← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
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Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. We all saw last week what happened in New York City. We had two ISIS inspired terrorists attempt to employ improvised explosive devices and of course try to kill protesters who are outside Gracie mansion. Luckily, these IEDs didn't explode. We're all very thankful today about how this turned out, but we have a lot to discuss when it comes to this situation. First off, according to investigators, the suspects brought multiple improvised explosive devices. We saw one potentially in a car down the street. And then of course in the storage unit in Pennsylvania. Then we saw that at least two of these IEDs were thrown towards this crowd. Another thing was is we at least saw one of the devices was initiated or there is an attempt to light it. And then lastly, we know both of these devices thankfully did not detonate. The last detail is what we're gonna talk about today. We are going to discuss the actual explosive used in these devices, which is tatp. This is one of the most common explosive in current modern day terrorism. And you'll see as we walk through a number of the attacks this was used in. It really usually is the terrorist's number one choice. And we'll explain to you why that is, to be very honest. And luckily the commissioner of the NYPD came out and said this. These were real devices. If they had gone off as planned, there would have been a large number of deaths. And we have to be honest about it because sometimes when this happens in these attempts, it gets completely downplayed as, oh, there was some sort of security incident outside this protest when. No, this was a terrorist attack and people were expected to die in this attack. So in this episode we're gonna break down and it's almost gonna be textbook style, you know, what is tatp? Why terrorist groups like isis, as we saw in this case, and Al Qaeda like to use this, what these bombs usually look like, how terrorists actually learn how to make them. Like, do you have to go to a training camp to know how to do this? And then why it's been used in number of attacks, what attacks it was used in, and then what failures occurred over the years because terrorists chose to use tatp. This is one of those weird cases when we can actually focus on the explosive and we can learn a little more about how modern terrorism works. I mean, it's a strange angle on it, but as you'll see, you're going to learn a lot today if we just simply focus on tatp. So what actually is tatp? It stands for triacetone triperoxide that is why every one of us calls it tatp, because that is incredibly hard to say. And this is a homemade explosive. And as I pointed out, it's become the terrace favorite explosive purely because that first piece, it's homemade. Right. They can make it themselves. Security officials call this the mother of Satan. They didn't actually come up with it themselves. The bomb makers actually came up with the term. And it's commonly what's used when we're discussing it. And it's the fact that TATP is incredibly powerful, but it's also insanely similar sensitive. Right? It's so easy to like detonate this and get an explosion to explain. Let's just talk about a different kind of explosive. So if we take a military grid explosive like C4, which is engineered to be stable, you can drop it. You don't have to be super sensitive in how you handle it. You can even set it on fire without an explosion because it needs like heat and friction to activate. TTP is the complete opposite. You know, just in the last probably like 18 months, two senior Islamic State, Khorasan province bomb makers died in their factories in Afghanistan by mishandling the components around these bombs. So it's this really interesting thing. There's this kind of risk analysis these terrorists take, right? Like, hey, we want this powerful explosion, right? We want to make a bomb that no one's going to trace, so it's easier to do a homemade one. But then there are these risks to it exploding unexpectedly. So it's a very interesting thing to walk through. And also then not every case where terrorists uses bomb, it's successful. This episode is brought to you by Dose for Cholesterol. One of the things we've been talking about more lately is how people are starting to pay closer attention to the habits they build into their daily routine, especially when it comes to things like cholesterol support. The reality is a lot of people hesitate when they're told they might have to start taking something long term that they're not completely comfortable with. People feel like they want to have still some say over how to manage their own health and what they're putting putting into their body. 