Spycraft - Melton [192]
Among terrorists’ standard weapons are small amounts of explosives fashioned into improvised devices and concealed in everyday items. Although small, these bombs can create physical damage as well as instill fear in a larger population. Less than an ounce of explosive is needed for a letter bomb capable of killing or maiming anyone around it. A few pounds of explosive hidden in a purse, briefcase, or suitcase can bring down an airliner, while a few hundred pounds in a car or van is capable of destroying an entire office building or embassy.
Bill Parr had a cramped office in Southern Europe during the late 1970s but that mattered little since most of his work was on the road. As one of the few OTS “bomb techs,” Parr frequently received the first call after bombings in Africa or the Middle East. CIA stations found that after bombings foreign services were especially receptive to hosting techs like Parr who knew how to conduct post-blast investigations and analyze security weaknesses.
Parr was asleep at home when a phone call awakened him at 2 AM. “Come in immediately.” The caller did not need to identify himself. Parr recognized the urgency in the voice of the CIA’s senior communicator. Arriving at the office, Parr saw the message headed with the word IMMEDIATE and followed by NIACT, for “night action,” which required an immediate response regardless of the time of day.
This message originated from a country friendly to the United States, and whose political leaders were frequent targets of terrorists. Reportedly, the country’s intelligence chief had acquired what seemed to be a suitcase bomb from a terrorist cell. For reasons unknown, the intelligence chief had taken the suitcase to his office, opened it, and noticed wires in one corner along with some unidentified materials wrapped in black tape.
“Then he apparently suffered a sudden attack of brilliance and decided not to mess with it anymore,” Parr recalled. “That’s when he called the CIA for help.”
Parr replied with his own IMMEDIATE-NIACT with questions about the appearance of the device and remained at the office for the rest of the night responding to additional messages before catching the morning flight out to see the device in person. Reaching his destination before noon, Parr was taken to an office where the opened suitcase sat on a desk. Almost certainly a bomb, the suitcase contained a messy collection of wires, small boxes wrapped in black tape, and miscellaneous packing materials. When an x-ray machine was located at a nearby prison, the suitcase was carefully transported there. The x-ray image revealed a coil pattern in one of the taped packages that Parr concluded was detonator cord wrapped around another unidentifiable substance, probably high explosive.
The trigger mechanism to control the detonation was circuit board wired to the coil. Parr calculated that he could pull the electronics away from the explosives without initiating a detonation. Taking the device to a remote area, he attached a hook on a long line to the electronics, and gave it a hard yank from a safe distance. The electronics, which had been attached to the blasting cap with black tape, pulled cleanly away from the explosives. After cutting off the blasting cap, he x-rayed the device again to recheck the circuitry.
With the device rendered safe, follow-up operational ideas began emerging. The bomb had been obtained through an agent who penetrated a terrorist cell. If a signaling device could be attached, and the suitcase reinserted into the cache, it could be tracked to determine its intended target. However, to do so, the bomb would have to be reassembled.
Parr knew that since he took it apart, he could put it back together, but the agent had only a few hours to return the device to the cache before someone discovered it missing. Not only did that rule out a tracking operation, Headquarters, quite sensibly, disapproved of returning a live bomb to a terrorist cache. The tech would have to reassemble a disabled bomb without