Homemade bombs – not enough is done in the U.S. to deal with the danger

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Israeli security experts say that the free sale of some materials that can be used for homemade explosives is a “big mistake”

One expert said that there must be control on people buying “above normal” quantity of the materials like fertilizers.

Timothy McVeigh used two tons of fertilizer and $3,000 of racing fuel to detonate a bomb outside the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The blast killed 168 people.

The Obama administration is currently not allocating money or resources to preventing fertilizer bombing attacks like the one McVeigh used, according to a former DHS official with direct knowledge of the department’s budgeting and operations.

The Daily Mail quotes the former official to say that the Boston Marathon bombing was “tragic, but if this were an Oklahoma City-type bomb, there would have been hundreds of deaths.”

The Mail reports that DHS now has only one federal employee and no contractors devoted to the task of preventing the deployment and detonation of ammonium nitrate bombs, a situation the former official called “completely ineffective, and very dangerous for the country.”

Ammonium nitrate is commonly found in farming fertilizer. In 2006, ABC News reporters purchased 1,000 pounds of fertilizer for less than $300 without identification, and transported it to a warehouse just a few miles away from the White House. According to ABC’s Brian Ross, that amount of fertilizer can take down a good sized building.

Terrorists across the globe have used amonium nitrate because it is stable, inexpensive, and effective.