A Chemical Dry Run?

As a pack-a-day smoker, Beata Zvástová, a 43-year-old manager of a Bratislava post office, is no stranger to sudden coughing fits. But what she felt during her Sept. 23 shift was no smoker's cough. "I felt as if my air tube was about to stick together," she says. "I kept trying to clear my throat." When she saw her colleagues were also choking, she called the police. Last week, the Slovak Interior Ministry confirmed that Zvástová's post office had been attacked by a mixture of chloropicrin and phosgene, two chemicals used during World War I as choking agents. A second attack...