Bombers, Hijackers, Body Scanners, and Jihadists

Copyright © 2012 by Billie H. Vincent.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2012918507

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4797-2720-9

                Softcover       978-1-4797-2719-3

                Ebook            978-1-4797-2721-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 02/26/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

Orders@Xlibris.com

120283

Contents

1.   Acknowledgement

2.   Introduction

3.   Bombs and Coincidences

4.   Bombs and Women Duped

5.   U.S. Government in Action

6.   BOJINKA, FAA BWG, and ASAC

7.   Aviation Security and Working with U.S. Airlines

8.   September 11, 2001, Attacks and Carry-On Personal Article

9.   People, Procedures, Processes, and Technology: An Effective Aviation Security System

10.   Screening Technology

11.   Body Scanners and Physical Searches

12.   Systemic Thinking and

Trusted Travelers

13.   Guns and Pilots and Interceptors

14.   Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices, Individual Suicide Bombers, and Suitcase Explosive Devices Attacks

at Airports

15.   A Personal Lesson in Political Correctness

16.   Discrimination and Profiling Stuff and Nonsense

17.   Where Are We Now—And How Did We Get Here?

18.   The Qur’ân, Radical Islamic Jihadists, and the WEST

19.   Future of Unlawful Acts against Aviation by Radical

Islamic Jihadists

20.   Why All This Matters

21.   Worldwide Statistics Data—Explosions

Aboard Aircraft

22.   Worldwide Hijackings from 1929 - 2011

23.   Bibliography

24.   Endnotes

I dedicate this book to those unappreciated people in the world’s aviation security systems that, in their everyday activities, diligently work to protect us from the horrors of terrorism. They are roundly condemned for the untoward actions by a few and unappreciated for the tens of millions of actions they do in our behalf each day.

Acknowledgement

In 60 years of professional life I have encountered individuals ranging all across the spectrum in their character, outlook, philosophy, and loyalty. Three individuals have been amoral and a bit difficult to comprehend—but most have been what one expects to encounter, i.e., honest, hardworking, a sound philosophical outlook, and loyal.

In this latter attribute any person has to earn that attribute for themselves—it cannot simply be assumed or acquired. Some people spend their entire existence never having given or earned the loyalty of their friends, co-workers, or colleagues. It can be said that loyalty goes both-ways and anyone expecting otherwise will certainly be disappointed. Even so we, as individuals, will always be disappointed when that loyalty, if earned, is not returned.

The contents of this book certainly rests on, to some larger degree, my many associations with many unnamed individuals going back to my years in the United States Air Force, the many FAA organizations I had the pleasure to serve with, and the many, many people in the private business sector. Noteworthy among this latter group are the friends, colleagues and associates in many countries around this magnificent rock we live on its annual trip around the Sun.

I treasure all of these associations, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc. and anything that I say here is truly inadequate to express my feelings, respect, and outlook and thanks towards these many people. You know who you are as there are far too many to name in this brief acknowledgement—suffice it to say that I deeply appreciate your friendships and associations.

Last, but certainly not the least, are the many people that constituted

Aerospace Services International over the past 26 plus years. For the most

part they put up with me and my foibles and sometimes questionable judgments in our many projects. In compiling the events in this book I must pay special attention to the few closest to me in the last couple of years as their assistance has been invaluable. They are Brian Scott Ward, Olga Kuznetsova, Philip Hansen, and Alvin A. Cook.

Most of the bomb images throughout the book are the handiwork of Mr. Ward. The statistical charts from page 523 through 528 are the handiwork of Ms. Kuznetsova. Clients of Aerospace Services International have been the beneficiaries of the analytical, graphic, and pictorial expertise of these two individual in countless ASI projects.

I thank you all for your association, friendships, and loyalty.

Lastly, any errors, omissions, inadvertent inaccuracies, or conclusions in what follows are mine alone based on these many years of observations and experiences. Each day has been a new journey into the unknown—and it has been a pleasure.

Introduction

In the succeeding chapters, I am asking the reader to once again go on a journey that we have all taken over the past several decades in the counterterrorism arena, some by choice, some with enthusiasm, but most have done so reluctantly. The events described are uniquely my views of that journey—buttressed by many historical facts—along with the views and opinions of many other people.

I spent the first thirty-four of the past sixty years in aviation in the U.S. government—the last four of those thirty-four years as the FAA’s head of their counterterrorism organization, i.e., the Office of Civil Aviation Security. The last twenty-six-plus years have been in the private sector as a businessman—still in aviation and other forms of counterterrorism.

I have had the pleasure of working on interesting projects, in interesting places, meeting and working with very interesting people in a number of cultures and—in most instances—being paid for doing so. In the process, I can call on friends in all of those various cultures—save one, and that one because of the endemic corruptness pervading the entire business culture of that country. As a consequence of these international ventures, I am an international culture-freak-fully acknowledged—notwithstanding my origins in the hills of North Central Tennessee.

The contents of this book includes several incidents where I was directly involved. Some of those incidents involved others that were well above the level of the position that I occupied in the U.S. government. My actions in these happenings were, for the most part, minor; but I have included them to provide the reader with a sense of reference and the credibility of my statements regarding the incidents. The reader may be better positioned when reading this book by taking the time to peruse the two graph appendices at the end of the book and briefly familiarize themselves with the data on the overall history of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used against aviation as well as some hijacking history.

I am well aware that many readers are turned off by footnote sources. Why, for instance, can’t the author simply state what he or she is thinking? Simple enough in concept but difficult in practice where the subject matter deals with a great deal of history. If I were to attempt to eliminate footnotes, some of the chapters in this book would themselves be three-hundred-to-four-hundred-page books. Moreover, what happens if that historical background is convoluted with conflicting data? When this happens, the reader is shortchanged if he or she cannot sample that conflicting background data and draw independent conclusions. The story contained in this book and its sources is a prime example of this conundrum.

