Collecting Terrorist Attack Evidence - USS Cole Experience

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Collecting Terrorist Attack Evidence

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Thu, 06/20/2013 - 7:04am

by Tim Studt

LISTED UNDER: Evidence Collection and Packaging

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The Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole in Yemen created new protocols for collecting forensic evidence at sea.

At 1118 on Thursday, October 12, 2000, the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole was attacked by Al-Qaeda

terrorists while at anchor for refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. A suicide attack was made by two terrorists

in a disguised garbage barge that had pulled up to the port side of the Cole. The terrorists detonated the barge,

whose hull was lined with 400 to 700 pounds of explosives. The resulting explosion left a 40-foot-diameter hole

amidships in the Cole's hull near the galley and the upper and lower levels of main engine room 1, while killing17 crew members and injuring 39 others.

Collecting evidence from the terrorist attack on the Cole was complicated by the need to recover the injured

and bodies of the crew from the wreckage and to stabilize increased flooding (and possible sinking) of the ship

when generators and pumps failed on Saturday night following the Thursday attack.

The Cole's captain at the time of this attack, Commander Kirk Lippold USN (now retired), was the KeynoteSpeaker at last October's Evidence Conferencein Washington D.C., which was sponsored by Forensic Magazine

andDFI News. We had the opportunity to interview Commander Lippold about the forensic investigations that

Collecting Terrorist Attack Evidence http://www.forensicmag.com/articles/2013/06/collecting-terrorist-attack-evidence

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the Cole. This attempt ended in failure as the disguised garbage barge sunk while being

launched from a trailer. No one in U.S. intelligence ever learned of this attempt and the

terrorists recovered the boat and trailer and all the explosives in the hull and used it

successfully in the attack on the Cole. Of course, all of this intelligence was learned

during the post-Cole bombing onshore investigations.

As a result of the onboard and onshore forensic investigations, the FBI determined that the hull of the disguised garbage barge was interleaved with

blocks of C-4, Semtex, and TNT. Batteries were built into the boat as part of the bomb which provided the charge for the electric blasting caps the

attackers used, apparently two for each block of explosive. The suicide bombers themselves were found to be Al-Khamiri and Al-Thawar. Subsequent

investigations found that Osama bin Laden had actually ordered and paid for the attack himself.

Al Qaeda co-conspirators involved in the Cole bombing include bin Attash who was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and is currently in U.S. custody at theGuantanamo Bay detention camp; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri who was captured in late-2002 and is currently in U.S. custody at Guantanamo; Abu Ali al

Harithi who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on November 3, 2002; Jamal Mohammad Al Badawi who was convicted in Yemen and sentenced

to death but escaped in 2006 and is still at large; Abdul Mun'im Salim al-Fatahami who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen on January 31, 2012;

and Fahd al-Quso who was also killed in a U.S. (CIA) drone strike in Yemen on May 6, 2012.

Tim Studtis the Editorial Director of Forensic Magazine. [email protected]

TOPICS CRIME SCENE PROCEDURES EVIDENCE COLLECTION JUNE/JULY 2013


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