Body Cavity Bombers: the New Martyrs: A Terrorism Research Center Book

Body Cavity Bombers:

The New Martyrs

A Terrorism Research Center Book

Robert J. Bunker &

Christopher Flaherty

Primary Authors

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

Body Cavity Bombers: The New Martyrs

A Terrorism Research Center Book

Copyright © 2013 by Robert J. Bunker and Christopher Flaherty.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-0310-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-0311-3 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 08/16/2013

CONTENTS

Acronyms

Endorsements

About The Terrorism Research Center

Figures

Tables

Prologue: Future Terrorist Threats

Stephen Sloan

Introduction: Body Cavity Bombers

Robert J. Bunker And Christopher Flaherty

Original Foreword: Emerging Adversary Tactics

Matt Devost

Original Preface: Body Cavity Bombs And The Barbarization Of Terrorism

John P. Sullivan

Chapter 1: The Projected Al Qaeda Use Of Body Cavity Suicide Bombs Against High Value Targets

(The Original Document)

Robert J. Bunker

Chapter 2: Addendum to the Original Document

Robert J. Bunker

Chapter 3: Revaluation of Bunker’s Original Document

Christopher Flaherty

Chapter 4: Body Cavity Bomb ‘In-Situ’ Attacks: Close-In Tactics

Christopher Flaherty

Chapter 5: Victim, Martyr, or Retaliation, And Becoming The Bomb

Christopher Flaherty

Chapter 6: Blast Effects of Explosive Charges

Colin Morison

Chapter 7: Current Sensors Research Tends And Capabilities, to Detect Body Cavity Bombs

Daniel W. O’hagan And Stefan Brisken

Conclusion: The Body Cavity Bomb: Contemporary and Future Considerations

Christopher Flaherty And Robert J. Bunker

Appendix I: The Concealment of Improvised Explosive Devices (Ieds) in rectal cavities

Appendix II: Preface To The Anatomical X-Ray Project

References

Notes On Authors

Endorsements

Effective counterterrorism demands continuous anticipation of new types of terrorist threats and tactics, as terrorists and their bomb makers always search for new vulnerabilities to exploit in their adversaries’ defenses. What makes this edited volume so important and invaluable as a reference resource is its authoritative account of a significant new terrorist tactic that is likely to become more pervasive in our increasingly sophisticated technological and medical age in which it is becoming easier for the terrorist adversary to use the types of body cavity bombs that will be capable of evading detection technologies, thereby making it easier for them to cause ever more devastating casualties.

Dr. Joshua Sinai, Washington, DC-based consultant on counterterrorism studies and author of Active Shooter: A Handbook on Prevention.

As counterterrorism operators tighten the noose on the adversary, would-be bomb-makers are responding with ever more grotesque innovations. Body Cavity Bombers shows how what was once a lurid Hollywood fantasy has emerged as a legitimate threat, dissects the risk with clinical precision, and soberly considers the remediation options.

Dr. Nils Gilman, Director of Research at Monitor 360 and co-editor of Deviant Globalization.

A timely and important book about a disgusting subject. In showing how the human body might be used to carry and conceal explosive devices, terrorism experts Bunker and Flaherty have left no stone unturned.

Dr. Martin van Creveld, one of the world’s leading writers on military history and strategy, with a special interest in the future of war, and author of twenty books including The Transformation of War.

Terrorists now have the capability to surgically implant explosives in body cavities thus becoming a new type of suicide bomber. Those in the front line of identifying and taking necessary action to counter these new techniques of destruction would be well advised to read Dr. Bunker and Dr. Flaherty’s realistic assessment.

Dr. Stephen Sloan, internationally recognized terrorism scholar and author/co-author of fourteen books on terrorism.

About the Terrorism Research Center

The Terrorism Research Center (TRC) is non-profit think tank focused on investigating and researching global terrorism issues through multi-disciplinary collaboration amongst a group of international experts. Originally founded as a commercial entity in 1996, the TRC was an independent institute dedicated to the research of terrorism, information warfare and security, critical infrastructure protection, homeland security, and other issues of low-intensity political violence and gray-area phenomena. Over the course of 15 years, the TRC conducted research, analysis, and training on a wide range of counterterrorism and homeland security issues.