In an attempt to ease this burden on the reader, I have deliberately resourced this book heavily on Internet sources. I have done so with the thought that many readers will be highly computer literate. Those that are can quickly pull up a resource and read a variety of background materials to their heart’s content. Not so for library references as those take a great deal of effort and puts off most readers from exploring sourced references. Recognizing that many readers will not read or research the references, I have also attempted to make the content as self-explanatory as possible—I hope that I have succeeded—where I have not, then perhaps even those that are put off by references may occasionally indulge in doing so?

I recognize that some of my references to Wikipedia will horrify the pure academics because of the Wikipedia reputation as not being the ultimate in accuracy. I have, in many instances, used fully credible sources and also included the Wikipedia as a secondary background source. One of these might be when I have sourced the FAA document on hijackings and bombings that was contained in one document up through January 1, 1986. The FAA then began printing an annual report thereafter and did not include the data in the earlier documents. A serious researcher can review this earlier all-encompassing document in the FAA library—not on the Internet. I, however, have my own official copy and can easily and readily refer to it and therefore have used it as a source document because I know its authenticity.

For those persons that are inclined to go the book/library reference route—and for those serious researchers and/or students of mayhem and terrorism—I have included a rich bibliography on that subject area. The data contained in the bibliography can take a dedicated individual—or researcher—literally months or even years to explore. I wish them well in doing so if that is what they choose to do.

This is another way of saying: what the reader sees in all of these sources is what I have seen and/or experienced and/or have read and studied in my thirty-plus professional life in the counterterrorism arena. However, the bibliography and the Internet sources cannot duplicate the data stored in my person, and I cannot find a way to divulge that data other than whatever adequate or inadequate effort is contained in this book. I apologize in advance to those readers who find that I have failed in my effort.

One part of the journey in this book ventures into a one-sided view of radical Islamic jihadist views of the Qur’ân’s guidance. I am not venturing into the entirety of the Qur’ân as that in itself would take thousands of books and many years of study. My focus is on the radical Islamic jihadists views of the Qur’ân¹ guidance—not the peaceful portions of the Qur’ân. The violent aspects of the Qur’ân are succinctly stated by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab during U.S. District Court Judge Nancy G. Edmunds’s sentencing of Umar to life in prison on Thursday, February 16, 2012:

Mujaheddin are proud to kill in the name of God. And that is exactly what God told us to do in the Koran, he said, according to the Associated Press. Today is a day of victory.

I hope that the reader finds the trip interesting.

Bombs and Coincidences

It was August 11, 1982, and the six of us were sitting around my boss’s round conference table on the tenth floor of the FAA building. My immediate boss, the Deputy Associate Administrator for Aviation Standards, Anthony Broderick, had only been in his position for a short time although he had served as the technical assistant to the Associate Administrator for Aviation Standards since 1979. Tony’s technical assistant, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel from the army’s aviation service, was sitting adjacent to him; and I and one of my staff were sitting opposite the two of them.

The other participants were two auditors from the Department of Transportation’s inspector general’s office. The auditors were outlining their case that the FAA should discontinue its spending on research for an explosives detector. They were, as most auditors are inclined to be when presenting their arguments, trying to be dispassionate in reviewing the amount of money the FAA had spent over the past several years on research to find a technology that would detect explosives. Still some hubris was evident in their proclamations that we had spent several million dollars since the start of the research effort in the late 1970s. But intermixed with their outward smugness was obviously some lack of confidence, and one got the feeling that they were expecting a forceful outburst by me, or my boss—we didn’t accommodate them.

Both auditors were clearly aware of the fact that they were sitting in the conference room of one of the most powerful men in the FAA—the Associate Administrator for Aviation Standards. The two auditors were alternatively pointing out the futility of the FAA’s explosives detection research and its substantial cost. They noted that the R&D program had not produced any results after five years of effort and the expenditure of upward of $3 million.

Note: The FAA was finally able to certify a technology as capable of detecting explosives—twelve years later, in December 1994—after the expenditure of upward of $300 million; but then I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s return to the two auditors.

I had been newly appointed to my position as the senior executive heading the FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security some three months previous. I had acquired an overall sense of the programs in my purview by the August 11 meeting with the inspector general’s auditors. Spending almost 3 million dollars in my mind was a considerable sum of money, and I was listening intently to the arguments by the OIG’s auditors. As they continued, both seemed to gain a greater sense of confidence and they became more forceful in their argument that we were spending U.S. taxpayer’s money on a fruitless effort.

We countered with the argument that our explosives detection research was started as a result of the December 1975 coin locker bomb that killed eleven persons at the LaGuardia Airport in New York. Moreover, the Congress had assigned the explosives detection research and development to the FAA following the LaGuardia bombing. Actually, the FAA was the designated agency for explosives research and development beginning in the early 1970s as a result of a White House’s decision,² but no specific funds had been allocated for this purpose until the 1977 budget. The LaGuardia bombing apparently drove the Congress to take action to fund the explosives detection research.

Our explanations for our aviation explosives research seemed to give the two auditors even more confidence, and they more forcefully asserted that we needed to give consideration to terminating our fruitless research. As they were feeding on their unexpected success, they noted that there was no longer any identified threat. The deduction they were trying to make was that:

1)   our research had not produced any explosives detection technology,

2)   we had spent a lot of taxpayers’ money, and

3)   there was no longer any explosives threat against aviation.

Unfortunately, their arguments were on-track on each point.

Just at the point that the OIG auditors were beginning to believe that they had succeeded by the logic of their arguments, one of my staff officers opened the conference room door and asked to speak with me privately. I stepped outside the conference room and was informed that an explosive device had detonated approximately three hours earlier in the economy section of Pan American Airways Flight 830 flying from Tokyo, Japan, to Honolulu, Hawaii.

