There’s still no official word on who’s responsible for the thwarted bombs mailed from Yemen to two Chicago synagogues. Shipping bombs aboard cargo aircraft bears “all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda and in particular Al Qaeda AP,” the terrorist group’s Yemen-based affiliate, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said. But even though she stopped short of attributing blame to al-Qaeda, the technique certainly fits within the group’s bag of tricks.
Here’s what we know about the bombs. Connected to an electric circuit via a mobile phone chip, the devices used Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, a nitroglycerin relative that’s sensitive to jostling. Tucked inside toner cartridges shipped to the U.S. from Yemen through the U.K. and the United Arab Emirates, it’s not yet clear if the devices were meant to detonate on arrival at the synagogues; if a call from a cell phone would have set them off; or if there were redundant procedures in place to ensure detonation in any case. John Brennan, the top White House counterterrorism adviser, said yesterday that the bombs have been made inert.
Terrorists like PETN because it’s metal-free, allowing it to get past airport magnetometers, and because it doesn’t ignite that easily, meaning the unskilled can safely experiment with it. (PETN requires a primary explosive to detonate it, according to a demolitions expert interviewed by CBS.) Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Christmas Day bomber sent to the U.S. by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, had it sown into his underwear. Richard Reid, the December 2001 would-be shoe bomber, snuck PETN into his sneakers.
al-Qaeda hasn’t issued a claim (or denial) of responsibility for the attack at this point. But it’s not evidently trying very hard to cover its tracks.
If it is al-Qaeda, this would be the first known case of al-Qaeda sneaking a bomb inside a cargo aircraft — which, if detonated aboard, wouldn’t have killed as many people as a bomb on a passenger aircraft or within a synagogue. But al-Qaeda’s Arabian Peninsula offshoot is big on improvisation and doesn’t mind the small-scale attack. It’s written in its English-language magazine, Inspire, that so-called homegrown terrorists should make simple bombs in their mothers’ kitchens or weld knives to the grills of their trucks to mow down pedestrians.
And according to the terrorist-watchers at IntelCenter, a recent communique in the group’s Arabic-language magazine, Sada al-Malahim, outlined emerging AQAP doctrine for improvised explosive devices. Long story short: improvised means really improvised.
“One of the secrets to the success of these devices is that they are formed according to conditions and the environment and so can be disguised according to the place and the target,” the group wrote. “Other than this, it is formed in the proper manner and what aids this is that the explosives take many forms in their condition. Some of them are solid, liquid, gas, or other. When the target and the conditions surrounding it are determined, the military committee issues orders to the manufacturing sector to manufacture the device according to the required specifications.”
As such, IntelCenter assesses, “The creation of devices built into toner cartridges fits within this philosophy and would not be surprising to see coming out of AQAP. If this attack is by AQAP, it demonstrates an accelerated ability to design new and innovative ways of conducting IED attacks and a focused effort to execute those attacks on US soil.”
The Yemeni government announced today that it arrested a woman in connection with the bomb plot, although it didn’t announce any connection between her and al-Qaeda. And about two weeks ago, Yemen sentenced one of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s chief bombmakers to death. But so far, there’s no stated connection between AQAP and the attempted bombing.
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