* * *

First established on April 19, 1996, the year anniversary of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing, the TRC operated for 15 years as a commercial entity providing research, analysis, and training on issues of terrorism and international security. The three original co-founders, Matthew Devost, Brian Houghton, and Neal Pollard, are reconstituting a new board of directors, comprised of researchers, first responders and academic and professional experts. The TRC had an incredible legacy as a commercial company, says Matthew Devost. We believe there is still a strong need to continue the research and collaboration on such critical topics in the public’s best interest.

From 1996 through 2010, the TRC contributed to international counterterrorism and homeland security initiatives such as Project Responder and the Responder Knowledge Base, Terrorism Early Warning Groups, Project Pediatric Preparedness, Global Fusion Center, and the Mirror Image training program. These long-standing programs leveraged an international network of specialists from government, industry, and academia. Reconstituting TRC as a non-profit will help establish the next generation of programs, research, and training to combat the emerging international security issues.

Thousands of researchers utilized the TRC knowledge base on a daily basis, says Brian Houghton. Our intent is to open the dialog, provide valuable counterterrorism resources, and advance the latest thinking in counterterrorism for the public good."

We want to put the 15-year legacy and goodwill of TRC to continuing benefit for the public, rather than focus on a specific business model, says Neal Pollard. TRC was founded in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and made its most significant contributions to the nation and the world after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Now that the War on Terrorism has evolved and the United States is entering a new era of transnational threats, the TRC will maintain its familiar role as the vanguard of next-generation research into these emerging threats.

For more information visit www.terrorism.org

ACRONYMNS

FIGURES

Figure 1: Blast Effects on the Attacker in the Prince Muhammad Attack

Figure 2: Speculative Design of Fetus/Unborn Baby—BCB

Figure 3: Blast Effects on the Room in the Prince Muhammad Attack

Figure 4: The BCB Tactical Concept

Figure 5: Relative Interaction Probability of X-rays due to Photo Effect (blue line, marked as ‘A’) and Compton Effect (red line/’B’) in Materials

Figure 6: Backscatter X-Ray Image

Figure 7: BCB Scale of Effect and Type of Effect 245

TABLES

Table 1: Likely Blast-Yield of Breast Implants

Table 2: Gestation a Fetus/Unborn Baby’s Size, Weight, Length and Mass/Circumference

Table 3: Terrorist Examples from Israel in 2002

Table 4: Blast Injury and Lethality Relationship

for Charge Size and Standoff

Table 5: Impact Velocities for Different Risks

of Skull Fracture and of Lethality

Table 6: Body Translation Injury and

Lethality Relationship for Charge Size

and Standoff

Table 7: Anatomical X-ray Project Results

PROLOGUE

Future Terrorist Threats

Stephen Sloan

For those of us who must address future terrorist threats, we must reconcile the unthinkable with the possible. In so doing, we must also not create an environment conducive to use by terrorists in creating a climate of fear. Robert Bunker and Christopher Flaherty in their Body Cavity Bombers: The New Martyrs have met these challenges by presenting a threat that has been murderously enhanced since mules secreted drugs in their bodies to escape detection by customs and police. Terrorists now have the capability to surgically implant explosives in body cavities thus becoming a new type of suicide bomber. Those in the front line of identifying and taking necessary action to counter these new techniques of destruction would be well advised to read Dr. Bunker and Dr. Flaherty’s realistic assessment.

INTRODUCTION

Body Cavity Bombers

Robert J. Bunker and Christopher Flaherty

The Body Cavity Bomber Book Saga

If someone had suggested intentionally creating a book on body cavity bombs (BCBs) ten years ago, the suggestion would have been considered ludicrous and bordering on paranoia. At best, it might have been considered one of those thousands of terrorism ‘what if’ questions that counter-terrorism professionals beat themselves up over but ultimately recognize that available public resources cannot defend against all such contingencies. It would have been likely filed as a long shot and wild card scenario.

