Judge In Liquid Bomber Trial Says Verdict Need Not Be Unanimous

The judge running the trial of the so-called "Liquid Bombers" has told the jury that it may return a verdict without unanimous agreement.

The judge, Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith [photo], gave the jury the "majority option" on Thursday, their eleventh day of deliberation.

The jury can now convict or acquit the defendants based on an 11-1 or even a 10-2 majority.

The move by Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith was not unexpected.

Three weeks ago, I wrote:

... If I were on the jury, ... I'd be waiting for the judge to indicate that a unanimous verdict wasn't necessary, that 11-1 or 10-2 would be good enough ...

If you're comfortable with basic arithmetic and you understand how the calendar works, you might be asking yourself difficult questions, like:

Is WP clairvoyant? How could he know three weeks ago that the jury wouldn't reach a quick decision, when they've only spent eleven days deliberating?

There's no supernatural explanation. In addition to the time spent deliberating, the jurors have also enjoyed a two-week holiday.

The break may be a meager reward for having spent four months listening to lawyers, but on the other hand, how does it help the jury to focus on a decision?

The "majority option" is considered controversial in some places, where jury verdicts are taken seriously precisely because of their unanimity. It is ostensibly used to avoid mistrials in cases where one or two jury members are unconvinced.

This line of thought is based on the notion that a relatively quick and inexpensive decision is preferable to a correct one. (Any resemblance between this and the idea which brought us our current president is all too real.)

The "majority option" has been effectively used to obtain five convictions (and five life sentences) in a high-profile case which had much in common with this one:

The defendants -- a group of young Muslim men -- were accused of wanting to make HMTD bombs, although they hadn't actually made any. And their alleged plot had been infiltrated at an early stage by a government "informant", whose role has now been wiped from the pages of history.

Was the "informant" an agent-provocateur, driving the plot along and pushing it in directions it wouldn't have gone otherwise? If so, it wouldn't be the first time.

It doesn't take much imagination to see how useful the "majority option" would be in situations where the government's case is less than convincing, or less than legitimate. In such cases it might be considered necessary to sidestep one or two jurors who could see that things weren't right.

Considering that the police had a surveillance camera in the alleged plotters' "bomb-making factory", and that the prosecution obviously doesn't have solid proof of their allegations, I would be one of the jurors the "majority option" was invoked to sidestep.

