 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Building bombs to keep you safe
By BILL ADAIR, Times Staff Writer ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- As a red light flashes outside Lab No. 1, Joe Kunkel is inside building bombs. Kunkel's job at the Transportation Security Administration test center is to think like a terrorist. He builds what he calls "improvised explosive devices" or IEDs -- a fancy name for bombs disguised as everyday items. On his counter are a few examples: a metal pipe, a Thermos and a flashlight, all containing plastic explosives. In another room is a bin filled with ski boots, toy trains, tape players and other innocent-looking items. Kunkel can transform each into a bomb powerful enough to blow a Boeing 747 out of the sky. He hides the items in suitcases and carry-on bags to see how well they show up in the new generation of bomb-detection machines in the lab. "My goal is to test the system," says Kunkel, a muscular guy who spent 17 years on the Air Force bomb disposal team. "There's no standard IED -- there's no such thing." Kunkel's work has taken on urgency as the Transportation Security Administration, the new federal agency overseeing airport screening, scrambles to fix weaknesses in the nation's security system. Currently, only a tiny fraction of bags and passengers are checked for explosives. The government has spent decades looking for guns but only recently made a serious effort to find bombs. Administration officials say they want to be sure new systems are effective. "We don't want to deploy anything too early," says Susan Hallowell, the head of research and development at the center. "We want to make sure it's ready for prime time." An Eveready batteryUnited Airlines Flight 629 took off from Denver and climbed toward 21,000 feet before air traffic controllers saw a flash in the sky as the plane exploded. All 44 passengers and crew members on the DC-6B plane were killed. Investigators found traces of dynamite in the wreckage. They also discovered pieces of an Eveready battery that they believed had been used to trigger the explosion in the rear cargo bin. FBI agents discovered that John Gilbert Graham, 24, had planted a homemade bomb with a timer and 25 sticks of dynamite in the suitcase of his mother, Daisy King, a passenger on the flight. Graham was convicted of killing his mother and the 43 others on the plane. He was executed in Colorado's gas chamber. The date of that explosion -- Nov. 1, 1955 -- is a reminder that airplane bombings are not a new phenomenon. The first bombing in North America actually occurred in 1949 when a Quebec jeweler blew up a Canadian airliner to kill his wife. From 1947 through 1996, there were 106 attempted airliner bombings around the world, according to a paper presented to the Gore Commission on aviation safety. In 18 of those cases, the attempt failed because someone discovered the bomb. Bombs have changed over time. Early bombers usually relied on dynamite. Today, they often use plastic explosives such as C-4 or Semtex. The federal government has been slow to deploy machines to catch bombers. For years, security measures focused largely on finding guns. Passengers have long been required to walk through metal detectors and have their carry-on luggage checked by X-ray machines. But those devices are not good for finding explosives, says Douglas Laird, a Washington consultant who formerly worked as chief of security for Northwest Airlines. "If you want to keep (bombs) off airplanes, you need to do a lot of work at the checkpoint -- and not with X-ray," he says. Terrorists have often used plastic explosives because they can be molded into different shapes and painted to look like innocent objects. But engineers and security experts say those explosives have unique properties that make them relatively easy to detect. They emit tiny particles that can be identified through a process known as "trace detection." Security workers can find the particles by swabbing suspicious items with a cotton pad and then testing the pad. That system is used at checkpoints at Tampa International and many other airports. Bomb-sniffing dogs are also effective, but Hallowell of the Transportation Security Administration says they cannot handle a large volume of bags. "The problem with canines is that they are like little children with IQs of 10," she says. "It's very hard to keep their attention." Bombs can also be spotted in luggage by a machine known as an explosive detection system, such as the one built in Clearwater by L-3 Communications. The EDS device, about the size of a minivan, depicts the contents of a bag using special X-rays much like a medical CT scan looks inside the human body. The EDS machine is programmed to find the unique density of explosives and alert the operator when something suspicious is found. The Transportation Security Administration plans to have 4,700 trace machines and 1,100 EDS systems in use by year's end. Security experts say the two methods are effective but have limitations. They say it's possible to build "clean" bombs that may not be detected by a trace machine. "It's wonderful when it works," says Laird. "The only problem is that if you know what you're doing, you can fool it." As for the larger EDS machines, analysts and government engineers say they are good at spotting explosives -- highlighted in bright red on the built-in screen -- but the machines have been slowed by false alarms and mechanical breakdowns. The L-3 machine, in particular, has been criticized for reliability problems. But administration officials say the company has been steadily making improvements. Trace-detection machines, which are about the size of a personal computer, are effective if security workers thoroughly swab the inside of a bag, but that is time consuming and cannot be done for every bag. Some security experts are concerned that the government will rely too much on the small trace-detection machines and use them ineffectively to avoid the high cost and installation problems of the big EDS machines. They cost about $1-million each and are difficult to install in the tight confines of many airports. "What I fear is that once you start with (the trace) system, we'll never get around to what's really needed -- the EDS machines," says Billie Vincent, the former head of security at the Federal Aviation Administration. 