http://www.heraldsun.com/nationworld/14-769206.htmlNEW YORK -- It was known as Operation Kaboom: Police investigators posed as apple growers and secretly built a 2,400-pound truck bomb to determine how easy it would be for homegrown terrorists to launch an attack with homemade explosives.
Then, they partially detonated it.
The 2004 experiment, revealed by city officials Tuesday, was part of a New York Police Department program to monitor suspicious sales of ammonium nitrate and other common chemicals sold by suppliers in the New York City area.
Falkenrath, a former national security aide for the Bush administration, criticized Congress and the White House for failing to seek strict regulations on the sale of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a key ingredient in the bomb used in the attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
"It has become commonplace to ask why, five years after Sept. 11, certain security enhancements have not been implemented," he said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks provided by the police department. "In this case, the question is, why has nothing been done about ammonium nitrate more than 10 years after the Oklahoma City bombing?"