"Experts: Liquid bomb easy to make and hard to find"

Friday, August 11, 2006

Experts: Liquid bomb easy to make and hard to find
By Jeremy Manier
The Chicago (IL) Tribune


The sort of liquid explosive that authorities suspect was to be used in the
foiled airliner terror plot in Britain is easy for anyone with a working
knowledge of chemistry to make-and difficult for ordinary airport
checkpoints to detect, experts say.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation
sent a memo to law enforcement agencies on Thursday saying the explosive
would have been "peroxide-based," with otherwise safe ingredients mixed
onboard the targeted airplanes during flight to make a bomb.

That information, reported Thursday by The New York Times, suggests the
bombers planned to use a well-known explosive called triacetone triperoxide
that can be made from ingredients found in ordinary household items,
including nail polish remover.

That explosive has been around for more than 100 years, is based on a widely
available formula and is a favorite of terrorist bomb-makers. It was used in
the July 2005 suicide bombings in London and numerous Palestinian bombings
in Israel. It is also extremely unstable and highly dangerous even for
trained chemists to make-qualities that caused bombmakers to nickname it
"Mother of Satan."

Although many would-be terrorists have been killed while trying to make the
mixture, its instability might not be a drawback for a suicide bomber intent
on destroying an airplane. The easy availability of the ingredients would
make it especially attractive to terrorists, experts said.

"You don't really need to go to a chemical factory to find these things-it's
just common household stuff," said SonBinh Nguyen, a professor of chemistry
at Northwestern University.

Prior to mixing, the individual ingredients of such an explosive would be
difficult for ordinary airport security measures to detect.

In the U.S., powerful scanning machines inspect every item checked as
luggage at major airports-a step that should catch most explosives, experts
said. Carry-on bags go through a much less effective-and less
expensive-X-ray machine.

Nitroglycerin, the primary ingredient in many terrorist bombs, could be
detected during inspection of carry-on bags, but only if a passenger is a
"selectee" designated for a more thorough search by bomb-sniffing dogs and
equipment. Even those added measures might not detect the unmixed
ingredients for a peroxide-based weapon.

"As things stand now, you can't find these explosives if they're carried on
someone's person" without a close exam, said aviation security consultant
Douglas Laird.

Both peroxide-based explosives and nitroglycerin are highly sensitive to
physical shocks and sparks from electrical sources. The FBI and Homeland
Security memo noted that all a peroxide explosive would need to detonate is
"fire or an electrical charge," which could come from a cell phone, laptop
battery, flashbulb or numerous other ordinary electric devices.

Any such item could supply "a lot of heat generated very quickly," said Phil
Eaton, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Chicago who
has worked on making new molecules, including potent explosives.

"The fact is that most common explosives are fairly simple to make," Eaton
said.

Eaton and many other experts noted that although recipes for making such
explosives are widely available through the Internet, they often contain
chemical errors or misleading directions-and gravely understate the risks of
mixing together volatile compounds.

Liquid-based explosives are at the top of many security experts' lists of
concerns, in part because they are relatively easy to make. Bomber Ramzi
Yousef was preparing to use nitroglycerin in a narrowly averted plot to down
as many as 12 airliners over the Pacific in 1995.

Yousef, since convicted for that plot and the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing, actually carried out a trial run for the Pacific airliner bombing,
authorities believe. Using nitroglycerin he concealed in a contact lens
solution bottle, he assembled a bomb in the lavatory of a Philippine
airliner. That bomb, timed to go off after Yousef left the plane, killed a
Japanese businessman after the aircraft took off again.

"When Yousef tested his bomb, he found it wasn't big enough to take down an
airliner," said aviation security expert Glen Winn, who was manager of
corporate security for United Airlines in Chicago when Yousef's plot came to
light.

Yousef's case illustrates the danger inherent in such liquid explosives. His
conspiracy unraveled when a fire started at his group's bomb-making lab in
the Philippines, alerting police to the scheme. Even so, Winn said, "we came
within a hair's breadth of something awful happening."

It's still unclear precisely how a bomber or group of bombers would have
used a peroxide-based weapon. It takes a large amount of such explosives to
cause catastrophic damage; the bombers who struck London's public
transportation system last year carried backpacks full of it.

Peroxide-based explosives were one component of the device that shoe-bomber
Richard Reid tried to ignite on a flight from Paris to Miami in December
2001. But Laird, the security expert, said he's not sure such a small amount
of explosive could have brought down Reid's plane.

"There's a real question about whether he had the right quantity to have a
catastrophic result," Laird said.

Some experts speculated that the mixture might have been meant to create a
large fire rather than an explosion. Laird said the risk of a bomber
carrying liquids that could be mixed to make a peroxide-based bomb is great
enough to warrant upgrading security at American airports.

One measure that might help would be replacing the X-ray machines now used
for carry-on bags with the same powerful CT scanners used for checked
luggage at major airports-an alternative that could cost up to $1 million
extra for each checkpoint.

Short of such a major step, experts said it may be nearly impossible to
catch a terrorist determined to bring elements of a liquid explosive on a
flight.

"It's very difficult," said Billie Vincent, former security director for the
Federal Aviation Administration. To be sure of preventing such an attack, he
said, "basically, you can't let any liquids go on the airplane in the
passenger cabin."

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