Part of the confusion surrounding the synagogue blast, authorities say, was connected to the device itself: An explosive layered under hundreds of pounds of concrete poured into a trash bin is not something bomb technicians typically encounter.
Santa Monica firefighters remove a 300-pound metal pipe encased in concrete from the roof of a home after it was catapulted into the air from a plastic bin containing construction debris. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times / April 7, 2011)
First it was believed to be a bomb, then it was dismissed as a freak industrial accident, and now authorities are again saying that the explosion last week near a Santa Monica synagogue was, most likely, deliberately planned.
Part of the confusion, authorities say, was connected to the device itself: An explosive layered under hundreds of pounds of concrete poured into a trash bin is not something bomb technicians typically encounter.
"This is clearly not a traditional type of explosive device," said FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller. "Clearly if it were, our investigators would have been able to identify it immediately."...[Full Article]
(Reuters) - A blast outside a Los Angeles-area synagogue this week was caused by an explosive device and police on Saturday were looking for a suspect, authorities said.
The explosion on Thursday near the Chabad House in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica injured no one and was blamed by police that day on a mechanical failure.
The blast sent a pipe hurtling through the air and crashing onto an apartment building next to the synagogue.
Santa Monica police said in a statement late on Friday that they were looking for a transient suspect named Ron Hirsch in connection with the blast...[Full Article
Police Hunt Suspect After Blast Outside Chabad Synagogue
Santa Monica, CA - Authorities say an explosion outside a synagogue and Jewish school in Santa Monica was caused by a homemade explosive device and not an accident as previously believed.
Synagogues in California have been put on high alert after the bomb blast.
Jewish organizations around Los Angeles were urged to be extra vigilant after the explosion, which shattered windows at a synagogue and sent a 300-pound block of concrete flying into the roof of a nearby house.
Police spokesman Sgt. Jay Trisler said Friday that further forensic examination led investigators to conclude the blast that broke windows at Chabad House Lubavitch of Santa Monica on Thursday was intentional.
Trisler says police have linked the device to Ron Hirsch, a transient known to spend time at synagogues and Jewish community centers seeking charity.
Police are searching for Hirsch, whom they describe as "extremely dangerous."
The explosion sent a 300-pound pipe (136-kilogram) into a house where a child was sleeping and spurred police to evacuate several blocks, but no one was injured.
Investigators earlier said the blast was caused by an industrial accident. But "technicians and detectives conducted further forensic analysis at the scene and, after unearthing much of the large portion of the cement found, uncovered materials indicating that the device appeared to have been deliberately constructed," the FBI said in a statement. "Investigation has determined that items found in and around the mechanism are linked to an individual by the name of Ron Hirsch, identified as a transient."
Law enforcement sources told LA The Times that gun powder was among the items found in the explosive device. Officials have not said exactly how they linked the evidence inside the explosive device to the suspect.
A large hole is left in the roof of a home after police and firefighters removed a device from the roof of a home next to the Chabad House Lubavitch in Santa Monica, Calif., on Thursday, April 7, 2011. An early morning explosion sent the object into the air, lodging it in the roof. Concern that it was a bomb due to its proximity to the Chabad House Lubavitch caused authorities to evacuate about 100 people in the surrounding area. (AP Photo/David Zentz)Hirsch, 60, also known as Israel Fisher, is thought to be behind the blast on 17th Street between Broadway Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. Police described Hirsch as a transient.
"Hirsch should be considered extremely dangerous," said a police bulletin sent to other law enforcement agencies.
He is described as white, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, 207 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes.
The bulletin said Hirsch was known to frequent synagogues and Jewish community centers in search of charity, among them Congregation Bais Yehuda on North La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles.
The motive for the attack was unknown, police said. Joining local authorities in investigating the case were the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
On Friday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League issued a security alert to synagogues and other Jewish organizations in the Los Angeles area.
Amanda Susskind, the league's Los Angeles regional director, said in an interview that the alert was "not intended to create panic or a drama," but rather to keep people on the outlook for a man who seems to be disturbed.
