Finally, A Backlash Against Iraq's Fake Bomb Detectors

The most recent terrorist attack in Baghdad killed more than 120 persons and employed a suicide car bomb in a shopping district. Also, it seems to have provoked a long overdue and richly deserved public backlash against the Iraqi government and its outrageous practice of using fake bomb detectors at checkpoints through the country.

From the WaPo story linked above, there is this:

On social media, Iraqis turned their anger toward a wand-style device that has been proved to be fake but is still widely used at checkpoints as a bomb detector. On Sunday night, Abadi announced that the devices should be withdrawn from checkpoints. Little more than an aerial attached to a plastic handle, they have been sold as capable of detecting explosives.

Earlier Sunday, after the bombing, the Interior Ministry’s website was hacked and a picture was posted of a bloodied baby and one of the supposed bomb detectors. “I don’t know how you sleep at night,” the hacked website read.

Hacked Iraq MOI website image

The scandal of these fraudulent devices, which were sold to Iraq under the name ADE 651, is well known and documented. See this Vanity Fair article for background. The Iraqi government purchased the scam detectors in 2008 at a cost of $85 million.

According to the WaPo's Baghdad Bureau Chief, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has finally, just tonight, ordered all the ADE 651s removed from Iraqi checkpoints. That decision comes about two years after he first acknowledged they were fake and promised to remove them.

Now, how about the governments of Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Mexico, and Thailand? So far as I know, they all still use the ADE 651 or a copy, under various names, to pretend to detect bombs at airports and other potential targets. Is a hacked website all it will take to cause them enough embarrassment that they'll stop that nonsense?

UK Warns Mexico Against Using Scam Bomb Detector

A few months ago the British government took action against a corporation that has been selling a notorious scam bomb detector known variously as the GT 200, the ADE 651, the Sniffex and the MOLE. Now the British are attempting to warn the Mexican government against using the ridiculous devices, which their military and police forces have purchased by the hundreds at the price of $20,000 each.

Good luck to the Brits. The U.S. government has so far been unable to convince the Iraqi government to stop using the thousands of GT 200s it purchased for $85 million. Evidently, the snake oil used to sell these things is particularly long-lasting and the victim doesn't come to his senses for years, if ever.

For their $20K, the Mexicans get nothing but an empty plastic box connected to an antenna and programmed with a deck of ordinary plastic cards. Really. That's all. See here and here for U.S. government test reports that document the bald-faced fraud that is the GT 200, ADE 651, et al.

From today's New York Times:

The British government has notified Mexico that a handheld device widely used by the Mexican military and police to search for drugs and explosives may be ineffective, British officials said. [TSB note: "may" be ineffective? That's British understatement. There's no maybe about it.]

Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat has spent more than $10 million to purchase hundreds of the detectors, similar to the “magic wands” in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, for its antidrug fight. Although critics have called them nothing more than divining rods, Mexican defense officials praise the devices as a critical part of their efforts to combat drug traffickers. At the military’s National Drug Museum, one of the devices is on display, with a plaque that describes its success in finding hidden caches of drugs.

-- snip --

As of April 20, 2009, the army had purchased 521 of the GT 200 detectors for just over $20,000 apiece, for a total cost of more than $10 million, according to Mexican government documents. Police agencies across Mexico have made additional purchases, records show.

“We’ve had success with it,” Capt. Jesús Héctor Larios Salazar, an officer with the Mexican Army’s antidrug unit in Culiacán, said recently. “It works with molecules. It functions with the energy of the body.”

Molecules? That quote must be a translation error. I think Captain Larios meant to say it works with magic, and it functions with the energy supplied by a body of money. Captain, please open your eyes. The only ones who have ever had any success with the GT 200 are the gringos who sold them to you.

Scam Bomb Detector Finally Banned in Britain

As was noted tonight on National Public Radio, authorities in Britain have finally taken action against the perpetrator of a murderous fraud, the scam bomb detector that is currently marketed under the name "ADE 651." This device, which consists of an antenna, an empty box, a set of plastic cards and a massive load of snake oil, has been sold to gullible security agencies all over the world. Iraqi agencies have spent $85 million on them and continue to insist, against all evidence, that the ridiculous things work.

The video embedded above is from the BBC's Newsnight program, and my favorite moment comes at about the 7 minute and 30 second mark when the wizened old scientist solemnly notes that the plastic case which houses the operating components of the ADE 651 is, upon his scientific observation, totally empty.

I've posted about this outrageous fraud before and linked to decades-old U.S. government reports, such as this one and this one, that documented the utter impossibility of using the ADE 651 to detect bombs or anything else.

Let's hope the export ban will finally break the evil spell that has been cast on suckers the world over by the ADE 651 - or as I call it, the PLACEBO 60K (Predatory Lucrative Advanced Confusinator Explosive-Detecting Bankable Opportunity @ $60,000). On the other hand, new suckers are being born every minute.