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So it's easy for people to work into their routine to support support cholesterol habits. And it gets delivered right to your door, which makes it so much easier to stay consistent. New Customers can save 35% on their first month subscription at DailyDose Co Watchfloor or by using Watchfloor at checkout. Again that's DailyDose Co/Watchfloor for 35% off your first month subscription. So why do terrorists prefer TATP? We obviously see there's massive risks, but then there's tons of jihadist propaganda pushing out its use. And that's because of a number of reasons. First off is accessibility. Unlike these military grade access explosives, TATP can be made with like widely available materials. Also it allows like unsavvy terrorists. So this is really great if you're inspired to kind of bypass using like arm smugglers and dealers because they don't really need to go out and get some sort of weapons grade material. You know, they can figure out how to do it at home because remember a lot of these people have none of these of kinds connections when they're inspired when they went online, read this material and decided to do it themselves. This is a very different situation than when a terrorist group is directing a plot and does all the bomb making and preparations for you. Now another thing that's interesting is you don't have to go purchase any kind of explosives in this case which then as you can imagine there's no sort of trail for law enforcement to be following. You know, as you're getting these items. Now the second is it just fits this modern way we look at terrorism. Terrorist attacks are primarily made up of individuals and small cells. We get a lot of self radicalized individuals and then we have supporters who don't maintain any direct contact with senior leadership of these organizations. So in these cases something homemade perfectly fits the model. So again what we saw in New York at least what Investigators are saying right now is self inspired terrorism. These are small attacks that's very different than a large scale operation like 911 was where it's plotted and planned for five years, directed down from senior leadership, which is what the Al Qaeda homeland plotting is right now that we're talking about. So it's kind of two sides of the coin. They're both a major threat on US soil, but obviously there is different bombs. And then of course there's the potential for much different casualty numbers on both sides. Third is detection challenges. So many traditional explosive systems were kind of set up back in the day to look for things like tnt. So these are like nitrogen based explosives. So ttp, you know, doesn't contain any nitrogen and there's not really kind of systems put into place to detect it in any way. Lastly, and we kind of brought this up at the start, it's extremist propaganda, really pushes the use of it. And that's kind of what sometimes pushes some of these people into believing, hey, I can do this, right? I went and watched this video and I feel I can make that too and I can be successful at it. They really try to make it like, you know, this self inspired jihadism, like you can do it yourself, you know, have confidence to do it yourself. And when you watch these videos, they're really narrated in that manner to make you feel like confident in your bond making abilities. It's actually kind of interesting when you spend time reviewing them. So both Al Qaeda and ISIS have put a lot of time and effort into designing these videos for what a lot of people call lone wolves. But really it's just these self radicalized, inspired terrorists. Because think about it, if you can get them to go make these bombs and do these attacks in your name, it didn't cost you anything. It gets you some free publicity and it really inspires others to maybe do the same or scary, you get copycats, you know, which is another problem. And terrorists kind of just sit back and watch the chaos that ensues. Now the most famous example of kind of this easy to use bomb making material came out of Al Qaeda in the Arab peninsula aqap, so Al Qaeda's Yemen branch, and they put it in Inspire. And the article that became the most famous was called make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom. Yes, that simple. Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom. Your mom's gonna love this.
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By the way, among your copies of Vogue and Sports Illustrated at home, you do not have the latest issue of Inspire magazine. That's An English language propaganda tool put out by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. They're the ones who wrote, quote, make a bomb in the kitchen of your. The directions for a pressure cooker bomb that were strikingly similar to the ones allegedly used by the Tsarnaev brothers for the Boston Marathon attack. CNN has now obtained the latest issue of Inspire magazine, which is celebrating the Boston Marathon attack and praising the Tsarnaev brothers.
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So the goal was very simple. Like, hey, you don't have to come overseas and get formal training from Al Qaeda. You can literally do this at home in your kitchen. And later, ISIS expanded this effort to include, of course, a lot of other different bomb making styles in Dabiq and Rumiya. And these publications went on to give guidance on bomb construction, target selection, even things like operational security. So it became almost this large toolkit for anyone who is inspired to do attacks on their own. And then of course, when we carry out terrorist investigations, we get to see how the terrorists came about learning how to make the bombs. Right. You could have your traditional way where they went to a training camp and learned. And then of course, this new age online version where they got the materials online, downloaded them, et cetera. A good case was Najibullah Zazi. He was an Afghan here in Colorado who attempted to do a terrorist attack. And what they found were handwritten instructions to produce peroxide based explosives. And they were just sitting in his email account. So, you know, the information pipeline is out there. It's not difficult to get guidance on how to make these explosives. You don't have to go to a training camp anymore. Right. The Internet is essentially your training camp. It's just like a. Any of us who go to YouTube to figure out how to fix something, it's the exact same model that Teresa put together, you know, for these operatives. This episode is brought to you by Pocket Hose, the world's number one expandable hose. We all know what it's like to use traditional garden hoses. They are beyond frustrating. They kink, they always twist up by the spigot, and anytime you're trying to do something quickly, they get all tangled up. Old fashioned hoses never stop getting those kinks and those creases. 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Message and data rates may apply. See Terms for details. So what does a TATP bomb look like? There's so many misconceptions around bombs because they are so much more rudimentary than people realize. And then when they see it, they're like, what? It's like a plastic container with a bunch of crap in it and wrapped in some duct tape, right? Because it surprised a lot of people this week. They're like, that's not going to do anything. But don't let that fool you. So they're very crude looking devices and they come in so many different forms, right? You can make them in a backpack, obviously, we know you can make them in pressure cookers like the Boston bombings. They're in plastic buckets. We'll talk about one of those cases today. You can put them in metal pipes. You can put them like in belts that you may wear on you and use it as kind of an improvised suicide vest. And what they do then is, of course, besides this explosive we spent a lot of time on, they put a lot of elements in to make shrapnel because then when the bomb goes boom, all of this shrapnel goes out like projectile and it causes even more damage to people in the vicinity. So the projectile is like nails, screws, bolts, and then of course, famously, ball bearings in a crowded space. Even though these look small, they look like what, the size of maybe like a Jif peanut butter jar. You know, it would have probably killed well over a dozen people. So we have to keep that in mind. Now there's another interesting detail. So we've told you kind of what they look like, like what's in them. But one thing that's not really talked about is what does it smell like. And I know this sounds crazy, but investigators have spent a lot of time on this because in the areas you make them, let's say you're making in your mom's kitchen, there's a very strong chemical odor that is made. So a lot of people describe it as an insanely strong like nail polish remover or harsh cleaning chemicals. But like almost like if you put different chemicals together, like you're not supposed to, or like a sweet acidic smell. So you need to keep that in mind because you know, we say a lot of things like see something, say something. Well, we might have a smell something, say something in this case, right? If there is something like that, right. You're going by storage unit and you smell something like that, like something is wrong. Even if a tears is not in there making bombs, like there is a problem. And so, you know, we need to at least be cognizant of this as unfortunately there's more of these threats that are going to pop up. And sadly, like I said, there probably also be some copycats who want to fulfill this attack for these two that failed. So of course when we talk about ttp, then you want to know, well, where is it used and has it been successful? So we're going to now walk through some of the major attacks. Of course, one of the most famous ones was the London bombings in 2005. So this was almost like a two phase attack. The piece we all talk about is phase one when there was four suicide bombers. They went on London's public transportation. So there was three on the subway trains and one on a bus. And they carried kind of the backpacks, you know, with these peroxide based explosives. And they killed 52 and injured 700. Right. It's amazing to think, hey, they made this in their mom's kitchen and it causes that kind of damage. Now there was a second piece of this plot, so it was just two weeks later. And then there was like a second round of attackers supposed to carry up the same event. But fortunately for us, unfortunately for them, the detonators fired but the explosives like failed to detonate. So you know, there was like some fizzles and a little bit of like fire and explosives, but they didn't go off in the way they were supposed to. The interesting thing is, so we all look at like these 77 bombings as this