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Three Explosive Devices Sent to Clintons, Obama and CNN Offices
Explosive devices were sent to former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as to CNN's offices in New York, sparking an intense investigation on Wednesday into whether a bomber is going after targets that have often been the subject of right-wing ire.
A law enforcement official said the three devices were similar to one found Monday at the home of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and liberal donor.
[...] The device sent to CNN was contained in a manila envelope addressed to John Brennan, who was the C.I.A. director in the Obama administration and is a harsh critic of Mr. Trump. The president revoked Mr. Brennan's security clearance in what was seen as an act of retribution. The return address bore the name of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman who formerly headed the Democratic National Committee.
In a statement, the White House condemned "the attempted violent attacks."
Update 1: The explosive devices have been described as pipe bombs. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says that a device was also sent to his office.
Update 2:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's spokesman has identified the device sent to his office, originally believed to be suspicious, as a thumb drive containing files on the far right group Proud Boys. It does not appear to be related to the explosive devices.
[...] Another suspicious package has been intercepted at a Congressional mail screening facility in Capitol Heights, Maryland, according to CNN. [...] ABC News reported the package was addressed to Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:23PM (10 children)
Look at the Unabomber's career [wikipedia.org]. The initial bombs were not fatal, and a couple of them didn't even go off. Towards the end the bombs became more deadly. This evolution took place over almost 2 decades. An amateur mailing bombs around all within the same week or so is probably going to fuck something up. Remember, it's a fail if they explode in the bombmaker's face or en route, so there's a balance to be struck between stability and detonation. Some of these bombs were intercepted before they reached their intended targets. It's possible that detection mechanisms are better these days, everyone's mail is being routinely scanned, or it's just a lot harder to get these to someone with Secret Service protection or mail screening than the relatively unknown targets that Kaczynski chose.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:30PM (2 children)
Fair enough on the quality of work and detection but, shit, you'd think they'd at least test a few out first to make sure they worked at all. Take pride in your craftsmanship, people!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @07:15PM (1 child)
You're not impressed with the little photo of John Brennan and the ISIS flag taped to the live explosive CNN photographed? [twitter.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:20PM
I've been talking admin stuff and watching season 3 of Daredevil. Much more enjoyable than visiting twitter or following news about bombs that didn't do their job.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 24 2018, @05:35PM (3 children)
Go with the latter possibility. If someone mails a bomb to you or me, and it doesn't have wires hanging out, it's going to arrive at our house(s). High profile targets have mail sorters in mail rooms working diligently to separate the cruft from the crap.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:19PM (2 children)
Sometimes the simplest explanation makes the most sense.
The FBI likely created and sent all the bombs, so they obviously know where they are; its not difficult for them to make sure they all get found for maximal PR impact.
They can't afford to let any of them actually explode; the FBI spent a lot of time and effort to plant evidence in the bombs they made and sent, and an explosion isn't going to help them frame the "correct" people.
Its likely all detail of the devices will be classified for national security reasons such that we can safely assume none of the devices ever contained explosives, etc. It would be extremely embarrassing during the trial if the explosives were chemically traced back to the BATFE or FBI, so its legally less risky to put nothing but air in the "devices". Even if some brave person wikileaks the classified data, if the devices contain air not explosives, they can not be traced back to government supplied explosives if there is nothing there...
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:14PM (1 child)
Interesting times. Interesting at least, in that this has a medium to high probability of being the truth. "conspiracy theory"? Actually, conspiracies happen all the time. Anyone paying attention to what the FBI and CIA admit to doing over the last 50 years will realize that it isn't even a stretch.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:25PM
Some of the private communications inside the FBI since Trump are pretty chilling, basically a rogue agency working on a coup. Crazy times.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:27PM
Its also worth pointing out that Uncle Ted had weird ideas against modern technology such that a "serious effort" is unlikely to fail, even if some hipster art project making a political/economic statement, historically didn't work out well.
I you insist for political reasons on building your "statement" out of hand carved wood, its gonna be problematic, vs using more modern technology similar to middle eastern IEDs or whatevs.
A more realistic success rate would be like middle eastern IEDs but more successful given more resources, essentially 100% odds of success.
Unless its all a false flag which is of course vastly more likely.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday October 25 2018, @03:17AM (1 child)
One can use a gas chromatograph to detect certain kinds of explosives. For example the suicide bomber's favorite detonator can be made out of Ortho Snail And Slug Death or a certain variety of women's urinary tract infection medicine, and smells just like Formaldehyde because that is what it is made of.
That HMTD is so popular leaves me puzzled as to why military dogs aren't trained to smell it.
With Neutron fluorescence you put a small piece of Plutonium next to a package, and if it has lots of nitrogen it will emit I expect a particular energy of gamma ray. You use a crystal scintillator, a photomultiplier tube and a multichannel analyzer to graph the spectrum of the gamma. If it's the nitrogen fluorescence there will be a sharp peak at a certain position on that graph.
I did this at Caltech but with silver. It turns out that it's legal to possess up to one gram of Plutonium provided you take care to observe the required radiological health precautions.
But nitrogen gamma fluorescence won't work with Potassium Perchlorate. Perhaps neutron fluorescence is used for that too, but looking for a different gamma spectrum.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 25 2018, @10:45AM
And none of the above work with the peroxides.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.