Yemen Bomb Could Have Gone Off at East Coast

A bomb from Yemen that was removed from a plane in Britain on October 29 was said to have possibly exploded around dawn over the American east coast. This was the same bomb that was en route to Chicago from Yemen. If the device had not been removed from cargo, the bomb would have went off at 5:30 am eastern time right over the eastern coast. American officials suspect the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is behind the bombs. It seems as if the plot was to attack the United States by exploiting vulnerabilities in the international air cargo system. After Saudi Arabia tipped off Western intelligence to the possibility of bombs on cargo aircraft, British authorities found one on a U.P.S. 747 at an air-cargo hub in East Midlands. British officials said sniffer dogs and explosives-detection equipment missed the package. The explosive material used was an odorless, colorless plastic that is difficult to detect. American officials said that both bombs contained circuit boards from cellphones, but the phone parts appeared to be used as timers, because the SIM cards used to receive calls were missing. A plot to bomb seven trans-Atlantic airliners over the Atlantic in 2006 was uncovered as a result of intercepted telephone calls and e-mails between Qaeda plotters in Pakistan and Britain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/world/europe/11parcel.html?ref=world


Submitted by Emily Collins