huge success because, you know, Al Qaeda killed so many. But to them they look at it as a failure because the second phase never came to fruition. And so we have to keep that in mind because Al Qaeda now within their homeland plotting and European Plotting want to bring past failures to success. And one of the past failures they're looking at is the London bombings. And they said, hey, we want to honor the terrorists who attempted to carry this out successfully and complete it. Now is completing it going to be back in London, is completing it going to be in US soil, We don't know. But we are going to see again something very similar, you know, to the 77 attacks. And that is something we have to be aware of and watch for another example. And this is one of the most famous ones. It's about 10 years later, it's in Paris, right? It's the ISIS kind of coordinated attack. This is one of the most devastating terrorist attacks, you know, in European history. It was November 13, 2015. And the terrorists, of course attacked multiple locations in Paris. We had restaurants, bars, the Baudiclon Theater, the Stando France. And many of these attackers wore suicide vests filled with these peroxide explosives. The attacks killed 130 people and investigators realized the bombs had actually been manufactured in safe houses, but over in Belgium. So then the following year we have basically the same network of unfortunately carries out the Brussels bombings. And this is when there was two bombs that exploded in the Brussels airport. Remember, it was like in the baggage claim area. And it happened right after an attack actually occurred on the Metro system. So 32 people were killed in this event, you know, including Americans. And investigators found, you know, a bomb making factory in the aftermath of this that was making these like peroxide based explosives. Now another famous event that occurred was of course the Manchester arena bombing in 2017. This was like right in the aftermath of the Ariana Grande attack. And there's a Libyan suicide bomber, you know, and he went to target this venue, couldn't really get inside. But unfortunately, 22 people were killed, including children. So even though he didn't get to the point, point where he wanted to, he still blew up. And you know, it caused pretty devastating circumstances. When investigators like looked at the bomb from Manchester and then they looked at the bombs from Paris and the bombs from Belgium, right? They realized they were very similar in construction, right? They were all these peroxide based bombs. Now we had another attack, you know, we talked about the London bombings. There was another attempted attack in 2017 in the Parsons Green subway in London. And this is when the attacker, he left the device on the train. It was kind of like in this large plastic bucket and it had the explosives and shrapnel inside. It didn't detonate properly. You know, this fireball kind of came up in the train, people were injured, but luckily no one was killed. You know, if it had exploded properly, it would have had been unfortunately another high death toll coming out of London. You know, one of the most dramatic examples of, I guess, TATP failing is, I don't know if you remember this Barcelona bomb factory explosion. It was pretty crazy. It was also back in 2017 and there is a terrorist cell in Barcelona putting together like a massive plot. And so in this factory is where they were like constructing all the bombs. This occurred in the town of Alcanar and really the terrorists had put together kind of this massive bomb making system. But as a part of it, these peroxide based explosives were being made in such a high quantity that the lab itself just blew up. So it killed a number of the terrorists in the cell and luckily it stopped the large scale attack from occurring. But the terrorists did go on and carry out like a smaller attack using a van, you know, in the aftermath of this event. So it could have been so much more catastrophic, you know, for citizens in Spain, you know, if the terrorists had not blown up their own lab. So these bombs fail, right? And they fail pretty often, which is a very good thing for the good guys. So there's a number of reasons they fail. Again, there's a sensitive kind of unstable nature. Also, a lot of these terrorists aren't like trained bomb technicians, so. So they make a lot of mistakes. And when I say they make mistakes, it's kind of in the wiring, the timing mechanism, and even in the detonators. Another thing is TTP degrades over time. There can be these environmental factors that affect it, like heat or humidity. They actually like degraded over time. The last piece that's really important is the triggering system that you build for this bomb must work perfectly. So any mistake can stop the device from detonating. Right? So we make these jokes about loose wires. Well, you cannot have a loose wire in this case. Right. Or we get to the situation we potentially had New York City. We don't know yet why those bombs didn't detonate, but something was wrong in the construction. Right. There was likely some amateur bomb makers who built these. And this was the result of that. This barrier to entry has never been lower. Right. We can have people radicalized online. They can find propaganda anywhere. I mean, look at X. It's easy to get these bomb making instructions. They get ideological encouragement within minutes. I mean, you should see these forums. And the tools that they're relying on are unreliable and dangerous even to them. And sometimes the reason the attack fails isn't because an intelligence agency thwart it or a law enforcement agency got ahead of it. It sometimes fails because the bomb itself fails. And we have to be thankful in this case that it occurred. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor.