Police: NYC couple had 'Terrorist Encyclopedia'
Source: AP-Timesunion.com
By LARRY NEUMEISTER and COLLEEN LONG
NEW YORK (AP) A woman who gave birth under arrest and her boyfriend were facing weapons charges Monday after authorities said they found a substance used to make bombs and papers titled "The Terrorist Encyclopedia" in their apartment in a picturesque Manhattan neighborhood.
Morgan Gliedman, the 27-year-old daughter of a prominent New York City physician, and Aaron Greene, 31, were arrested Saturday after officers with a search warrant discovered a plastic container with 7 grams of HMTD, a highly explosive white powder used in bomb making, police and prosecutors said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Monday the substance was powerful, but it was difficult to speculate how much damage it would do in that amount.
Also found in the living room were numerous written items containing instructions on the manufacture of explosive materials and bombs, including a collection of pages that had a cover page entitled "The Terrorist Encyclopedia" and a booklet entitled "Deadly Homemade Weapons," court papers said. No political writings were discovered, and Kelly said the investigation was continuing into whether the couple had any larger plans or ties to any radical groups. They didn't show up on any watch lists.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/news/crime/article/Police-NYC-couple-had-Terrorist-Encyclopedia-4157356.php
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)about low level explosives. He wasn't a terrorist, just a little punker. I can't get too up in arms about people who have information about how to do nefarious shit. The container containing the explosives seems a lot more dangerous to me.
Proletariatprincess
(718 posts)..and how can we be sure any of this is true. As soon as I see the word Terrorist or terrorism in the corporate media, I tend to discount the article.
robthomaseyes1
(2 posts)First of all, the cops were "tipped off" by a random couple they met in a park last month. Gliedman and Greene supposedly took two strangers back to their apartment where there was a cache of weapons, bombs, explosives and "terrorist training manuals" just lying around? Are you kidding? To top it off, cops found two manuals with such cartoonish and convenient titles as "The Terrorist Encyclopedia" and "Homemade Weapons"? Give me a break! This is a classic frameup and a really transparent one at that. Sure, two strangers are going to invite you back to their apartment where there are explosives and grenade launchers just casually lying around the living room, along with a "terrorist training manual", and you would wait weeks to say anything? lmao. come on.
daleo
(21,317 posts)I guess one would have to see the totality of the evidence.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)Or perhaps it doesn't make you blink, but I think a jury will find it quite convincing.
When you've got explosive materials, bomb-making manuals, ingredients to manufacture more explosive materials, and a grenade launcher with ammo, MOST jurors would consider that the prosecution has a pretty strong case.
Angleae
(4,500 posts)The article states it was a replica and most GL replicas use flares and cannot use grenades.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)You pack your own missiles with explosives and launch them with the grenade launcher.
Soooooo sweeeeet.
Ashgrey77
(236 posts)It would be more likely he would have blown his hand off if he had tried that.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)or exaggerated bullshit.
I find the cops often screw back on their initial reports of finding arsenals. In such cases the arsenal hits the front page, the correction will be buried with the comics.
Tempest
(14,591 posts)Practically required reading for college students in the 60's, 70's and 80's.
I still own a copy of The Poor Man's James Bond I bought while in college in the 70s.
Ashgrey77
(236 posts)I still have a digital copy of the AC somewhere on a old hard drive. There were more than those two as well, there were several Poor Man's James Bond editions, improvised weapons books, books on traps, special forces handbooks, improvised explosives, etc. You could mail order them back then out of magazines and catalogs. You basically still can, they just got rid of "most" of the books that had improvised explosives in them. The funniest thing about all of it is I've known people over the years that are living Anarchist's Cookbooks, they never needed any of those books, they were taught how to make explosives by their fathers, by the military, or by the commercial sector.
Tempest
(14,591 posts)Nothing was taboo as far as they were concerned. There was even a porno section, which saw a lot of use (but not by me).
formercia
(18,479 posts)But thousands of innocent civilians are, for nothing more than protesting with OWS.
Kennah
(14,352 posts)happyslug
(14,779 posts)Metric Conversions:
http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/grams-to-ounces.htm
More on HMTD orHexamethylene triperoxide diamine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexamethylene_triperoxide_diamine
Despite no longer being used in any official application, and despite its shock-sensitivity, HMTD remains a common home-made explosive and has been used in a large number of suicide bombings throughout the world, and was possibly used in the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Bristol student Isa Ibrahim was charged for possession of HMTD. The New York Times reported it as the planned explosive in the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot.
Wikipedia then goes on to add the above arrest. A 1/4 of a ounce of HMTD can still do a lot of damage (and is illegal in any quantity), but that is still a very small amount of explosive.
To give you a better idea of the amount we are talking about, let me point out that 7 Grams equal 108 grains (Grains is the English measure for small items, in everything other then firearms, people use Grams, but in Firearms a lot of people still use grains).
Gram to Grain conversion:
http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/grams-to-grains.htm
A typical 30 06 round uses about 46 grains of powder:
http://www.reloadammo.com/3006load.htm
A 50 Caliber Browning Machine Gun Round uses 15-16 grams or 220-250 grains of powder:
http://www.lapua.com/upload/downloads/brochures/2011/vihtavuorireloadingguideed9eng.pdf
Thus this is over twice the amount of powder used in a 30 '06 round but 1/2 the powder used in a .50 caliber round.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)When I saw that the NYPD said that it's "difficult to speculate", I headed over to Youtube. If you want to find a video of someone blowing something up, that's your place to go.
Here's a video of someone using 8.5 grams of HMTD to blow up some trash. It would probably take your hand off, but doesn't look any more energetic than a large firecracker (M80):
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)nt
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)It used to be common in blasting caps.
If someone's using it, they're planning on setting off a much bigger bomb.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)Before we know it, they will have library technology.
yellowcanine
(35,703 posts)This is useful information the MSM never talks about in these stories.
Bucky
(54,087 posts)You can have my HMTD when you pry it out of my cold dead hand--you know, the one over on the other side of the tarmac.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)"The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion occurred on March 6, 1970, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. It was caused by the premature detonation of a bomb that was being assembled by members of the American radical left group, the Weather Underground. The bomb was under construction in the basement of 18 West 11th Street when it accidentally exploded the blast reduced the four-story townhouse to a burning rubble-strewn ruin. Three persons preparing the bomb were killed instantly, and two others were injured but escaped from the scene"
Shortly before noon on Friday, March 6, 1970, people in the townhouse were assembling nail bombs packed with dynamite and roofing nails. Former members of Weatherman later advanced differing claims as to the planned uses of the bombs. According to Mark Rudd, the plan was to set them off that evening at a dance for noncommissioned officers and their dates at the Fort Dix, New Jersey Army base, to "bring the [Vietnam] war home". Other reports say that some were destined for the Fort Dix dance and some were to destroy the main library at Columbia University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village_townhouse_explosion