Word: bomb
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...shaitan, or the mother of Satan. Many would-be bombmakers have suffered severe burns while trying to mix the explosive in makeshift laboratories. For terrorist groups, however, the risks of TATP are outweighed by the advantages. The white, sugarlike powder is lightweight and nearly odorless (the better to evade bomb-sniffing dogs) and contains no nitrogen (foiling scanners that detect nitrogenous bombs). Its basic ingredients - acetone, hydrogen peroxide and acid - are readily available in beauty supplies and home-improvement products. Al-Qaeda operatives have been using the stuff for years...
...kill, except that U.S. Homeland Security is a sharper instrument than it was in the summer of 2001. The dysfunctional system that failed to connect the dots before 9/11 managed, eight years later, to spot and disrupt a plot in progress. Zazi has denied charges he conspired to bomb targets in the U.S., but government officials are confident they've got their man. Authorities took notice when Zazi traveled last year to Pakistan, while his unsavory associations there - the FBI charges that Zazi attended terrorist training camps - heightened their interest. The government caught Zazi about a month ago talking about...
...That's the good news. Perhaps the fact that he was caught in time - and the same week that two other alleged bombing attempts were foiled in Middle America - tells us that post-9/11 security measures, many of them highly controversial, are working. But there is bad news too. Zazi's alleged project, from the training camp in Pakistan to his bomb recipe and backpack delivery system, bears the marks not of some fluky local scheme of the kind that the feds have sniffed out in the past but of a plausible al-Qaeda operation. Nor does Zazi appear...
...After his bomb training in Pakistan, Zazi returned to New York City and then moved to Aurora, joining relatives in a house on East Ontario Drive, a few doors down from the chief of police. Why Aurora? The answer may be as simple as the low cost of living, the presence of a few relatives and the familiar terrain. The dry plains, thin air and faraway peaks bear no small resemblance to northern Pakistan and Paktia province. Zazi passed a background check to qualify as an airport-shuttle driver, and if he was notable for anything, it was his appetite...
...booked a room with a kitchenette at the Homestead Studio Suites a couple of miles south of the cosmetics store. When FBI technicians examined the room, they scraped traces of acetone, found in nail-polish remover, from the vent over the stove - indicating that someone had been cooking a bomb...