The Chemical Weapons Detectives. Meet the scientists who trace the world's most notorious acts of war back to labs in which they were made.

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▼ The first bomb landed shortly after sunrise on April 4, 2017, in Khan Shaykhun. Unlike the three that would explode ­moments later in other parts of the rebel-­controlled ­Syrian town, this one produced ­little noise and even less physical ­damage, leaving behind a jagged 5-foot-wide-by-20-inch-deep crater in an otherwise empty road. ­Minutes earlier, a group of volunteer rescue workers in town had received an ominous alert: Spotters had observed a Syrian Armed Forces bomber taking off from Shayrat airbase 68 miles away, and it was likely carrying a chemical payload. “Guys, tell people to wear masks,” the voice on the other end of the walkie-​­talkie implored.
Most of the town’s 16,000 residents were in bed or getting ready for work when a milky-white cloud began to spread near the bombed-out bakery and grain silos shortly after 6:30 a.m. The first people on the scene arrived to find bodies lying on the ground outside and in homes, with no signs of blunt trauma. Some had bluish lips and were convulsing. Others foamed from the mouth and nose. Nearly all of them had pinpoint pupils.
As news of the attack appeared on his computer screen, Stefan Mogl felt a horrible sense of déjà vu. Sitting in his office at Switzerland’s premier national-defense lab, the analytical chemist was all too familiar with the images coming out of Syria that spring morning. Four years earlier, he’d watched hours of similar footage originating from the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, and helped the German magazineDer Spiegeldetermine that the attack’s victims likely had been exposed to an outlawed nerve agent. He worried that a similar weapon had been used in Khan Shaykhun; a U.N. fact-finding mission would soon confirm the attack had used sarin. Strikes like these are not uncommon in Syria. This past April, the U.N.’s Human Rights Council reported 34 confirmed chemical assaults since the civil war began in 2011 (more than 80 have been reported). Most reputable sources would eventually estimate that up to 100 civilians, including as many as 32 children, died during the Khan Shaykhun attack that day in April 2017—or shortly thereafter.

The target for the deadly chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun.
Hasan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
As it turned out, the soft-spoken 52-year-old chemist was a few weeks away from joining the leadership panel of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, a kind of elite international Justice League established in 2015. Formed through a partnership between the United Nations Security Council and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons—the independent intergovernmental body created to oversee compliance with 1997’s Chemical Weapons Convention—the team was tasked with identifying the perpetrators, organizers, and sponsors of chemical attacks in the Syrian conflict. Now that Mogl would be in charge of the technical side of this investigation, he was aware that he and his new position were about to get a lot more attention. “I wouldn’t just be investigating this incident,” he says. “If there’s enough information, I’d be one of the people who would determine responsibility.”
After a nearly two-decade absence from the world stage, banned nerve agentssuch as ­sarin have re-emerged as modern-day tools for dictators, assassins, and other malefactors. Whether it’s the Russian nerve agent Novichok, used to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal in the U.K. in March, or the brazen use of VX to murder North Korean despot Kim Jong-Un’s half-brother in broad daylight at the Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017, we are once again living in a world where invisible molecules are regularly being deployed as murder weapons.
From a forensic perspective, it’s easy to see why these illicit agents are attractive. In its purest form, sarin is colorless, tasteless, and odorless, and can kill in minutes. It’s also volatile, meaning it will evaporate from liquid into vapor, and, depending on environmental conditions and the quantity used, murder and maim lots of people before gradually vanishing over the course of days or weeks. While it’s relatively easy to tell if a nerve agent killed or hurt someone, figuring out who deployed it can be notoriously difficult.

A victim of the Khan Shaykhun assault.
Cem Genco/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Difficult, but not impossible. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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