you to GFY and STFU? Your post would be that much more informative if you had stopped before the sentence I broke above and skipped to the last paragraph. In fact I think I might just hit the Report button, that sounds like a valid "post whore" complaint.

Tim

[Edited on 5-16-2008 by 12AX7]

MagicJigPipe - 16-5-2008 at 02:20

No shit there are legitimate uses for cyanides. Who said otherwise? That has hardly mattered, however, when it comes to restricting chemicals to individuals in the US and other similar countries.

nodrog19 - 27-6-2008 at 17:21

"There is also a legitimate use for the stuff in organic chemistry, namely, in SN2 substitution reactions with alkyl halides RX (most often obtained from an alcohol ROH + HX) to add an extra C atom to the alkyl group as the nitrile, R-CN, which is usually then either hydrolysed with an aqeous acid to a carboxylic acid R-COOH, or catalytically hydrogenated to an amine R-CH2-NH2, or after hydrolysis reacted with a Grignard reagent R'MgX in a polar aprotic solvent to form a ketone R-(C=O)-R'."

Do you actually think the FBI is going to listento/understand that?
i dont understand amph chemistry, but I bet some of those reaction are needed to produce them.

MagicJigPipe - 27-6-2008 at 17:40

Yes, sodium cyanide can be used to make phenylacetonitrile which can be used to synthesize amphetamine.

That sucks for NaCN because it is so damn useful.

chloric1 - 28-6-2008 at 16:48

Its been proven several times in this forum that cyanides can indeed be synthesized with some ease. The problem is possession. And you don't want to have jars of unlabled NaCN or KCN around either. Next best thing is to lable jars then stash them in an underground bunker.

Sauron - 28-6-2008 at 20:42

CWC is indeed a matter of monitoring national activity. Schedule 3 is specifically for chemicals with major industrial uses. HCN itself is a massively important industrial chemical feedstock. Its salts are used ubiquitously in plating, metal polishing, and mining. HCN as a chemical weapon went out with horse cavalry. The only real significance of cyanide salts remaining in connection with chemical weapons is the use of NaCN in production of GA nerve agent. So if the guy had a drum of phosphorus oxychloride to go with his drum of NaCN then maybe the feds would have a case.

Sounds likie just a drug bust to me.

Incidentally NaCN used to be used in making PCP as well. In connection with meth one might use it to make his own BzCN in order to make that into PAA to make into P2P but that is going the long way round.