>> NARRATOR: They've been in use
for over 3,000 years, but they're no longer only in
physical space. They're in cyberspace as well.
They're crafted with sophistication or simplicity.
But make no mistake-- using one today buys you a one-
way ticket to the penitentiary. Now, "Booby Traps" on<i> Modern
Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00">Captioning sponsored by
A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> >> HARRY GILBERT: The explosion
ripped through the mezzanine floor which houses the executive
suites where the bomb was discovered early yesterday
morning. >> KEVIN TOMICH: The FBI
continue to keep this area around Kazinsky's cabin
cordoned off from the press. They refuse to deny or confirm
reports that there was an explosion in this area earlier
this morning. >> TOM ELSER: The elderly woman
who opened the mailbox told her husband that the bomb looked
like a flashlight. It blew up when she touched it.
>> NARRATOR: Each of these stories is a little different.
Yet each shares one thing in common-- the victims never saw
it coming. A booby trap is an explosive or
mechanical trap that is designed to appear totally innocent.
But when it is moved or touched by an unwary person, it suddenly
goes off. >> CAPTAIN BEN CACIOPPO:
Anything at all can be booby trapped, or booby traps can be
fabricated from just about anything that you can get your
hands on. >> NARRATOR: Dynamite wired to
a car's ignition. As the key is turned, it
ignites. A shotgun hooked up
to a doorknob. When the door opens,
it goes off. Even a water faucet rigged so
when it is turned on, an entire house explodes.
>> CACIOPPO: The bottom line is there's a lot of bad people
out there with very vivid imaginations.
>> NARRATOR: Most booby traps are meant to kill or seriously
injure their intended victims. Others are designed to harass
and intimidate. But whatever their purpose, they
are showing up more and more, not only on faraway
battlefields, but on our streets and in
our workplaces... even in our homes.
>> STAN MATHIASEN: The motives are almost endless: revenge,
love triangles, property protection, homicide, extortion,
drug dealing... You name it, it runs the gamut.
>> NARRATOR: According to the latest figures fro
the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or ATF,
there has been a record number of bombings or attempted
bombings recorded in the United States since 1993.
That number exceeded 8,000. Ten to 15 percent were directly
related to booby trap incidents. ease.number is expected to
>> TONY JONES: I believe the use of booby traps in the future is
going to continue to climb. There are so many wayst yo
n devise a booby trap around >> NARRATOR: The fact that there
is such easy access to informiling the ins
and outs of tr ns isn't helping.
>> MATHIASEN: There's a lot of publications and manuals out
there put out by variouss well as clandestine-type publicationsat
wia Inte form wn
le aerti xp des, ki
>> NARRATOR: In the make- believe world of video games and
actionies, booby traps are edge-of-the-seat thrillers.
Audiences are delighted with the unique devices set up to protect
the mummified remains of an Egyptian pharaoh and the rich
treasures hidden alongside his corpse.
In reality, the ancient Egyptians used booby traps
sparingly. The pharaoh's builders
camouflaged the entrances to their tombs with rocks and
debris, and carved curses into the entrances and on the walls
metimes some of them would end
So wouldem
Some of these corridors were blocked with huge stones that
slid into place when the tomb was sealed.
>> NARRATOR: But for a select number of tombs, ancient
engineers employed several ingenious devices to send a
crystal clear message to the r.
SILVERMANOnof tio ways of making a booby trap
would be to have rocks fall on someone.
And even though the Egyptians didn't do that very often, we do
have a couple of examples of it occurring.
>> NARRATOR: A popular trap was the man-burying booby trap.
A large funnel was hollowed out in the ceiling of the corridor
that led to the burial chamber. The funnel was then filled with
rocks and sand. A large blocking stone was then
rolled in under the shaft. A robber trying to dig around
the blocking stone would trigger the sticks holding the funnel
together, collapsing the entire thing and burying the thief
alive. >> SILVERMAN: In the tomb that
we were working on a few years ago, we ran across exactly the
same thing and the remnants of that funnel actually did come
down at one point. And we had to evacuate the tomb
very, very quickly. >> NARRATOR: Tomb builders also
liked digging "bottomless" pits hidden under camouflaged covers.
