Tuesday 16 April 2013

FBI Lockerbie explosives expert comments on Boston bombing

[What follows is an excerpt from a report headlined FBI combs Boston crime scene for clues published this evening on the website of The Financial Times:]

Tom Thurman, a former FBI explosives specialist who was involved in the investigations of the bombing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said the fact that the bombs produced white smoke indicated they were probably an improvised device. While military explosives such as C4 cause big plumes of black smoke, he said, white smoke was usually the result of a device that contained gunpowder or a commercial rock-blasting explosive such as dynamite.

Mr Thurman, now at eastern Kentucky University, said an improvised device would need to be packed into some form of container such as a pipe, which could explain the reports of extensive shrapnel wounds among some of the victims.

While the FBI, which is leading the investigation, said it was pursuing a number of leads, former security officers warned that such cases can sometimes take a long time to resolve.

[It was Tom Thurman who purportedly identified the crucial Lockerbie circuit board fragment as coming from a MEBO MST-13 timer. Posts on this blog in which he is mentioned can be accessed here.]

2 comments:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2013: Will he do it again...

    The by ex FBI forensic examiner Tom Thurman selected MST-13 Timerfragment (PT/35) has nothing to do with the bombing of PanAm 103 !
    The PT/35 fragment for the crucial circumstantial evidence, was manipulated from a inoperative prototype circuit board - with the Intention to Involve Libya in the "Lockerbie Tragedy". - scandalous deed !

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch

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  2. Hmmm. Thurman pontificates; might we now expect Mr Feraday to emerge from the woodwork to assert dogmatically that pressure cookers have no other use than terrorism?

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