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Liquid Bomb plot

peteweaver

Graduate Poster
peteweaver
Joined
Mar 1, 2007
Messages
1,006
Two years ago, Alex Jones alleged that the foiled liquid bomb plot to down transatlantic airliners, was a staged hoax.

Now the people he claimed had been quietly released without charge are on trial...

I suspect Alex will probably want to forget about this one.
 
 
Whoops meant Alex Jones, but statement still stands for DRG too!
 
I went through Standstead airport a couple of days after this, and they confiscated my jar of Branston Pickle (essential on international flights)

Then the guy just chucked it in this huge bin he was standing next to. I asked him what he was doing. "Bomb scare". So why did he throw it in a bin full of other potential bombs? "Move along please". The new measures brought in were hardly thought through.
 
The FBI knew about the possible use of liquid bombs on aircraft, (including acetone peroxide bombs), in 1996. This knowledge was based on evidence obtained from Ramzi Yousef in the wake of the 1993 WTC bomb plot - (See page 554 of the book Triple Cross by Peter Lance). It makes you wonder why all the extra security at airports about carry-on liquids was not implemented back then.
 
Because in 1993, if professional chemists had said that the idea of downing a plane by carrying on liquid chemicals which you then combined to make a bomb was ludicrous, the idea of confiscating passengers' hair gel would have been laughed at?

That's just my guess.

In any sane society the effort taken to prevent a threat materialising is proportional to the likelihood and danger of the threat. There are so many better ways of downing a plane than getting passengers to smuggle liquid chemicals on board and then construct a bomb in the loo to blow themselves up with, that focusing to any extent on that particular kind of scheme is insanity.
 
This part of the plot is truly bizzare in it's stupidity.

The diary apparently tells how security would be fooled by "dirty mags" and condoms in the gang's hand luggage, the court heard.

A scrawl in Ali's diary said simply: "Prepare dirty mag to distract, condom."
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Apparently they believed that security would not pay attention to them if they thought they were not "devout" muslims.
 
Alferd_Packer said:
This part of the plot is truly bizzare in it's stupidity.

Apparently they believed that security would not pay attention to them if they thought they were not "devout" muslims.
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Actually I don't think that's stupid at all, and I propose it would have worked. Upon seeing things like that the average security guard, especially female, is liable to be so embarrassed for the passenger that they wave them on as quick as possible.
 
Oh I dunno. The security people at Barcelona seemed more than happy to turf through all of my belongings, getting their friends to come over as they demonstarted the finer points of my remote controlled electric torch - I can well imagine that they would have no problem leafing through your dirty mags, bring their mates over to laugh at a particularly ridiculous porn face etc. It's you who gets embarassed, not them after all.
 
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gumboot said:
Actually I don't think that's stupid at all, and I propose it would have worked. Upon seeing things like that the average security guard, especially female, is liable to be so embarrassed for the passenger that they wave them on as quick as possible.
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Agreed. Further, the whole “religious sensitivities” thing is simply massive in the United Kingdom at the moment, resulting in people (including male terrorists) wearing burqas when flying so as to avoid having even their faces checked against their passports. So, it seems quite plausible that, on finding such material, security personnel would fear breaching some nebulous aspect of political correctness, become flustered and not ask too many questions. In short, it could be seen as yet another example of the bad guys using our more hang-wringing sensibilities against us.
 
Par said:
Agreed. Further, the whole “religious sensitivities” thing is simply massive in the United Kingdom at the moment, resulting in people (including male terrorists) wearing burqas when flying so as to avoid having even their faces checked against their passports.
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You have any evidence for that?
As far as I am aware any passenger traveling wearing a 'burqa' will be taken aside by a female officer and WILL have their identity checked.
 
I think you are both right. I believe the new procedure was brought in after a Somalian man escaped in a burqa. If I get time I will see if I can find the article.

I remember being surprised at the time because I had come through Colombo airport where all women were taken behind a curtained off area to be examined.
 
uk_dave said:
You have any evidence for that? As far as I am aware any passenger traveling wearing a 'burqa' will be taken aside by a female officer and WILL have their identity checked.
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Yes, that’s fine.

