Jet Searched in L.A. for Missing Explosives

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140503,00.html

Jet Searched in L.A. for Missing Explosives
Saturday, December 04, 2004

PARIS — Police at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives were placed to train bomb-sniffing dogs, police said Saturday. Warned that the bag may have gotten on any of nearly 90 flights from Charles de Gaulle (search), authorities searched planes upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York.

French police said the explosives were harmless and there was no chance of their going off, since no detanators were connected to them.

More than 300 passengers were evacuated and their luggage searched when their Air France flight from Charles de Gaulle arrived in Los Angeles late Friday the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said

Two Air France (search) and one American Airlines (search) flight to Paris were also searched in New York City, TSA spokesman Norm Brewer said. No explosives were found on any of the flights.

French police at Charles de Gaulle deliberately placed up to five ounces of plastic explosives into a passenger's luggage Friday evening, police spokesman Pierre Bouquin said.

But a "momentary lack of surveillance" led to the bag being lost on a conveyor belt carrying luggage from check-in to planes, he said.

Authorities immediately alerted the relevant airlines that one of between 80 and 90 planes that left the French capital from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday could be carrying the explosives, Bouquin said.

Four of the flights were en route to the United States, while others were headed to places like Japan and Brazil, Bouquin said. Some were domestic French flights. The flight searched in Los Angeles was delayed two to three hours before continuing on its next leg to Tahiti in the South Pacific.

"These dogs must be trained in the most realistic situation possible ... to be the most effective," Bouquin said.

"Indeed, it's possible that someone will have a surprise when he opens his bag

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"Somebody is gonna catch hell - and it won't be me." - Anon.

Another good reason to Drive , bad coffee at a diner is one thing....
 
Great, just frelling great..

So the French place some explosives in some hapless passengers bag, then LOST the bag and its cargo of planted explosives. :banghead:

Darn decent of 'em to tell us that they FUBAR'd their training exercise. I hope SOMEBODY is able to find the stuff, and that some innocent traveler is not entangled in terrorism investigations and the like when the explosives are found in their baggage. Explosives placed there by the freaking Authorities
 
Rofl. They put plastique into a passangers bag? I wish I had visited France instead of England last week.

Licorice Allsorts, check; Aero, check; a lump of plastique? oooh christmas is early this year.

Only five ounces tho. Boring.
 
[TSA employee]

" Fred ...sniff, sniff, bite...take a whiff of this , it ain't Bleu Cheese , what is it?...hey you lady with the nail clippers...drop the nail clippers, back away real slow like, whew Fred - we stopped another serious threat to security"
 
Oh I thought we were trying to remove explosives from the luggage, wait, darn, we're planting it :what:

Wait, we FUBAR'd.

"Yo mamma so tactical, she give her science class C4 instead of modeling clay" :what: :what:

Wrong type of spark...*BLAM* :what:
 
Planting explosives in passengers' bags, eh? Well, apart from the obvious problem (this one), let's consider some others:

Did the passenger consent to be a part of your little exercise? I rather doubt it. Bags may be subject to search, but I don't recall seeing any signs to the effect of "subject to search, or we can 'borrow' them to train our dogs." And I'm usually pretty observant at the airport.

Even if the explosives are removed, is any residue left (answer: almost certainly). Next time I fly, and they run the funny little wand over my bags, am I going to get flagged as having a bomb? Do you really think that Security Officer Schmuckatelli is going to believe that I don't know why my bag has plastique on it, or that "the French planted it there!" Somehow, I don't. Helllooooo, Club Fed!
 
Flyboy, exactly what I was thinking.

Were the agents who planted the explosives too stupid to write down the description of the bag they were using? How long does it take to write down the size, color, and name of the owner of the bag?
 
If this is even a rare practice method, then in the future a lot of passengers bags will soon screen positive, won't they.
They could only narrow it down to 80-90 flights?
How about pushing that big red emergency stop button on the conveyor and sending the dog down the line?
Hold a few planes currently loading in that terminal?
No, we are French and we will have 90 planes inspected later!
 
No search dog could ever sniff out explosives in French luggage. Between the stinky cheese and the lack of personal hygiene the stench would be overwhelming. What were they thinking? Maybe the explosives were only hidden in American tourists' luggage. For that matter, what are 'harmless explosives" anyway?
 
This is such a 'dim bulb' idea on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin.....

But yeah, take down a description of the bag you 'loaded'. A quick peek at the claim check tag would do.

As Bugs Bunny would say..."What an ultra-maroon."
 
About the only thing I can think of that would be more stupid than that would be to turn off all the safety systems on a nuclear reactor in order to test the safety systems. :eek:
 
Our airlines are missing a great oppertunity to increase profits. Imagine how many more of us would fly if there was a chance that when we got home and unpacked the TSA would have gifted us a box of ammo or a nice knife. ;)
 
Might this fiasco, the one started in France, possibly be described as something along the lines of that proverbial POOCH SCREW? I wonder.
 
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