A single, careless step would send unsuspecting intruders
plummeting through a false floor and into a dark abyss.
>> SILVERMAN: The deeper ones of these, of course, they would
never be able to scale their way out of.
>> NARRATOR: There is some evidence that suggests poisonous
powders were spread around the burial chamber's floor.
When an intruder entered, the powders were released into the
air and inhaled. In fact, a poisonous substance
was unleashed in a tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Golden
Mummies in September 2000. As archeologist Zahi Hawass and
his team entered the main burial chamber, without realizing it,
they stepped into a two-foot layer of yellow powder sending
it airborne. The team became ill almost
instantly and was forced to evacuate.
20 workers wearing gas masks labored for two weeks to remove
the mysterious substance later identified as tainted iron
oxide. But was it a booby trap?
>> SILVERMAN: The only question, of course, is whether this
material was put there by the Egyptians.
There is indication that in some of the tombs, there is lethal
bacteria and molds that have come on the walls.
Aspergillus is one of them that has been recognized.
>> NARRATOR: Over 4,000 miles east of Egypt's Valley of the
Golden Mummies lay the ruins of one of the greatest discoveries
of all time. It is here that archeologists
struggle with a far more deadly puzzle.
100,000 slaves toiled for 36 years to build the mausoleum of
the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang.
It covered ten square miles and was buried 15 stories
underground. For two millennia, an army of
8,000 life-sized terra-cotta soldiers and horses kept watch
over his complex burial site. According to folklore, scores of
booby traps wait in silence as well.
>> DR. RON EGAN: By popular myth and legend, the tomb is
protected by an elaborate system of crossbows and other weapons
waiting to be discharged at any potential grave robber.
There are also supposed to be large ponds or even rivers of
mercury placed inside the tomb for its noxious fumes which
would theoretically overcome any intruder.
>> NARRATOR: Today, most of the site has yet to be excavated.
One of the reasons is that Chinese archeologists and their
workers believe that crossbows do exist.
They are proceeding slowly, with great caution, so as not to
become modern victims of the Chinese emperor's ancient booby
traps. Early engineers had managed to
turn the art of protecting burial grounds and tombs into a
deadly science. But it would take ancient armies
and military geniuses to transform booby traps from
guardians of the dead to weapons of war.
It was on the battlefields of North Africa, Greece and the
ancient near east that military geniuses, like Alexander the
Great and Julius Caesar, first discovered the tactical
significance of booby traps. By setting up hidden snares and
traps, they realized they could injure or kill unsuspecting
enemies without exposing their own troops to danger.
Early on, commanders favored camouflaged pits deep enough to
hold razor-sharp spears angled to impale the foe.
>> DR. WILLIAM ATWATER: The other thing was a caltrop, which
was a sharpened, triangular piece of metal that could be
thrown out in front, so that the enemy would run over it with
their horses, but it could also be used as an anti-infantry
weapon. >> NARRATOR: Julius Caesar used
caltrops during the Battle of Alesia in 52 BC.
As his legions seemed headed for defeat, Caesar ordered hundreds
of caltrops to be strategically positioned on the ground in
front of his defenses. As wave after wave of the Gallic
cavalry charged his line, his hidden booby traps tore at the
hooves of the attacking army's horses, slowing down their
assault. Military historians believe it
was this strategy that helped Julius Caesar to turn a losing
battle into a victory. (<i> sirens</i> )
Not surprisingly, today there is a modern version of the ancient
caltrop-- the road spikes used by police officers in pursuit
of a suspect fleeing in a vehicle.
>> MATHIASEN: The spikes are made in a certain way that
they'll always be upright. And when the bad guy runs over
it, and flattens all four tires and hopefully stops the pursuit.
>> NARRATOR: The invention of gunpowder in Asia during the
12th century vastly increased the potential for carnage on the
battlefield. As a result, gunpowder soon
became a staple ingredient in the manufacture of booby traps.
