US investigators have found that Islamic militant bomb builders have used the
same designs for car bombs in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, government
officials said this week. One forensic expert explained that they could see that
widely dispersed attacks were the work of the same bomb maker, or different bomb
makers using the same instructions.
A previously undisclosed intelligence operation in the US has expanded on
studies of past cases. Bomb analysts collected fragments from hundreds of
devices from attacks in Iraq, including large car and truck bombings and smaller
assaults using explosives packed in empty artillery shells and even concrete
blocks. That led to a better understanding of the devices and to efforts to
provide commanders in Iraq with faster countermeasures to help protect American
troops.
Intelligence analysts say they believe that Al Qaeda has been weakened by the
campaign against terrorism and lacks a central command, as well as financial and
recruiting structures. But the bomb investigations suggest that the terrorist
network still may be disseminating bomb-making skills to a generation of
militants who have fanned out around the world.
Many bomb makers may have learned how to make improvised explosives in the 1990s
at Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, and the methods taught there
may now be showing up elsewhere.
Intelligence analysts did not say there was evidence of a single controlling
entity behind the construction of the larger car and truck bombs often used in
the most deadly attacks, although they suggested that there might not be many
people with the technical skills to build larger bombs.
Behind the effort to analyze the bombs is a new forensic intelligence unit, the
Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, or Tedac. The F.B.I., which took
the lead in the center's creation, has found that in the last five years almost
90 percent of terrorist attacks against Americans have involved improvised
explosives. The center's work was not previously disclosed.
The unit became operational in December after President Bush approved it. The
unit, which is based at the F.B.I.'s laboratory in Quantico, Va., has drawn on
experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency,
the National Security Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and
other intelligence agencies.
Examination of bombs used in Iraq has so far yielded little information about
the identity of those who made them. Many bombs of different types explode every
day in the country.
Examining tiny bits of bomb housings, wirings, detonation cords, fuses,
switches, the chemical composition of the explosives and the electronic
signatures of remote switching devices often used to detonate bombs, experts at
the center have begun to compile a data bank about terror bombs. In some cases,
forensic scientists have been able to obtain evidence of who made the bomb,
through a fingerprint or DNA material left on an explosive part. However, in
countries like Iraq, even sophisticated analysis has often failed to solve
terrorist bombings.
The study of the unexploded device built into the sole of the shoe worn by
Richard Reid, a British citizen who is known as the "shoe bomber," is
instructive. Mr. Reid acknowledged he was a follower of Al Qaeda. But subsequent
investigation showed that the design of his shoe bomb followed specific details
in training manuals found by American forces at training camps in Afghanistan.
The design closely followed the manuals. It remains unknown who built the shoe
bomb, but investigators doubt it was Mr. Reid.
