Take This, Terrorist Boogeyman

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Take This, Terrorist Boogeyman Retired sergeant Red Thomas and his wife, "Miss Aggie." His e-mail offering a calmer view of terrorism was read with relief by many people and with disdain by the Army. (Sherrie Buzby - for The Washington Post) _____Special Report_____ Military: Related articles, Web search, online resources. _____Dot.Mil_____ Online column by William M. Arkin E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version Subscribe to The Post By Don OldenburgWashington Post Staff WriterThursday, December 13, 2001; Page C01 Twenty years in the U.S. Army beat this credo into Red Thomas's head: "If something needs to get done, you ask: If not me, who? If not now, when?"For weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Thomas watched in disbelief from his home in Mesa, Ariz., as a nonstop parade of talking heads on television news dissected every real and imagined terrorist threat. He knew there was more to fear than fear itself, but it ate at him day after day that the media and government seemed to be ushering the American people down the path of irrational fear."I was watching these ninnies on TV just scaring the hell out of people and I wanted to say 'Just stop it!' " says Thomas, 44.On the morning of Oct. 6, the craggy retired sergeant first class got out of bed, kissed his "darling bride" of 22 years, "Miss Aggie," and decided something needed to be done. And he was the one to do it. And now was the time. Thomas sat down at his computer and, despite disabling pain in his back and hips, in one sitting over several hours he cranked out a no-fear dispatch to the American people. Like him, it was nothing fancy. Three pages of pedestrian-grade analysis of what terrorists might do and man-in-the-street advice on how to survive various kinds of attacks, all leftover know-how from his military training in nuclear and biochemical warfare. To him, it was the plain-language survival manual for living on the bull's-eye that the government forgot to issue to civilians. In fact, the Army would later have more than a few quibbles with it.He could've called it "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Terrorism but Were Afraid to Ask." He might've titled it "Better Red than Dead." Instead, he topped it off with "The Real Deal About Chemical, Nuclear and Biological Warfare," checked it for glaring errors in the old -- decade-old -- Army field manuals in his garage, then e-mailed it to 15 friends. For good measure, he sent it to a small Christian online newsletter called "Day 4 Smiles.""I actually got down and prayed and said, 'If what I have written is really good, could You please let people see it?' And if the information is bad, I asked to have it killed," he says. "What a testimony, huh?"For those who didn't mistake "The Real Deal" for a porn pitch or easy-money spam and spike it unread, it was the reality check in the e-mail -- regardless of whether it was all accurate or not. The feel-good report ricocheted from the first 15 in-boxes to countless others. Sobering but empowering, it showed up on dozens of online discussion groups, from depression-support sites to sites on horse racing to weightlifting to Aerosmith. People said they felt no longer felt helpless. "Some sense at last!" wrote one woman on an herbal-folklore discussion group. "It should be required reading," wrote a regular contributor to a Los Angeles Lakers newsgroup.Gavin de Becker, the best-selling author and nationally recognized expert on threat assessment, came looking for permission to excerpt Thomas in his next book, after having him investigated, of course.Why doesn't the government distribute that kind of information? wondered Deryl Looney, an Albuquerque technical support representative who saw Thomas's report on a discussion group. And thousands no doubt wondered:Who is this guy anyway? And is this stuff true?Don't PanicThe gist of Red's advice is simple. Know that old nuke maxim that used to be funny, about sticking your head between your legs and kissing your rear end goodbye? Well, the last part isn't necessarily so, according to Thomas."Forget everything you've ever seen on TV, in the movies, or read in a novel about this stuff, it was all a lie," he wrote. "These weapons are about terror. If you remain calm, you will probably not die."His advice in case of a nuclear attack: "If you see a bright flash of light like the sun where the sun isn't, fall to the ground," Thomas wrote, explaining that the first heat wave will pass in a second, followed by two blast waves -- one going out, the other coming back. "Don't stand up to see what happened after the first wave. Anything that's going to happen will have happened in two full minutes. If you live through the heat, blast and initial burst of radiation, you'll probably live for a very, very long time."Besides, he said, terrorists probably only have small, low-yield suitcase bombs that would