In Europe during the Middle Ages, warring kings and
landowners protected the length and breadth of their estate's
boundaries by laying trip wires connected to containers packed
with explosives, nails and broken glass.
During the American Civil War it was soldiers on both sides who
took booby trapping to a new level of sophistication.
>> JONES: We have a pistol barrel, a lock work off
a regular percussion type weapons system,
and a trigger. And as the triggering mechanism
is disturbed, the safety bar would fall free, the locking
mechanism would trip forward, and bang, they have
their man. >> NARRATOR: They connected
their devices to everyday objects like a spoon or a
jackknife. The items were left behind when
they moved out of the area. The booby traps were literally
hidden in plain sight. When the enemy entered the
abandoned camp and picked up the harmless-looking spoon or knife,
the booby trap would detonate. By the time World War I began in
1914, the machine gun and artillery were the dominant
weapons on the battlefield. The use of this hardware made
free movement impossible. So both sides adopted trench
warfare. But as the American, French and
British forces attempted to storm the German trenches, they
found that yet another deadly weapon awaited them.
>> ATWATER: The Germans got very good at booby-trapping devices
like trip wires across the entrances of dugouts
so that if you entered a dugout, you'd hit the trip wire, it
would explode. They also got very good at booby
trapping a helmet, or a Luger pistol.
Because everybody wants a souvenir.
So, these things were rigged in such a way that if you moved
them, they would explode. >> NARRATOR: During World War II
the art and science of the military booby trap exploded--
literally and figuratively. There is a combination of ways
that a booby trap can be triggered.
>> ATWATER: One way is pressure. And then any pressure on this
would crush the exploder and it would go off.
You could also rig this up as a trip wire.
So that when you pull this, it would go off.
You could make this also with a tension release device so that
if you cut the wire it would also go off.
>> NARRATOR: German soldiers planted booby traps along roads
and in fields to catch the unsuspecting or the inquisitive.
Allied soldiers, landing on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day,
met anti-tank barriers that were rigged to explode if moved.
As the Allies pushed farther inland, they found that the
Germans had laid trip wires attached to explosives across
doorways and staircases, or attached to doors, cupboards and
windows. >> ATWATER: Soldiers don't go
through doors, they go through the windows.
And you would smash a window in with your rifle butt.
And when you smashed it, it would set the explosive off.
>> NARRATOR: In late 1944, during their drive across
northwestern Europe, Allied forces came across an abandoned
German headquarters. No mines or booby traps were
found. But when a soldier urinated
against the building wall, an electrical connection made by
the urine set-off a booby trap that destroyed that building.
The Japanese planted a substantial number of booby
traps against the Allies, using them in the jungles, along
beaches, anywhere they figured they could fool an unsuspecting
or curious GI. They often booby-trapped
desirable objects such as food and sake, or war souvenirs, like
rifles and helmets. Desperate to get in the last
punch, they even booby-trapped the bodies of their own dead or
wounded soldiers. >> ATWATER: You did not want to
disturb a Japanese body in World War II.
There was the pressured-release device where if you moved the
body, the pressure would be released and an explosive device
would go off. >> NARRATOR: But the use of
booby traps on the American side was limited.
Amazingly, it took permission from a three-star general for an
American solider to set up a trap.
During the Indochina Wars, it was the Vietcong who were
unmatched for ingenuity and deadly effectiveness with booby
traps. They improvised mines out of any
explosives they could find. Packing them into seemingly
harmless objects-- fruit hanging from a tree, a pile of buffalo
dung, even an empty ginger jar. >> ATWATER: When I was in
Vietnam, the most common booby trap that we ran into was
nothing more than a tin can with a hand grenade stuck in there
with a trip wire across the trail.
You'd come along, you'd trip the wire, pull the hand grenade out
of the tin can and it would explode.
>> NARRATOR: A centuries-old favorite of the Vietcong was
the punji pit. Various size pits were dug.
