ORLANDO, Fla. – Traveling this holiday season by plane? Taking off your shoes at the Transportation Security Administration security checkpoint to be X-rayed?
You can thank the failed “shoe bomber” for that ... sort of.
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Hardly a laughing matter, 21 years ago on Thursday, al-Qaida terrorist Richard Reid tried to detonate a homemade bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight in an attempt to kill everyone onboard. The explosive device was hidden in the heels of his shoes.
The subsequent failure of the attack, Reid’s detention, and the unique way in which he smuggled explosives onto the jet led the media to dub Reid “the shoe bomber.” Furthermore, most people believe that Reid’s attempted attack led directly to the screening of shoes at U.S. airports. That’s only partially true, as the security screening was not immediately enforced for everyone but was actually put in place after another high-profile incident.
What exactly happened two decades ago?
On Dec. 22, 2001, American Airlines Flight 63 — a Boeing 767 en route from Paris to Miami — was diverted to Boston Logan International Airport after a passenger tried to detonate a homemade bomb during the flight. According to the FBI and Massachusetts Port Authority spokeswoman Laura White, Reid (identified by his British passport) had a small amount of C-4 in the heel of his shoe and tried to light a protruding fuse.
AA flight attendant Cristina Jones was alerted to the smell of smoke by another flight attendant, Hermis Moutardier. When Jones arrived at Reid’s row, she found him huddled over and trying to light something in his possession. Jones immediately grabbed Reid and tried to yank him up; in response, Reid bit her on the hand. As Jones screamed, passengers in the cabin intervened, subdued Reid, and tied him up with seat belts. Reid was eventually sedated by a doctor traveling on board.
Reid’s “shoe bomb” was not found until a few minutes after the incident. The two pilots initially took the footwear into the cockpit to examine it as they did not realize the shoes, hiking boots, contained a highly explosive material.
Court documents would later reveal Reid lit six matches trying to ignite the bomb.
For two hours and 50 minutes, crew and passengers traveled in fear that Reid might have an accomplice or that the threat of the attempted attack was not over. Jones even walked the aisles barefoot to see if she could sense heat coming from the cargo compartments below the cabin. Flight 63 made an emergency landing at Boston’s Logan Airport. The aircraft was escorted into Logan by U.S. fighter jets.
Besides the severe bite to Jones’ hand, none of the 185 passengers or 11 other crew members was injured.
Reid’s passport was issued in Belgium about two weeks prior to the incident although Reid himself was of Jamaican descent. When he boarded Flight 63, he had no additional identification and no luggage. His original destination was Miami, where he was scheduled to then transfer to another flight to Antigua.
An interesting fact that was later be revealed was that Reid originally tried to get on American Airlines Flight 63 on Dec. 21, 2001, 13 years to the day of the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103. He missed the flight because French authorities questioned him extensively.
Explosives found in heels of Reid’s shoes
Upon examination of the footwear, it was found that small holes had been drilled into the heels of the hiking boots. Massport officials originally said the substance found was consistent with C-4, the same explosive used in the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole. C-4 is a military plastic explosive; the main ingredient is RDX, a substance also used in fireworks.
To detonate a small amount of C-4, one usually needs a blasting cap (acting as the detonating agent), though large amounts of C-4 will explode if burned. Further examination by the FBI, however, found the presence of PETN, a material used to make the explosive Semtex. PETN was the same explosive used to down Pan Am 103; there were about 20 ounces of explosives found in the two boots which, according to the FBI, was enough to blow a hole in the fuselage of the aircraft. Also found in the shoes: the chemical accelerant TATP, frequently used by Palestinian suicide bombers.
In the case of Reid’s “boot bomb,” the TATP was to be used as an igniter to detonate the PETN, a combination of explosives experts had not seen before but one that made sense as the chemicals together would be hard to detect. Authorities believe that Reid couldn’t detonate the explosive because he was using a non-metallic fuse that may have absorbed enough moisture to make it difficult to ignite.
Reid indicted on charges
Reid attended the same mosque in Brixton, England, as Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui was at one time suspected of being the 20th hijacker in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
On Jan. 16, 2002, an 11-page indictment was handed up by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts. Reid was indicted on nine charges, two days later:
- Attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
- Interfering with a flight crew (two counts).
- Attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle.
- Using a destructive device during a crime of violence.
- Attempted homicide of U.S. nationals oversees.
- Placing an explosive device on an aircraft.
- Attempted murder of passengers on an aircraft.
- Attempted destruction of an aircraft.
Reid pleaded not guilty.
Reid changes plea, pledges allegiance to al-Qaida
On Oct. 4, 2002, Richard Reid surprised the court by pledging his allegiance to al-Qaida and changing his plea to guilty to eight of the nine original counts (in June, a judge tossed out the charge of attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle).
