Government forensic investigators examining how terrorists manufacture improvised explosives have found indications of a global bomb-making network, and have concluded that Islamic militant bomb builders have used the same designs for car bombs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, government officials said this week. "Linkages have been made in devices that have been used in different continents," said one forensic expert involved in the intelligence effort. "We know that we have the same bomb maker, or different bomb makers are using the same instructions."
The previously undisclosed intelligence operation has expanded on studies of past cases like investigations of the thwarted shoe-bomb attack aboard a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001. In a test, detonation of a similar bomb on a grounded aircraft blew a 2 feet by 2 feet in the fuselage — a potentially catastrophic event aboard a pressurized plane in flight. In another example of the investigators' work, bomb analysts have collected fragments from hundreds of improvised devices detonated in attacks in Iraq, including large car and truck bombings and smaller assaults using explosives packed in empty artillery shells and even concrete blocks. That project has led to a better understanding of the devices and to efforts to provide commanders in Iraq with faster countermeasures to help protect American troops. But there are many questions still unanswered about who is behind various bombings, including some of the major suicide bombing attacks in Iraq. Intelligence analysts have said they believe that Al Qaeda has been weakened by the campaign against terrorism and lacks a central command, as well as financial and recruiting structures. But the bomb investigations suggest that the terrorist network still may be disseminating bomb-making skills to a generation of militants who have fanned out around the world.
Many bomb makers may have learned how to make improvised explosives in the 1990's at Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, and the methods taught there may now be showing up elsewhere. Intelligence analysts did not say there was evidence of a single controlling entity behind the construction of the larger car and truck bombs often used in the most deadly attacks, although they suggested that there might not be many people with the technical skills to build larger bombs. Some counterterrorism officials have emphasized the need to identify and locate the relatively small number of master bomb makers responsible for the most lethal bombings.
| That would seem to be an excellent idea. I'd suggest a special office within one of the major intel agencies to track them. |
Behind the effort to analyze the bombs is a new forensic intelligence unit, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, or Tedac. The F.B.I., which took the lead in the center's creation, has found that in the last five years almost 90 percent of terrorist attacks against Americans have involved improvised explosives. "Tedac is a multiagency effort to analyze improvised explosive devices," said Dwight E. Adams, director of the F.B.I. laboratory. "It gathers and shares intelligence related to the construction of these devices. Its purpose is to save lives." The center's work has not previously been disclosed. Terrorism specialists in Congress were briefed on it this week.
| So now everybody in the world knows about it. |
While there is still debate about who is behind the bombings in Iraq, and none of the larger and most deadly attacks by suicide bombers have been solved, intelligence analysts said that they believed followers of Al Qaeda or ideologically sympathetic allies may be involved in some of the bombings. But the examination of bombs used in Iraq has so far yielded little information about the identity of who made them. Many bombs of different types explode every day in the country.
| Mainly because Iraq is littered with every kind of explosive imaginable. Sammy collected the things compulsively. |
Examining tiny bits of bomb housings, wirings, detonation cords, fuses, switches, the chemical composition of the explosives and the electronic signatures of remote switching devices often used to detonate bombs, experts at the center have begun to compile a data bank about terror bombs. In some cases, forensic scientists have been able to obtain evidence of who made the bomb through a fingerprint or DNA material left on an explosive part. The unit became operational in December after President Bush approved it, and lawmakers were told of the existence of the organization in recent days.
| Whereupon they promptly blabbed, to show how in-the-know they are. It's a power thing, whether it makes any sense or not... |
It has a broad mandate to examine not only bombings against Americans, but those directed against other countries like the recent assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. The unit, which is based at the F.B.I.'s laboratory in Quantico, Va., has drawn on experts from the Defense intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and other intelligence agencies.
In countries like Iraq, even sophisticated analysis has often failed to solve terrorist bombings. Investigators have collected valuable clues, including the fingerprints of the driver and license plate of the truck that carried the bomb that detonated outside the United Nations mission in Iraq in August 2003, killing dozens of people. Even so, in a country with no fingerprint files or vehicle records, authorities still do not know who was behind the attack.
| A further confirmation that as bloody-handed dictators go, Sammy was particularly incompetent. He doesn't even make it to Mussolini-grade — more a Papa Doc kind of dictator. Mugabe's probably got a better handle on things. |
The study of the unexploded device built into the sole of the shoe worn by Richard Reid, a British citizen who was sentenced to life in prison, is a model for how the new analysis center will operate. In that case, forensic examiners were aided by experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration. Mr. Reid acknowledged he was a follower of Al Qaeda. But subsequent forensic investigation showed that the design of his shoe bomb followed specific details in training manuals found by American forces at training camps in Afghanistan. The design closely followed the manuals. For example, the fuse was cut at precisely the angle the manual advised. It remains unknown who built the shoe bomb, but investigators doubt it was Mr. Reid.
| He seems to have been exceptionally stoopid, even for cannon fodder... |
Forensic analysts found a partial fingerprint on the bomb and a single strand of human hair, but neither matched Mr. Reid's. The forensic conclusions about the seriousness of Mr. Reid's shoe bomb have deepened concerns about the possibility of attacks aboard commercial airliners and provided a backdrop to the concerns that led American authorities to cancel abruptly several international flights to the United States in recent months. |