If it’s true that the bombs were inside 6-liter pressure cookers and placed in black duffel bags, that seems both good and bad. It’s good because I don’t think you can walk around with a heavy black duffel bag without being caught on camera. But it’s bad because it is a pretty significant failure of security to not question someone who is carrying heavy awkward black duffel bags into a crowd and leaving them unattended.
Who knows if this report is accurate, but it is being carried by the Associated Press. I saw somewhere that the bomb squad had done a sweep in the early morning and then again an hour before the race started. So, my thinking was that the bombs had been smuggled in shortly before the explosions and dropped in mailboxes or trash cans. But it appears they were brought in in duffel bags and placed on the ground on the sidewalk.
One thing I would look at is the possibility that the bombs were stored in one of the buildings nearby the second explosion. It would be easier to store the duffel bags there in advance, then to quickly drop the first bag near the door and continue on with only one bag toward the finish line. If they were set on a timer, the timers could be set inside. If using a cell phone, he could have walked away and called them in sequence, explaining the brief delay between the explosions.
I’d focus on the people with access to the buildings, and I’d want footage of everyone going in and out of those buildings in the days before the crowds showed up.
There is no way that those duffel bags were there for long. So, we should be able to find images of the suspect, and hopefully they can be matched to earlier footage. If they knew what they were doing, however, they would be strongly disguised.
I just don’t think we want to go down this road. The notion that ANY package is inherently suspicious is the slippery slope to the security state.
20 years ago, in Charles deGaulle airport in Paris, there was a security issue. Someone left their suitcase unattended. So they came and blew it up, after clearing that section of the terminal. The suitcase has a sandwich and some sweaters.
If we consider ANY package to be inherently suspicious, will we be scanning garbage in garbage bags? Will we need to scan all UPS packages? Is the response a full Israeli style security state? Do we want a London-style camera system, with cameras in many many public locations?
I sure hope not.
Well, this is pretty basic. If you are working security, and there were cops and security every few feet, you are looking for someone doing something suspicious. You can’t carry a 6-liter pressure cooker loaded with bomb components and ball bearings in a natural manner. It’s too heavy. He wouldn’t have looked like just some guy with a backpack. Plus, he left it unattended. And it wasn’t a small parcel.
It seems to me that this couldn’t have done in a way that shouldn’t have fit a profile. And a justifiable profile.
Bull, it would be 20 pounds tops. Anybody that isn’t extremely out of shape can carry that without problems. And six liters aint that big of a pressure cooker. So unless something is physically wrong with you, the size and weight are a non issue.
Are you that out of shape?
But it was a marathon. Hundreds of people were walking around with backpacks and other luggage. According to at least some media reports there were lots of people with camp stove and other food/cooking gear, presumable intending to picnic or camp or something.I don’t see any way security, with no warning of trouble, could be expected to pick these two insignificant bundles out of hundreds.
I haven’t been to the Boston marathon, but again the MCM’s finish is at the Iwo Jima Memorial which is literally right across the street from my apartment.
There are hundreds of people there. Many people are waiting for their friends with their luggage. Massive bags containing spare clothes, food, medical supplies, whatever. They are acting as sherpas and one person may have six bags of various sizes. People also leave their stuff all over the place because it’s rarely stolen. So you have unattended bags all over the place.
There are also vendors and sponsors all over the place cooking food, selling goods. It’s a god damn mess. Now many of those vendors are official, but there are all sorts of people set up all over the place with all sorts of stuff. There’s trash all over the place as well and huge containers of waste (well, the waste that isn’t rolling down the street).
So a person with a rack ton of duffel bags stuffed to the brink, or even heaving massive items into a trash container, wouldn’t stand out as abnormal or out of the ordinary one bit. In fact a brief explosion (well, prior to this bombing) would probably be ignored as a transformer blowing or a propane tank issue. That happens as well off and on if it’s hot enough.
There’s nothing you can do to prevent it that doesn’t ruin the race. The fact of the matter is that if you want to kill people at a marathon you can do it easily and there isn’t anything anyone can do to stop you. And if someone wants to bomb another marathon they’re going to pull it off and kill more people as well.
