The Mandelbear's Musings

According to this NY Times article, the liquid explosive planned in the British plot was HMTD.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, "in theory is dangerous," but whether the suspects "had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen."

While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.

"In retrospect," said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, "there may have been too much hyperventilating going on."

Some of the suspects came to the attention of Scotland Yard more than a year ago, shortly after four suicide bombers attacked three subwav trains and a double-decker bus in Londo~ on July 7, 2005, a coordinated attack that killed 56 people and wounded more than 700. The investigation was dubbed "Operation Overt."

(from cryptome)

From ravan comes a link to this little article by someone called electronpusher pointing out that triacetone triperoxide is actually quite difficult to make, and would probably not be very effective on an airplane. (I will note in passing that I was also badly mistaken about how easy concentrated H2O2 is to handle.)

The obvious conclusion, however, is not that the whole plot was a hoax, but that the triacetone triperoxide was either due to an overeager reporter looking up "peroxide" without reading the rest of the article, or possibly a deliberate smokescreen put up by the authorities to hide the real explosive. On the whole I lean toward the first explanation: we already know from other details that the explosive was a binary mixture one component of which was a powder. (Triacetone triperoxide has three components, all liquids: acetone, H2O2, and sulfuric acid.)

Another highly amusing take on the matter can be found in The Register under the title Yanks not impressed with UK terror emergency. Here they conclude that "either that US officials are quite underwhelmed by the UK's evidence of a feasible terrorist plot, or that the US government's casual indifference toward catastrophic loss of life and property, as exhibited when New Orleans was destroyed, is the new American attitude." They conclude:

Whether we're seeing the true Bushie callousness laid bare, or a healthy American skepticism toward HMG's repeated exhibition of a phony terrorist menace as a pretext to introduce the Kafka-esque legislation favored by Tony Blair and John Reid, will be answered by and by. There will be successful prosecutions, or there will be official excuses verging on an apology, but not quite amounting to one.