A recent government report, “IEDs: Coming to America,” has not been released to the public. While its exact contents are not widely known, one conclusion can be drawn: the title is misleading.
Improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, have been used to sow terror in the United States for a long time. In the mix are extremists, from the right and left, individuals and organized cells, single acts and prolonged campaigns. Here are some of the more infamous examples:
The Haymarket Tragedy. On May 4, 1886 in Chicago, an unknown assailant threw a pipe bomb at Chicago police as they were attempting to break up a pro-labor rally. The explosion killed seven officers. Police began to fire indiscriminately into the crowd, killing four demonstrators. The incident became a seminal moment in the labor movement. The backlash was seen as damaging efforts to institute an eight-hour workday.
“Bombingham.” Between 1947 and 1965, Birmingham, Ala., was the location of some 50 explosions directed at civil rights workers, thus garnering the city the “Bombingham” nickname. On Sept. 15, 1963, a member of a Ku Klux Klan splinter group planted a bomb in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Church, where many prominent civil right leaders congregated. The explosion killed an 11-year-old and three 14-year-old girls. The shocking crime was one of several incidents that galvanized the nation and led to reform.
The Weather Underground. It seems almost inconceivable today, but this radical leftwing organization in the late 1960s and early 1970s managed to walk into the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon and plant bombs. The organization employed about 25 improvised explosive devices during its years-long terror campaign. In one case, three members working on a powerful explosive in a Manhattan building accidentally blew themselves up. The alleged target was a dance being held at Fort Dix, N.J. This base in 2006 became the focus of a thwarted terror plot by the so-called Fort Dix Six — a group of radicalized Muslims who wanted to use small arms and plastic explosives to kill U.S. soldiers.
The Unabomber. An example of a lone individual carrying out a prolonged bombing campaign, Ted Kaczynski managed to evade authorities for two decades as he mailed out bomb-laden packages from a cabin in the Montana woods.
The World Trade Center Bombing. U.S.-based radical Islamic extremists first attempted to destroy the World Trade Center Feb. 26, 1993 by using a homemade thermobaric bomb. Ubdul Rahman Yasin and Ramzi Yousef packed compressed gas cylinders around the explosives to create a large fireball. A similar truck bomb was used 10 years earlier during the Beirut Marine barracks bombing. The case shows how techniques perfected overseas can make their way to the homeland.
The Oklahoma City Bombing. Timothy McVeigh’s attack on the Murrah Federal building on April 19, 1995 serves as a stark reminder of the power of vehicle-borne IEDs. The truck contained some 4,800 pounds of explosives using components and chemicals that he and co-conspirator Terry Nichols had bought legally or stole with relative ease. The blast was heard 55 miles away, caused $652 million worth of damage and killed 168.