Don’t Rule Out Iran Role, Experts Warn

Although terrorists operating out of the Middle East most commonly use more powerful explosives, the possibility that the pipe bomb attack on Sharon Rogers was ordered by Iran cannot be dismissed, terrorism experts said Friday.

“I would expect the Iranians to come better equipped, but it’s not unheard of for terrorists to use pipe bombs,” said John Ruggie, an international relations professor at UC San Diego. “One example is the attack on U.S. servicemen in Germany.”

Ruggie said there has also been a trend among international terrorists to shift away from dynamite or plastic explosives to avoid leaving clues that could lead to their detection.

“The Iranians could be using something other than what they’ve used in the past to make us think it wasn’t them,” said Ruggie, who has worked as a consultant on terrorism and low-intensity conflict for the federal government and the United Nations.

G. Allen Greb, associate director of UC San Diego’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, agreed. “It might be a group trying to cover its tracks by using a cruder device than they would have preferred,” he said.

Bruce Hoffman, a specialist on Middle East terrorism for the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, said he has interviewed terrorists trained in Lebanon who say they are specifically ordered to use low-intensity explosives like pipe bombs when hitting targets abroad.

“For one thing, these kinds of materials are easily obtained near the victim, rather than having to be smuggled in,” he said. And, he noted, the Iranians have a history of trying to avoid detection for assassinations, as was the case in 1980, when a black Muslim was hired to murder then-Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s former press attache in Washington.

Pipe bombs are also the weapon of choice for domestic radical groups that might have sympathy with Iran, Hoffman said.

In the past, groups like Puerto Rican separatists, the Weather Underground, anti-Castro Cubans, Armenian nationalists, Croatian liberationists and white supremacists have used pipe bombs, he said.

“Remember that while a pipe bomb isn’t terribly powerful, as bombs go, it can be very sophisticated, placed near a gas tank for a secondary explosion and using a timing device,” Hoffman said.

In San Diego County, for example, a pipe bomb with a timer destroyed an Encinitas restaurant in 1982. Pipe bombs with timers have been found in automobiles. Just a few weeks ago, a pipe bomb was discovered strapped to a car in El Cajon, set to explode when the driver used his right turn signal.

Easy and cheap to assemble, pipe bombs are the most common kind of illicit explosive used in the United States. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says pipe bomb devices constituted up to 60% of the 900-plus bombings in the United States last year.

Pipe bombs were used in attempts in 1987 to destroy several San Diego County abortion clinics. The bombs were to be detonated by candles acting as crude timing devices.

Organized crime hit men are thought by authorities to favor heavier firepower like dynamite in order to inflict greater property damage and take fewer chances of the victim surviving. The fatal bombing of Arizona newsman Don Bolles in 1976, done in retaliation for his probes of organized crime, was accomplished by dynamite.

“Kids use pipe bombs, amateurs use pipe bombs, guys with grudges use pipe bombs,” said Sgt. Conrad Grayson of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department arson and explosives unit. “Professionals use dynamite or, if they can get it, plastic explosives.”

Plastic explosive is the most deadly but also the most difficult to obtain. It is illegal for civilian use and must be stolen from the military or bought on the black market.

“We’ve had young servicemen willing to sell some for dope,” Grayson said.

A pipe bomb is simply a small length of pipe--plastic or metal--with either black powder or smokeless powder, both commercially available, inside. The pipe is capped on both ends, with a fuse or timer on one end.

Once detonated, the powder burns slowly before exploding. The explosion sends hot shrapnel in all directions at three times the speed of a .38-caliber bullet. A vacuum is created, and windows blow outward; people are knocked to the ground.

Pipe bombs have been placed near jars of gasoline to create a secondary explosion, Grayson said. Without that secondary explosion, however, pipe bombs are not particularly destructive as bombs go, he said.

“I’ve talked to people who’ve just had their hands blown off by a pipe bomb but are still talking,” Grayson said. “If dynamite or plastic explosive goes off near you, you just vaporize; the skin is ripped from your bones.”