She also said there was no indication that the suspect was part of a terrorist plot.
"[The incident] seems more in the nature of a disturbed individual," she said.
"If he's out there and has nefarious goals, we wanted people to be extra vigilant and careful," she said.
Susskind also said she hadn't heard of Hirsch being seen at synagogues or community centers on Friday night, when Shabbat services were held. She added that "if there had been another incident, we would've heard about it."
During Shabbat, observant Jews are not allowed to use the telephone. But an exception was made Friday night, according to Susskind.
"We had indicated that this was worthy of breaking the rule," she said. "If anybody did see [Hirsch], we instructed them to call law enforcement directly."
Susskind said she isn't sure if he is Jewish.
"We're all wondering that," she said. "Both the name and alias are Jewish names, but I don't have any independent knowledge [if he is Jewish]."
Mirel Levitansky, who works at the Chabad House and is the wife of co-Rabbi Eli Levitansky, told Santa Monica Patch on Friday that Hirsch had stopped by the synagogue "over the years." She said she didn't interact with Hirsch when he visited the Chabad House.
"He makes his rounds, looking for handouts, for money," she said. "He hasn't caused any trouble [in the past]. He needs a little bit of help."
Hirsch is 60 years old, has brown hair and green eyes, is 5' 7" and weighs 207 pounds. Those with information about him are asked to call SMPD Det. Derek Leone at 310.458.8949.
The Swedish military had prior knowledge of the suicide blast which hit a busy shopping street in central Stockholm on Saturday, suggesting the attack was allowed to go ahead in order to bolster the flagging global war on terror.
“A Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten) employee warned an acquaintance to stay clear of an area in central Stockholm on Saturday where, several hours later, two explosions went off in what is being called a terrorist attack,” reports The Local, an English-language Swedish newspaper.
The TT news agency obtained a copy of a text message sent to the military staffer. “If you can, avoid Drottninggatan today. A lot can happen there…just so you know,” it read.
Armed Forces spokesperson Jonas Svensson initially said he was unaware of the message but would be checking into its origins. Swedish military sources later acknowledged the authenticity of the message and said they were “preparing how the issue will be dealt with”.
Intelligence analysis professor Wilhelm Agrell said that Swedish authorities may have known in advance of the suicide bombing, but military spokesperson Erik Lagersten denied any prior knowledge in a statement.
“The Swedish Armed Forces did not know ahead of time about the plans or the circumstances surrounding the events which have taken place. If that had been the case, (Swedish security service) Säpo, which is the responsible agency in these types of cases, would have been informed immediately,” he said.
Middle East-born Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly has been blamed for the bombing. Al-Abdaly was killed as he tried to set off the car bomb and two others were injured. Repots say that he was also wearing a bomb belt, though the cause of a second explosion 300 meters away from the car are murky given the fact that Al-Abdaly died in the initial blast.
The attack is very similar in nature to that attempted by so-called “Times Square bomber” Faisal Shahzad, who was a member of the CIA-controlled Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist organization. Shahzad was directed by Al-Qaeda terror mastermind Anwar Al-Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers.
As we have documented, Al-Awlaki is the CIA’s foremost patsy handler, having dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
After having examined the suspicious ink toner device for six hours and found it to be a dud, bomb experts at East Midlands Airport only reversed their decision after being ordered to re-inspect the package by US authorities following President Obama’s Friday afternoon speech in which he claimed that the devices did in fact contain explosives.
This telling contradiction in the timeline of the cargo bomb plot fiasco proves that the story was being hyped and manipulated from the very early stages.
How did Obama and his terror chief John Brennan know that the East Midlands package was an explosive device virtually at the same time bomb experts had only just discovered the device at East Midlands Airport and before they had even had the chance to analyze it?
A spokesman from the Metropolitan Police stated: “Following initial examination explosives officers were satisfied that the package presented no immediate danger.”