While 9/11 changed many of our perceptions concerning terrorism and viable threats to U.S. homeland security—such as the use large passenger airliners with full fuel loads to obliterate the two tallest buildings in the continental United States—placing bombs inside live human beings was still definitely not on the radar. The concept smacks of children’s science fiction from the late 1960s—such as the explosive devices implanted in enemy operatives in the Johnny Sokko and His Giant Robot television series[1]. This Japanese-made science-fiction fantasy ironically presented—in an episode set in a fictionalized Arabia—a somewhat realistic use/deployment of the BCB as an anti-personnel device, namely:

• The existence of ‘Human Bombs’ via intentional implants in enemy agents.

• The voice activation of bombs when a target agent is near (in personal contact with the carrier).

• The explosion is highly localized.

In a more mainstream example of that period, the 1967 James Bond satire Casino Royale, Sir James’s nephew Jimmy Bond is duped into swallowing one of his atomic time pills, turning him into a walking atomic bomb[2]. Woody Allen, playing the character of ‘Jimmy Bond’ (the film’s nemesis), narrates—

it looks like an aspirin, tastes like an aspirin but it’s not an aspirin… this pill contains 400 tiny little time pills, they go off in the body, little explosions, forming a chain reaction, turn the person into a walking atomic bomb.

It is argued in the Conclusion to this book that the concept of the BCB has been regularly used as a theatrical-plot device in many popular TV shows and movies since at least the late 1960s, developing a cogent terrorist TTP (tactics, techniques, and procedures). Notional precedent notwithstanding, it was not until 42 years later that the first use of a body cavity bomb device was recorded—by Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in August 2009. This book on the body cavity bomb seeks to portray the fact that terrorism—including the use of BCBs—is evolving far quicker and more rapidly than most of us ever expected.

The creation of this book is, in many ways, a saga in itself. As early as 2003, Robert Bunker’s suicide bomber research leading to counter-terrorism solutions represented a considerable component of his then professional law enforcement support duties with the Counter-OPFOR Program, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center—West (NLECTC-West) and the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group (LA TEW). These duties included the coordination of the data basing of suicide bomber incidents, threat group suicide bombing pattern analysis, playbook construction, red teaming, and response guidance[3].

This book has been an inadvertent work in progress since he wrote the following passage in the 2005 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) training keys on Suicide (Homicide) Bombers:

No recorded use of cavity bombs (i.e., in the stomach, rectum, or vagina) exists, but this tactic represents a potential threat.[4]

The author recognized early on the iterated offensive and defensive dynamic of suicide bomber and security force countermeasures and saw the offensive potentials inherent in an explosive device carried by a suicide bomber secreted inside of the human body. This resulted in a non-public disclosure series of presentations on projected BCB employment that took place between September 2006 and August 2008 in the United States and later in the United Kingdom. These presentations were resumed between October 2009 and February 2010 as a by-product of the first recorded use of a BCB device by Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in August 2009.

As an outcome of this incident and the previous and subsequent presentations, a decision was made to create a manuscript that systematically discussed the analytical approach undertaken in making the initial projection regarding BCB use. By this time, discussions were openly taking place on the internet concerning BCB—the ‘cat was out of the bag’ so to speak as a result of the heavy media reporting of the incident in question—which allowed the non-public disclosure ban regarding this specialized suicide bomber TTP to be lifted. As a result, the BCB projected use document was finalized in May 2010 and published, with an addendum written in November 2010, in March 2011.

Flaherty’s May 2012 revaluation of Bunker’s original document and their links through a number of common associates, including John Sullivan, Hakim Hazim, and Matt Devost, resulted in their collaboration as the primary authors behind this present book. Conceptualized in June 2012, it went through various iterations regarding content. A number of subject matter experts helped provide additional expertise concerning explosive blast effects and sensor and scanning systems utilized to detect explosive devices. Over the last year, this small research group—coordinated principally by Dr. Flaherty who also contributed quite a bit of new material analyzing various aspects of BCB—has been working diligently on this project. Robert Bunker later reengaged with the project, contributing the first drafts of the BCB effects analysis provided in the conclusion (Fig. 7), discussing future body cavity CBRNE use potentials, and the introduction to this work.