And this is definitely a case in which things aren't right. The plot as alleged was six kinds of impossible, and that can only mean one thing.

~~~

thirty-sixth in a series

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Ludicrouser And Ludicrouser: The Alleged Liquid Bombing Plot, Revisited Again

In the UK, the prosecution has laid out its case against the alleged terrorist plotters who have come to be known as the "Liquid Bombers", and it's much different than the stories that were leaked just after the suspects were arrested, two years ago this weekend.

Those stories sparked considerable interest at this blog, where chemistry is no barrier. And the previous leaked versions of the alleged plot were utterly preposterous, as I've pointed out several times since they were leaked.

But the new alleged plot -- the one testified to in court by British authorities -- is even more ludicrous than the alleged plots in any of the previously leaked stories.

The technical difficulties inherent in the new alleged plot have been hinted at -- just barely -- in mainstream media reports, such as one from New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino, as published in the Seattle Times, which read:

Using a sealed 17-ounce sports drink, the men planned to drain the plastic bottle through a tiny hole in the bottom and then inject an explosive mix of concentrated hydrogen-peroxide, along with food coloring to make it look like the original beverage. Super Glue would seal it shut. AA batteries filled with the explosive HMTD would serve as the detonator; a disposable camera would serve as the trigger.

Prosecutors said the men planned to carry the components onto seven trans-Atlantic planes, assemble them and then explode them in midair.

WOW! Is that ALL they were trying to do?

Is this admirable brevity, or lying by omission? You decide.

Instructions for such a plot, in plain English, would run like this:

Go get some AA batteries, and start taking them apart. But do it very carefully; make sure you don't damage them. We have to be able to put them back together later -- without the cores -- and make them look like new.

What? It sounds tough? Don't worry: that's nothing compared to the other things we have to do.

Buy some bottles of sports drink -- Oasis, Lucozade, it really doesn't matter. And get a syringe, too. We'll use it to empty the bottles, and we'll use it again to refill them later. Remember to inject air into the bottles while emptying them; otherwise they'll collapse.

And that would be no good, because we need to keep them in mint condition. That's why we're not going to unscrew the tops. But don't worry. With enough patience, this part of the job is easy.

Also, buy some hydrogen peroxide -- lots of it. We won't need much, but the peroxide we need is much stronger than what you can buy in the shops. So we'll have to boil it down ourselves. This part of the process will be difficult and dangerous, but don't worry.

The danger has to do with the nature of hydrogen peroxide. It decomposes spontaneously, producing water and oxygen and heat. So if you boil it, you've got additional heat, and a strong possibility of spontaneous detonation. But don't worry. The concentrated peroxide we produce will be our ticket to paradise -- and countless virgins!

Get some Tang, and some cherry Kool-Aid, too. We'll add them to our concentrated peroxide, once it's ready, to make it look like the original sports drinks.

Then, using the syringe, we'll refill the bottles. This is going to be difficult and time-consuming. Remember to draw air from the bottle with each injection. We don't want the pressure in the bottle to build up.

It's dangerous, but not too dangerous. So don't worry. Just don't let any of the concentrated peroxide touch you -- or your clothing -- because it'll burst into flame.

Get some disposable cameras. We'll re-wire the flash and use that surge of electricity for something else. Ha ha ha!

Oh, right! The primary charge. Here's the sort of dangerous part. We're going to make some HMTD. That's "hexamethylene triperoxide diamine". We can make it with common household items, so you'd better buy some nitrogen-based fertilizer, and some bleach or strong acid, too.

Once we've made the HMTD, we're going to put the batteries back together with HMTD inside them. Take your time with this stuff; HMTD is sensitive to shock and friction, so we always have to be careful with it. But Allah will protect us. So don't worry.

Then we'll sneak everything onto airplanes, and be cool about it. Once we're safely aloft, we'll tape the battery to the bottle, wire it to the disposable camera, and presto! An anti-aircraft bomb.

The sugar in the Tang will give it even more explosive power. Just wait and see.

When the Lucozade bottles are full, seal the holes with Super Glue. This is where it gets tricky. But don't worry.

The concentrated peroxide will continue to decompose, giving off oxygen and building up pressure in the bottles. The bottles are not designed to hold pressurized contents; so it won't take much to rupture them. And that's why -- as I say -- things might get a bit tricky once they're sealed.

Because after we seal them we're going to put them in our pockets, and we're going to carry them to the airport that way, and of course if any of the bottles burst from the pressure, our clothing will burst into flame immediately. So we'll pray for Allah to be with us -- and maybe we should also pray for some help from the maniac who thought this plan would work.

Where is he, anyway? Why is he never around when you need him? And do you really think the conspiracy theorists are crazy when they say he must have been working for ISI -- and MI6?

I'm not claiming the "instructions" quoted above were delivered. We have good reason to believe no instructions of the sort were ever delivered to anyone. But that's a bit of a problem for the British authorities.

The jury is out in this case -- they've been out for a while, and now they're enjoying a two-week holiday. From the look of things, they appear set to deliberate forever. According to published media reports, it seems they haven't got enough evidence to convict the accused "terrorist plotters", and in the virulently anti-Muslim political climate of the day, they clearly haven't got enough confidence to acquit them. So there it hangs -- in a fine and apparently synthetic balance.

The prosecution showed the jury a video of a bomb exploding. They said this was the sort of bomb that the alleged plotters were allegedly plotting to make. And the explosion was terrific. In fact the bomb components were so sensitive that the police had to assemble the demonstration bomb with a robot -- in order not to risk injuring anyone through premature detonation.

But the judge had to remind the jury that the explosion they saw had come from a bomb made by the police, and that the alleged plotters had made no such bomb.

The police seized many bottles of garden-variety [3%] hydrogen peroxide, and one bottle of highly concentrated peroxide. The prosecution showed surveillance tapes of the alleged plotters visiting the shops, buying Lucozade and glassware ... but where did the concentrated peroxide come from? Nobody's saying. Why isn't this question of interest? I have my ideas.

Concentrated peroxide cannot be obtained without credentials. Who in this case had credentials? Who could obtain peroxide without leaving an incriminating trail? Who had the ability to plant evidence?

The alleged plotters met in a flat they had bought for about $270,000. Where did the money come from? Nobody's saying. Why isn't this question of interest? I have my ideas.

Several of the alleged plotters have already pleaded guilty to planning to cause a disturbance. But they all deny that they were trying to destroy airplanes, and the prosecution doesn't appear to have proven that they were.

The police had a surveillance camera in the alleged plotters' flat. The saw and heard everything that went on there. And yet they don't have enough evidence to convince a jury that the alleged plotters were doing what they were allegedly doing. So the jury continues to deliberate.

We could see this coming a long time ago. The police began a search of the woods near where the suspects lived two years ago, on August 9th. On that day, they claim, they found a suitcase presumably owned by the suspects, containing bomb-making materials, presumably put there by the suspects. But they continued to search the woods, apparently finding nothing, and the search was finally called off in December, having cost the taxpayers tens of millions.

If I were on the jury, I'd be saying:

Let's get out of here. If the cops had access to the flat to install a video camera, they had access to plant evidence. If they can't show where the most incriminating stuff came from, it's only logical to assume they put it there themselves. What are we gonna do, miss the rest of our lives sitting here arguing about it? We've been had, again. Enough is enough. What are we waiting for?

I might not convince everybody, but that wouldn't be my goal. I'd be waiting for the judge to indicate that a unanimous verdict wasn't necessary, that 11-1 or 10-2 would be good enough -- just like in the most famous previous HMTD case, and then I would only have to find nine intelligent life forms among the other eleven jury members, and we could all get out of there alive.

Not that it would matter much. The alleged plotters aren't smart enough to disassemble AA batteries without destroying them, much less get over all the other technical hurdles. But that's not a knock; nobody's smart enough to do things that are impossible.

And meanwhile the forces of tyranny already have everything they could have asked for from this case: There's ridiculously tight airport security all over the world now, all because of this palpably bogus story. And that's just the beginning of what they have gained.

The fear injected into the political echo machine two years ago reverberated for a long time -- long enough to provide some "political capital" for those who fight this bogus Terror War -- and played no small part in the passage of the Military Commissions Act, which gives our unelected president retroactive immunity for having ordered torture, as well as the power to define what shall constitute torture in the future.

This outrageous presidential power is much more important than putting a handful of knuckleheads in prison.

And so, even if the alleged plotters are acquitted, the forces of darkness will have won -- again!