Sharpened bamboo was then planted upward at the bottom of
the pit. Most were just large enough to
impale a victim's foot. A few were big enough to swallow
a man. Another ingeniously arranged
trap was the bamboo whip. A green bamboo pole with spikes
attached to an end was pulled back and held by a catch device.
When the trip wire stretched across the trail was triggered,
the whip would snap back, impaling who ever set it off.
In the 1990s, during the civil wars throughout Bosnia, Croatia
and Kosovo, the Serbs made extensive use of indiscriminate
mine-laying and booby-trapping. Their intention was to terrorize
and thereby control the civilian population.
Booby-trapped mines were placed in residential rubble to prevent
anyone from rebuilding a house. The booby traps were rigged to
everyday objects in and around houses and farms, doors, light
switches, even televisions. >> CAPT. NICOLE DUBE: Grenades
were typically employed as booby traps.
They would remove the pin and the safety from a hand grenade
and they would slip it into a glass or a jar, something that
would hold the spoon in place. And then they would place it
very precariously on a door handle.
When you would have someone walk into a room, and they would turn
the door handle, the glass would fall and break.
And then the grenade detonates as the person is walking into
the room. >> NARRATOR: One very complex
booby trap consisted of a pile of explosives, hidden in the
attic of a house, then linked by an elaborate wiring system to
the kitchen faucet. Anyone who turned on the tap for
a drink of water would close the electric circuit, setting off a
fatal explosion. But soon, booby trapping would
reach a whole new level of destruction turning an entire
town into a single, massive trap.
It was dawn when the Israeli Army entered the Palestinian
town of Jenin and the nearby refugee camp in March, 2002.
What they found shocked them-- more booby traps per square inch
than was ever discovered in one location.
Some of the booby trapped bombs were huge-- containing as much
as 250 pounds of explosives. Compare this with a typical
suicide bomber whose explosive content is a mere 25 pounds.
Israeli bulldozers rolled along the principal roads leading into
Jenin, clearing booby traps along the way.
In one three-quarter-mile stretch of road, 124 separate
booby traps were found and detonated.
In the refugee camp, the explosive charges were even more
densely packed. Over three days, 23 Israeli
soldiers and 52 Palestinians were killed, many by rubble from
the exploding booby traps and mines with which Palestinian
fighters had honeycombed the camp.
Some of the bombs they found were land mines.
Others were land mines made into booby traps.
>> ATWATER: Improvising a mine for the explosive content is
really good, because you have a large explosive ready to go
right there. >> NARRATOR: The mechanical
differences between booby traps and land mines are few.
Both use the same type of firing devices and explosive-laden
containers. The differences are in their
purpose. Land mines are designed to be
positioned solely in the ground. In this way, they serve their
primary purpose-- to slow down an enemy's advance.
A booby trap, however, can be anywhere.
And it is usually disguised to look like an innocent object.
Even as a soldier successfully scans the ground for land mines,
the possibility of detonating a booby trap exists everywhere--
all around him. It is a constant, relentless,
unforgiving threat. In this way, the booby trap
serves it's purpose-- to create doubt by amping up the stress
level. >> DUBE: The booby trap makes
its money on catching the enemy unaware...
And it really has that psychological impact on his
morale. >> NARRATOR: The fact that booby
traps are so hard to detect makes them a truly sinister tool
of destruction and terror. American forces in Afghanistan
were in constant danger of detonating booby traps.
Most Al-Qaeda caves or weapons cache sites were loaded with
them. When a soldier or a marine did
find a booby trap, his standing order was to let the explosive
ordinance disposal-- or EOD personnel deal with it.
>> ATWATER: The reason the EOD people went in to try to take
care of that was there was a possibility that there were also
documents in there. Anything that could be used as
evidence and possible indicators as to what Al Qaeda might do
then, and in the future. >> NARRATOR: Once a cave had
been cleared, it was demolished. >> Today we're going to talk
about some mines that can be booby-trapped.
>> NARRATOR: This group is currently being trained to
detect a variety of the latest booby traps-- those manufactured
by the military and those that are improvised by terrorists
and guerrillas. >> The way it's used as a booby
trap is there's going to be a trip wire or pressure function.