'Like garlic'"This is it, Rambo stuff," says Hallowell, as she holds a block of material that resembles PlayDoh. "This is Semtex." The tan-colored material looks innocent, but Hallowell says, "There's a lot of energy stored in there." The explosive, which was developed in Czechoslovakia, is usually detonated by an electrical charge and a blasting cap. It has been estimated that it took less than one pound of Semtex to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The messy trail of particles that Semtex and C-4 leave behind is a fortunate byproduct. "Some of the plastics are like garlic -- they stay with you for days and days," says Hallowell. "If you are a handler of explosives, you basically get it everywhere." The particles are so hard to get rid of that Hallowell and other lab workers are nearly always contaminated, which means they often set off the trace detection alarms at airports. They carry letters from the Transportation Security Administration that explain why they are contaminated and provide a phone number so airport security workers can verify their identities. Today, the primary way to discover the particles is by testing a carry-on bag or laptop computer with a trace machine. But administration officials are testing a new system called a "sniffer" that checks the passengers themselves. The sniffer, such as one made by Ion Track Instruments, relies on the fact that the human body constantly burns energy like a light bulb. That heat makes the body emit a small plume similar to the cloud around Pig Pen in the Peanuts comic strips. The plume allows the sniffer to detect explosive particles and even traces of illegal drugs. A test of the Ion Track EntryScan in Orlando has gone well and yielded few false alarms, says Paul Eisenbraun, a vice president of the company. "The passenger acceptance has been tremendous. People are very happy to go through." To demonstrate the sniffer at the Atlantic City center, Hallowell takes journalists who have just handled C-4 and Semtex to a separate Transportation Security Administration lab where engineers are testing the EntryScan. The device resembles an ordinary airport metal detector, like a doorway without a door. One by one, the reporters step into the device and a voice inside the machine declares, "Air puffers on." Puff-puff-puff. The machine fires a few jets of air to direct each reporter's plume to the ceiling of the sniffer. A computer analyzes the air and flashes a report on a screen. "EXPLOSIVE DETECTED," it says. About 10 reporters go through, and it finds explosives for all but one. (That reporter's pen is later tested using a conventional trace system and explosives are found.) The challengesA red warning flag flies outside the Transportation Security Administration building when the engineers are working with plastic bombs. The flag has been flying so much recently that it is faded and tattered. As the administration rapidly expands its bomb-detection efforts, Hallowell and other administration officials have some important challenges: To test new technologies such as quadrupole resonance, similar to the MRI tests used in hospitals, which finds unique radio waves that explosives give off. Sergio Magistri, chief executive officer of InVision Technologies, which is developing several devices based on QR, says it soon "will be a major way to check luggage and people." To learn the lessons of the incident involving Richard Reid, the British man accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines plane last December. Reid is accused of having explosives in his shoe that were not detected before he boarded the plane in Paris. Officials say trace detection used in U.S. airports and the new sniffer systems would have discovered the shoe bomb. To improve the reliability of EDS machines and help airports find ways to adapt them to the unique design of each facility. Hallowell says there's a saying in aviation these days: "If you've seen one airport, you've seen one airport." To account for the limitations of trace detection, which may not find a "clean" bomb in which the explosive is well contained. "You can defeat any system," says Hallowell. "But I believe trace is certainly compatible with EDS." To find a speedy but accurate way to examine carry-on bags. Some experts say the existing EDS machines should be downsized for that task, but others say quadrupole resonance may be more promising. Hallowell says she is confident that the new technology will improve security because of the growing ability to examine people and their bags. "We could build the ultimate "tunnel of truth' configuration," she says. "It's all possible." -- Researchers Mary Mellstrom, Caryn Baird and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Bill Adair can be reached at (202) 463-0575 or adair@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
