Posted on 02/08/2002 8:19:18 AM PST by vannrox
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| WASHINGTON, DC: February 8, 2002 — The most serious attempt to destroy an airliner since September involved the man named Richard Reid who was trying to set off the explosives in his shoes when he was apprehended. ABC News got an exclusive look at those shoes (left), and has learned that investigators think they know who helped him – and how he got the explosives. According to investigators, Richard Reid's hiking shoes were transformed into a deadly bomb powerful enough to bring down a commercial airliner. The sophisticated design required no wires or metal, making the explosives virtually impossible to detect by airport security. |
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According to former FBI Analyst Matthew A. Levitt, the design was "Extremely sophisticated, and there's no question that this was not something he did by himself. Reid was a mule." ABC News has learned that intelligence officials suspect Reid had support from associates of Osama bin Laden operating throughout Europe. "Reid indeed depended upon a pretty extensive European network that so far remains pretty mysterious," says Former French Defense Minister and ABC News Consultant Alexis Debat. Investigators believe Reid was aided by terrorists in France and Belgium, including one man who is being held in France suspected of planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris. European investigators suspect Reid traveled to a terrorist safehouse in Belgium to pick up the explosives and then made his way to France, to meet with a man code named "the engineer," an explosives expert who helped design the shoe bomb. "The funding, the material, the know-how all indicate that there was someone or some group behind this," says former FBI Analyst Matthew A. Levitt. "And it appears to be al-Qaida." ABC News has learned that officials believe whoever helped Reid may have left evidence behind: a strand of hair and a palm print found in one of his shoes. ABC News Washington |
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He was about as smart as one, too. How tough is it to light a fuse?
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'Pegleg Richard Reid'
Or would that be grey?
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