>> DUBE: We teach marines that there exists the possibility
that every obstacle is booby- trapped.
>> Sergeant Osborne, hand me that mine.
It's that easy. You go home in a plastic bag.
Notice, I didn't say a body bag. A plastic bag.
That's all that's going to be left.
>> NARRATOR: How they handle a booby trap depends largely upon
how much damage they can accept in the vicinity of the trap.
>> DUBE: If damage is unacceptable, for example if
you're working in the building, mark the booby trap and request
some assistance from explosive ordinance disposal personnel or
some combat engineers. If you can accept a certain
degree of damage to the area that you're operating in, the
preferred method is to detonate the booby trap in place.
>> NARRATOR: To help insure their safety, the marine EOD
personnel often rely on tools, like this remotely controlled
robot called Andros. >> SERGEANT MICHAEL SHUFF: We
can use it to recon the suspect item, and if it is a bomb or a
booby trap, we can use this device also to disarm or disrupt
or even x-ray or move the device.
I've got three different video cameras on board.
This is my forward looking camera.
This is a side view camera. It has pan, tilt and zoom
features in it. This is my bottom view camera.
It's got all the basic features of a regular arm.
It's got a shoulder, a wrist, an elbow.
It's got a gripper that acts like a hand.
I can open and close the gripper.
The wrist turns 360 degrees. As long as I can reach it, which
usually is about seven feet, I can do anything I want with it.
>> NARRATOR: But remote control robots like the Andros were not
available to military EOD during the war in Somalia, in 1993.
Disarming the improvised booby traps had to be done carefully--
the old-fashioned way. >> CACIOPPO: In Somalia, we
encountered booby traps almost on a daily basis.
They would use very simple booby traps-- things like hand
grenades under rocks, hand grenades wedged between
doorways. >> NARRATOR: Somalian warlords
and their hired thugs seldom used booby traps in a military
sense. They did use them to terrorize
and then to extort money from their own countrymen.
>> CACIOPPO: There were two or three well stations in the city.
People would take a land mine, put a hand grenade underneath of
it, and they'd make it readily obvious that you could see it.
>> NARRATOR: The warlords created visible booby trap mazes
around the wells, then stood with their guns poised, and
their open hands outstretched, ready to take payment for
leading thirsty Somalis safely through the maze to the well.
>> CACIOPPO: We would work on a daily basis to go out and clear
some of these booby trapped items.
>> NARRATOR: Extortion isn't the only motive for the bad guys
setting booby traps. Some of the most famous mad-
bombers were just that-- madmen. New York City in the mid-20th
century. World-famous for its fast pace,
sophistication and glamour, but lurking just beneath the
surface, there was a feeling of uneasiness.
For 16 years, an anonymous crackpot secretly planted booby
traps in public places. New Yorkers nervously referred
to him as the "Mad Bomber." He planted 32 bombs in all--
from 1940 until 1956. One was attached to a seat in a
movie theater. 22 people were wounded, many
critically. The Bomber's anger appeared to
be directed at the city's power company, to which he sent a
letter that read, "I can make the Con Edison sorry."
>> CLINTON VAN ZANDT: When we look at profiles of bombers,
normally we're looking at someone who is angry, but it's
also one who is focused. Uh, the bomb itself gives him an
outlet for his anger, for his frustration, and it gives him
the ability to strike out at society.
>> NARRATOR: The serial bomber turned out to be a polite, well-
dressed but delusional fellow by the name of George Metesky.
Metesky built his booby traps in the garage of the apartment he
shared with his two unmarried sisters, in Waterbury,
Connecticut. His bombs were handmade, out of
corrugated pipe, gunpowder and a trigger mechanism.
Ted Kaczynski, the man known as the Unabomber, may have been
inspired by New York's Mad Bomber.
>> VAN ZANDT: On some level, he was probably impacted by Metesky
and other bombers and developed his deadly activities along the
same lines that had happened nearly half a century before.
>> NARRATOR: Kaczynski had a gripe against anyone he believed
was corrupting the environment with modern technology.
