Truck bomb threat still high despite U.S. efforts

WASHINGTON -- Government bomb technicians have packed Chevrolet sedans, Dodge vans and Ryder trucks with 10 tons of explosives and have blown them up in the desolate New Mexico desert hoping to analyze the flight of debris over the sand.

Federal agents in Front Royal, Va., have trained more than 400 Labrador retrievers to sniff out the chemical compounds used in 19,000 separate explosives formulas.

Law enforcement officers have left thousands of calling cards across the country -- from a farmer's co-op store in McPherson, Kan., to a chemical company in West Haven, Conn. -- asking sales managers to report unusual interest in fertilizer or other components of homemade bombs.

The United States has spent more than $1 billion on these and other efforts to stop a single threat: the explosion of a car or truck bomb at a government installation or other structure. But 11 years after Muslim extremists used an explosives-laden van to attack the World Trade Center and three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, even senior federal agents acknowledge that the country has virtually no defense against a terrorist barreling down the street with a truck bomb.

"If a person doesn't care about dying, they can pull right up to a building, push a button and the building would go," said Michael Bouchard, assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "That's why we have checkpoints and try to keep large vehicles away from buildings."

The government has been racing to devise ways to systematically detect and warn against plotters creating truck bombs. But those efforts are embryonic at best, government officials say, even as al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists have used the truck bomb time and again overseas and the threat to use it here is growing.

The frustrating struggle to thwart terrorists' low-tech, low-cost weapon of choice provides a case study of America's challenge in waging the fight in the post-Sept. 11 world -- a fight in which the enemy is hiding and the traditional role of soldiers and weapons takes a back seat to intelligence and prevention.

It is a war in which the United States, with all its technological and economic advantages, has been unable to develop protection against a self-taught suicide bomber assembling large amounts of explosives in secret, acquiring a vehicle and fading into the landscape before detonating a payload.

Since the first World Trade Center bombing, the government has hardened federal buildings and military facilities at home and abroad; passed laws restricting the sale of explosives and shipments of hazardous materials; inspected thousands of people who deal with explosives; and researched explosive-detection and vehicle-disabling technology. But the only foolproof defense was on display last week - when heavily armed police sealed off buildings, roads and bridges in Washington, Newark, and New York City after the government issued an elevated terror alert focusing on five financial institutions.

Counterterrorism experts say the threat is especially striking because al-Qaida and other Muslim extremists have demonstrated mastery of the weapon. Since the first World Trade Center attack was plotted by Ramzi Yousef with 1,200 pounds of chemical explosives tied to Casio watch timers in a rented Ford van, al-Qaida cells perpetrated simultaneous truck bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew up three housing compounds in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, attacked resorts in Bali and Jakarta and carried out multiple bombings in post-war Iraq.

"The truck bomb is a pervasive threat. Al-Qaida is adept at it and comfortable with it, and for all those reasons it is difficult to protect against it," said Bruce Hoffman, author of "Inside Terrorism" and head of the Washington office of the Rand Corp., a nonprofit think tank. "The lesson of Sept. 11 was there's not a moment to lose, but we're constantly behind the curve."

Law enforcement authorities say they have few signals to stop bombers from building their weapons and approaching their targets.

As one ATF explosives expert said, "The only true defense is to shut the road down so no one can come down there. Sedans, sport utility vehicles, a Ryder truck, a large flatbed vehicle or a truck -- there's no sure-fire way to look at that vehicle and say, 'That's a large vehicle bomb.'" The expert spoke on condition of anonymity because of agency security rules.

For the U.S. government, blast walls, barricades and setbacks at sensitive buildings have become the last line of defense. The Pentagon, White House and Capitol increasingly resemble fortresses.

The problem is that hardening some locations might redirect terrorists to "softer" ones, including hotels, malls or stadiums, analysts said.

Michael Mason, assistant FBI director for the Washington field office, compared the sense of vulnerability to boxing in the dark against a terrorist with night vision goggles.