Al-Qaida Operative Favored the Use of Truck and Limousine Bombs

NEW YORK — A Britsh Al Qaeda operative conducting surveillance on U.S. soil in 2000 favored using a limousine packed with explosives or a hijacked oil tanker truck to attack financial institutions in Manhattan and New Jersey, police officials said.

"The most obvious technique to utilize, that comes to mind ... would be a limousine in the VIP underground car park," the operative, Dhiren Barot, wrote in a memo about the Prudential Building in Newark, New Jersey.

Barot was sentenced to life in prison was sentenced to life in prison in Britain last week after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit mass murder
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This man is accused of spying on financial locations in both New York City and New Jersey. The accused is suspected of doing this back in the year 2000, nearly a year before the attacks of 9-11. He is currently beginning to serve a life time sentence in a British prison. What this man had in mind was nightmarish in nature due to the fact as to what two types of vehicles were going to be used. To have used a limo packed to the fenders with explosives could be possible. However, there is one drawback to this and that is most of the VIP parking spaces in and around New York City are underground. To be able to inflict as much damage and as many casualties as possible, the explosives that could have been used might have been military grade explosives.

As for the rolling truck bomb, it would have been much easier for this person to use it. This is because most tractor trailer facilities are not that secure. It would be easy for someone to sneak into a parking lot full of trucks and steal one. Or, if the truck is left alone while running, you could just walk up inside of the cab and drive off probably without even being noticed by a single person around the truck. For this attack to have been made feasible, you would have to find a way around the tunnels coming into Manhattan from either the Outer Boroughs or New Jersey.

For an attack like what this man had in mind, the truck really shouldn't be an oil tanker truck. This is because you will more than likely not have an explosion unless it has a means by way of a spark or something. Oil fires are one of the most difficult fires for firefighters to put out. Oil will float on top of water as seen in oil spills in the ocean. That means, if you try and fight the resulting fire, it will only be spread over an even larger area than what has already been affected.

Most oil tankers that go over the road carry somewhere in the neighborhood of five to ten thousand gallons of oil in the trailer. A truck bomb with this form of petroleum can do a lot of damage to the surrounding area. However, most truck bombings over the years were made from rented box trucks, drums of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and diesel fuel. This was the concoction used to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City back in 1995. This bomb caused sevefe damage to the building and the buildings across the street from it.

If someone with a truck bomb wanted to do some serious structural damage, all they would have to do is get a truck full of either gasoline, diesel fuel, or propane. This is because those three are some of the most explosive petroleum products, with the execption of ammonium perchlorate. It would be extremely difficult, if not darn near impossible, for a terrorist to get a hold of this volatile fuel. Ammonium Perchlorate was the chemical responsible for the PEPCON Disaster outside of Henderson, Nevada back in 1988.

Ammonium Perchlorate defined.

Ammonium perchlorate is a chemical compound with the formula NH4ClO4. It is the salt of ammonia and perchloric acid. Like other perchlorates, it is a powerful oxidizer.

This salt generates toxic gas and extremely high temperature elevation following its decomposition.

It is produced by reaction between ammonia and perchloric acid, or by double decomposition between an ammonium salt and sodium perchlorate.

It crystallises in colorless rhombohedra with a relative density of 1.95. It is the least soluble of all ammonium salts with 20 g in 100 g water at 0 °C, due to the large size of the anion. Like all ammonium salts, it decomposes before fusion. Mild heating results in chlorine, nitrogen, oxygen and water, while strong heating may lead to explosions.

It is an important oxidizer used in solid rocket propellants, such as the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, as well as many other solid rockets including some fireworks, amateur and hobby high powered rockets, and larger rockets used for space launch and military purposes.

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I do not condone any terrorists actions taken in the world today, either by Muslims or by my government. Nor am I a terrorist informant.