I am primarily concerned with what this country thinks. I will stick with what our explosives experts (resident and local LEOs, and the US Army demo guys I have spent time with), they say it is viable and easy. They play with boom stuff all the time and they have a pretty good idea of what boom can do and in what forms.

And yet, there were no shoe bombings before the carnival was made mandatory in 2006. Because no one's trying to harm aviation with shoe bombs.

They might be correct about the possibility of doing that, but suspect that they are very wrong about the threat level.

I�m not sure where you�re seeing advocacy of removing the screening process. The vast number of us that are critical of the TSA would like to revert to 9-10-01 style screening. We didn�t need a $6.8 billion a year boondoggle agency to ban boxcutters. You are aware of the Government Accountability Office report that states we are no better off now, aren�t you?


It�s possible that I have a WMD buried in my back yard. Is it probable?

If you are primarily concerned with what this country thinks then why do you not show concern that the majority of people think TSA is a failing effort?

What is TSA going to do about Near Earth Objects? They are a real threat you know!

There is no sign of this in, for example, the liquids policy. Kip used to go on and on about how they had to implement the "no liquids at all" policy in the middle of the night over the course of a few hours. It was only relaxed when it became clear that people were going to die without essential medicine and infants were going to starve on long flights. More to the point, the duty-free industry and airport shops leaned on the gov't when they couldn't sell drinks, perfume and grog.

The "shoes must be/should be/could be on belts" of a few months ago is another example. Clearly the "shoes out of bin" part was to save time for the TSA in restacking and cleaning bins. Within a few hours, when people here and on PV pointed out the possible damage to shoes getting caught in the machinery, the policy was (partly) rescinded. This is the exact opposite of giving weight to the impact on passengers.
And yet you admit your agency is not infallible. Could it be that they're wrong about this? I believe they peed their pants in August 2006 and are now unable to admit they over-reacted. (That would be pretty consistent with human nature.)

The question is not, as others here have said, viability, but probability. The next time you cross a street, there's a chance you could get hit by a car. There's also a chance that you could be struck dead by a meteor in the middle of the intersection. Which one of those will you take precautions against, and which will you choose to ignore? Why? Stop listening to the chicken-littles at HQ and think for yourself. In human beings, if someone obsesses about absolutely every possibility and treats them all the same, it's considered a mental illness. At TSA HQ, it's apparently a virtue.
And yet your "none" option is "except medical necessities". Does that include infant food? Beverages on board? Meals on intercontinental flights? I regularly spend 24 to 40 hours in transit (from leaving home to arriving at a hotel) - toothpaste, deodorant and moisturiser are medical necessities.
Easier for whom? For elderly people who have trouble removing and replacing them while standing? It's fine for a young, fit person to say "it's no big deal to take your shoes off" but for some people it is a big deal. I'm with JSmith; the rest of the world doesn't insist on this, even where there's a fair amount of concern over terrorism.
And every time you go in, not just the first time each day. Or do you think any screener who wants to bring in a bomb will do it first thing in the shift, rather than after a break?
And yet you said "I believe that means we should try to prevent what we can with all means at our disposal". Does the $3.4 BILLION being spent on a new HQ building counts as "tons of money"?
Seriously, I'm sure you're a nice guy and correct the ones who aren't. For my part, I have never hijacked an aircraft. I have never planted a bomb, brought a gun to the airport, or threatened a FA with my Swiss Army knife. I have no mercy for those that do; I find them despicable and hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But so what? Your colleagues are still going to treat me like I could do any of those things. You shouldn't be surprised if we treat you as if you might steal, yell, threaten or make up rules.
I know full well that your agency is not infallible. I'm asking you to think for yourself instead of just believing everything they tell you.
All people are subject to that element of nature, too. Robert Mugabe is "only human;" Albert Einstein was "only human." That doesn't mean one can't criticize one or admire the other.
You need to get out more. Really. You really need to go to Europe, Asia or Australia on a GSO-LAX-overseas route of about 20 - 30 hours in a very dry aircraft without a break. You will begin to understand why the liquids, etc, that seem "optional" to you are essential to us.
Seriously, come to Australia and I'll buy you 3.39999 oz of beer.

I hope your not trying to compare the TSA to the agencies you mentioned, DHS excepted.

TSA is not even in the same game.

Other countries are not the USA. 9/11 did not happen in another country. Reid did not try to blow up an aircraft flying to another country. He intentionally targeted a US bound aircraft, because of the US citizens aboard and that the carrier is a US company. He didnt choose El Al, British Airways, or Air France. He picked American Airways. Other countries dont have people take off their shoes because they have never been the target of a shoe bomb plot, but the USA has been.

Its a pretty simple concept. Why are so many of you folks having such trouble understanding it?

And you think the US is the only country to have terror incidents happen in it?

London and Madrid both had subway bombings and you don't see the stupidity there to get on the subways there.

And Reid got on at CDG and they don't have a shoe carnival. Perhaps the French don't see it as the threat. Do you think the French want to have planes falling out of the sky that originate in their airports? I don't think so. Regular shoe bombs would be detrimental to their aviation industry.