Over the last year-and-a-half, the authors have each engaged in a presentation on body cavity bombers—one in the Los Angeles metropolitan area to an academic audience and one in London to a gathering of security professionals[5]. Additionally, Dr. Bunker was also twice interviewed by the media on this topic during this period. The first interview was with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) News. It focused on whether BCB were a realistic threat[6]. The second interview was with the Kabul bureau chief of the New York Times and took place just as this work was being finalized. This interview is of great significance—not so much for what this author conveyed to the reporter—but rather why the interview was conducted. On December 6, 2012 an incident took place in which a suicide bomber targeted the head of Afghanistan’s intelligence services, initially reported as having utilized an underwear bomb. The reason for the interview was that, instead, it was a body cavity bomb that had been utilized—the second confirmed use of such a device[7].

From detailed discussions with the reporter, Rod Nordland, numerous aspects of the incident were reviewed. Asadullah Khalid, the Afghani intelligence head, received a Taliban envoy who had travelled from Pakistan to meet with him about peace talks. Fearing for his personal safety given earlier assassinations based on such ploys, Khalid had the visitor stripped naked in an armored room. Since no bomb was found anywhere on the body of the Taliban representative, he was deemed safe to then meet with Khalid. Upon their meeting, the visitor blew himself up and in the process severely wounded Khalid in the mid-section of his body. Forensics suggests that the body cavity bomber greeted Khalid with some sort of ritual hug for ‘in-situ’ attack purposes. Various scenarios as to how the IED was detonated were looked at in our discussions, covering cell phone, shock, and binary (chemical reaction) techniques, but the actual cause still remains undetermined. In the New York Times article published in June 2013, the Afghani government finally came clean about the incident:

"Now, months after that attack, on Dec. 6, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, Shafiqullah Tahiri, confirmed that the attacker had hidden the bomb inside his rectum.

Two other Afghan security officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the bomb had been hidden internally. Officials had earlier been quoted as saying the bomb had been hidden in the attacker’s underwear."[8]

Additionally, suicide bombers wearing explosives on their bodies beneath their clothing continues as a terrorist TTP against high value targets. For instance, in July 2013, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief John Pistole publically disclosed that a ‘Underwear Bomb II" device was created in 2012 by Al Qaeda. The device contains a new form of liquid explosive never seen before, utilizes redundant double syringe initiators, and is encased in kitchen caulk to defeat bomb sniffers[9]. Further, in May 2013, a suicide bomber dressed as a police officer—with the explosives hidden under his uniform—successfully killed a deputy police chief and thirteen other people in Baghlan province, Afghanistan[10]. Earlier, in January 2013, explosive devices were surgically placed in two corpses belonging to slain police officers in Latehar, India, one of which detonated and killed four civilians, making this technique an ongoing security concern[11]. These incidents and many others like them over the last five years highlight the increasing importance of the trends and themes highlighted and analyzed in this book. In sum, Body Cavity Bombers: The New Martyrs represents the first serious analytical work focusing on an extreme and still emerging form of terrorism utilizing body cavity bombers. In many ways, it can even be considered the next act in Steve Sloan’s apropos perception that Terrorism is the theatre of the obscene,[12] aptly articulated by Chris Flaherty’s ‘exploding man’ and ‘protest horror’ constructs discussed herein.

Overview of the Book

This work is composed of front and back sections and seven chapters and a conclusion. Front pieces include an informative synopsis concerning the Terrorism Research Center, an acronyms listing, a short figures and tables listing, and a prologue to the book by Dr. Stephen Sloan an internationally recognized terrorism expert. This introduction then leads into the original foreword and preface to the original body cavity suicide bomb projection, written by Matt Devost and John Sullivan, respectively. Lt. Sullivan’s essay is of importance for its ongoing recognition of the ‘barbarization of terrorism’ and the insightful discussions provided of BCB potentials derived from his extensive policing counterterrorism perspective.

Chapter 1, the document originally written by Robert Bunker in May 2010, is a sizeable analytical paper containing one hundred and thirty-four endnotes. It takes the reader through a historical overview of suicide use by military forces and terrorists and then provides insights into the co-evolution of suicide bombs and the countermeasures created to respond