PAA-830 Under the Seat Cushion Bomb

Fortunately, the flight was able to land safely at the Honolulu International Airport about one and a half hours after the explosion. Unfortunately, however, a sixteen-year-old Japanese youth traveling with his family to vacation in Hawaii was killed and fifteen other persons had been injured. I was also informed that our explosives expert—Mr. Walter Korsgaard³—was in contact with the FBI and the Hawaiian authorities and working on the problem.

I stepped back into the conference room, seated myself, and resumed listening to the auditors’ arguments. To this day, I do not know whether the auditors had paused during my absence or not. In any event, they were continuing their presentation as I returned to my seat. After listening for a couple of minutes, I then courteously interrupted the auditors’ presentation and announced that PAA Flight 830 from Tokyo to Honolulu had managed to land safely after a bomb detonated in the passenger cabin.

Watching the faces of the two auditors and my boss was a lesson in human incredulity. Just for the briefest fraction of a second, the two auditors weren’t sure if I was serious or putting them on. My demeanor didn’t change, after all, after almost twenty-five years in air traffic control, I had seen and experienced about ever-startling event one can encounter; and while I am often surprised at some human behavior, it would have been difficult to startle me.

The auditors quickly recovered and, picking up their papers and briefcases, murmured something to the effect that, given the circumstances, they were returning to the department’s OIG offices. We didn’t do anything to dissuade them from their newly set goal of getting out of our sight, and reach, as soon as was humanly possible.

With this beginning, I entered the murky realm of the terrorist bombing campaign against U.S. aviation. While this was the end of the IG auditors’ tale, it had just started a much larger set of issues for me—most of which I did not or could not have realized at the time.

As an air traffic controller, I had had earlier introductions to the world of terrorism from aircraft hijackings. This introduction to the world of terrorism from an aviation security standpoint was to get ever more interesting. I would still be deeply involved in counterterrorism activities four years later when I retired after thirty-four years with the U.S. government and now twenty-five-plus years after my retirement from the U.S. government.

The FAA and Explosives Research and Development

The FAA’s formal role in explosives detection research and development (R&D) began in the 1977 congressional budget authorization and appropriations process when funds were made available to the FAA for explosives research and development. At that time, the FAA in this role was a strange duck to a number of people in and out of government.⁴ After all, as noted earlier, shouldn’t the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) be conducting this research as the military were properly the ones that had the greatest use for explosives?

On the other hand, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) was charged with the federal investigations into the misuse of explosives in the United States—why shouldn’t they be the civilian agency conducting explosives R&D?

These factors were examined in detail by the FAA, ATF, FBI, and U.S. Customs in the early 1970s. The ATF in particular, with some interest expressed by the FBI, wanted to take the lead on explosives detection. Joseph Blank, from the FAA, had begun this debate by collecting data in the FAA about bombing against aviation and was determined to make a case for the FAA to take the lead in explosive detection. He presented his views, as did the ATF and the FBI, in a meeting in the White House complex. The FAA’s position as expressed by Mr. Blank was that the FAA was ideally and functionally suited to undertake this effort.

These facts were considered by the U.S. Congress and others leading up to the 1977 budget authorization and appropriations process. One very significant factor in the FAA’s favor to become the lead U.S. government agency was the December 29, 1975, bombing at the LaGuardia Airport on Long Island in New York that killed eleven persons and injured scores others. The bomb was placed in a coin-rental locker in the public’s side, i.e., nonsecure side, of the airport terminal building.

One senior FBI official once stated to me in a private conversation that they suspected an Eastern European ethnic group of the deed but were never able to acquire the evidence to prove it in a U.S. court. That was a major failing; however, not due to any failing on the part of the FBI to my knowledge. Without sufficient evidence, the FBI and the Justice Department were unable to get an indictment. Therefore it was impossible to proceed with any legal action against the group believed responsible for the heinous act.

Aviation remains a target of terrorists. The detonation of a bomb by a Chechen suicide bomber in Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport on January 24, 2011, that killed thirty-seven people and injured approximately two hundred others was one of the more recent aviation bombings. The Russians have charged Chechen Islamist rebel leader Doku Umarov with plotting this outrageous crime.⁵ This follows a number of other terrorist bombings and shootings by Chechen terrorists.

The FAA, along with the FBI and the ATF, was most interested in determining who was responsible for the December 1975 LaGuardia terminal bombing and how to prevent it from recurring.

The FAA subsequently prohibited any lockers of any kind for the public’s use in the public side of commercial airport terminal buildings. The FAA allowed the lockers to be moved into the sterile concourse area which are located after persons had been screened by walk-through metal detectors (WTMDs) and their personal articles had been screened by X-ray or a physical examination. By this process, the FAA hoped to prevent any explosives from being carried into the sterile areas of airport and therefore it was OK to have coin-operated lockers located within commercial airport sterile⁶ areas.

The second major happening in the mid-1970s regarding the detection of explosives that occurred was that the U.S. Congress looked at the fact that the bombing was at an airport and began discussing how to prevent it from happening again. It quickly became apparent that there was no technical means, other than the use of trained canines, to detect explosives materials. The Congress acted by authorizing and then appropriating funds for an FAA R&D program to detect explosives.

The DOD was interested in detecting explosives; for the most part, this meant the detection of mines targeted against U.S. troops on the battlefield. The DOD’s greatest interest appeared to be the detection of metal containers⁷ that housed buried landmines. The ATF’s interest in explosives was to identify the perpetrator of bombings; after the fact investigations that would determine where explosives were manufactured and discovering the supply chain to the bomber. The Congress apparently did not give the explosives research task to the Department of Defense as the Congress was well aware that the DOD’s type of research would not find explosives that were to be used against aviation targets.

