Drill at Dow plant prepares for terrorism Staged hostage, bomb situation designed to prevent catastrophe should it really happen By CHANDRA M. HAYSLETT Three terrorists were shot dead yesterday at the Dow Chemical Company plant after they stormed the Piscataway facility, taking eight hostages and killing one. Well, not exactly. The "terrorists" were police brass from across the state and the "hostages" were Dow employees and a truck driver. Both groups volunteered to role play so the Piscataway Police Department's S.W.A.T. team could sharpen its skills in case real terrorists try to overthrow a chemical plant.
The drill started peacefully with five demonstrators marching outside a gate at the River Road plant. They were protesting against Warren Anderson, who was the CEO of the Dow subsidiary Union Carbide during one of the world's worst industrial disasters in Bhopal, India, in 1984. The tragedy claimed more than 20,000 lives. About five minutes into the demonstration, three protesters - actually, Sgts. Scott Bonito and Tony Bonito, brothers with the Union County Department of Corrections, and Lt. Dave Michelini, with the Passaic County Sheriff's Department - pulled out toy guns and overthrew the guard shack, shocking Dow security guard Eric Biney- Anim. "I knew (it was going to happen), but I wasn't expecting it to be so real," Biney-Anim said after he was escorted to safety. The three "terrorists" then hijacked a Papco tanker truck and took driver Dave Kozak, a lease operator for Papco, hostage. Then they raced into the plant and took seven Dow employees hostage. When the plant's security was breached, police were summoned and about a dozen members of the Special Weapons and Advanced Tactical team arrived and took their place around the plant. They were joined by hostage negotiator Jerry Mahoney, also of Piscataway's S.W.A.T. team. While Tony Bonito was making his first demand - 10 cups of hot coffee with cream, Michelini was attaching fake explosives to the hostages and the door of the conference room, where the hostages were held. The coffee arrived about an hour later. "If I hit the panic alarm, that's to know that something's going on and just start executing," Tony Bonito said to the other terrorists before he left to get the coffee. Bonito escorted Kozak through the plant with a gun pointed to the truck driver's head. Kozak grabbed the java and the two headed back to the conference room. But the coffee was cold, which ticked off Bonito. "The little things mean a lot to a person," Bonito yelled, holding a gun to the heads of Kozak and Dow employee Dan O'Brien. "Who's not going home today?" Bonito then forced O'Brien and Kozak outside. He freed O'Brien, but shot Kozak with the toy gun. O'Brien provided information to the police about the number of hostages and the explosives. Once the terrorist harmed a hostage, that gave the S.W.A.T. team the "green light" to enter the building and take control of the situation, said Piscataway Sgt. David Powell, who is also the deputy commander of the S.W.A.T. team. Fourteen S.W.A.T. team members rushed the plant, weapons drawn. Police removed the guns' magazines and live rounds for training purposes, Powell said. About 20 minutes later, the three terrorists were dead, the bombs were detonated and the hostages were free. "This went great. This is our second drill with Piscataway and they're getting good," Scott Bonito said. Tony Bonito, one of the ones who critiqued the drill, said he checked for the preparedness of the facility and how the employees handled themselves. "The security system is good here," he said. Stephenson said the site is vulnerable because the security guards are not armed and Dow has no plans to arm them, but he was comforted by the S.W.A.T. team's swift response. "Knowing the response is five minutes away, it makes us a little bit of a harder target," he said. PHOTO CAPTION: CREDIT: AMANDA BROWN/THE STAR-LEDGER Both Dow Chemical and Union Carbide supplied chemicals to Saddam Hussein's regime despite warnings that they could be used for chemical weapons, and after the regime had bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja with nerve gases. There are striking similarities between what happened in the mountains of Kurdistan and in the city of Bhopal. Here are a couple:
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