The most interesting piece comes from our Australian friend Gavin Gatenby ("Nick Possum"). A chemist told him the straight skinny on TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), the "secret ingredient" which, we are told, the Pakistanis had planned to use on jetliners.
I avoided chemistry in high school and thus cannot verify what you are about to read; any readers "in the know" should feel free to share their expertise. Gatenby's source calls TATP an "unstable brew" that requires both same-day usage and constant cooling:
“Well, firstly you’ve got to understand that TATP isn’t a liquid, it’s a white crystalline powder. Looks like sugar and it makes nitroglycerine look safe...So far, we've talked about the easy part. Here's what happens once you've dragged the cooler and other ingredients into the plane's toilet (without avoiding suspicion) in order to mix up some big boomage:
“The three ingredients are acetone, sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. The acetone and sulphuric you can buy at the hardware store without attracting suspicion, but the hydrogen peroxide has got to be virtually full strength. You can’t use the stuff you buy over the counter at the pharmacy because it’s 97 per cent water. Well, you could, but you’d have to buy a lot of little bottles of peroxide and boil off the water, which is very risky. One false move and you’ve burned your house down.
“Anyway, you can premix the peroxide with the acetone – a couple of litres might make a useful amount of TATP – and carry that onto the plane in a single container but you’ve got to keep it cool and the only way I can think of to do that is to carry it in a Styrofoam container with some of those cold bricks from the supermarket. Plus, in your kit you’ll need to have a stirrer and a thermometer and a glass beaker or a stainless steel bowl to mix it in..."
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
“First you’ll need to fill your cooler box with water and wait till it the cold bricks cool it below 10 degrees C. Next step: take your mixing bowl, float it in the cold water, pour in the peroxide/acetone mix and then add the sulphuric acid, a drop at a time, stirring carefully. You’d need to check the temperature constantly. If it gets a little too hot you’ll get a piss-weak batch; if it gets way too hot you’ll get a weak batch that spontaneous detonates. I’d probably kill you and nobody else.(Emphasis added.) Could a Pakistani take a bulky carry-on into the airline restroom and expect to operate undisturbed for 90 minutes? Not likely.
“Let’s assume that takes twenty minutes or so. You still aren’t finished. You’ll end up with damp crystals. You’ll have to carefully, very carefully, decant them onto a paper towel to soak up surplus liquid and then leave them to dry for an hour or so. Hey presto! Mother of Satan.”
Very similar conclusions are reached in this piece in the Register, by Thomas C. Greene:
So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.Craig Murray notes the the binary liquid explosive myth (if myth it is) can be used by authorities who want to smear someone placed under arrest. The acetone under your bathroom sink doesn't make you a terrorist, but it could lead to some ominous headlines about "precursor chemicals" in your apartment.
Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.
Murray likens the current tales to the ricin plot of a couple of years ago:
It was alleged that a flat in North London inhabited by Muslims was a "Ricin" factory, manufacturing the deadly toxin which could kill "hundreds of thousands of people". Police tipped off the authorities that traces of ricin had been discovered. In the end, all those accused were found not guilty by the court. The "traces of ricin" were revealed to be the atmospheric norm.Two weeks before the announcement of the latest jetliner plot, Pakistani authorities arrested Rashid Rauf, the alleged terrorist mastermind, Al Qaeda link-man and beauty product entrepreneur. I've always found the sequence of events odd: One would presume that the arrest would have cancelled any plans. Now we learn that the information extracted from Rauf (whether by fair means or foul) may not hold much value:
The "intelligence" on that plot had been extracted under torture in Algeria - another echo here, as the "intelligence" in this current case has almost certainly been extracted under torture in Pakistan.
But after two weeks of interrogation, an inch-by-inch search of his house and analysis of his home computer, officials are now saying that his extradition is ‘a way down the track’ if it happens at all.This whole "plot" is starting to look like just another scarecrow, designed to frighten the gullible.
It comes amid wider suspicions that the plot may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed.
Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf’s role to appear ‘tough on terrorism’ and impress Britain and America.
A spokesman for Pakistan’s Interior Ministry last night admitted that ‘extradition at this time is not under consideration’.
3 comments:
...and now we hear about a plane departure i believe in london being aborted because a couple of men were heard speaking arabic, causing pandemonium and eventually forcing the two men to leave the plane.
mass hysteria; mission accomplished.
the reports framing the case as pakistan's fault, being too eager to please the empire, completely overlooks the fact of the timing of that exposure. just a bush exposed a very real double agent's work in pakistan a couple of years ago (which to my mind amounts to treason) was timed prematurely but importantly to save bush's ass.
apologies for not having the link for the flight story, but just heard it on this morning's democracynow! it was part of a fascinating interview with a w. mark (didn't catch the full name) who as a journalism intern worked in baghdad for the lincoln group crafting propaganda. that is worth a listen, in itself.
www.democracynow.org
for those of you who may not have discovered amy goodman yet, her daily broadcasts of the news at 8 am mon - friday are the best on tv, and can be streamed, as well as viewed later in their excellent archives.
You have the wrong end of the stick.
Yes the stuff is very unstable but no, you would not mix a batch on the plane.
The stuff sublimes at room temperature, evaporates, just disappears into the air.
The way to keep it from evaporating is to store it in liquid.
Our problem is it is difficult to tell if a liquid container has TATP in it.
The disposal of liquids or creams is because liquids and creams can be used to STORE the TATP so that it maintains it's property's.
The hunt for liquids and creams is not a search for the raw ingredients to make the stuff, because as many people point out it's not stuff an ameter cooks up in a public restroom, it's a search for TATP thats already made and stored in the container.
We don't want to talk to much about the exact nature of TATP storage and transport mediums, because we don't want to tell the bad guys exactly how to store and transport the stuff, or how the transport medium may get past airport screening.
No need to tell the bad guys. I think they already know. Knowing how fanatic they are about blowing up the world, they'll always find the better mousetrap.
Has anyone tried religion? Not the bad guys' kind but the one that's more powerful? The world is full of evil and we people just don't have the power to stop it. Only God can.
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