Among his targets were airlines, universities, and manufacturers.
>> VAN ZANDT: This was a case that ran approximately 18 years,
with a series of bombings all across the United States.
>> NARRATOR: Kaczynski was able to stay one step ahead of his
relentless pursuers, because, like George Metesky, his booby
traps also were handmade. In an isolated cabin in Montana
with no electricity, Kaczynski carefully crafted his bomb parts
from pieces of mahogany and other hardwoods used in
furniture. One bomb contained a twig from a
cherry tree. >> VAN ZANDT: Even the screws
that were used to put it together, uh, he had crafted
from hand. They were a labor of absolute
love for him. >> NARRATOR: Three people who
opened Kaczynski's plain- wrapped, homemade wooden boxes
were killed. Another 23 were wounded.
>> MAN: Ted, did you do it? >> NARRATOR: The victims of the
most recent serial bomber were ordinary citizens living the
quiet life in America's heartland.
Their terror lasted for one week in May, 2002.
>> REPORTER: The scare started on Friday when eight pipe bombs
were found in Illinois and eastern Iowa.
The FBI said six people were hurt by those bombs, including
four postal workers. >> MAN 1: You'd think out here
in rural Nebraska it's not going to happen.
>> MAN 2: Why they picked our road, why, I have no idea.
>> VAN ZANDT: One more time it appeared to be random bombings
without purpose, and the authorities were forced to
consider anything from members of militia groups to
international terrorists to high school kids with bombs.
>> NARRATOR: A nationwide manhunt resulted in the arrest
of Luke Helder, a 21-year-old industrial design student.
He said he planted booby traps because he didn't like the way
the government created laws that he felt manipulated lives.
Buying the parts to put his booby traps together was easy.
>> VAN ZANDT: Luke Helder, like so many other makers of booby
traps, was able to purchase all of the components for his deadly
devices simply by going to local stores, and purchasing over the
counter the supplies, the equipment that he needed.
There was no license, there was no identity check.
>> NARRATOR: He told authorities the placement of the bombs in
mailboxes across the country was to create a smiley face on the
U.S. map. Reports of booby traps killing
or injuring victims has increased 60% over the past
decade. Surprisingly, most were guarding
pot farms or meth labs from thieves and police.
Many marijuana farms, especially in the western U.S., rely on
well-placed booby traps for protection.
>> JONES: One of the most common and more deadly booby traps that
we find around marijuana patches is the shotgun type trap.
It's made out of a common rat trap, wood, and a three-quarter-
inch diameter plumbing pipe. What the booby trapper does is
insert the shotgun shell into the plumbing pipe, finds a
suitable support, like this stump, attaches the wood to the
stump, brings the bail around. The unsuspecting officer comes
down the trail, hits the wire, causes the pin to slip out, and
it fires the device. >> NARRATOR: Less deadly but
exceptionally painful are booby traps designed to harass law
enforcement or intimidate thieves wanting to steal the
marijuana plants. >> MATHIASEN: One thing we'll
typically see is either single- or double-edged razor blades
which are placed down in the stalk of a marijuana plant.
It deters people from just reaching in and grabbing the
plant and pulling it out, because they're going to get cut
if they don't know it's there. >> NARRATOR: There's another
painful, non-lethal trap out there that tears at the face.
>> MATHIASEN: It's just a simple fish hook with fishing line
attached to it. You can see it's very, very
sharp on the end-- it has barbs. Where we'll typically find these
is hanging on small branches. When you walk through here,
they're going to either snag in your eye, in your cheek, your
scalp, or somewhere along in your head area, and with the
barbs on them, they're not going to come out very easily.
>> NARRATOR: Meth labs rigged with booby traps present another
deadly challenge. More than 18 law enforcement
officers were killed and hundreds of others wounded in
recent years attempting to enter and close down these illicit
operations. >> MATHIASEN: We have found
shotgun booby traps behind doors, where you open the door
and it fires a shotgun. They're also finding a lot of
chemical type booby traps. Probably not going to kill them
but could seriously injure them, uh, and cause potential long-
term damage. >> NARRATOR: Not all booby traps
are meant to kill or injure. Some are to provide early
warning. >> JONES: A very simple device
is nothing more than a trip wire, an empty can, handful of
pebbles. The pebbles go in the can.
