Bombers likely hoped to maximize terror

Two explosives speculated
Authorities would not describe the materials the suspects intended to use, but analysts said the Transportation Security Administration’s immediate ban on common consumer products from air passengers’ carry-on bags suggested two leading candidates.

One is triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, which can be made by combining two common products sold in every drugstore. Richard Reid was convicted of attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001 using TATP concealed in his shoes.

They said the other is potassium chlorate, which can be made by chemically treating laundry bleach with heat and other common materials. It creates a gel that looks similar to many hair styling gels and some toothpastes.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said other, more sophisticated explosives were possible, including astrolite, a liquid explosive invented in the 1960s, and dual-component compounds that are commercially available for clearing minefields.

Noting reports that several of the British suspects had traveled to Pakistan, Pike said even unsophisticated operatives could be trained in handling and secreting the materials by scientists in Pakistan’s defense industry, which is known to have experimented with small, hard-to-detect explosives.

“If you know what you’re doing — if you’re, say, an explosives chemist from Pakistan’s defense industry — this is something they would know how to fabricate,” said Pike, formerly a military and intelligence specialist with the Federation of American Scientists. “They would be able to teach this art to someone else.

“It’s cookbook chemistry,” he added on MSNBC TV’s “The Most.” “The big challenge, of course, is being sure that you’ve got a good cookbook.”

Nitroglycerin unlikely
Experts all but ruled out the use of more widely known explosives suggested in early reports, notably nitroglycerin.

Nitroglycerin is so powerful that an amount sufficient to bring down an airliner could be concealed in a single contact lens case, making it an attractive prospect for a potential suicide bomber. But it is also extremely volatile — a single vigorous shake can set it off.

Nitroglycerin “could explode at any second, so there would be no possible way” a terrorist could be confident that he could “even get on the aircraft with this stuff,” Jacobs said.

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