Editor's Note:
My name is Ellen Howe and I am responsible for the content of this website. We obviously had a lapse of judgement on this story and you folks in the blogosphere have done a good job of keeping us honest. The points made by Gizmodo, Boing Boing, and Bruce Schneier were compelling.
First, the headline is misleading, we totally over-hyped it.
A suspicious-looking item is not the burden of proof for surrender of said item. This looks much more like the Wylie Coyote bomb of yesteryear. In this case, the item was easy to spot but not harmful. TSA finds far more interesting items through improvised explosive device (IED) drills every day.
To be clear, we did not doctor the photo. The wire was not attached to the bottle, but was resting underneath it as the passenger placed it in the bin.
There is credibility to looking at batteries as they are commonly improvised by terrorists: click here.
- Ellen Howe
Explosive-Like Item Intercepted at Checkpoint
July 10, 2008
For six long minutes on June 30, screening operations froze at Jackson-Evers International Airport's West checkpoint in Mississippi as TSA investigated a suspicious item that appeared to be a bundle of explosives connected by wires to a cylinder.
Transportation Security Officer Scot Peele leveraged his training and experience when he detected the suspicious item while monitoring the X-ray image of the passenger's carry-on bag.
The checkpoint area was immediately closed as Bomb Appraisal Officer Timothy D. Smith inspected the item and spoke with the passenger. The item in question was determined to be an empty metal bottle and a home-made battery pack, consisting of 28 rechargeable batteries connected by multiple resistors and held together in two layers with a silicone-based adhesive.
The passenger was an engineer and said he built the battery to power his DVD player for the long flight to Hawaii. After recognizing that the item could be seen by other passengers as a threat, the man surrendered it to Supervisory TSO Raiford Patterson and was allowed to board the flight.
"We must treat every suspicious item the same and utilize the tools we have available to make a final determination," said Federal Security Director David Wynn. "Procedures are in place for a reason and this is a clear indication our workforce is doing a great job."