Mustaf Jama, a prime suspect in the fatal shooting of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, assumed his sister’s identity — wearing the niqab and using her passport — to evade supposedly stringent checks at Heathrow, according to police sources. But today the Home Office, BAA and the Department of Transport all denied that the fault lay with them. At the time of his departure, Jama was Britain’s most wanted man, while Heathrow was on a heightened state of alert after the 7/7 terrorist atrocities in London five months previously. The Times has learnt that British immigration officers rarely carry out a visual check to match a passport photograph with a departing female passenger’s veiled face.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article758992.ece
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It’s also worth nothing this from the same article, however.

Liam Byrne, the Home Office Minister, refused to comment on what he said was "pure speculation" about Jama. "It is standard practice for immigration officers to ask people to lift the veil - more than that, if immigration officers have got suspicions they fingerprint people and check them against our databases," he told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article758992.ece
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So, while what you describe indeed looks to be standard practice, it doesn’t appear to be being followed in all cases. (Nevertheless, I might well have been guilty of indulging in hyperbole in so straightforwardly attributing the phenomenon to political correctness.) I might have more on this later.
 
Par said:
Agreed. Further, the whole “religious sensitivities” thing is simply massive in the United Kingdom at the moment, resulting in people (including male terrorists) wearing burqas when flying so as to avoid having even their faces checked against their passports. So, it seems quite plausible that, on finding such material, security personnel would fear breaching some nebulous aspect of political correctness, become flustered and not ask too many questions. In short, it could be seen as yet another example of the bad guys using our more hang-wringing sensibilities against us.
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Do you have any evidence that it would work this way?

Consistency with some kind of reactionary narrative where "political correctness" is making us all weak and vulnerable is not evidence.
 
Liszt said:
I went through Standstead airport a couple of days after this, and they confiscated my jar of Branston Pickle (essential on international flights)

Then the guy just chucked it in this huge bin he was standing next to. I asked him what he was doing. "Bomb scare". So why did he throw it in a bin full of other potential bombs? "Move along please". The new measures brought in were hardly thought through.
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I have to agree with this, some of the things they are doing are ridiculous. While I have to agree that there should be a consern over binary liquid weapons, the lengths they have taken it to are absurd. There are much more logical ways to do the checks, but they aren't as easy as just taking them all off people, so that is what they do. They'd far rather inconviniance the customers than themselves.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Because in 1993, if professional chemists had said that the idea of downing a plane by carrying on liquid chemicals which you then combined to make a bomb was ludicrous, the idea of confiscating passengers' hair gel would have been laughed at?
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Probably just like the idea of blowing up a plane with explosives carried in the soles of your shoes. I guess that's not so funny anymore though...
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Do you have any evidence that it would work this way? Consistency with some kind of reactionary narrative where "political correctness" is making us all weak and vulnerable is not evidence.
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Here.

Par said:
Nevertheless, I might well have been guilty of indulging in hyperbole in so straightforwardly attributing the phenomenon to political correctness.
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In fairness to you though, I am extremely reactionary. It must be all the Heroin.
 
PhantomWolf said:
Probably just like the idea of blowing up a plane with explosives carried in the soles of your shoes. I guess that's not so funny anymore though...
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No, that attempt was so inept I think it's still pretty funny.

Particularly because as best I can tell there was never any chance that he could have destroyed the plane. The FBI stated that the shoe bombs were potentially functional and could in theory have breached skin of the plane if they had been pressed against it when they detonated (source: http://nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/shoebombplot.pdf ) but even this was never going to occur because Reid was according to eyewitnesses trying to set the shoe off in his lap.

Even if he had breached the hull of the plane that only equals a destroyed plane in movies. In reality the plane would have made it down just fine even if the shoe bomb had gone off, although there would certainly have been injuries or deaths as a result of the explosion.

I think you have to be a lunatic to lose any sleep over the possibility that someone else like Reid might hatch an equally inept bomb plot, given that there are so many easier ways to cause much greater death and destruction than shoe-bombing planes.

Also, the fact you find Reid not-funny is, to me, extremely funny.
 
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