Brit Arrested for Selling 'Useless' Bomb Detectors

LONDON (Jan. 25) – The boss of a British company that sold $85 million worth of "totally ineffective" explosives-detecting equipment to Iraq was arrested this weekend on fraud charges, and exports of his company's devices to Iraq and Afghanistan have been banned.

Some campaigners have questioned why action was not taken sooner against Jim McCormick, a former policeman and managing director of ATSC Ltd., as experts first raised concerns about the company's bogus detectors more than a year ago. The company's handheld ADE 651 scanners are used to search for hidden bombs at hundreds of checkpoints across Iraq, so it is possible that the failure to stop exports earlier may have led to many preventable deaths. In December alone, around 130 people were killed by car bombs in Baghdad, and at least 36 were killed in attacks in the capital on Monday.

"If this technology is being used at checkpoints, where there's a high probability that someone will try to get through with explosives, there's a huge potential for loss of life – if it hasn't already happened," says Lou McGrath, executive director of U.K. charity Mines Advisory Group, a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work clearing landmines in current and former war zones. "It's totally unforgivable that somebody could sell a product like this in Iraq."

Doubts about the ADE 651 were first raised in October 2008 by famed skeptic James Randi, who publicly called the ADE 651 "a useless quack device which cannot perform any other function than separating naive persons from their money." He offered $1 million to anyone who could prove him wrong. ATSC didn't respond. And last November, Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training, told the New York Times that he had "no confidence" that the detector worked.

ATSC's brochures claim the ADE 651 contains "electrostatic ion attraction [ESA] technology" capable of pointing out explosives, drugs, ivory and banknotes located up to 0.6 miles away from the operator. The gizmo can achieve those remarkable feats, McCormick said in interviews, thanks to a series of programmed "substance-detection cards" that are "designed to tune into the frequency" of the substance named on the card. If a Semtex card is inserted in the machine, the device's radio antenna will swing in the direction of any hidden explosive, much like a dowsing stick is supposed to do around water.

Iraq's government fell for the jargon-laden sales pitch and bought some 1,500 ADE 651s, paying up to $60,000 for each device – even though ATSC was selling them elsewhere for $16,000. But last week, a BBC investigation revealed that the device contained no electronic parts capable of spotting explosives or any other contraband. Markus Kuhn, a computer science expert at Cambridge University, carefully dismantled a card "programmed" to spot TNT for the British broadcaster. Inside he found an anti-theft tag used to prevent shoplifting – one of the cheapest electrical components available. Kuhn said it was "impossible" that it could detect anything at all and that the card had "absolutely nothing to do with the detection of TNT."

Last June the U.S. military also passed on to Iraqi officials a study that concluded the ADE 651 was ineffective. "The examination resulted in a determination that there was no possible means by which the ADE 651 could detect explosives and therefore was determined to be totally ineffective and fraudulent," Maj. Joe Scrocca, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told The Associated Press.

Despite this wave of evidence, Iraq's Interior Ministry is still backing the device, claiming its 3,000 devices have spotted 773 bombs. "There are a lot of companies working on the development of these sort of instruments, and Iraq is now considered a market area for companies producing such devices," Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said Friday. "It is a business, the business of security. And there are other rival companies trying to belittle the efficiency of these instruments the government is buying."

Another ministry official claimed the arrest of McCormick, who has since been freed on bail, was an act of revenge by Britain and the United States. "The reason the director of the company was arrested was not because the device doesn't work, but because he refused to divulge the secret of how it works to the British authorities and the Americans before them," Assistant Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Tareq al-Asl told the al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper. "I have tested it in practice and it works effectively and 100 percent reliably."

Others in the government, though, detect a rat. After Britain banned exports to Iraq and Afghanistan on Friday (the ADE 651 isn't classed as military equipment, so the government can only block exports to countries where it "could cause harm to U.K. and other friendly forces"), Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, ordered an investigation into the mass purchase of the gadgets. And the security and defense committee of Iraq's parliament is examining whether the tendering process was corrupt.

McGrath of the Mines Advisory Group says it's vital that the Iraqi government now return to "tried and tested" means of bomb detection. For the cost of an ATSC scanner, for example, the country could buy at least eight sniffer dogs. The animals may not look as high-tech as an ATSC wand, but their bomb-spotting skills are undisputed.