Bus Depot Explosives Probed
Authorities tried to track the origin Saturday of a third of a pound of C-4 plastic explosive and 1,000 feet of blasting cord found in an unclaimed suitcase at a bus depot.
Buses came and went as usual Saturday at the Greyhound station, which had been shut down for four hours after the military-grade explosive was discovered Friday afternoon. FBI and ATF agents and Philadelphia police were investigating but had not made any arrests.
"We're going to look for the source of it and see where it takes us," said Linda Vizi, spokeswoman for the FBI.
The C-4 explosive — the kind used in last year's attack on the USS Cole — and the 1,000 feet of green blasting cord would have been enough to level the bus depot if they had exploded, police said.
The locker's electronic records indicated the bag was left at 2:43 a.m. on Sept. 29, a Saturday, according to Police Commissioner John F. Timoney.
As is normal with items left in lockers beyond the 48-hour rental limit, the suitcase was removed from the locker by a station employee on Oct. 3 and placed in a storage closet. The suitcase was not opened until Friday, police said.
Investigators said they would examine video surveillance tape from the depot in hopes of finding the person who rented the locker.
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms spokesman Darrell O'Connor said all C-4 manufactured in the United States contains tracing elements that can identify where it was made and who last possessed it legally.
O'Connor said he was unsure how quickly agents would be able to make a match.
"It is one of those things that could happen right away, or it could take a few days, depending on how much identifier we were able to recover." he said.
He said both the blasting cord and C-4 were of commercial quality and not homemade.
Police said a worker who sorts through unclaimed luggage to give clothing to homeless organizations discovered the puttylike material wrapped in plastic garbage bags inside the suitcase. It lacked a detonation device, allowing police to remove the material and begin searching for the person who left it there, police said.
Stephen Gale, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies terrorism, said the amount of cord made him suspect that someone was stashing the explosive at the bus depot until it could be used somewhere else.
"That's the weird part, 1,000 feet of primer cord is a whole spool," Gale said. "You don't need it for a third of a pound, you don't need much at all, certainly not for one detonation job.
"My first instinct is that someone was transporting it somewhere else and there is a whole load of additional C-4 around," Gale said.
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