What are liquid explosives?
Liquid explosives are easy to make and difficult to detect, experts warn.
By Jeremy Manier
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Friday, August 11, 2006
The sort of liquid explosive that officials suspect was to be used in the foiled airliner terrorism plot is easy for anyone with a working knowledge of chemistry to make — and difficult for ordinary airport checkpoints to detect, experts say.
The Homeland Security Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a memo to law enforcement agencies Thursday saying the explosive would have been "peroxide-based," with otherwise safe ingredients mixed onboard the targeted airplanes during flight to make a bomb.
Robert Kirkham
ASSOCIATED PRESS
(enlarge photo)
The ban on taking most liquids onto airplanes left passengers annoyed and trash cans overflowing.
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That information suggests the bombers planned to use a well-known explosive called triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, 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 last July's suicide bombings in London and numerous Palestinian bombings in Israel. It is also unstable and dangerous even for trained chemists to make — qualities that caused bomb-makers 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 Northwestern University chemistry professor.
Before they are mixed, the individual ingredients of such an explosive would be difficult for ordinary airport security measures to detect.
"As things stand now, you can't find these explosives if they're carried on someone's person" without a close exam, aviation security consultant Douglas Laird said.
Peroxide-based explosives 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, flash bulb or numerous other ordinary electric devices.
Any such item could supply "a lot of heat generated very quickly," said Phil Eaton, a University of Chicago professor emeritus of chemistry. "The fact is that most common explosives are fairly simple to make."
But Eaton and many other experts noted that, though recipes for making such explosives are widely available on the Internet, Web sites often contain chemical errors or misleading directions and gravely understate the risks of mixing together volatile compounds.
"Kids get killed every year trying to do this stuff," said Jimmie Oxley, an explosives expert at the University of Rhode Island.
Additional material from The Washington Post. |