These interests, or lack of interests, quickly led back to the FAA. First, the LaGuardia Airport bombing had begun the drive to be able to detect explosives targeted against aviation, and the FAA was the organization that had a responsibility to keep explosives off airplanes and out of airports. So the FAA’s responsibility for explosives R&D was reaffirmed, this time from a default by others as well as an inherent functional requirement.

The need to detect explosives was recognized by others several years earlier, but the technology to do so was very immature. In fact, it was so immature as to be virtually nonexistent. One of the earliest scientists to enter the field was Dr. Fred Roder who wrote some of the initial scientific papers on the subject and holds one or more patents on explosives detection initiatives. I subsequently met and have worked with Fred and others of his professional colleagues in the field of aviation security since 1983. Dr. Roder subsequently became one of the two key scientists that developed the InVision CTX 5000 DSi explosive detector that was certified by the U.S. government (FAA) in December 1994.

I was aware of the FAA’s explosives R&D program at the time of the DOT inspector general auditors’ August 11, 1982, briefing. However, I was not intimately familiar with the technologies being investigated as I had only been in my position as the director of the FAA’s Office of Aviation Security since late April of 1982. Moreover, the FAA’s explosives R&D program was being run from the FAA’s technical center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and my offices were in Washington DC.

I was very familiar in a general sense with the technical center’s activities as they had conducted extensive research in the air traffic control field, my former professional discipline. In fact, while I was the chief of the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), my peer, as head of the FAA’s technical center, was Brooks Goldman, a classmate of mine at the FAA’s executive school. He and I maintained a sometimes exchange of ideas and assisted each other wherever we could. But the explosives research and development program was a bit on the arcane side and not much was said or known about it publicly in early 1982.

FAA Reaction to the PAA Flight 830 Bombing

My staff had already begun a number of actions on the in-flight bombing of Pan American Flight 830 by the time I moved from the tenth floor aviation standards conference room to my offices on the third floor of the FAA building. Walt Korsgaard, the FAA’s aviation explosives expert, was busy on the phone with the FBI and others learning what he could about the bomb that had been detonated on PAA 830. He was also making plans with the FBI to travel to Honolulu on very short notice to do an on-site inspection of the PAA aircraft.

Mr. Korsgaard was already an institution in the FAA’s aviation security service, as well as with the FBI, ATF, and some unnamed other U.S. government organizations. Walt had earned a battlefield commission in Korea in the early 1950s as an explosives ordinance disposal (EOD) expert. He joined the FAA after his retirement from the U.S. military in the late 1960s.

I quickly gained an admiration of Walt from his no-nonsense style. He was direct in his communications, in a one-on-one basis as well as a one-to-many in his lectures or conference presentations. I admired this as he came from a discipline that demanded knowledge, skill, and a direct no-nonsense approach to his work. My background in the air traffic control field, while not in the life-or-death personal situation that Walt had gained his professional standing in the battlefield EOD arena, were nevertheless similar as they both demanded exacting standards of performance and professionalism.

Walt and the FBI experts from the bomb data center left the next day for Honolulu. I was to find that this was a standard operating procedure for Walt and the FBI bomb data center people and, for that matter, any of the U.S. government entities involved in responding to bombings.

Walt and his colleagues immediately began to produce valuable evidence on the nature and type of the bomb used against PAA Flight 830. When they returned to the U.S. mainland a few days later, they had determined that the bomb had been planted under the seat cushion, but above the seat bottom, of a seat well back of the wing on the left side of the airplane. This was a window seat, and we were to learn very quickly that this was quite significant. This bomb, and subsequent under-the-seat-cushion bombs, were all planted under the seat cushion of a window seat to be near the side of the airplane, hoping to rupture the pressure hull of the aircraft and cause it to explode in-flight.

Sixteen-year-old Japanese youth Toru Ozawa was sitting on the seat when the bomb detonated. As it turns out, we later learned that the activating device in the bomb was a squat switch that started the e-cell timer that initiated the detonation sequence. Sitting on the seat cushion above the bomb was all that was necessary to activate the bomb by starting to decrement the time programmed into the e-cell timer. When the time programmed in the e-cell expired, the power to the detonator initiated the explosion. We were not privy to these details until about two to three weeks later.

The detonation blew Toru out of the seat, over the passengers sitting in the seats next to him, and he landed in the isle to the horror of his friends and family accompanying him on what was to be a glorious vacation in Hawaii. The detonation ripped his buttocks to shreds, and he died very quickly from a loss of blood and the associated trauma. Fifteen other persons were injured, including his parents.

Walt brought back pictures of the destruction of the inside of the passenger cabin and the cargo/baggage area immediately below the seat where the bomb had detonated. The sides of the passenger cabin wall up to the overhead baggage bins were scorched as was the area immediately below the seat in the cargo/baggage area. The blast was directed downward to some degree by the Japanese youth sitting on the bomb; otherwise, it may have caused the rupture of the pressure hull of the aircraft. As a consequence of the downward force of the explosion into the cargo hold and the space in the passenger cabin, the overpressure had room to dissipate and the airplane did not lose pressurization. Others have not been so fortunate when terrorists planted this bomb on other aircraft.

On learning of the bombing on August 11, we began deliberations within the FAA aviation security organization on what to do to protect U.S. aviation from any additional attacks. Our problem was that we knew enough about the PAA Flight 830 bombing to be terrified of the potential consequences but not enough to go after anyone that had planted the bomb. In fact we had no sense whatever of who might have planted the bomb on PAA Flight 830 as it originated from the Narita International Airport serving Tokyo, Japan.

