http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2010051434_bomb13.html

U.S. lab cooks up ways to stop terrorists

Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the front line in America's war on terrorism runs through a little-known federal laboratory where engineer Nelson Carey holds what appears to be a bratwurst in a bun.

"This is a Semtex sausage," says Carey, as he pinches the pink, plastic explosive long favored by terrorist groups.

On his table lie a green Teletubbies doll stuffed with C-4 military explosives, a leather sandal with a high-explosive shoe insert, an Entenmann's cake covered in an explosive compound that looks like white frosting, and other deadly devices Carey and his colleagues have built. None has a detonator, so all are safe.

"We let our imaginations go wild," explains Carey. "The types of improvised explosive devices are endless."

So are possible solutions, at least in theory. That's where the Transportation Security Laboratory comes in. Scientists here dream up ways an enemy might slip a weapon or a bomb onto a plane, and then try to build defenses to detect or counter the danger. The work is part cutting-edge science, part Maxwell Smart.

Staffers have experimented by exploding more than 200 bombs on junked jetliners. They also have filled a warehouse with nearly 10,000 lost or abandoned suitcases and other packed luggage.

"We build bombs in them" and run them through airport-style screening machines, says Susan Hallowell, the lab director. If the bomb escapes detection, technicians try to figure out why and how to catch it next time. "We call it the art of bagology."

Most important, the lab evaluates and certifies all the equipment purchased from outside vendors to search, sniff or scan passengers and their luggage at some 450 U.S. airports.

Dr. Colin Drury, distinguished professor emeritus of engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, calls the lab "one of the best in the world for the kind of work they do."

"They think broadly, and have new ideas, and maybe 90 percent don't work," he says. "But that's OK, as long as 10 percent do."

Lockerbie sets lab in motion

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About 125 chemists, physicists, engineers and others work in the lab's low-slung buildings on a wooded campus behind high fences and armed guards at the edge of the Atlantic City International Airport.

Inside is an odd mix of standard cubicles and blast-resistant rooms with thick steel doors and three reinforced walls. If an accident occurs, the design is supposed to channel the explosion to the fourth wall, which faces outside.

It's a work environment filled with painful reminders of how terrorism has changed the world.

Hallowell, 56, joined the lab as an analytic chemist when it first opened after the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The lab still keeps a mock-up of the Semtex-filled boombox that brought the jet down, killing 270 people.

She was named director shortly after the 2001 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon that turned the backwater lab into a national priority. Its budget has seesawed over time, but it now is about $45 million a year.

Like "Q" in James Bond films, Hallowell clearly enjoys the unusual tools — and the dark humor — of her profession. She takes a woman's shiny black pump off a shelf. It hides an inert explosive in the heel.

"I've always liked this shoe," she says. "It's my size."

Working one step ahead

Much of the lab's work focuses on far-off technology.

In one room, chemist Inho Cho has put liquid explosive in a small purple bottle of NutriPals, a nutrition drink for children. It sits in a blast-proof, see-through box while he tries to determine how sensitive a screening portal must be to identify vapors that leak from the bottle.

"Maybe five years from now, the sensors will be sensitive enough," he says.

In another room, research physicist Rob Kleug uses medical technology to take what looks to be a brain scan of an M&M chocolate-covered peanut. He measures the candy's mass density and effective atomic number and compares the data with that of known explosives.

"We're still looking for practical applications," he says.

Nearby, physicist Jeff Barber aims high-frequency radio waves at an explosive compound. He probes the interaction between molecules in an effort to produce a unique visual signature.

"This is the final frontier," he says, showing a colorful graph on his computer monitor that represents TNT powder. "It's still in the experimental stage."

The threat, meanwhile, is ever changing.

The strange but true

On Aug. 28, an al-Qaida militant was killed when a bomb hidden in his anal cavity exploded in a failed attempt to assassinate Saudi Arabia's chief of counterterrorism operations. The bomb apparently was triggered by cellphone.

TSA officials say current detection systems probably would spot such a bomb, but the unusual case has sparked deep concern among international security experts.

The TSA's own experience is less than reassuring.

In July 2008, a man at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport similarly tried to conceal a canister of Mace pepper spray in his body. According to a TSA report of the incident, officers "did not actually discover the can."

Instead, it "was so uncomfortable that the passenger left the security checkpoint for the nearest restroom. The passenger ran barefoot because his shoes had already been sent through the X-ray when he abandoned the line."

Police confiscated the Mace when the man emerged and he "was allowed to rebook but was later denied boarding when he showed up ... with a bottle of lighter fluid in hand," the report adds.

"We've seen lots of weird stuff," says Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman. "We've had people hide blocks of cheese in their bags with duct tape and wires attached to it. They're testing us."

And so the laboratory's search for security continues.

Bomb designer and model

In a bomb-hardened lab, explosive expert Theresa McGhee sews suicide vests with slabs of Semtex and other explosives, then wears the garment to see if she can foil the latest bomb-detection systems.

"I'm both the designer and model," she says.

As Hallowell walks through the facility, she stops by a pile of old-fashioned alarm clocks wired to sticks of fake dynamite, the cartoon image of a terrorist bomb.

"I call these our Road Runner bombs," she says with a laugh.

Her dream: to build a "tunnel of truth" in each airport lined with hidden sensors, scanners and rays. Passengers would get zapped and sniffed as they passed, but wouldn't need to take off their shoes, toss their liquids or anything else.

"The ideal is to get us back the freedoms we had before," Hallowell says. "Wouldn't that be nice?"