Authorities at East Midlands only reversed their earlier assessment after “(US) authorities urged the British to look again, a US official said,” reports the Nottingham Post.
So is it credible that bomb professionals whose expertise and training is focused around detecting explosives, failed to do so after a six hour sweep, only to change their minds after being ordered to look again by the US government?
What did Obama know and when did he know it? The timeline strongly indicates that US terror authorities knew about the East Midlands device before East Midlands bomb experts had even discovered it.
Police and bomb experts at East Midlands have refused to comment on the confusion.
Al-Fayf had infiltrated the Al-Qaeda group in Yemen who were behind the plot. Going on past evidence of how almost every terror scare was contrived with the aid of federal agents or their Al-Qaeda informants provocateuring the terror group into action, Al-Fayf was probably responsible for grooming the patsies, whose mental incompetence, as again is the case in most instances, prevented them from building sophisticated enough bombs to be successful.
However, despite the fact that authorities not only in the UK but also in the cases of the Newark and Pittsburgh packages, initially gave the “all clear,” according to CNN, Obama, having already been informed of the plot the night before, simply contradicted the very experts who had dismissed the devices as duds, claiming the packages contained explosives. This soon mushroomed into a media scaremongering blitz about powerful explosives that could have knocked dozens of planes out of the sky.
The contrived series of events has been swiftly exploited as a means of intensifying US attacks on Yemen, which was instantly blamed as the source of the alleged attack, despite a female student who was arrested as the prime culprit later being released after it became clear she was the victim of a “set-up,” according to her lawyer.
Two Wall Street Journal articles today make it plain that the Obama administration will use the incident to justify further military incursions into Yemen while beefing the CIA’s power to control secret “elite U.S. hunter-killer teams” that operate in foreign countries.
In another report entitled Yemen Covert Role Pushed – Foiled Bomb Plot Heightens Talk of Putting Elite U.S. Squads in CIA Hands, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Entous explain how the plot – supposedly masterminded by someone on the CIA payroll – will enable the Obama administration to shift “more operational control to the CIA” in its mission to violate the sovereignty of more nations in the name of the war on terror.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
Every scrap of evidence screams “false flag,” as authorities seek to crush resistance against invasive airport security measures, while Obama exploits event for domestic and geopolitical gain
The revelation that CIA stooge Anwar al-Awlaki, the Al-Qaeda leader who once dined with Pentagon top brass, is the supposed mastermind behind last week’s plane bomb plot, adds yet more weight to the already overwhelming evidence that the whole charade is another contrived false flag to both boost Barack Obama’s domestic and geopolitical agenda, while crushing the growing resistance against invasive airport security measures.
According to the London Guardian, Awlaki is now the “prime suspect” in the cargo plane bomb plot. He is also fingered as the mastermind by BBC News, and the London Telegraph amongst others. The man who allegedly made the ink toner cartridges that were later claimed to be deadly explosive devices was Saudi Arabian-born Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri. Al Asiri is “in regular contact in Yemen with radical cleric Anwar Awlaki,” reports the Daily Mail.
Awlaki was also the spiritual leader of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, a fact that didn’t seem to concern Pentagon top brass who invited him to dine with them just months after the September 11 attacks despite the fact that he had personally colluded with the very hijackers who were alleged to have slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
As Webster Tarpley has documented, Awlaki is “an intelligence agency operative and patsy-minder” and “one of the premier terror impresarios of the age operating under Islamic fundamentalist cover” whose job it is to “motivate and encourage groups of mentally impaired and suggestible young dupes who were entrapped into “terrorist plots” by busy FBI and Canadian RCMP agents during recent years.”
Any Awlaki connection to the latest alleged bomb plot is therefore a huge smoking gun that the entire story, as every other piece of evidence also indicates, is a manufactured political ploy.
In the rush to pin the blame on US geopolitical target Yemen, a Yemeni female student was hastily fingered as the perpetrator, a “set-up” according to her lawyer, and she was quickly released. Indeed, according to Mohammed al-Shaibah, Air Cargo Director for Yemenia Airways, “there is no evidence to prove that this package came through Yemen.” He said there were no UPS or DHL cargo flights from Yemen within a 48 hour period prior to the supposed terror attack.
In addition, the United Arab Emirates’ Civil Aviation Authority rejected claims by US authorities that Flight 201 from Dubai contained any suspicious packages. “The Emirates plane that arrived today in the United States from Dubai did not contain any packages from Yemen,” the official Emirati WAM news agency quoted an unnamed source with the country’s civil aviation body as saying.
Within the space of 24 hours, the story was completely reversed and inflated into a massive terror plot involving dozens of suspect packages supposedly bound for synagogues in Chicago. How could packages that after being tested for explosives were labeled duds suddenly become ‘massive and powerful explosive devices’? This proves that the story was manipulated at an early stage so that it could be feverishly overblown and exploited for political purposes, just as a number of contrived terror alerts were issued for political gain by the Bush administration, as former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge admitted.
The plane bomb plot and how it has been swiftly exploited fulfills at least three political objectives.
1) Occurring less than a handful of days before what has been dubbed one of the most important mid-term elections for decades, the attack will serve to entice undecided voters back under the illusion of big government as protector, potentially saving a few key establishment Democrats their seats in the House and Senate. The fact that Obama completely reversed the initial announcements of security officials to claim that the ink toner cartridges did in fact contain explosives is a key indication that the White House is over hyping the story for political gain.
3) Blaming Yemen as the origin of the plot allows the US military-industrial complex to intensify drone attacks on a country that has become one of the prime targets for the next phase of the contrived war on terror. Just a day after the plane bomb charade, the New York Times aggressively pushed for more attacks on the country, citing the presence of CIA stooge Awlaki as a reason for doing so.
We are once again being manipulated and brainwashed into accepting draconian security measures through fear and lies. Only by exposing the fact that this chain of events was yet another false flag attack on the psyche of the American people and people globally can we hope to identify the real terrorists, those in positions of power, who are continually hyping the threat of terror to change our society for the worse.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
In addition to adding new urgency and a fresh dose of hysteria to the flagging war on manufactured terror, the toner bomb plot has provided an excuse to rationalize the global reach of the CIA.
“Officials said support was growing both within the military and the administration for shifting more operational control to the CIA — a move that would allow the U.S. to strike suspected terrorist targets unilaterally with greater stealth and speed,” reports the Wall Street Journal today. “Allowing the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command units to operate under the CIA would give the U.S. greater leeway to strike at militants even without the explicit blessing of the Yemeni government,” or the American people who, as usual, remain woefully uninformed.
Corporate media does its part to justify expanding war on terror into Yemen.
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) conducts several covert and clandestine missions, such as unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, psychological operations, direct action, counter-terrorism and war on drugs operations.
Exploiting the obviously contrived Yemen toner bomb plot (see Paul Watson’s article today) as an excuse to shift more operational control to an unaccountable CIA would reduce conflict between the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and the more clandestine parts of USSOCOM. It would also consolidate operations.
Moreover, a commissioned Pentagon study revealed that such a move would allow the CIA to maintain its covert capability and be the “sole government agency conducting covert action.” The DoD found that under U.S. law and the Constitution it does not have the legal authority to conduct covert action, nor the “operational agility” to carry out these types of missions.
Since the creation of the National Security State in the late 1940s, the CIA has used covert operations to consistently overthrow governments and install favored actors in power. “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work,” said Henry Kissinger in 1975 after the U.S. government betrayed the Kurds of Iraq.
In the 1980s, former CIA agent John Stockwell estimated that the agency has run thousands of covert operations since its inception, “all designed to disrupt, destabilize, or modify the activities of other countries.”
We are told the Obama administration is behind the effort to put the CIA’s “elite U.S. hunter-killer teams that operate secretly” inside Yemen, but the effort transcends any perceived rule by the teleprompter reader in chief.
