Feds in DC, NYC Teach Bomb Dogs New Tricks

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal agents are trying to outsmart -- and outsniff -- new threats from terrorists by teaching bomb-detection dogs to be on alert for devices made from everyday products, officials said Wednesday.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has been training state and police bomb detection dogs to sniff out a type of home-brewed bomb that increasingly worries authorities, often referred to as peroxide-based explosives because they can be built from household cleaning supplies.

The bombs are made by mixing chemicals used in common household items and easily found at drugstores or hardware stores. Experts know them as TATP, short for triacetone triperoxide, and HMTD, or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine.

Special Agent Terry Bohan, the head of the ATF's canine division, said the point of the additional training -- which dogs in New York City also have received -- is to adapt "as terrorists change their tactics based on what's easiest and attempt to defeat detection.''

There are over 19,000 possible separate components to explosives, so it is impossible to teach a dog to recognize them all, but the ATF program is designed to help them identify different groups of ingredients.

In England, six defendants have gone on trial accused of conspiring to kill London bus and subway passengers with bombs made of hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour -- normally used to make a south Asian flat bread.

The men were arrested when their devices failed to explode on July 21, 2005, two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters in the city.

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