I’m perfectly happy to accept all sorts of risks to live in society if the alternative is to live in a security state. Because the state will never be secure. Can anyone tell me under what circumstances in America would the security state ever be dialed back? We’re too much of a corporatocracy to have that option.
The “security state” gets dialed up during every war, and dialed back afterwards.
Lincoln used to throw newspaper editors in jail without charges. Wilson sent the feds to raid war protesters.
Those episodes of the growth of the security state were followed by the Wild West and the Roaring Twenties.
This is the way it always works.
Information is still being sorted out. Were there public garbage cans there?
There are cameras all over the place these days, not only the cell phones everyone owns, but also at ATMs and security cameras on buildings. It will take some time to fully examine all of that, but I’m guessing that in day or two we will have a photo of the bomber.
I’m tired of these anon sources leaking shit. They leaked info yesterday that proved false (i.e., the JFK library) so, until I hear an official source publicly state for the record what kind of bomb was employed, I’m inclined to be skeptical.
The weight and bulk of the duffel bags alone would make it problematic for a single person to wander through the crowd before setting them in place. One guy carrying two such bags would stand out. Makes me wonder if there were two people setting this up.
Guess I’ve watched too many Criminal Minds. My thought was that the investigators have now swarmed to Boston, which leaves other cities less well covered.
Presumably, it was two guys each carrying a bag or one person carrying each one separately.
It should show up on someone’s video. Maybe it already has.
It’s not a security failure at all not to spot them. People do that all the time at races. The Marine Corps Marathon goes right by my house. People acting as pack mules for multiple runners and leaving bags or asking others to watch them is pretty damn normal. Harassing people for doing that would be as stupid as harassing people for wearing sun glasses.
You can’t secure something like this. Either it’s a full on police state and you strip search everyone or you admit that if someone wants to kill a lot of people there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Thank you. That’s something that most of us wouldn’t know.
Agreed, on both points.
I sometimes ponder the half-dozen or so different terrorist attacks I would do if I were a dedicated terrorist wanting to kill Americans, which are so simple, and usually come to the conclusion that we’ve given up our rights under amendments IV, V, and VI of the Bill or Rights, for pretty much nothing…
A 6 liter pressure cooker is not extremely large or heavy. It’s actually on the smaller side for pressure cookers so I don’t see why it would necessarily stand out. I don’t know what it was filled with but 6 liters of water is a little more than a gallon and half so total weight, including the cooker, is probably around 20 lbs.
Exactly. About like carrying a gallon and 2 quarts of milk, plus the (pretty light) weight of the pot.
I imagine I carried far more than 20 pounds in my backpack back when I was a student. It really is no big deal to carry that much, nor would it seem out of place to carry an equivalent sort of load at an event like a marathon (as I think someone else has already aptly noted). No need to hassle those who carry backpacks – that’s overkill in reaction to what happened yesterday. Regrettably, there will likely always be terrorists, and there probably is not much that can be done to prevent some sufficiently motivated asshole from attempting, and sometimes succeeding, in causing massive harm.
If the media reports are at all right, I’m expecting the perps to be a homegrown small group, either domestic of the Christopher Dorner kind, or ragtag foreign-influenced terrorist wannabes.
The bombs, made with black powder and pressure cookers seem more homemade than something like alQaida would do. They could have been much more destructive if they were part of some large organized conspiracy. The absence of any message or claim of responsibility seems to strengthen that picture. Why blow up bombs unless you’re going to make demands or call attention to a cause?
This seems more like yet another nutcase(s) obsessed with some personal slight or revenge for some perceived ideological outrage.
A bomb designed not to kill but to cup off people’s feet? At a marathon?
Could that be the message?
Eric Rudolph – Atlanta.
I doubt it’s al Qaeda or similar group. if it were, the death toll would have been much larger.
Of course the fact this attack was so easily carried out sends the wrong message. and it proves the enormous amount of money being spent at the federal level on “homeland security” is a waste.
Could have been but a soft target for a violent nutter. OTOH, could one day and one location in this country contain any more symbolism for a rightwing nutter(s) to perpetrate an act of violence?
So sad for all the victims at the Boston Marathon. So sad for what each horrific display of violence in this country does to all of us.
This news video/photos, apparently show the second bomb package. We’ll see what shakes out in the coming days. Hopefully this can be crowd-sourced and the perpetrators caught.