As author John Prados notes, the CIA does not answer to the president or Congress. “Covert action has never been under complete presidential control, even as presidents have total authority to order it,” he writes. Under the 1947 National Security Act, the CIA remains beyond Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that expressly reserves to Congress, not the president, the right to give letters of marque, the eighteenth-century equivalent of grants of combatant status.
Since September 11, 2001, U.S. foreign policy has shifted further into covert and illegal action in violation of the Constitution. Under Obama, the CIA has ramped up the covert war against CIA-ISI created elements inside Pakistan, an effort begun in earnest during the Bush regime.
In late October, Agence France-Presse reported that the CIA had authorized “officers and special operations military trainers to enter the country to intensify pressure” on “militants” created and supported through a collaboration between U.S. and Pakistani intelligence, although this is rarely if ever noted by the corporate media.
“The number of CIA personnel in Pakistan has grown substantially in recent years, [the Wall Street Journal] said. But the exact number is highly classified…. A senior Pakistani official said relations with the CIA remain strong but Islamabad continues to oppose a large increase in the number of American personnel on the ground.”
Since the staged underwear non-bombing last Christmas, the U.S. has steadily increased its military presence in Yemen and the Arabian peninsula under the guise of fighting against al-Qaeda and specifically the operative Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. born cleric designated by the government and the corporate media as the senior leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
“The U.S. military accelerated strikes against Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula following December’s failed attempt by the group to blow up a Detroit-bound American airliner. Since last December, the U.S. military has carried out a series of missile strikes on alleged al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. All of the strikes were approved by Washington’s ambassador to Sana’a,” the Journal reports.
The newly formed Yemeni branch of the intelligence contrivance known as al-Qaeda will continue its campaign of absurd non-bombings and will release propaganda videos featuring a raft of scary turban-donning “militants” on cue as the United States ramps up its military involvement in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa.
In the days ahead, as the mid-term election plays out with predictable results (as a highly controlled and orchestrated event), the manufactured terror threat that is not a terror threat will continue to dominate headlines. It is wholly irrelevant if the Republicans or Democrats control the House and Senate.
Regardless of who wins at the game of congressional musical chairs, the effort to exploit the manufactured war on terror will continue unabated and expand its reach into new fertile territory as the globalists attempt to extend their reach and seek to accomplish order through murderous chaos.
A federal judge is likely to question the confessed would-be bomber of a downtown Dallas skyscraper about a letter he wrote claiming the FBIentrapped him.
Hosam "Sam" Smadi, whose sentencing in federal court is today, could face decades in prison. The 20-year-old Jordanian told the judge in May that he knowingly plotted to blow up the Fountain Place building using what turned out to be a fake device after he was caught in an FBI sting.
But he wrote in a letter to The Dallas Morning News that "I would never do this if the intelligence didn't wash my brain."
In his letter, written in halting English, Smadi says he was led astray. "They implant in my mind to commit crime design by them to take my life from me," he wrote. "Everything was design like al Qaeda because the failure of the intelligence to get Osama bin Laden...
...The press release said that Hosam Smadi was discovered by the FBI “espousing a desire to commit significant acts of violence. Smadi stood out because of his vehement intention to actually conduct terror attacks in the US”.
According to the press release, on July 21, 2009, Smadi made contact with an undercover FBI agent posing as an Al Qaeda operative. In late August, while meeting with one of the undercover agents in Dallas, Smadi discussed the logistics and timing of the bombing, stating that he would have preferred to carry out the attack on “September 11”, but decided to wait until after the month of Ramadan, which ended on September 20.
The offence of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction carries, upon conviction, a maximum statutory sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to US law, the press release said.
Maher Smadi, however, accused the FBI of “entrapping” his son, provoking him to follow through on actions he would not have taken without the encouragement of the undercover agents.
“Instead of encouraging my son to become a terrorist, the FBI should have focused on changing his thoughts and putting him on the right track again. All they did was to add a new name to the list of terrorists,” he said...