To our knowledge, there were no individuals or groups in Japan that were inclined to target U.S. aviation. We were aware of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group, but they had not previously shown any interest in attacking U.S. targets. We did know that the Japanese farmers living adjacent to the Narita International Airport had opposed the airport for years. In fact, they had first rioted in the early 1970s in protest of their lands being confiscated for the new airport. Phalanx of rioters in lockstep subsequently overwhelmed the Japanese legions of police defending the new airport and trashed segments of the airport, including the airport control tower, and twice delayed its opening. We knew that this opposition to the airport was continuing, and I was to subsequently learn during a visit to my aviation security counterpart in Japan that over 1,100 Japanese police were actually living in barracks on the airport to protect the airport.

While we were puzzling about our dilemma with the under-the-seat-cushion bomb and instituting some rudimentary additional security measures, the next element of the drama unfolded.

Bomb on PAA Flight in Brazil

Shortly after Walt and the FBI bomb data center experts returned from Hawaii, we received a call through the U.S. Department of State that the Brazilian police had found a suspicious device on a Pan American aircraft in Rio de Janeiro. Walt, once again demonstrating both his initiative and direct approach to problem-solving, began arranging for the FAA executive jet to transport him; Mr. Hector Gonzalez, one of our Spanish-speaking⁸ aviation security experts; and his FBI colleagues to Rio.

As this was a long journey, the FAA Jetstar had to make two refueling stops going and coming in order to make the journey. The use of the FAA’s executive aircraft was necessary as Walt had already determined that he wanted to bring the suspicious device back to the United States for more detailed examination—if the Brazilian authorities would permit the United States to take custody of the device. Mr. Gonzalez managed to assist in the translations even with the language differences, but more importantly, he was well known to the Brazilians because of his extensive work in the Caribbean and South America. Walt, Hector, and the FBI were a winning combination as they managed to acquire and bring the suspicious device back to the United States.

Walt, his FBI associates, members from the CIA, and others examined the suspicious device in great detail. They determined that it had indeed been a functioning improvised explosives device (IED). It was approximately ten to twelve inches long, four inches wide, and about one-eighth inch thick. It had an imbedded switch of some kind in the explosives and an e-cell timing device and was powered by two AAA batteries. Walt and his associates in other U.S. agencies were never able to determine with any exactitude whether the imbedded switch was a barometer sensor, or whether it was a squat switch because the Brazilians had destroyed the mechanism in their render-safe processes. Walt believed the latter, but it was never conclusively proven give the condition of the device we recovered. Walt and his FBI colleagues coined the phrase under-the-seat-cushion bomb or device in describing this IED.

Rio Under the Seat Cushion Bomb—PAA 441

It was an ingeniously designed device, one that could be carried in a man’s inside suit coat pocket. In fact, one could be carried in both the left and right sides of an inside suit coat pocket and never be noticed because the device’s size would not cause any discernable bulges. The two AAA batteries could be carried separately, or as part of a walkman radio, or some other electrical/electronic device without raising any suspicion. The PAA flight on which the under-the-seat-cushion bomb had been found in Rio had come from London via Miami.

The Brazilian police, along with Walt and his FAA and FBI colleagues, speculated that the device had been found by persons cleaning the aircraft. A cleaner had probably found the device in their search for loose change and bills that may have fallen under the seat cushion. Cleaners were known to search under seat cushions for loose change and bills during their cleaning activities. Coincidences abound in human activities, and while the cleaner’s objective may have been for personal enrichment, it also served as an unplanned security measure. Without this event, we would not have known the specifics of what we were dealing with—and in this instance, it was very important that we know as much as possible about the IED we were dealing with.

15 May Terrorist Group Under the Seat Cushion Bomb

Bomb image used with the permission of Vincent Enterprises.

The IED was wrapped in dark plastic and may at first have appeared to have been a wallet. On discovery that it was not a wallet, and a mysterious object at that, the speculation was that the cleaner had immediately discarded it in the area in which it was subsequently found. It was reported to have been found on the floor and leaning against the side of the aircraft cabin. The circumstances in which this under-the-seat-cushion IED was found and the knowledge that the PAA Flight 830 Honolulu device had been planted under a window seat cushion resulted in the conclusion that this device had been similarly planted. Unfortunately, this was not the last we were to hear of this IED.

Our immediate problem was that we now knew that two IEDs had been targeted against U.S. aircraft. More troubling was the fact that the threat was apparently global in its nature, having emanated from the Far East and now from the Southern Hemisphere with the second device possibly originating in Europe. We now had enough data to develop specific security countermeasures against the IED.

FAA Reaction to the PAA Bomb in Brazil

We called all U.S. international airline security managers into the FAA headquarters for an emergency meeting. Walt had constructed a similar-sized example of the under-the-seat cushion IED appropriately covered in black plastic and used this to demonstrate the ease of concealing the IED. Walt briefed the airline security managers and other attendees on what had happened, what we knew, what we surmised, and what we knew about who might be targeting U.S. aviation. This latter point was pure guesswork as we did not have anything from the U.S. intelligence agencies that would identify any specific group or individuals. This was to change quite suddenly.

One of our key aviation security experts, Mr. John Jack Hunter, then briefed the airline security directors on what security measures we believed should be implemented to counter this threat. This involved the requirement to search under the cushions of all window seats during any stops at any international location and at the first such stop in the United States for any U.S. air carrier returning to the United States. This was highly controversial among the airlines, particularly for Pan American and Trans World Airlines (TWA) as they had the bulk of U.S. international operations in 1982. After some considerable debate, the procedure was agreed to by all the airlines involved to be applied to their respective international operations and the meeting was adjourned.

We were to later learn that the under-the-seat-cushion bomb planted on PAA 830 on August 11, 1982, was done by an operative of the 15 May terrorist group. Mohammed Rashed was the operative, and he was traveling with his Austrian wife and five-year-old son.

Mohammed Rashid’s route of flight with his wife and five-year-old son to plant the bomb on PAA 830.

I was pleased with the results of our meeting with the U.S. airline security directors and the security procedure adopted. This was a voluntary security measure that the U.S. airlines with international operations had willingly accepted for their protection. Unfortunately, I was to quickly get a major wake-up lesson from the application of so-called voluntary security measures from U.S. airlines.

We began to get feedback from both Pan American and Trans World Airlines after the procedure had been in effect for two to three weeks that the voluntary security measure was causing them a great deal of grief. Not only was the process to accomplish the searching delaying on-time departures but it was also resulting in damage to the aircraft interiors, e.g., ripped seat cushions.

These complaints were somewhat puzzling to us as the normal process simply required someone to pull up the seat from the front Velcro fastening strip, look or feel under the seat cushion but above the seat bottom, and then replace the seat to its Velcro strip. It was a time-consuming process, but the failure to catch the next bomb could be catastrophic. I didn’t place too much credibility to the complaints at that time as I had worked with airlines for over twenty-five years and knew that anything that affected their on-time departures and their bottom-line financials always provoked complaints.

Approximately three months after the imposition of the voluntary security procedures, the U.S. airlines with international operations verbally petitioned us to cancel the voluntary security measures as the threat appeared, at least to them, to have gone away. After some consultation with other U.S. government organizations and discussion within the FAA security organization, we decided to allow the airlines to drop the special security measures for under-the-seat-cushion Bomb.

PAA and TWA Application of Voluntary Security Measures

In late 1982, a couple of months after the lifting of the special voluntary under-the-seat-cushion-bomb security measures, I was speaking with an industry source who made a laughing remark about one airline’s failure to fully implement the voluntary security measures. I immediately began some research, and all information pointed to TWA as the alleged miscreant.

Some suspicions also pointed to PAA, but the security manager there was a bit more discrete and I was never able to fully substantiate that either TWA or PAA had failed to implement the special measures as they had agreed. However, enough data was obtained that indicated a high probability of a failure to implement the special security measures across the board in their international operations. I was getting my first lesson on some U.S. airlines’ compliance with our voluntary security measures.

Sometime in 1983, we began to receive some hint from intelligence agencies that the perpetrator of the under-the-seat-cushion bomb may have been a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. The indications were that it was the 15 May Abu Ibrahim Group. This group’s operations arena was primarily the Middle East and surrounding areas, but the 15 May Group was felt to have possibly been the organization responsible for the under-the-seat-cushion-bomb activities.

Bombs and Women Duped

In early 1984, we, in FAA aviation security, began to get some indications that a terrorist group might once again be active against aviation. We debated this within the FAA security organization and reviewed the classified and unclassified data we had but could not discern any specific threat. There were some vague indications from the elements of the aviation intelligence community that something was happening within one of the known terrorist groups. We made some contacts within the aviation and intelligence communities but were unable to acquire any more data from our airline and intelligence contacts.

As a precaution, we once again looked at our security countermeasures and discussed them with the U.S. airline security directors with specific emphasis on international operations but did not implement any additional security measures at that time. However, we did require TWA and PAA to review the application of their security measures at their European and Mediterranean locations. In retrospect, given the feedback we had received on their voluntary compliance with the under-the-seat-cushion bomb, this may have been a waste of our time.

On June 10, 1984, the Wall Street Journal published an article about a suitcase bomb being directed against Israel’s El Al airline. We were surprised by this article as it was quite detailed and damning. Once again, Walt Korsgaard was thrust into the breach and began querying a number of sources within the U.S. government. What we found was not very comforting as a second WSJ article added to the first and we learned that the Greek government had missed detecting a suitcase explosive device in Athens sometime in December 1983. We were caught unawares at this attack against aviation, and I was personally angered at this revelation to the WSJ by an alleged U.S. government source when we had not received any specific notification of the threat.

Inside The Lining Suitcase Bomb

The lining of the suitcase had been removed and three—to five-millimeter (about one-eighth inch) sheets of explosives had been concealed against the insides and on the bottom of the suitcase. A barometric sensor had been incorporated near the bottom posts of the suitcase, and this was connected to an e-cell timing device between the barometer sensor and the blasting cap imbedded in the explosives in the bottom of the suitcase. The lining of the suitcase had been carefully replaced to conceal the device with only two wires protruding from the lining where the two AAA batteries would be connected as the power source for the bomb.

The Palestinian boyfriend had convinced his British girlfriend that he had connections in Israel and was ostensibly trading in religious artifacts. The boyfriend convinced her to go to Israel to pick up some artifacts for him, and Oh, by the way, go ahead and travel to London to visit your parents before returning to Athens. She bought the bait-love knows no bounds—neither does terrorism! The object was to target El Al Airlines because that was how she was to travel from Tel Aviv to London, which she did.

Ms. Codding’s Travels with Inside The Lining Suitcase Bomb

Much to her boyfriend’s dismay, she returned to Athens all in one piece, with the luggage intact. He apparently never showed up in Athens because the suitcase and its IED were discovered later by foreign intelligence agents. These foreign intelligence agents gave this information to the Greek police who did a black bag job on the British national female’s apartment to look at the suitcase. The Greek experts came back to the foreign intelligence agents with the explanation that the suitcase did not contain an explosive device.

The foreign intelligence agents did their own black bag visit to the apartment, brought the suitcase back to the Greek police, and said in essence, Look, dummies, here is the concealed bomb. It is unclear whether the lady that carried the bomb to Israel then to the UK and then back to Athens was ever the wiser—perhaps if she was aware of what she had done, it would have frightened her so much that it is just as well that she didn’t know. Anyway, she and her former boyfriend lost possession of the suitcase with the concealed IED.