Officer comes down the trail, will disturb the wire, causes a
rattling sound, gives the pot farmers down the road an
opportunity to get away. >> NARRATOR: Experts agree that
the chances are slim for the average citizen to be caught by
a booby trap. But these same experts caution
that it is possible... especially for hikers or
bicyclists who innocently wander into a marijuana field on public
lands. >> MATHIASEN: If you're in a
national forest, if you're in a state park, there's the
possibility that you could stumble onto an illegal
marijuana grow that is booby- trapped with either lethal or
non-lethal means, or both. >> NARRATOR: One very famous
booby trap case involved a gambling casino in a small
Nevada town called State Line. The year was 1981.
>> MATHIASEN: They made this big bomb, they put it in the
Harvey's Casino, and said, you give us the money and we'll tell
you how to take it apart-- classic extortion bombing.
>> NARRATOR: The extortionists had built 25 tamper-proof booby
trap devices inside a refrigerator bomb.
Authorities decided it would be safer to destroy the 1,100-pound
bomb in place rather than risk trying to disarm it.
(<i> explosion</i> ) (<i> people cheering</i> )
>> NARRATOR: There is another disturbing development in the
use of booby traps. Otherwise law-abiding citizens
are using them to take the law into their own hands.
>> VAN ZANDT: We see private citizens, store owners, setting
up their own form of booby traps to protect themselves, their
property, so when the burglar breaks into the back of a store
at night again, that shotgun is there to face him.
(<i> gunshot</i> ) Of course, that's illegal.
>> NARRATOR: A classic case occurred in 1990 in Denver,
Colorado. A warehouse owner, tired of
frequent break-ins, rigged a 12-gauge shotgun booby trap to a
window. When a teenage burglar was
killed, the businessman was tried and convicted of
manslaughter. >> PHILIP CONNAGHAN: I was just
pushed too far. Uh, they were stealing my life.
It was like a war. I mean, it was either... it was
my survival that I was trying to... to protect.
>> NARRATOR: And then, the booby trap maker lost a wrongful death
law suit... brought by the dead thief's family.
On April 23, 1978, mobster Salvador Gingilo, better known
as Sammy G, got into his car outside a cafe in Rochester, New
York and turned on the key. The car blew sky high, killing
Sammy and seriously injuring his two body guards.
Then-FBI agent, Clint Van Zandt, was called to the scene.
>> VAN ZANDT: The drunks, the winos, the pimps, the
prostitutes that had been standing around watching, ran
over and started picking up the pieces of metal, the shards of
glass. They all wanted a souvenir of
the demise of Sammy G. >> NARRATOR: Gangsters have been
booby trapping the cars of the competition with bombs ever
since crime became an organized business.
But an alarming number of public officials and corporate
executives in the U.S., and abroad, have found they, too,
are targets for car bombs. The increased demand for
corporate security has spawned a new industry: the "under vehicle
booby trap detector." Because the designs are
proprietary, no pictures of the devices are available.
Basically, it works like this: if a bomb is attached to the
car's frame with magnets, the detector will sense it
immediately. Ever since the anthrax mail
scare in 2001, even ordinary citizens are becoming fearful of
this new brand of booby trap. >> SWEETMAN: The portable letter
bomb detector detects known agencies of bomb-making material
like Centex, C4, ammonium nitrate, TNT.
The device allows the user to pass unopened mail across the
target zone where the crosshairs are.
If the letter is laced with any explosive material, the device
will go off. >> NARRATOR: Not all booby traps
are deadly, but there are some out there that cause a lot of
suffering-- computer viruses. These treacherous cyber-thugs
qualify as booby traps. They engage an unsuspecting
victim with an invitation to open seemingly harmless email.
