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| US Government Taking Various Actions to Prevent Truck Bombings |
| 2004-08-08 |
| From The Washington Post .... The United States has spent more than $1 billion on ... 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 nearly 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 E. 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 Qaeda and other Islamic extremists have used the truck bomb time and again overseas and the threat to use it here is growing. .... Since the 1993 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, New York and Newark after the government issued an elevated terror alert focusing on five financial institutions. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |