The CIA, working with counterparts in the Middle East, earlier this week halted the latest al Qaeda terrorist plot to bomb aircraft bound for the U.S. The planned attack, which would have come from explosives worn under a passenger's clothing, is reminiscent of the so-called underwear bomb worn by an al Qaeda operative in the failed attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a Detroit-bound passenger airliner on Christmas Day 2009. The latest underwear bomb found through the covert CIA operation is thought to be the work of Ibrahim Hassan al Asiri, who designed the original device.

Although the plot was disrupted before a particular airline was targeted and tickets were purchased, al Qaeda's continued attempts to attack the U.S. speak to the organization's persistence and willingness to refine specific approaches to killing. Unlike Abdulmutallab's bomb, the new device contained lead azide, an explosive often used as a detonator. If the new underwear bomb had been used, the bomber would have ignited the lead azide, which would have triggered a more powerful explosive, possibly military-grade explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN).

Lead azide and PETN were key components in a 2010 plan to detonate two bombs sent from Yemen and bound for Chicago—one in a cargo aircraft and the other in the cargo hold of a passenger aircraft. In that plot, al-Qaeda hid bombs in printer cartridges, allowing them to slip past cargo handlers and airport screeners. Both bombs contained far more explosive material than the 80 grams of PETN that Abdulmutallab smuggled onto his Northwest Airlines flight.

With the latest device, al Asiri appears to have been able to improve on the underwear bomb supplied to Abdulmutallab, says Joan Neuhaus Schaan, a fellow in homeland security and terrorism for Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. This is just the latest in the "very serious cat-and-mouse game" that terrorists play with those trying to stop them.

"In this particular case it's interesting to see the way the terrorists were trying to use resistance to [Transportation Security Administration] procedures as part of an attack," Schaan says. After Abdulmutallab's attempt a few years ago, the TSA put in place new procedures and technologies to prevent someone else from smuggling explosives on board an aircraft in their clothing. Shortly thereafter the general public took offense to these new security methods, and the TSA was required to rethink it policy, she adds.

The joint CIA–Saudi intelligence operation to stop this latest attack, orchestrated by Yemen-based Sunni terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), coincides with several other significant terrorism-related developments of the past week. In addition to the recent one-year anniversary of former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's assassination by U.S. military forces in Pakistan, a CIA drone strike earlier this week in Yemen killed AQAP head of operations, Fahd Mohammad Ahmed al Quso, an alleged planner of the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole.

On Monday al Qaeda released a hostage tape featuring former American Peace Corps and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official Warren Weinstein, who was kidnapped last August in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the military trial of accused 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others has begun in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Scientific American spoke with Schaan about al Qaeda's continued attempts to take down airliners traveling to the U.S., the terrorist organization's focus on exploiting cultural norms to reach their targets and the most successful approaches to stopping terrorist plots.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]


How significant was the discovery of this plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner with an improved version of an underwear bomb?
It further illustrates the fact that even though we've killed Osama bin Laden, Anwar al Awlaki [a key AQAP operative who died in a September 2011 drone air strike] and several other al Qaeda leaders, we have not stopped the threat they pose.

Why would al Qaeda be trying to develop a new underwear bomb, after the first attempt failed?
An underpants bomb is worn under a person's clothes, just like a diaper. The people behind these plots understand not only the TSA's security procedures but how they are tolerated—or in this case not tolerated—by travelers in the Western world, and the terrorists used this knowledge to design their attacks. The plotters might not have gone back to an underpants bomb if the TSA had continued with the more intensive screening procedures it had in place.