The result of following their simple instructions could
ultimately lead to the destruction of irreplaceable
data. In 1985 there were 11 known
viruses. Today, there are over 60,000.
The success of these cyber-traps is often based on the public's
desire for freebies. >> THOMAS: Computer booby traps
are something which lure a user in to false sense of security,
um, with the promise of some sort of reward, and at the end,
ends up tricking them in some way and giving them something
unexpected. >> NARRATOR: That unexpected
surprise is often a virus. >> THOMAS: They end up
triggering a mechanism which usually causes some sort of
damage or further propagates the virus.
>> NARRATOR: The lure of the freebie has produced a multi-
million dollar anti-virus industry.
The questions is: do these anti- virus programs really work?
>> THOMAS: There are probably 30 to 100 new viruses every month.
So you can sort of do the math-- figure one to three a day.
So if you're updating everyday, you seriously cut down the risk
that you're going to be infected with a virus.
And I say "cut down." Something new is going to hit
your system, and until we figure out a way that doesn't rely on
catching up with the viruses as they're written, we're always
going to be one step behind. >> NARRATOR: While we may be a
step behind computer viruses, software designers are staying a
step ahead of software thieves. >> THOMAS: Probably the most
interesting example of this is the latest incarnation of the
windows operating system, Windows XP, which actually needs
an activation code, which is checked periodically back at
Microsoft. If too many things on the system
are changed, or if the operating system is installed on a second
computer, the computers back at Redmond will figure that out,
and the booby trap will be triggered, and the system will
stop working. >> NARRATOR: Microsoft's new,
high-tech way to stop software piracy.
But when it comes to disarming or just coping with booby traps,
the military may be ahead of the computer whizzes-- at least in a
war zone. The right tool for the booby
trap bombs found on battlefields may be the TRC's-- Tactical
Remote Control Vehicles. They have many jobs, but in the
hands of a bomb expert, they are particularly effective in
diffusing booby traps. The TRC's called Packbots,
established that value in test after test.
Looking like miniature tanks stripped of their guns, the
Packbots moved with agility and navigated in the tightest of
spots. Their on-board video cameras and
audio sensors provided the precise and careful remote
movement for safely rendering booby traps useless.
>> SERGEANT SAM MATHIASEN: I think in the next 10 years
you're going to see that technology probably overtake us
from where we are today, in ways that we can't imagine as bomb
techs, being able to deal with explosive devices.
>> NARRATOR: Perhaps the simplest and most intriguing
"future technology" involves the U.S. government's experiments
with honey bees. Researchers at the Pentagon have
taught whole hives to ignore the scent of flowers, and instead,
trained them to swarm on traces of explosives.
Others might say the future of detecting booby traps has gone
to the dogs. >> CRAWFORD: Because of 9-11,
there has been a great demand for an increase in the number of
explosive detection dogs trained throughout the United States.
We've been tasked here at ATF to train more K-9s, and so have all
the other law enforcement agencies across the United
States. >> NARRATOR: The ATF K-9 school
has trained 300 dogs since 1990. They work in embassies and
airports in 13 countries overseas.
Another 70 ATF dogs work domestically.
ATF dogs learn how to distinguish the smell of
explosives from other odors that are similar-- like oil, gasoline
and antifreeze. Here a dog is being trained to
separate the smell of engine grease from explosives.
>> CRAWFORD: And when they get a whiff of it, they'll sit down
and alert their handler that there's a device there.
>> NARRATOR: If a package has already been determined to be a
possible booby trap, dogs are not used.
>> MATHIASEN: That doesn't put the dog or the handler or
anybody else in danger. >> NARRATOR: Of course, most of
the booby traps detection devices being researched and
tested today are years away from making it to the field.
Until then, the grunt trudging through the battlefield and the
cop investigating the meth-lab, must continue to be suspicious
of what he touches or where he steps.
>> MATHIASEN: The best advice I can give is to use to your gut
instinct. If you think something's wrong
it probably is. If you think you've encountered
a booby trap, you probably have. Call for professional help and
let us take the risk, that's what we get paid to do.
