Originally Posted by
WillCAD
So, the people who came up with the idea were never able to assemble such a device, but Government scientists, presumable those with a knowledge of chemistry and/or bomb making, were able to to do so in a lab. That doesn't really demonstrate the viability of the plan.
The techniques these idiots were purported to be looking into may indeed be viable methods for creating explosives and detonators in a laboratory environment. But when assessing the viability of the plot, the real question is whether any of them had the requisite knowledge, skills, or experience to create, transport, smuggle, assemble, and detonate such devices in the real world.
More likely, they'd blow themselves to spaghetti sauce while attempting to create the chemicals, or while attempting to transport them. They might also get caught, delayed, or otherwise prevented from making the rendezvous with the others, resulting in an incomplete and useless device.
These days, they'd just smuggle the explosives and detonators in palettes of Deer Park and Coke Zero bound for the local Hudson News.
"Viable," to me, means that the technical aspects of the plan were possible, however unlikely to succeed. Of course, prior to reading Tom Clancy's fiction and 9/11, did you think, as did most everybody else, that using a commercial airliner as a missile was not a "viable" plan?
From your comments, is it possible that you did not actually read The Register article? It was proven at trial the the people who came up with the plan had actually assembled (and tested) similar devices and that the bomb-makers were not only trained (by the aforementioned planners) in making the specific type of devices and had obtained the needed chemicals but in were in the process of concentrating the peroxide and assembling the devices; in addition to the physical evidence of these facts the accused actually admitted to all of this.
So, yes, the plan was viable not only as an idea but also as an actual operation. And even though it had extremely small chance of being successful because it had not only been detected but was under tremendous surveillance the entire time, that didn't make it any less viable.
Smuggling WEI in pallets of material destined for Hudson News or most other vendors has a very low possibility of succeeding as all of that material is inspected several ways before being admitted into the other areas of the airport. Generally, this is done not by TSOs but by airport-operator provided security/contractor staff.
A more successful avenue to bring it in would be in bulk construction materials (such as concrete, fill dirt, gravel, etc.) or in large equipment - but that would also be low probability due to the security procedures for that material and the challenges in getting it near an airplane. Much higher probability is to coerce or outright pay an airport employee to smuggle it in. And while that is the weakest link as not all employees at all airports are screened each and every time entering the SIDA - there is a tremendous amount of effort and activity that goes into preventing such a thing.