The Greek government did not do anything about the discovery of the suitcase bomb. A high-level official of the U.S. government, learning of the Greek’s failure to do anything after the discovery of the IED, leaked the information about the bomb and the Greek’s failure to take any action to the Wall Street Journal. The Greek government was incensed at the embarrassment and denied most of the story. They retaliated by declaring the foreign intelligence agents persona non grata and expelled them from the country. They still didn’t do anything about the device and its perpetrator.

I, likewise, was incensed at not having been informed of the movement of the IED by the U.S. government—but could not do anything about it except to try to see that we had enough open channels within the U.S. government that it did not happen again. Unfortunately, it appears that those open channels between the FAA, FBI, the CIA, and others were still closed seventeen years later in the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks.⁹

At this point, we in the FAA’s aviation security service were very interested in the device; and I sent Mr. Korsgaard, accompanied by his FBI colleagues, to Athens to see the bomb. I told Walt to do whatever he had to do in order get his hands on that suitcase IED.

The day after Walt arrived in Athens, he called me and said that the Greek authorities had agreed to release the suitcase IED to him for examination provided that he promised to return it within forty-eight hours if they asked. I immediately responded that he should agree to the terms and bring it back to the United States as fast as he could. I also took the Greek authorities’ terms as a face-saving agreement and that they would never want the device back under any circumstances. To my knowledge, they never asked for the device to be returned. A false lead story was planted in the Greek press that the device had been destroyed.

Walt and I then discussed how we would get the device back to the United States because there was no way we would be able to (nor would we want to) transport an explosives device, even an inert one, on a commercial airplane. I had done some checking and had gotten tentative approval for and was prepared to send the FAA’s executive jet to Athens to bring Walt and the device back to the United States. It would have cost the U.S. government at least $45,000 in fuel expenses alone to do so and I didn’t want to go to that expense unless it was necessary.

The next thing I heard from Walt was that he was at the U.S. Hellenikon Air Force Base in Athens. The Hellenikon Air Force Base shared the same runway with the Hellenikon International Airport serving Athens, Greece, at that time—a new airport has since been built outside the Athens City limits. Walt informed me that the Greek authorities had given him the suitcase IED.

Walt also said that he had spoken with the commander of a U.S. Air Force C-141 Starlifter cargo aircraft that was returning to the United States had identified himself and his credentials as a former U.S. Army EOD¹⁰ expert and a current EOD special agent for the FAA. Walt explained to the C-141 commander that he wanted to transport himself and the suitcase IED, which he had verified had been rendered safe, back to the United States. The commander of the C-141, which was already carrying some interesting stuff from the Middle East, said why not; and Walt returned to the United States with the device. Once again Walt triumphed over great odds, as much for his audacity and resourcefulness as for his background and experience.

We studied the device back in the United States, and it was immediately apparent that it was the handiwork of Abu Ibrahim of the 15 May terrorist group that was operating out of Baghdad, Iraq, at that time. The maker of the under-the-seat-cushion bomb had scored with another sophisticated design for an IED. What worried us most was whether there were any other such devices in planning or in operation given our previous experience with the under-the-seat-cushion bomb in the fall of 1982. We did indeed find out later that there may have been several additional IEDs constructed by the 15 May group, but we didn’t know that at the time nor did we subsequently know what kind of additional devices may have been constructed, or for what purpose they were intended.

Once again we were scrambling to find a countermeasure to a new IED. We were always as much a target of the Middle East terrorist groups as the Israelis. This was because the two nations were considered equally guilty in the eyes of most Middle Easterners because of the unquestioning support the United States gives to Israel versus the Palestinians. Moreover, the United States was considered more vulnerable by these terrorist groups, and perhaps a better and easier target, because our aviation security was not as good as the Israelis. We were doubly concerned because we now knew that the suitcase IED had traveled from Athens into Israel and then on an El Al aircraft to London before it was then flown on another airplane back to Athens. In other words, it had passed through the much-vaunted Israel aviation security system undetected.

We also knew why it had malfunctioned and didn’t detonate on the flight from Tel Aviv to London—but we weren’t in the business of telling the terrorists why their devices didn’t work. We kept quiet and implemented some additional security measures, none of which we were extremely proud of because we were very limited in our capability to protect against these sophisticated devices. In addition, any move to dramatically increase U.S. aviation security measures would immediately raise the ire of the U.S. airlines who generally viewed any such attempts as unnecessary. More on this airline opposition later. Moreover, the world’s capability to readily detect these sophisticated devices was not realized until the mid to late 1990s with the advent of the U.S.-certified explosives detection systems for checked baggage—but that is also another story.

In February 1986, an Israeli scientist from the Israeli SOREQ Nuclear Research Institute visited me in my office in the FAA to pass along a note from Amiram Nir, the terrorism advisor, to the prime minister of Israel. Amiram and I had first met in the 1984/85 time frame when he came to the United States as a participant in the U.S.-sponsored Antiterrorism Assistance Program. My name had been passed to Amiram by his predecessor, one Rafi Eitan, whom I had met in early 1983. Again, that is another story and is covered elsewhere in this book.

The note from Amiram said that the Israeli security forces had discovered a suitcase IED at the border crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The suitcase IED was apparently a later version of the December 1983 IED we obtained in Athens in July 1984. I called Amiram and asked if I could send Walt Korsgaard to see the device. He immediately agreed.

Reappearance of the Under-The-Seat-Cushion Bomb

a Woman Bomber!

While we were planning Walt’s trip to Israel, Trans World Airlines Flight 840 was bombed on a flight from Rome, Italy, to Athens, Greece, on April 2, 1986. The explosives device detonated as the flight was descending through fifteen thousand feet on its approach to the Hellenikon International Airport in Athens. It was, once again, the under-the-seat-cushion bomb by the 15 May terrorist group operating out of Baghdad, Iraq.

The man sitting on the bomb in seat 10F had his legs severed from his body. When the device detonated, it propagated from left to right, almost as a shaped charge against the inside of the cabin of the aircraft and opened a hole about thirty-six to forty-eight inches in diameter in the side of the airplane at seat 10F. The man sitting on the bomb was sucked out the hole by the decompression.

TWA-840 Bombing—Under-The-Seat-Cushion-Bomb—April 2, 1986

Photos courtesy of and in memory of Mr. Walter Korsgaard,

FAA aviation explosives expert.

A grandmother sitting in seat 11F, her daughter sitting beside her in 11E, plus her infant granddaughter sitting in her mother’s lap were all were sucked out the hole in the airplane. They plummeted to their deaths fifteen thousand feet below.

All this was the result of another woman’s handiwork who allegedly planted the bomb on behalf of the 15 May terrorist group. When I hear the media and uninformed people complain about security searches of women, old, young, supposed nuns, veiled women, etc., I instinctively cringe because I know that innocence is in the eye of the beholder—not in reality.

15 May Terrorist Group Under the Seat Cushion Bomb

Our subsequent investigation revealed that the alleged perpetrator

of this heinous crime was an attractive female who walked with a limp. She arrived in Cairo from Beirut, Lebanon, on March 25, 1986, ostensibly for business with plans to fly directly back to Beirut a few days later. In late March, she changed her ticket to return to Beirut through Athens on April 2, an unusual route given the option of staying in Cairo another day or two and returning directly to Beirut.

The first leg of the lady’s route was on the TWA B-727 daily shuttle flight that always departed Cairo early in the morning to Athens. After a one-hour stop in Athens, the TWA flight flew on to Rome and repeated the route back to Cairo via Athens during the same day. This TWA shuttle flight flew passengers from Cairo and Athens to Rome to connect with the departing TWA flight back to the United States and picked up the passengers from the incoming flight and delivered them to Athens and Cairo.

On the morning of the flight to Beirut via Athens, she arrived at the TWA check-in counter about twenty minutes before the flight was due to depart. The Egyptian security screening point had already been shut down as had the TWA redundant security screening point. The TWA staff, wanting to be as accommodating as possible, accepted her ticket; and the TWA station supervisor actually drove her and her bags to the aircraft.

Note: The U.S. government had long required that both TWA and PAA do redundant security screening of all passengers and their carry-on baggage at the Athens and Cairo airports as a countermeasure against poor security measures by both the Greek and Egyptian governments at these two airports. This included both walk-through metal detector examination of passengers and X-ray examination of their carry-on articles. Some examination of checked bags was also performed based on risk management profiles. The metal detectors and the X-rays were owned by TWA and PAA, and the persons doing the screening were employed by the two U.S. airlines—or were local nationals under contract to the airlines.

What else would one do for an attractive woman who walked with a slight limp and needed to make her flight? Our later assessment concluded that she deliberately arrived late, anticipating that the TWA staff would accommodate her late arrival, and probably knowing through some inside assistance that she would not be subjected to the normal security screening.

Once on the aircraft and comfortably seated in seat 10F, she whiled away her time on the short two-and-a-half-hour flight to Athens by listening to her Walkman radio. Before the time for descent and approach into Athens, she is alleged to have gone to the lavatory. She is thought to have taken the batteries from the Walkman, connected them to the under-the-seat-cushion bomb, and returned to her seat. Prior to leaving her seat on arrival, she is thought to have activated the device and placed it under the seat cushion at seat 10F. She deplaned and had about a five-hour wait in the transit terminal at Athens before catching her flight on to Beirut.

The TWA B-727 departed Athens on time for its flight to Rome, Italy. Sitting in seat 10F was the wife of a prominent Italian politician, and he was seated next to her in seat 10E. The under-the-seat-cushion bomb was designed so that it could be programmed for a specific amount of time before it detonated. As I noted earlier, it was activated by a squat switch, which guaranteed that someone would be sitting in the seat when it detonated. During the flight to Rome, the device was decrementing time from the e-cell timer while the wife of the Italian politician was sitting on the bomb. Once the lady sitting in seat 10F rose and left the seat, the device went inactive.

TWA-840 Route of Flight on April 2, 1986

The aircraft landed at the Rome airport, was serviced and refueled, passengers were then boarded, and the flight departed for Athens on its circuit back to Cairo. The under-the-seat-cushion bomb was reactivated when the male passenger assigned to seat 10F boarded the airplane and sat down in the seat and depressed the squat switch. As the airplane descended through fifteen thousand feet into Athens, the time programmed into the e-cell timer expired, and the bomb detonated—the aircraft managed to land safely—minus the four unfortunate passengers. The April 2 explosion on TWA 840 pretty well proved that Walt had been right all along—it was a squat switch, not a barometer switch activation mechanism on the IED.

The squat switch activated the IED once the seat was occupied. This timing mechanism also served as a means of distancing the person planting the bomb from the actual detonation. In other words, the device could be on the airplane for several segments of flight, depending on how much time was programmed into the e-cell timer and whether someone was actually sitting in the seat.

The function of the squat switch served as a guarantee that someone would always be sitting on the bomb when it detonated. A barometer switch would not have done so and would have detonated the IED after the aircraft had flown above the trigger altitude for the time programmed into the e-cell regardless of whether the seat was occupied or not.

Luckily for the wife of the Italian politician, and for him, the time programmed in the e-cell was such that it allowed the TWA B-727 to travel to Rome without incident. Unlucky for the man sitting in seat 10F, and the grandmother, mother, and daughter sitting in seats 11F and 11E who were not wearing their seatbelts at the time of the detonation the time expired on the e-cell as the aircraft was descending for a landing in Athens. Ironically, the alleged lady perpetrator of this heinous act was leaving the Athens transit lounge to board her flight to Beirut.