'Plot Would Have Killed Thousands' - Chertoff on Last Year's Liquid Explosive Plot

RamboLiberal

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Mon Aug-06-07 06:37 PM
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'Plot Would Have Killed Thousands' - Chertoff on Last Year's Liquid Explosive Plot

Edited on Mon Aug-06-07 07:05 PM by RamboLiberal

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3451976&page=1

Terrorists who had planned to detonate gel-based explosives on U.S.-bound flights from London last August would have achieved mass devastation, according to new information from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

"I think that the plot, in terms of its intent, was looking at devastation on a scale that would have rivaled 9/11," Chertoff told ABC's Pierre Thomas. "If they had succeeded in bringing liquid explosives on seven or eight aircraft, there could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous economic impact with devastating consequences for international air travel."

Sources tell ABC News that after studying the plot, government officials have concluded that without the tip to British authorities, the suspects could have likely smuggled the bomb components onboard using sports drinks.

The components of that explosives mixture can be bought at any drugstore or supermarket; however, there is some question whether the potential terrorists would have had the skill to properly mix and detonate their explosive cocktails in-flight.

But they can work � scientists at Sandia National Laboratory conducted a test using the formula, and when a small amount of liquid in a container was hit with a tiny burst of electrical current, a large explosion followed. Video at the link.

On edit Larry Johnson last year on this plot:
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/bushs_weapon_of.html

Bush's Weapon of Mass Deception

First, no evidence has emerged that the plotters had in hand a functioning prototype of the device they wanted to take on board a plane. That's an important point. The Bojinka plot of 1994--when Ramsi Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Mohamad, Walid Khan, and Hakim Murad planned to blow up 12 jumbo jets in the Pacific--was preceded by Ramsi Yousef's December 1994 success in testing a bomb that exploded on a Philippine Air flight and killed a Japanese man. Yousef, Mohamad, and Murad are in jail. Walid Khan is dead. No one from that group is around to provide technical advice on the amount of explosive required to down a plane.

There is a press report from Pakistan that monitoring of one of the plotters, a fellow named Rauf, revealed that:

the plotters had tested the explosive liquid mixture they planned to use at a location outside Britain. NBC News has previously reported that the explosive mixture was tested in Pakistan. The source said the suspects in Britain had obtained at least some of the materials for the explosive but had not yet actually prepared or mixed it.

We'll say it again--the plotters had not yet actually prepared or mixed a potential explosive. More importantly, they did not have a working prototype of a viable explosive charge that would pass muster at a screening checkpoint. The British plotters reportedly did have hydrogen peroxide. Big deal. Go to your local drug store and you too can buy some. Hydrogen peroxide is not an explosive and there is no easy, safe way to make an explosive with it. The plotters in Britain still had alot of work to do in order to carry out their plot.

I'm also struck by the fact that more then twenty people were allegedly involved in this plot. The Al Qaeda of Ramsi Yousef's day had a viable plan for blowing up 12 planes using only 5 people. Now we learn that the radical Islamic copycats need 20 folks for at least 6 planes. Is this evidence of Al Qaeda's degraded capability?

Second, no evidence has emerged that the group had purchased tickets or even had passports that would allow them to board a plane to the United States. How exactly were they supposed to bomb planes that they could not even board.