~~~

I'll have more on this story again soon.

thirty-fourth in a series

~~~

To avoid further discussion of this topic, please don't click here.

Overpowered: How Rashid Rauf Got Away

Rashid Rauf just slipped out of his handcuffs and overpowered the policemen who were escorting him back to jail after his court appearance on Saturday, or so we were told in a stream of breathless and speculative reports, as documented here over the weekend.

Rashid Rauf has been called "a key person" in the so-called "Liquid Bombers" plot, and alternately named as either "the mastermind", or "the messenger" connecting the plotters to al Qaeda leadership supposedly overseeing the alleged plot to down a dozen trans-Atlantic airliners more or less simultaneously. [Rashid Rauf is seen in this photo, taken after his court appearance December 5.]

Rashid Rauf's arrest in Pakistan in August of 2006 was the trigger for the arrest of 25 people in Britain on the 9th and 10th of the month. Ten of those arrested (including Rashid Rauf's brother, Tayib Rauf) were released without charge, but fifteen others still face charges, including "conspiracy to murder" for eleven of them. Their trial is slated to begin in the spring; Great Britain has been trying to extradite Rauf from Pakistan in connection with that trial.

The Pakistani charges against Rashid Rauf himself have been dropped -- twice. But they have been quietly reinstated both times.

The alleged plot -- if successful -- would have killed more people than 9/11, "a senior intelligence" source told The Observer, and Michael Chertoff, DHS-meister at the time, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the plot could have killed "hundreds of thousands of people".

The alleged plotters were supposedly planning to mix bombs from liquid explosives which they would have smuggled aboard the aircraft disguised as sports drinks. We're told they were planning to step into the washrooms with their bottles of Lucozade and emerge with bombs capable of knocking jumbo jets out of the sky.

From a chemical and logistical point of view, the plot (alleged or otherwise) was impossible, regardless of whether the plotters were intending to make TATP (as suggested by the Guardian), or HMTD (as suggested by the New York Times), or MEKP (as hinted on a few message boards). All of the reactions in question take much longer to complete than any terrorist would possibly be allowed to spend in the washroom aboard a flight, intercontinental or not, as we have documented here (and here, and especially here).

So -- chemically, at least -- this alleged plot could never be done on one plane, let alone a dozen, let alone a dozen planes at the same time -- but that doesn't matter, because this case is not about knocking down airplanes; it's about knocking down democracies!

Thus we had flashing terror alerts and the virtual lockdown of Heathrow, with the cancellation of thousands of flights, and the airlines losing millions. And to this day we have much more restrictive airport security -- none of which makes us any safer than we were last August, when we were in absolutely no danger.

But it's not about explosives; it's about propaganda. And from a propaganda point of view, the alleged plot was -- and remains -- almost perfect, especially since the timeline is so shaggy, and the use of classified national security information for political purposes is so obvious, as documented P. O'Neill at the excellent Best of Both Worlds (starting here, then here, later here, and finally here).

It would have been completely perfect had it ended in a blaze of glory with Rashid Rauf's miraculous disappearance, in which he somehow opened his own handcuffs and overpowered his escorts to vanish inexplicably into the mist of Islamabad.

But instead we now have a detailed account of Rashid Rauf's escape, as told by Shakeel Anjum in Pakistan's The News, who has sources inside the team investigating the incident. Shakeel Anjum's story begins last week:

A warning letter was sent to the capital police by the superintendent [of the] district jail to tighten security of the high profile British national of Pakistani origin, as he was a hardened criminal, Adiala jail sources told The News.

The letter, dispatched in the second week of December, was addressed to SP [superintendent of police] (Headquarters) as well as a DSP [deputy superintendent] of the police headquarters responsible for deploying duties...

Apparently the letter wasn't enough.

Sources said ... the authorities, taking it as a routine letter, marked it to the higher authorities without taking any measures to beef up Rauf’s security.

And so ... Rashid Rauf's police escort consisted of two policemen, Constables Wazirzada and Muhammad Tufail, who told the investigating team that they were traveling with Rashid Rauf, who was handcuffed, in a private taxi.

Great Britain has been asking for Rashid Rauf to be extradited, even though Pakistan has no extradition treaty with the UK.

Pakistan has requested a certain builder in exchange for Rashid Rauf, but the UK has apparently declined. Two Balochi nationalists were arrested in London last week in what appears to be an attempt to set up a counter-offer.

Rashid Rauf and his police escort had been in Islamabad for an extradition hearing on Saturday, and at about 3:00 in the afternoon, as they were going back to the jail, they passed a mosque (on Adiala Road, near Gulshan-e-Abad).

Rashid Rauf asked if he could go in and pray.

Constables Wazirzada and Tufail said he could.

He asked them to wait in the car.

And they did.

About twenty minutes later, Muhammad Tufail went into the mosque to find that Rashid Rauf had slipped out the back door -- handcuffs and all!

The news took its sweet time finding its way up the chain of command, according to Shakeel Anjum, who quotes an officer inside the investigation as saying:

“The authorities took the transportation of the suspect so non-seriously that only two cops were deputed to move him and that too in a private cab instead of a police mobile van.”

The officer also said:

“Apparently, Inspector (Hawalaat) is responsible for his escape because he is supposed to take the ... inmates from jail and send them back escorted by heavily guarded police vehicles.”

But this time everything was done differently:

“Reserve Inspector (RI) headquarters sent the ‘special team’ comprising two constables to fetch the high profile suspect from jail by a private car instead of police van and to take him back to jail in the same way.”

“The police high-ups were informed about his escape about two-and-a-half hours after the incident,” the officer said.

To cap off our story, The News reports that no "missing persons" bulletin was ever issued over the police wireless network.

So there you have it. It may be perfect after all.

Perfectly miraculous? Not exactly.

Perfectly ridiculous? Now you're cookin'!

~~~

twenty-seventh in a series

Uninformed Nonsense: Juan Cole, Rashid Rauf, Liquid Bombs and Whole Cloth

Today's reading is from "Combating Muslim Extremism" by Professor Juan Cole, of the highly respected blog "Informed Comment", as published in the November 19, 2007, edition of The Nation. The piece reached me via George Mason University's History News Network.

Professor Cole's essay includes a short passage about the one "terrorism" case with which I am most familiar, that of Rashid Rauf [photo] and the so-called "Liquid Bombers". I am very unhappy to report that this passage contains a significant amount of fiction.

The rest of Professor Cole's essay may make perfect sense, or it may not. I don't know. For the purposes of this essay, I have set myself a much smaller task: to look at a single paragraph in depth, and to separate what is false from what is true.

For ease of discussion, I have broken the passage in question into four smaller sections, as follows:

The Administration clearly is not very interested in doing the hard work of dealing effectively with small fringe terrorist networks. That is why Osama bin Laden is at large and the CIA unit tracking him disbanded.

This is a highly contentious subject and the assertion is not only unsubstantiated but also absurd. How, pray tell, does the good professor know why Osama bin Laden is at large? Does he really expect us to believe that the administration talks about al Qaeda all the time because it considers al Qaeda a "fringe terrorist network" which is not worth dealing with?

Does he really believe that the administration hasn't made a serious effort to catch Osama bin Laden, a CIA asset whose family does business with the Bush family, because the administration is not very interested in doing the hard work?

Do we really spend $500 billion a year trying to do something the administration is not very interested in doing? I'm sorry to say so, but this explanation cuts no ice with me. So let us move on.

Next, Professor Cole says:

Successful counterterrorism involves good diplomacy and good police work.

And here I agree. I wish Professor Cole had thought to use a better illustration, though:

A case in point is the plot last summer by young Muslim men in London to bomb several airliners simultaneously using liquid explosives in innocent-looking bottles and detonators hidden in disposable cameras. Contrary to the allegations of skeptics, the techniques they envisaged were perfectly workable.

... because here I most emphatically disagree. The techniques envisaged by the plotters were utterly impossible, and if you're willing to spend a few more minutes reading, I will tell you why this is so. But first, let's deal with the rest of the passage.

Professor Cole continues:

The plotters were determined enough to make chilling martyrdom videos.

But determination is no substitute for technical ability. And if they couldn't do it, then it really doesn't matter how badly they wanted to do it! I wish I could flap my arms and fly. I really, really, wish I could do that! But I can't. So I won't.

And the alleged plotters could not have done what they were allegedly plotting to do.

How Do I Know This?

If I dare to speak with a voice of authority about this case, it is because I have done the research.

On the night of August 9, 2006, pro-Bush "Democrat" Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic Senatorial primary in Connecticut to the anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont. As soon as the result became clear, the Republican noise machine suddenly shifted into high gear, calling Democrats all over the country "Defeatocrats" and "soft on terror" because the Democratic primary voters of Connecticut had chosen Lamont over the faux-Democrat Lieberman. At the time I was guest-hosting a high-traffic blog, and I figured this was a newsworthy story. So I started digging. And since I would be writing for a larger than normal audience, I started digging hard. I've been digging hard at this story for the past 15 months.

While I was composing the piece, which came to be known as "An Avalanche Of Bullshit", breaking news arrived from the UK, telling us about two dozen Muslims who had been arrested for allegedly plotting to attack a dozen intercontinental airlines simultaneously. The synchronicity -- Democrats soft on terror while British allies foil a horrifying plot -- seemed too good to be true, and I kept digging.

Within a few days the British press had obtained the names of those who had been arrested (or so they thought: they wound up paying dearly for a couple of minor errors, but that's another story). The papers printed the names, and I set up Google alerts for all of them. (It was because of my Google alert for Rashid Rauf that I found Professor Cole's article at the History News Network.)

For the past 15 months, I have received email whenever any of those names appeared in any news or blog item, and I have read everything about all of them. In addition, I have done more reporting -- and more detailed reporting -- on this story than anyone else, anywhere.

I don't mean to be immodest here -- just truthful. Since August of 2006, I have spent hundreds of hours reading about this case. I've written an extensive series (of which this is the 21st installment) which links to hundreds of source articles. And at my other blog, "Winter Parking", I have posted copies of more than 160 news articles concerning the alleged mastermind and al Qaeda connection, Rashid Rauf.

Because of the nature of the alleged plot, I also did considerable research into the chemistry behind the alleged method of attack, and I acknowledge and thank my science adviser, Bruce, who has that rare combination -- a PhD and good common sense. Bruce's help has been most valuable, as has the assistance of a former Army explosives expert with whom I consulted while I was working on the Ronald Swerlein story.

A Simple Chemistry Lesson

According to the reports which scared us silly in August of 2006, the "Liquid Bombers" were allegedly plotting to take down as many as a dozen airliners en route to the USA from the UK, using bombs made from common household liquids. They were allegedly going to smuggle their ingredients onto the airplanes in soft-drink bottles, then create and detonate the bombs while the planes were in flight. Let's do a little chemistry and see how credible these allegations are.

There are three commonly-known explosives which can be made from hydrogen peroxide and other household ingredients. Hydrogen peroxide is a key ingredient because it has been mentioned in all technical accounts of the bomb-making aspect of the alleged plot, and also because the alleged al Qaeda connection, Rashid Rauf, faces trial in Pakistan for possession of articles for the purpose of terroism, in which the articles in question are bottles of hydrogen peroxide.

The three peroxide-based explosives which have been discussed in conjunction with this case are TATP, HMTD, and MEKP. For legal reasons, I won't link to the recipes for any of these compounds, and for security reasons I won't give enough detail for anyone to make them. I will, however, give you enough detail so that you can understand why the alleged plotters simply couldn't make any of these three explosives, not in sufficient quantity, and not on intercontinental flights.

TATP

Let's start with the first peroxide-based explosive mentioned in the press in connection with this case. Triacetone triperoxide, aka TATP, aka Acetone Peroxide, is reportedly called "the Mother of Satan" by the terrorists who try to make it, because it is so unstable. In other words, it tends to detonate prematurely.