“I don’t care,” Reid said in court. “I’m a member of al-Qaida, I pledge to Osama bin Laden and I’m an enemy of your country and I don’t care.”
When entering his plea, Reid said, “Basically I got on the plane with a bomb. Basically I tried to ignite it. Basically, yeah, I intended to damage the plane.” When asked by the judge why he was pleading guilty, Reid sarcastically responded, “Because I know what I’ve done. At the end of the day, I know that I done the actions.”
Reid’s demeanor in the courtroom was cynical, lighthearted, and nothing short of misplaced considering the situation. One headlinefrom The Scotsman described it as the guilty plea from the laughing bomber.
At his sentencing on Jan. 30, 2003, U.S. District Court Judge William Young told Reid, “You are a terrorist and we do not negotiate with terrorists ...We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.” Young added, “You see that flag, Mr. Reid? That’s the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten.”
Reid received three life terms in prison. Young added 80 more years and a $2 million fine.
Another shoe bomber was part of the plan
On Feb. 28, 2005, another al-Qaida operative, Saajid (or Saijd) Badat, pleaded guilty to charges by the British government of conspiring to blow up an aircraft. Badat was indicted earlier by the U.S. Justice Department on Oct. 4, 2004. In unsealed court documents, the U.S. said Badat conspired to destroy an aircraft, conspired to commit homicide and attempted murdering passengers and crew.
Badat was given a second shoe bomb by the same operative who supplied Reid with his device. Authorities later revealed the detonation chord on the shoe bombs of both men came from one source.
The original plan was to have both Badat and Reid blow up planes simultaneously over the Atlantic Ocean, but to be somewhat glib, Badat got cold feet and never took the flight. He dismantled the shoe bomb and kept it hidden for almost two years at his parent’s apartment in Gloucester.
British authorities arrested Badat on Nov. 27, 2003; he was linked to Reid through Nizar Trabelsi, another al-Qaida operative being held by Belgium authorities. Trabelsi was arrested on September 13, 2004. All of the men were part of a British al-Qaida cell run by Djamel Beghal. Beghal was arrested in the UAE and extradited to France in 2001. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2005 but with time served, he was eligible for release in 2011.
On April 22, 2005, British Judge Adrian Fulford sentenced Badat to 13 years in jail. During the sentencing, Fulford said he was being lenient with Badat because Badat had “…a genuine change of heart” when he made the decision not to board a flight between Manchester and Amsterdam and then on to the U.S. Badat’s plan was to detonate his shoe bomb on the Amsterdam-U.S. leg of his flight.
One final note on flight attendant Cristina Jones, the single mother who lived in Safety Harbor at the time: she was publicly honored by President George W. Bush during his State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002 (she and fellow flight attendant Moutardier were both seated in the audience for the speech). Jones, a dual citizen (French and American) was also decorated for valor by the French government and honored by the state of Florida with a “Points of Light” award.
Reid’s shoe bomb attempt was only small part of TSA change
After Reid’s attack was thwarted, the newly formed TSA, which was created about a month before on Nov. 19, 2001, began randomly checking the shoes of passengers at security check points. The new security measure was not uniformly enforced and many people will remember that it was only in place for about 18 months.
But if there was only an 18-month period of random shoe checks, why did the TSA reverse course to the point of airline passengers always taking off shoes at security checkpoints?
On Aug. 10, 2006, almost five years after the failed bombing, the Department of Homeland Security established the new protocol requiring that all passengers boarding flights in the U.S. needed to take off their shoes and have them screened for explosives. The reason? The day before, Aug. 9, 2006, the agency hastily put into place another restriction: the ban on all liquids, gels and aerosols in carry-ons. That ban was in direct response to a massive counter-terrorism operation that thwarted a plot to blow up almost a dozen jetliners over the Atlantic Ocean.
Operation OVERT culminated with the arrests of 24 individuals of which 15 were charged, and eight went to trial. The TSA was so worried about the possibility of explosives getting on to a jetliner, they over-corrected and put in a full ban on liquids in the main cabins. Furthermore, the idea of a copycat shoe bombing attempt was re-visited and, you guessed it, now shoes had to be checked as well. In September 2006, the TSA relaxed the liquids ban resulting in what we have today: the 3-1-1 rule. The shoe check is mostly the same today as it was in 2006.
So that’s how we got to where we are, initially because of Reid, but mostly because of Operation OVERT. Taking off our shoes at the airport has become the new normal for almost everyone traveling on a commercial flight. Exceptions to the rule: security pre-screened passengers with TSA PreCheck, Global Entry, or CLEAR, the elderly (over 75), and children under the age of 12.
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