SummerHologram

Since he got away with his minor infraction, perhaps he thought he could get away with this one.

I don't for one minute buy the idea that every Green Beret in this elite bomb squad gets to travel with a backpack full of military grade explosives! (And does so without getting prior clearance or following some sort of special boarding procedure with the airlines). No way.

On another forum, where a person claims to know this dude's family in Midlands, it is being said that the guy intended to detonate these explosives for his friends in a New Year's Eve celebration outside town. Given what I've seen go on in El Paso itself (outside town) on New Year's (or for that matter, inside town) that seems plausible.

But having been caught just a week prior (and merely warned?) he might have thought he could get away with more. Opportunistic criminal behavior - not surprising in a person who is trained extensively in doing something that is illegal for all of the rest of us (bombing people).

chollie

(Edited to add: just read that he had two pounds of the stuff. It's pretty hard to believe that you have that much of something and don't notice it).

Boggie Dog

I have no direct experience but would guess that 2+ pounds of C4 would make for a fairly large explosion and would be capable of serious damage.

Which makes me question just how well controlled military supplies of these materials are?

I think chollie is on to something about the strangeness of this story.

cardiomd

Well, they can never be too controlled given how much of the dangerous stuff the military needs. These guys will always have access to it.

This article has some interesting information:

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...-troubled-base

This is the category of people that congress wants to exempt from aspects of screening? Totally ridiculous, they are not an extremely low risk group, and certainly no lower than the general population.

chollie

I wonder if Blogdad Bob is going to come out with a post praising the screeners for doing their job. Or if he's holding off until they make sure that he didn't go through a checkpoint with it on his outbound flight (I think he said he did).

Anyone with military background that could guess-timate how stiff the penalties from the military might be if this stuff (grenade and C4) was taken without permission from the base? Given the circumstances, it's hard to imagine they'd want to go lightly on him. Wonder if this automatically qualifies him for the no-fly list.

I can't help thinking about Manning and the Army shrink who shot up a bunch of his own people. I wonder if we're going to start seeing a trickle of information indicating that this guy's been showing 'signs' for a while now but that they were ignored.

fishferbrains

Honestly - props to the TSA for catching him - however eventually - as it's not in anyone's best interest to have head cases running around with C4 (even 1/2 an ounce).

Is this case worth the billions spent - I don't know.

Boggie Dog

He is/was being arraigned in federal court. That would suggest that the military will take legal action if they ever get him back or have already turned him over for prosecution. He could be tried by the feds and then later tried by the military under UCMJ.

This guy better have a darn good story or he may be facing a few years on ice.

SirFlysALot

C'mon TSA and news media!!! Tell us!

Did he carry the C4 to Midland? On a plane? Did the TSA miss it the first time around? They found the smoke grenade but missed the real explosives?

I feel so much better and safer!

Letitride3c

Two pounds of whatever stuff that they found, that's one heck of a bang or series of it! It only took a few oz. of Semplex, similar to C-4, to blew a 20" hole in the fuselage and took down Pam Am 103 in 1988.

If the earlier incident is true, his base command was NOT in the loop or simply warned him - oh, how nice!

That's how we "dispose" of surplus supplies now that we are proudly bringing our oversea troops home PTSD, perhaps ....

Homeland Security AND TSA news desk must be buzzing mad

SirFlysALot

Now they ask the question! No responses from anybody! TSA tooted their own horn too soon!

JoeBas

If only he'd thought to bring a cupcake. That way, the TSA could have "found" the cupcake on the way out, and upgraded to the smoke grenade on the way back, and he'd have gotten away with the C4 and only a "warning" for the smoke grenade!

Alas...

Boggie Dog

Another interesting turn.


http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Hea...136617763.html

Batmanuel

It's hard to say...the Special Forces take care of their own, and they can get away with bending the rules a lot more than the "regular" Army. That being said, he'll probaby be charged on the State level by airport cops, face Federal charges by the FBI, and then military UCMJ. A triple jeopardy, of sorts. If he serves time because of the State/Fed charges, I doubt the military will tack on more time @ Fort Leavenworth. Maybe a reduction to E-1 and dishonorable discharge?

Flying down with it sounds the most logical, but I have my doubts. The Wikipedia entry for C-4 lists the composition as being 91% RDX. Those fancy machines that always get set off by lawn fertilizer and hand lotion would have gone crazy with two pounds of the stuff. Since they're prone to overreact, I find it hard to believe they would have missed swabbing the bag once they saw themselves looking at a live grenade on the X-ray screen. He was probably stationed at Fort Hood or Bliss at one point, and snagged the C-4 from a training excercise. Drove it home on leave, left it there, got reassigned to Fort Bragg, then thought he'd be able to bring it back to Bragg with him. It doesn't make sense to me that he'd "forget" two pounds of explosives in a small carry-on bag and not see it at all while packing/repacking for holiday leave.

Edit:
Also, the article states: "He said his Army special forces team always carried at least two blocks of C-4, but he didn't know any explosives were in his bag when he returned to the U.S." Prior to returning from deployments, everyone's bags are basically dumped and redumped for thorough inspection by Navy Customs inspectors. All live ammunition/ordnance gets turned into unit armorers, and are transported seperately. I'm really doubting his story of forgetting about his issued combat load, and thinking more that he took it without authorization.

FXWizard

From the Yahoo News article:
I feel so much better knowing the C-4 was safely in his garage.

chollie

Maybe this is what is supposed to happen. Maybe it's what happens most of the time. But maybe it didn't happen this time and this part of his account is true. Here's just one example of stuff that came back from overseas that shouldn't have:
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-05/u...apons?_s=PM:US.

I do wonder if the hearing was cancelled because no agency wants him to say something in open court that could embarrass them or raise more questions about how this happened. It is certainly in TSA's best interests to prove that he didn't have it with him on the outbound flight, particularly since they looked in his bag. I wonder if they did an ETD or just assumed there was no point because they had the grenade.