[Webmaster - Here it is...the same template over and over again... This is the way the Feds always do it...they locate a vulnerable target, follow them and then provocateur them into trying to commit some act of violence. Fortunately, this time they did not let it go through with a live bomb like the FBI did in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yes, that's right...The FBI Allowed the 1993 WTC Bombing to Happen. Always remember, if anyone tries to induce or encourage you to commit acts of violence, or make statements espousing those intentions...they are probably a Federal agent or informant trying to provocateur you.]
The lawyer of a man nabbed in an FBI terror sting tells The Upshot he is considering arguing that his client was induced by federal agents to commit a crime he wouldn't otherwise have gotten involved in.
Lebanese citizen Sami Samir Hassoun is charged with plotting to detonate a weapon of mass destruction outside of Wrigley Field in Chicago after a Dave Matthews Band concert. The undercover agents gave him a fake bomb that he believed could cause casualties when he dropped it into a trash can, according to the criminal complaint (PDF) against him. A federal judge has denied Hassoun bail, on the grounds that he may be dangerous.
The fake bomb was the culmination of a lengthy sting operation. The FBI asked a cooperating witness to befriend the 22-year-old Hassoun after the bureau began to regard him as a possible terrorism suspect in the spring of 2009. (The FBI hasn't yet disclosed what the basis for such suspicions may have been.) Authorities say that Hassoun told the witness about a bizarre and sinister desire to unseat Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley via the use of fake bombs and similarly unfocused schemes — like poisoning Lake Michigan — and then the informant introduced him to two undercover FBI agents in July.
The agents paid him $2,700 so Hassoun could quit his job and focus on planning attacks. He scouted out potential bomb sites with an FBI-owned camera. When one of the undercover agents said Hassoun's attack would send a message about how America treats Arab people, Hassoun said he didn't agree, that he just wanted to wrest political power from Daley through attacks that would terrify Chicagoans. He said he didn't know how exactly the attacks would translate into political power.
"He's not a terrorist," argues Hassoun's lawyer, Myron Auerbach. "He doesn't have the training, he doesn't have the ideology, he doesn't have the skills."...
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (Reuters) – Two car bombs exploded in northern Mexico early on Friday, days after marines found the bodies of 72 people gunned down in the country's escalating war with powerful drug cartels.
The blasts, the second and third modest-sized bombs planted in a vehicle this month in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern Gulf state of Tamaulipas, and the fourth in Mexico since late July, caused no casualties but damaged buildings.
The attacks came the same day officials discovered the body of a police officer investigating the massacre of dozens of migrants in the latest attack linked to Mexico's drug war.
"I'm told of the explosion of two car bombs here in the state, one in the offices of local traffic police and the other in the installations of Televisa," Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez told local radio, referring to Mexico's top broadcaster...
Juarez-- People in Juarez are recovering from a car bomb that killed four Thursday night. The victims include two federal agents, an ambulance worker and a doctor who was in the area when the bomb went off.
Tonight, we have learned that it was a car bomb that was detonated with the same kind of sophistication that is used by terrorist groups like Hezbollah...
PITTSBURGH — A suspicious device near the finish line of the Pittsburgh Marathon on Sunday prompted police to briefly stop the race after it had begun. The device was disabled and police said it was not believed to have been an actual explosive.
The device, in a small microwave oven, was spotted Sunday morning on the sidewalk next to the Greyhound bus station after the race leaders had finished the course, police Lt. Kevin Kraus said.
The bomb squad determined there were contents that resembled an explosive, and the area was evacuated, Kraus said. He declined to describe the materials that concerned authorities pending a further evaluation...
WASHINGTON — Airport screeners for the first time will begin roving through airports taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives, the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.
The program, already tested at five airports after the attempted Christmas Day bomb plot on a U.S.-bound airliner, begins nationwide in a few weeks, TSA spokeswoman Sterling Payne said. Screeners will push carts with bomb-detection machines around airport gates and checkpoint lines to randomly check passengers' hands and carry-on bags for explosive residue...