Let me give you a simple concept, Ronnie.

Pan Am 103 was blown up over Locherby, Scotland. That was also a US bound flight on a US carrier. To this day, TSA STILL doesn't screen cargo effectively (if at all, in a lot of cases) and we've been lucky another one hasn't happened.

What made Reid's attempt so special and why are efforts to make Pan Am 103, which actually DID succeed, half hearted attempts at best? Answer me that, Ronnie.

If TSA doesn't see cargo as a threat, that's fine. However, in light of that, it can't justify the shoe carnival by deeming one a threat and one not based on one failed incident when it ignores a SUCCESSFUL one.

You can't have it both ways.

Ronnie has it whichever way supports his argument du jour -- or, in Ronnie's case, du moment.

VERY good, Ronnie! You just made two unambiguously correct statements!

So what? One US-bound flight the better part of a decade ago does not justify a perpetual and nonsensical shoe carnival.

Do you deny that no planes were brought down in the US by shoe bombs before the shoe carnival was made mandatory in August 2006?

Do you deny that no planes are being brought down in other countries that don't have a shoe carnival?

It's a pretty simple concept, Ronnie. Why are you having such trouble understanding it, Ronnie?

I can't find my American Airways FF card, but Richard Reid flew American Airlines. Also: Half of the 9/11� planes were American Airlines. Using TSORong's logic it is a pretty simple concept. The fastest way for TSA to greatly increase the safety of the flying public is obviously to ground American Airlines.

Thanks for posting your response with links so quickly, gsoltso�just now viewed after a routerless weekend. I do appreciate your posts and contributions; however my concerns on this issue, as detailed below, still stand.

It's not a demonstration, it's a narrative. As the video is not continuous, a viewer can have no confidence the process "shown" was. (Try watching it with the sound off. Without that distraction, it's more obvious how many cuts are made, how many assumed actions are not shown.) It's been edited in contemporary media style to hold the viewer's attention, which we are so used to it's easy to watch uncritically.

It is not the visual equivalent of the voiceover. That would require unbroken video showing the integrity of the fuselage, the bottles being filled, placed the fuselage, apparent absence of other apparatus to produce a similar result, how it's made to go bang, and the bang.

I'm no explosives expert, but I've served on criminal trials which utilzed evidence tapes. They were handheld, tedious, with shifting light, background noises, dull stretches, and low production values, but uncut, because they needed to be. In contrast these clips are the CSI version: their purpose is to tell a story, not establish unbreakable links between processes or locations. If what's on those links was exactly what the jury saw, I can only suppose the rules of evidence between the two systems differ more than I thought.

Tech used against possible, probable threats�agreed.

Journalism, like all professions, is motivated by the need to stay in business, as well as its higher callings. Journalists are as often frightened and fooled by propaganda as their readers. (If you disbelieve this, take a look at West Coast newspaper archives during the internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.) Occasionally, as with the "exploding" GM truck gas tanks, there is outright fakery.

Journalistic ethics also must weigh the balance between complete, factual reporting and saying, in an article on teen suicide, "Cutting the ulnar artery is actually quite difficult. To be effective..." Maybe that's what they're doing here, or what they think they're doing.

Dr Alford may be absolutely legitimate; I have no information that he's not. His website provides no vita, no list of past clients. In similar businesses I deal with, I expect those.

I concede that routines may have changed since my academic forays into chemistry. (One undergraduate exercise required literally liters of carcinogenic benzene, my first summer grant had a $60/mo expense stipend.) However, I noted gloves worn inconsistently, no apparent protective clothing, and no eye protection. My lab work used explosive substances only incidentally to other syntheses, but protection was standard. We mixed flammables at the bench, often in a fume hood�not over the floor of a room filled with containers of other chemicals.

And finally, if these compounds are so easily created, transported, and effective, why isn't this incendiary equivalent of the greatest thing since sliced bread widely used for more common applications?

So I'm not saying I disbelieve the liquid-explosives-plot potential; neither have I seen anything to make me believe.

Additionally, considering Dr. Alford sells his services, while he may also have a lot to lose if he's wrong, he also has a lot to gain if he's right. I'd rather see disinterested third parties, like academics, seriously evaluate this.

I remember one did - Dr. Jimmy Oxley, at URI, did and she concluded that it wasn't feasible.

The problem is, governments and contractors that have dogs in the fight don't want to have this discussion. The fact that Dr. Alford is the only one that's ever trotted out in these instances is suspect to me.

�December 11, 1994�, Bokjinka test bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The device was a liquid based explosive. The "Mark II" "microbombs" had Casio digital watches as the timers, stabilizers that looked like cotton wool balls, and an undetectable nitroglycerin as the explosive. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide (silver trinitride), and liquid acetone.

2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, planned for sometime in 2006, was also a liquid explosives plot. The plotters allegedly planned to use peroxide-based liquid explosives.

Richard Colvin Reid, (aka. Abdul Raheem) attempted to detonate his explosive on December 22, 2001. Who is to say that there is not someone else out there planning to use another pair of shoes for this purpose right this minute? You? I?