kill primarily within a half-mile circle. Others nearby could survive.His prescription for avoiding radiation poisoning after a detonation: Try not to inhale or ingest the nasty stuff, eat frozen or canned foods, practice basic hygiene.In a chemical or nerve-gas attack: If you suddenly start experiencing a headache, dimness of vision, runny nose, drooling, difficulty breathing, nausea and stomach cramps, twitching of exposed skin where a liquid just landed on you, he wrote, "ask yourself, did anything out of the ordinary just happen? A loud pop? Did someone spray something on the crowd? Are other people getting sick, too? Is there an odor of new mowed hay, green corn, something fruity, or camphor where it shouldn't be?"If the answer is yes, then calmly leave the area and head upwind."The military term is "area denial," and it's the key "right-now antidote," along with staying calm, in Thomas's compendium of survival tips. "If you don't die in the first minute and you can leave the area, you're probably gonna live," he wrote.Red's bottom line on terrorist weapons of mass destruction: "They are intended to make you panic, to terrorize you, to herd you like sheep to the wolves. Don't let fear of an isolated attack rule your life. The odds are really on your side."After anthrax began making headlines, Thomas saw a frightened elderly couple on television wearing rubber gloves to sort their mail. Tormented that innocent old folks were scared of their own mail, he wrote this anthrax addendum: "First, ask yourself honestly, 'What are the odds of me getting picked out of 270 million other Americans for this attack?' Second, realize that more people have choked to death on food than have gotten anthrax in the last two weeks."About "dirty bombs," made from radioactive material and conventional explosives, and currently the threat du jour: "This isn't meant to kill, it'll be meant to harass, to terrorize."Not that Thomas denies the deadliness of any of these weapons. "If you get a snoot full of this [stuff], it's cancel Kwanzaa," he says. "But the idea that the lady next door doesn't sleep well at night because of it is incredibly unsettling to me."All hype aside, Thomas says the best overall preparation for any terrorist attack is about the same you'd take for a big storm. "We have a week's worth of cash, several days' worth of canned goods and plenty of soap and water," he wrote.Shooting StraightWhy take the word of a retired armored-division sergeant on fatal distractions like biochemical and nuclear terrorism? "Reasonable question, sir," says Thomas, who identified himself on the Real Deal e-mail by name and rank but listed no e-mail address or phone number. He didn't have anything more to say: "A lot of people have asked me to expand on this, but if you get any further into the subject than I've written, it's like playing pick-up sticks with a bowl full of cooked spaghetti."Besides, he didn't want the nuts bothering Miss Aggie, he says.Ever since severe osteoporosis forced him out of the Army in 1994, he and Aggie Thomas have lived in a modest single-story house on a corner lot in a quiet, working-class neighborhood in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb. Neighbors don't pry but know each other well enough to recognize when something's out of place.In his back yard, Thomas built a pellet gun range where he helps Boy Scouts earn merit badges in marksmanship. "When I'm shooting it's the only time I ever really manage to lose the pain," says Thomas, who on an average day is up by 8, putters around the house until the pain throughout his body eases, then goes shooting in the nearby desert or at Rio Salado Sportsman's Club east of town. "Shooting's my last link to the man I used to be."Born in Easton, Md., Red Thomas doesn't readily admit that his given name is Irvin. He hated the nickname his red hair got him as a child growing up on Bruff's Island off Maryland's Eastern Shore in the Chesapeake, and later in Ohio. But he's been Red since dropping out of school at 17 and joining the Army. Being a soldier was all he ever wanted to do since first grade."That Army 'Be all that you can be' thing? It's true," says Thomas, whose military schooling covered small-arms repair to bombing investigation to civil defense and disaster shelter management. In 1983 he graduated from the Army's intensive two-week nuclear, biological and chemical warfare school. "If it went bang, boom or pop, I wanted to understand it," says Thomas. "Someone once lent me an encyclopedia of munitions and I read it all. The Army doesn't make guys like me anymore."He'd still be in if the Army hadn't put his aching bones "out to pasture." He loved protecting his country, but now, he's just an ordinary man living a regular life. Now, he says, he's more like Scarlett, his old golden retriever -- "fat and gimpy." He owns a T-shirt that he says pretty much sums him up: Printed across the front is "Christian American Heterosexual Pro-Gun Conservative: Any Questions?"Thomas says he's trying to live a good life so that when he dies he'll be allowed to go back to Bruff's Island and, like he did as a boy, "sit under that giant oak tree plinking at tin cans while the tide takes them out into Shaw Bay." He still has that rifle.Terror in PerspectiveWhen he read "The Real Deal," Gavin de Becker was impressed."My firm has pretty high-level consultants on these topics, but Red was plain-spoken and accessible, and caring, and anxiety-reducing," says de Becker, author of the 1997 bestseller "The Gift of Fear" and whose 70-member consulting firm, Gavin de Becker & Associates in Studio City, Calif., advises the CIA, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Supreme Court, among others.De Becker had his investigative division look into Thomas's background and credentials. He ran "The Real Deal" past big-cheese warfare experts, then phoned the master gunner about borrowing some passages for his upcoming book on terrorism, "Fear Less." "He is a decent, straight-shooting American," says de Becker. "He is helping his country by fighting the terror that results from terrorism."Raymond Zilinskas, biological arms control specialist at Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., says Thomas may have downplayed what can happen in a chemical attack when a crowd panics, but "for the average person, this isn't bad at all."Thomas ended "The Real Deal" with a disclaimer because he knew there are "a million caveats" to everything he wrote. "This letter is supposed to help the greatest number of people under the greatest number of situations," he hedged. "If you don't like my work, don't nitpick, just sit down and explain chemical, nuclear and biological warfare in a document around three pages long yourself."The Army itself took a look at "The Real Deal," and "nitpick" is not exactly the word for its response. "He is trying to minimize the dread and terror associated with these weapons. However, many of [Thomas's] claims are incorrect," reported Maj. William King, Maj. Keith Carroll and R. Scott Farrar, experts from the Army's 84th Chemical Battalion based at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., in an e-mail to The Washington Post.Thomas's conclusions about why the 1995 sarin attack in Tokyo killed so few people were flat-out wrong, they said. Thomas wrote that only 12 people died, a fact that he believes disproved expert predictions that one drop could kill a thousand people and demonstrated that biochem weapons aren't that effective in real life. His comparison of nerve gas to household bug killers like Raid is "wrong info," they said, as was his stating that the fluid in blisters caused by mustard gas is dangerous. Thomas's take on nukes and biological weapons ignores their potential catastrophic consequences, they say.Furthermore, the Army's experts said they "absolutely disagree that an attack with military-grade agents is 'incredibly hard to do.' Two months ago, any one of a dozen experts would have told you that the use of anthrax was beyond the means of even the most sophisticated terrorists."Still, the Army experts call his advice to "put space between you and the attack" generally "reasonable for unprotected persons." And his "editorializing" on the low odds of an individual becoming a victim of terrorism wasn't bad either: "Individually, we are in more danger of traffic accidents than getting hit with chemical attack. However, as drivers we can take precautions to lessen that probability."The Army's last word: "Retired SFC Red Thomas's article offers some common sense advice for unprotected victims of a NBC [nuclear/biochemical] attack. However, his article doesn't reflect the U.S. Army's position for individual defense and contains an overwhelming amount of incorrect material. . . . "With domestic terrorist acts, the Army is reexamining its role in homeland defense, and how, or if, it will provide individual protection for each citizen. The threat has come to the lands of the once invincible United States and all citizens need to be aware the potential of an attack."Thomas doesn't take kindly to the "hatchet job" he says the Army did on his report. "To date, nobody's done more than me to combat unwarranted terror that I know of," he says. "Bottom line from me is, yes, there are errors. I had to do a lot of generalizing to make something useful to everyone. My point was to keep things in perspective and to do it in three pages."The Army used worst-case-scenario explanations that are unlikely, he says, and even depended on "hokey statistics" and "smoke and mirrors."The reason? They are the experts Thomas warns about. "The government is going nuts over this stuff because they have to protect every inch of America," he says. "You've only gotta protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the country."We don't have the right to feel safe -- that's something we have to give ourselves." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34577-2001Dec12.html