But according to the official story of 7/7, TATP was the explosive used by the four notoriously uninvestigated London Bombers, each of whom supposedly wandered around with 10 kilograms of TATP in their backpacks before the "bombs" detonated, miraculously blowing the undercarriages of the trains upwards into the passenger compartments. It's quite a magical explosive, and according to an article published in the UK by the Guardian, TATP may have been the explosive the alleged plotters were allegedly plotting to make.

In a post called "To Mix The Impossible Bomb", I examined the process by which TATP is made. Here's a short and deliberately vague outline:

Start by mixing the acetone and the hydrogen peroxide together, in the right proportions, using lab-quality glassware (otherwise the impurities will destroy you). And be very diligent about chilling the mixture. You'll need to keep it cold throughout the entire process, otherwise you may get a weak and premature explosion. Add the third liquid, very gradually, stirring constantly and checking the temperature frequently. The addition of the third liquid starts the reaction, and the reaction gives off a lot of heat.

This will be inconvenient for you because the liquid ingredients are highly concentrated and the fumes are extremely noxious. But you need to keep the mixture very close to the freezing point, so you must add the third liquid as slowly as necessary to avoid overheating. When you've added enough of the third liquid, you can stop stirring. But you have to keep the mixture cold, and you have to wait.

The reaction is a slow one and it produces a white crystal. After six or eight hours (some sources say two or three days!), you can pour the result through a fine paper filter, to separate the crystals from the liquid. You can discard the liquid, but you should keep the crystals. They must be rinsed and dried before they can be used.

These explosive crystals formed by this reaction are very unstable and relatively powerful. But airplane fuselages are not cigar tubes. They are built to withstand a significant pressure differential, otherwise they couldn't fly at high altitudes. So it takes a significant quantity of these explosive crystals -- roughly 250 grams (half a pound) in a properly shaped charge, to blow a hole in the fuselage of a modern passenger airplane, according to one demolition expert whose work I read while researching the original series.

If all goes well, you can get as much as 8 grams (a quarter-ounce) of TATP crystals per liter (quart) of liquid. And you need about 250 grams (half a pound) of TATP, so you'll need roughly 32 litres (8 gallons) of liquid ingredients. Now: How are you going to mix that? If you do it all in one batch, you'll need a 40-liter (10-gallon) beaker, which will be difficult to smuggle onto the plane without attracting attention. Of course you can make the TATP in small batches, but then you will need multiple teams, and that means you'll need multiple restrooms.

How many restrooms on an intercontinental flight do you suppose could be occupied by Muslim men bearing glassware and large bags of ice, without attracting attention? It hardly seems possible to fit a 2-liter (half-gallon) flask in an airplane sink full of ice, but if you can do that, you'll only need sixteen teams (and sixteen washrooms). And of course if you make it in smaller batches, you'll need even more teams.

In summary, you will have big problems -- insurmountable problems! -- if you decide to blow up the planes using TATP. So what are your other options?

HMTD and MEKP

An article published by the New York Times on August 30, 2006 (which British subscribers were not allowed to read!), suggested that the alleged plotters may have been thinking of making Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, or HMTD. And a bit of research revealed that while HMTD is made from a different combination of liquids than TATP, the processes by which they are produced are virtually identical. Crucially, you can't make HMTD any faster than you can make TATP. Again you'll have to chill the mixture and wait for crystals to form, then filter them out, wash them and dry them before they can be used.

If you try to make HMTD on a plane, you'll run into all the logistical problems inherent in trying to make TATP. In other words, it's impossible, unless you get all the passengers and crew to help you.

So what's left? Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide, or MEKP.

The idea that the alleged plotters were planning on making MEKP has been floated on a few internet discussion boards, although to the best of my knowledge it has never been suggested in any mainstream news report. It does represent a third possibility, however, so the chemistry behind the synthesis of MEKP deserves some study.

MEKP differs from TATP and HMTD in that the reaction produces an explosive liquid, rather than crystals. So instead of filtering the result, the MEKP must be decanted -- never an easy task on a moving plane. And again, the plotters will need either an enormous piece of glassware and a way to keep it cold, or else uninterrupted access to more than a dozen washrooms for several hours at a time.

In other words, forget it. It can't be done, not without an enormous number of accomplices, not without the active cooperation of the flight crew, not unless the Atlantic crossing takes an inordinately long time.

To envisage one attack succeeding using this method is an excercise in fantasy. To envisage a dozen such attacks succeeding simultaneously is madness.

I do not say that the alleged plotters were not plotting along these lines. I have no way to know whether they were plotting or not; assuming they were, I have no way to know whether they were mad or simply clueless. But I do know, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that the alleged plot as described was absolutely impossible.

And to make a statement such as

Contrary to the allegations of skeptics, the techniques they envisaged were perfectly workable.

without offering any supporting evidence, or any indication of having done any research, is ... well ... I was about to say "unfathomable", but let's just say a statement like that doesn't bring any credit to its author.

And considering what's at stake -- ridiculous airport security, enhanced police powers, and further legitimization of the GWOT -- Professor Cole's very superficial treatment of this apparently bogus case strikes me as not only "uninformed nonsense" but much, much worse. And here's the reason:

None of this uninformed nonsense would have been necessary if Professor Cole had merely wished to establish the point on which I noted our agreement, namely that "successful counterterrorism involves good diplomacy and good police work". If that was the point he was trying to make, there were a thousand ways he could have illustrated it. And so ...

One cannot help but wonder why Professor Cole would tell a tale made of whole cloth, as it were. Could he be so woefully uninformed? Or could he be trying to prop up the phony war on phony terror? The questions are not pleasant, but then again, none of this is pleasant.

~~~

For my best estimate of what may have driven the alleged plotters, please see "Inadequate Deception: The Impossible Plots Of The Terror War".

~~~



In recent "Liquid Bomber" news, Rashid Rauf's petition for a bail hearing was accepted by a judge in Lahore last week after being rejected in Rawalpindi last month. He is scheduled to return to court in Lahore on November 6th.

As the Frontier Post reported:

On the orders of Judge Sakhi Muhammad Kahut, the kids and wife of the accused Rashid Rauf were allowed to meet him at the premises of the courtyard of the ATC [Anti-Terror Court] here.

When accused Rashid Rauf met his family he began to cry as the environment became sentimental and emotional [scenes] were witnessed.

The meeting continued for 20 minutes.

~~~

NEW! IMPROVED!
A previously posted version of this piece was longer and somewhat speculative in spots. It also contained some crucial spelling mistakes. I have removed passages that may have been extraneous and/or misleading, and fixed the spelling, too. I apologize for any confusion caused by this deviation from the normal procedure of editing articles before posting them.

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twenty-first in a series

NYT Blocks British Readers from Monday's Article on Alleged Liquid Bombing Plot

Paper not shipped to UK on Monday; NYT web page blocks British visitors

Monday's New York Times included a long article about the alleged "liquid bombing plot", which -- as you may recall -- was reportedly broken up by British authorities three weeks ago.

The article "claims to reveal new information", and would certainly have been of great interest to NYT readers in Great Britain.

But they couldn't read it!

From Tuesday's Guardian: UK readers blocked from NY Times terror article

The New York Times has blocked British readers from accessing an article published in the US about the alleged London bomb plot for fear of breaching the UK's contempt of court laws.

Published in the US yesterday under the headline "Details emerge in British terror case", the article claims to reveal new information about the alleged terror bomb plot that brought British airports to a standstill earlier this month.

Online access to the article from the UK has been blocked and the shipment of yesterday's paper to London was stopped. The story was also omitted from the International Herald Tribune, the NYT's European sister paper.

Today's Guardian has a bit more, including this:

For all the precautions taken by papers, legal experts agree there is little to stop bloggers and others from quickly disseminating articles around the globe via websites, messageboards and email.

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at Finer, Stephens, Innocent, said he did not believe the article was prejudicial and blocking it would increase the likelihood of British readers reading it.

"Lawyers have a tendency to be overcautious on occasions," he said. "By not publishing it, it is almost inevitable that the information will come into the public domain in the UK. It is already being copied on to blog sites and emailed around the globe.

Mr. Stephens is certainly right about that!

The article in question is available at the NYT website, unless you live in Great Britain, in which case you have to look elsewhere: here, for instance.

Excerpts from the article follow, along with a few comments from one very cold blogger:

Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government officials in both countries said they had intended to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as “getting really quite close to the execution stage.”

We now know that these official statements -- from Stephenson, from Chertoff, and from many others as well -- were speculative at best, deliberate lies at worst.

British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval.
...
One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.
...
While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British official said.

So they weren't ready to blow up airplanes after all. They weren't ready to do anything!

So why all the panic? Because it serves a purpose, that's why!

What purpose? Whose purpose?

Is it any wonder that these questions are never asked in the mainstream media?

And here's another important question that is hardly ever asked: Could they have done it?

Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne.
...
A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, “in theory is dangerous,” but whether the suspects “had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.”

Your humble and nearly frozen blogger has done some research into HMTD, and has found that its synthesis is remarkably similar to that of TATP (which we discussed last week). In other words, once the chemicals are mixed, the reaction takes a long time -- several hours at least, maybe several days -- to complete, and produces an explosive compound in the form of crystals which must be filtered out before they can be used.

Among the HMTD recipes I have found, the one which seems to take the least amount of time includes the following instructions:

[K]eep stirring for 3 hours and continue to hold the temperature at 0°C [32°F]. Next, remove the beaker from the cooling bath and let it stand at room temperature for 2 hours [...] Finally, pour the solution over a filter to collect the crystals of HMTD, wash them thoroughly with water, and rinse with methyl or ethyl alcohol so they can dry faster at room temperature.

So ... even though we joined the party in progress, we were still five hours away from being able to blow anything up. Do you think the flight crew would leave us alone in the bathroom for more than five hours?

Whether anyone on earth has the "brights" to pull it off -- in the bathroom of a moving airplane and without help from the flight crew -- is extremely dubious.

But let's get back to the New York Times:

While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.

“In retrospect,” said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, “there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.”

Hyperventilating? Possibly. Or maybe -- just maybe -- it was something else.

As for the timing of the arrests, you may recall that serious questions were asked almost three weeks ago, and none of them found satisfactory answers.

British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.

The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a “key figure” in the plot.
...
Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators [t]here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot.

But they didn't get a chance to do that.

[W]ithin hours of Mr. Rauf’s arrest on Aug. 9 in Pakistan, British officials heard from intelligence sources that someone connected to him had tried to contact some of the suspects in East London. The message was interpreted by investigators as a possible signal to move forward with the plot, officials said.
...
A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit. But, nonetheless, investigators [...] had to change their strategy quickly.

“The aim was to keep this operation going for much longer,” said a senior British security official who requested anonymity because of confidentiality rules. “It ended much sooner than we had hoped.”
...
British investigators worried that word of Mr. Rauf’s arrest could push the London suspects to destroy evidence and to disperse, raising the possibility they would not be able to arrest them all.

And here we are left with more questions, among the most interesting of which is: Why was Rashid Rauf arrested?

A few days after the arrests were announced, NBC ran a report which said:

One senior British official said the Americans also argued over the timing of the arrest of suspected ringleader Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, warning that if he was not taken into custody immediately, the United States would "render" him or pressure the Pakistani government to arrest him.

Is this what happened?

Did the Pakistanis arrest Rashid Rauf to keep him out of the hands of Americans?

We may never know.

But surely it's becoming more and more obvious that this so-called "plot" was not what we were told it was at the time.

Therefore, it makes good sense to ask: What was it?

Stay tuned, my friends; there's more to come.

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seventh in a series

The NYT 'Liquid Bombers' Article British Readers Were Not Allowed To Read

New York Times: Details Emerge In British Terror Case

LINK to original text in the New York Times

By DON VAN NATTA Jr., ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEPHEN GREY

Published in USA, August 28, 2006, and Blocked From Britain!

LONDON, Aug. 27 — On Aug. 9, in a small second-floor apartment in East London, two young Muslim men recorded a video justifying what the police say was their suicide plot to blow up trans-Atlantic planes: revenge against the United States and its “accomplices,” Britain and the Jews.

“As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed,” said one of the men on a “martyrdom” videotape, whose contents were described by a senior British official and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God would be “pleased with us and accepts our deed.”

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden video and audio equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard decided to shut down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States, barred passengers from taking liquids on airplanes and plunged air traffic into chaos around the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack. Those details include fresh evidence from Britain’s most wide-ranging terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a handwritten diary that appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several suspects’ statements of their motives.

But at the same time, five senior British officials said, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike.

The suspects had been working for months out of an apartment that investigators called the “bomb factory,” where the police watched as the suspects experimented with chemicals, according to British officials and others briefed on the evidence, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on confidentiality regarding criminal prosecutions.

In searches during raids, the police discovered what they said were the necessary components to make a highly volatile liquid explosive known as HMTD, jihadist materials, receipts of Western Union money transfers, seven martyrdom videos made by six suspects and the last will and testament of a would-be bomber, senior British officials said. One of the suspects said on his martyrdom video that the “war against Muslims” in Iraq and Afghanistan had motivated him to act.

Investigators say they believe that one of the leaders of the group, an unemployed man in his 20’s who was living in a modest apartment on government benefits, kept the key to the alleged “bomb factory” and helped others record martyrdom videos, the officials said.

Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government officials in both countries said they had intended to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as “getting really quite close to the execution stage.”

But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.

While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British official said. Some of their suspected bomb-making equipment was found five days after the arrests in a suitcase buried under leaves in the woods near High Wycombe, a town 30 miles northwest of London.

Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often made well in advance of an attack. In fact, two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated.

In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that the police were still investigating the basics: “the number, destination and timing of the flights that might be attacked.”

A total of 25 people have been arrested in connection with the suspected plot. Twelve of them have been charged. Eight people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of terrorism. Three people were charged with failing to disclose information that could help prevent a terrorist act, and a 17-year-old male suspect was charged with possession of articles that could be used to prepare a terrorist act. Eight people still in custody have not been charged. Five have been released. All the suspects arrested are British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 35.

Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, “in theory is dangerous,” but whether the suspects “had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.”

While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.

“In retrospect,’’ said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, “there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.”

Some of the suspects came to the attention of Scotland Yard more than a year ago, shortly after four suicide bombers attacked three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London on July 7, 2005, a coordinated attack that killed 56 people and wounded more than 700. The investigation was dubbed “Operation Overt.’’

The Police Are Tipped Off

The police were apparently tipped off by informers. One former British counterterrorism official, who was working for the government at the time, said several people living in Walthamstow, a working-class neighborhood in East London, alerted the police in July 2005 about the intentions of a small group of angry young Muslim men.

Walthamstow is best known for its faded greyhound track and the borough of Waltham Forest, where more than 17,000 Pakistani immigrants live in the largest Pakistani enclave in London.

Armed with the tips, MI5, Britain’s domestic security services, began an around-the-clock surveillance operation of a dozen young men living in Walthamstow — bugging their apartments, tapping their phones, monitoring their bank transactions, eavesdropping on their Internet traffic and e-mail messages, even watching where they traveled, shopped and took their laundry, according to senior British officials.

The initial focus of the investigation was not about possible terrorism aboard planes, but an effort to see whether there were any links between the dozen men and the July 7 subway bombers, or terrorist cells in Pakistan, the officials said.

The authorities quickly learned the identity of the man believed to have been the leader of the cell, the unemployed man in his mid-20’s, who traveled at least twice within the past year to Pakistan, where his activities are still being investigated.

Last June, a 22-year-old Walthamstow resident, who is among the suspects arrested Aug. 10, paid $260,000 cash for a second-floor apartment in a house on Forest Road, according to official property records. The authorities noticed that six men were regularly visiting the second-floor apartment that came to be known as the “bomb factory,” according to a British official and the person briefed about the case.

Two of the men, who were likely the bomb-makers, were conducting a series of experiments with chemicals, said the person briefed on the case.

MI5 agents secretly installed video and audio recording equipment inside the apartment, two senior British officials said. In a secret search conducted before the Aug. 10 raids, agents had discovered that the inside of batteries had been scooped out, and that it appeared several suspects were doing chemical experiments with a sports drink named Lucozade and syringes, the person with knowledge of the case said. Investigators have said they believe that the suspects intended to bring explosive chemicals aboard planes inside sports drink bottles.

In that apartment, according to a British official, one of the leaders and a man in his late 20’s met at least twice to discuss the suspected plot, as MI5 agents secretly watched and listened. On Aug. 9, just hours before the police raids occurred in 50 locations from East London to Birmingham, the two men met again to discuss the suspected plot and record a martyrdom video.

As one of the men read from a script before a videocamera, he recited a quotation from the Koran and ticked off his reasons for the “action that I am going to undertake,” according to the person briefed on the case. The man said he was seeking revenge for the foreign policy of the United States, and “their accomplices, the U.K. and the Jews.” The man said he wanted to show that the enemies of Islam would never win this “war.”

Beseeching other Muslims to join jihad, he justified the killing of innocent civilians in America and other Western countries because they supported the war against Muslims through their tax dollars. They were too busy enjoying their Western lifestyles to protest the policies, he added. Though British officials usually release little information about continuing investigations, Scotland Yard took the unusual step of disclosing some detailed information about the investigation last Monday, when the suspects were charged.

A Trove of Evidence

“There have been 69 searches,” Mr. Clarke, the chief antiterrorist police official from Scotland Yard, said Monday. “These have been in houses, flats and business premises, vehicles and open spaces.”

Investigators also seized more than 400 computers, 200 mobile phones and 8,000 items like memory sticks, CD’s and DVD’s. “The scale is immense,” Mr. Clarke said. “Inquiries will span the globe.”

He said those searches revealed a trove of evidence, and officials and others last week provided additional details.

Four of the law firms that are defending suspects declined to comment.

When police officers knocked down the door to the second-floor apartment on Forest Road, they found a plastic bin filled with liquid, batteries, nearly a dozen empty drink bottles, rubber gloves, digital scales and a disposable camera that was leaking liquid, the person with knowledge of the case said. The camera might have been a prototype for a device to smuggle chemicals on the plane.

In the pocket of one of the suspects, the police found the computer memory stick that showed he had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the United States, a British official said. The man is said to have had a diary that included a list that the police interpreted as a step-by-step plan for an attack. The items included batteries and Lucozade bottles. It also included a reminder to select a date.

In the homes of a number of the suspects, the police found jihadist literature and DVD’s about “genocide” in Iraq and Palestine, according to British officials. In one house searched by the police in Walthamstow, the authorities found a copy of a book called “Defense of the Muslim Lands.”

A “last will and testament” for one of the accused was said to have been found at his brother’s home. Dated Sept. 24, 2005, the will concludes, “What should I worry when I die a Muslim, in the manner in which I am to die, I go to my death for the sake of my maker.” God, he added, can if he wants “bless limbs torn away!!!”

Looking for Global Ties

In addition, the British authorities are scouring the evidence for clues to whether there is a global dimension to the suspected plot, particularly the extent to which it was planned, financed or supported in Pakistan, and whether there is a connection to remnants of Al Qaeda. They are still trying to determine who provided the cash for the apartment and the computer equipment and telephones, officials said.

Several of the suspects had traveled to Pakistan within weeks of the arrests, according to an American counterterrorism official.

At a minimum, investigators say at least one of the suspects’ inspiration was drawn from Al Qaeda. One of the suspects’ “kill-as-they-kill” martyrdom video was taken from a November 2002 fatwa by Osama bin Laden.

British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.

The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a “key figure” in the plot.

In 2000, Mr. Rauf’s father founded Crescent Relief London, a charity that sent money to victims of last October’s earthquake in Pakistan. Several suspects met through their involvement in the charity, a friend of one of them said. Last week, Britain froze the charity’s bank accounts and opened an investigation into possible “terrorist abuse of charitable funds.” Leaders of the charity have denied the allegations.

Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot.

But within hours of Mr. Rauf’s arrest on Aug. 9 in Pakistan, British officials heard from intelligence sources that someone connected to him had tried to contact some of the suspects in East London. The message was interpreted by investigators as a possible signal to move forward with the plot, officials said.

“The plotters received a very short message to ‘Go now,’ ” said Franco Frattini, the European Union’s security commissioner, who was briefed by the British home secretary, John Reid, in London. “I was convinced by British authorities that this message exists.”

A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit. But, nonetheless, investigators here had to change their strategy quickly.

“The aim was to keep this operation going for much longer,” said a senior British security official who requested anonymity because of confidentiality rules. “It ended much sooner than we had hoped.”

From then on, the British government was driven by worst-case scenarios based on a minimum-risk strategy.

British investigators worried that word of Mr. Rauf’s arrest could push the London suspects to destroy evidence and to disperse, raising the possibility they would not be able to arrest them all. But investigators also could not rule out that there could be an unknown second cell that would try to carry out a similar plan, officials said.

Mr. Clarke, as the country’s top antiterrorism police official in London with authority over police decisions, ordered the arrests.

But it was left to Mr. Reid, who has been home secretary since May and is a former defense secretary, to decide at emergency meetings of police, national security and transport leaders, what else needed to be done. Mr. Reid and Mr. Clarke declined repeated requests for interviews.

Prime Minister Tony Blair was on vacation in Barbados, where he was said to have monitored events in London; Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott did not attend the meeting.

“While the arrests were unfolding, the Home Office raised Britain’s terror alert level to “critical,” as the police continued their raids of suspects’ homes and cars. All liquids were banned from carry-on bags, and some public officials in Britain and the United States said an attack appeared to be imminent. In addition to Mr. Stephenson’s remark that the attack would have been “mass murder on an unimaginable scale,” Mr. Reid said that attacks were “highly likely” and predicted that the loss of life would have been on an “unprecedented scale.”

Two weeks later, senior officials here characterized the remarks as unfortunate. As more information was analyzed and the British government decided that the attack was not imminent, Mr. Reid sought to calm the country by backing off from his dire predictions, while defending the decision to raise the alert level to its highest level as a precaution.

In lowering the threat level from critical to severe on Aug. 14, Mr. Reid acknowledged: “Threat level assessments are intelligence-led. It is not a process where scientific precision is possible. They involve judgments.”

Reporting for this article was contributed by William J. Broad from New York, Carlotta Gall from Pakistan, David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

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[ return to The "Liquid Bombers" Series ]