Official: Plastic explosive 'very sophisticated'
WASHINGTON (CNN) --The plastic
explosive that a passenger allegedly tried to detonate aboard a trans-Atlantic
American Airlines flight last week was "very, very sophisticated," a U.S.
official told CNN on Wednesday.
Officials say Richard Reid hid 10 ounces of PETN-based material, a version
of the
plastic explosive C4 that is very sensitive to heat and friction, in each
of his shoes
when he boarded Flight 63 in Paris on December 22.
"It would have taken a high level of high intelligence and know-how to
construct this
type of bomb," a U.S. official said. The complicated nature of the
explosive has led
authorities to believe Reid likely had an accomplice, government sources said.
Investigators, the official noted, have also found a safety fuse -- black
powder
packed inside a cord that is attached to and designed to detonate the
explosive.
Passengers and crew subdued Reid, 28, after an attendant on the flight,
bound from
Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, noticed him trying to use a match to set
fire to his
shoes. The British national is under suicide watch in a Plymouth jail,
about 30 miles
south of Boston, charged with interfering with a flight crew.
Some al Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan claimed to recognize Reid in a
photograph
shown them by U.S. interrogators, officials said. U.S. authorities
cautioned they had
no independent confirmation tying Reid with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
However, one senior official said these reports "open the door" to the
possibility of a
connection.
Meanwhile, in Britain, a mosque official said that both Reid and Zacarias
Moussaoui
-- the only person to date charged with conspiracy in the September 11
terrorist
attacks in America -- attended Brixton Mosque in south London.
Brixton Mosque chairman Abdul Haqq Baker said Moussaoui and Reid's time at the
mosque overlapped in late 1998 or early 1999, but he was not certain if the
two had
ever met.
"Towards the end of [Reid's] stay with us, we noticed he started wearing
the army
green jacket, and started questioning our understanding of Islam based on
what he
had learned elsewhere," Baker said.
Those questions, Baker said, pertained to suicide bombings and other terrorist
activities -- activities Baker said "alarmed and disgusted" members of his
mosque.
But they were views that dovetailed with those of Moussaoui.
"He came before ... Mr. Reid, and he came from France," Baker said of
Moussaoui.
"His views changed quite quickly and he was very vocal and somewhat arrogant. I
cannot say that they met, because Reid came at the tail end of when
Zacarias was
asked to leave, so I cannot say for certain. But it is highly probably that
they met."
Reid, he said, has not been seen at the mosque for at least two years, and
he had no
idea what Reid may have done after leaving. But, Baker said, he doubted
Reid would
or could have acted alone.
"He doesn't have the capacity to think: 'I'm going to get these explosives,
I know
where to get these explosives from, I'll put them in my shoe,'" Baker told
The Times
of London. He suggested that Reid may have been testing a new method of terror
delivery.
Reid boarded the December 22 flight a day after authorities detained him for
suspicious behavior. He was cleared, but missed his original flight and
spent the
night at a Paris hotel courtesy of American Airlines, sources told CNN.
George Fergusson of the British Consulate in Boston said officials believe
Reid was
British-born and that his British passport "so far as we are concerned" is
legitimate.
He said he does not have any further information about the suspect's
background or
his parents.
-- CNN Correspondent Susan Candiotti contributed to this report.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/26/inv.reid.mosque/index.html