Although Abdulmutallab was stopped, how was he able to get as far as he did with his planned attack?
Abdulmutallab began his journey in Lagos, Nigeria, on December 24, and the initial security screening would have occurred there. The Lagos airport has had a well-known reputation for lax security. PETN, [the explosive] which Abdulmutallab tried to use, is widely available. It can easily be detected if checked by dog, swab or "puffer" machine, but it's hard to detect in a sealed container. In addition, passengers are most often checked only by magnetometers. In the case of Abdulmutallab, he attempted to detonate the device by injecting a chemical into it after he had gotten onto the airplane, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

7 Comments

1. 1. Gerard314 10:59 PM 5/9/12

   Last week the TSA agents grabbed a 4 year old girl because she made contact with her Grandma after she had already cleared security. A year ago, the TSA made an older women remove her <a href="http://www.theincontinencestore.com">adult diapers</a> so she could be checked more thoroughly. Al Qaeda is going to have to get whatever sneaky bomb they design past these same TSA agents. I'm kinda liking our chances.

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2. 2. EyesWideOpen 04:25 PM 5/10/12

   Underwear bombs could lead to full attire bombs, where terrorism experts working clandestinely in foreign labs imitate designer clothing (made of undetectible plastic explosives). A passenger's entire wardrobe they're wearing, and possibly all the clothing it their suitcase in the under-carriage of the aircraft, could be designed to detonate simultaneously.

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3. 3. hanmeng 11:09 PM 5/10/12

   The number of Americans killed by terrorists pales besides the 40,000 who die every year in traffic accidents. Instead of pumping up support of Bush/Obama Homeland Security & TSA outrages, why not focus on something important?

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4. 4. larkalt in reply to EyesWideOpen 11:32 PM 5/10/12

   Maybe they'll require people to travel naked, soon.

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5. 5. bongobimbo 09:14 AM 5/11/12

   I don't trust any mass media but Reuters, the Guardian and McClatchey, and get the most reliable news from Truthout, Daily KOS, RSN, NationOfChange and other emailed/online "underground newspapers". This is not arbitrary, but the result of experience. Here's why: (1) it's real news, not nonsense about who's on reality TV, (2) the best sources are funded by contributions, not by advertisers who censor and propagandize, (3) these news outlets employ the talented investigative reporters and thoughtful public philosophers--many of them former conservatives--fired or laid off by the 1%-owned newspapers and TV networks, not the "Judiths" and Sean Hannitys, but most of all (4) in the wake of the propaganda deluge after 9/11 I have found that actual events prove alternate news to have been FAR more trustworthy than the mass media, even than PBS/NPR, which the Koch Brothers fund. Usually I consider SciAm a good source, too, but in reverse. I trust the printed page--the magazine--but many of the blogger-written online reports are unreliable.
   
   The current report, above, seemsis shrilly propagandistic, and is out of date. For the past couple of days I've read reports online that tell us about the background of the 2009 wannabe underpants terrorist--that he's a double agent in the employ of Saudi and CIA handlers. Sounds as if he's a fall guy. Who really originated the 2009 plot? At age 76 I would be able to toss a grand piano out the window quicker than I'd trust the CIA to protect Americans if the CIA wanted to use the death of citizens as an "example" to increase their funding or extend their already massive power. Or maybe it was a benign plot. Since a CIA official has stated that this purported bomb was not dangerous, was it never rigged, just a test of airport security (which failed)? I didn't see a word about any of that in this article. The author biased it toward the further demolition of U.S. civil liberties for a mess of "security" pottage against the--brrrrr!--"Evil Islamists". (Yeah, right. Like my cultured Muslim friends, next door neighbors for over ten years.)

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6. 6. Broom Closet #3901 in reply to bongobimbo 11:03 PM 6/15/12

   It also failed to mention the well dressed Indian that guided the patsy and claimed that "we do this all the time" when the Airport Boarding agents refused to let the guy board. That was mentioned by Kurt Haskell a passenger on the plane.
   Kurt also said that a white man stood up and began filming the incident on board the plane.
   He was interviewed and seemed believable.
   
   

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7. 7. Broom Closet #3901 in reply to EyesWideOpen 11:05 PM 6/15/12

   The Al Cia Da is now wearing Dolce Gabbana, Prada and Armani?
   Wow

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