reporter: in 2009 i asked explosives expert sydney alford to show me what a top al qaeda bomb maker was capable of. this is what six grams of petn does to something that is twice as thick as an aircraft fuselage. reporter: he mastered the white powder explosive petn. the al qaeda bomb maker made this, the underpants bomb targeting a u.s. passenger jet christmas 2009. here in russia, the rising question is likely to become who made the bomb that brought down metro yet 9268? was it isis, an isis affiliate, another radical islamic group or al qaeda? what we do know is that after the underpants bomb, al qaeda s bombs became even more sophisticated. 2010. printer bombs hidden in cargo on two planes. fortunately, they were
intercepted. here is the clever end of the scale there is no doubt about this. this is an ingenious way of doing it. reporter: alford deconstructed, remade the bombs, explained al qaeda s deadly cunning. three, two, one! in 2014, a few years later, i came to see alford again. so that is a t-shirt dipped in explosives and dried, blown up and that would bring down a plane. reporter: american sources fearing the next terrorist bomb could be a clothing bomb. he shows me how easily it can be done, leaving out some key details. this is where the t-shirt bomb was sitting on the steel plate, thick steel plate. imagine if that was the skin of an aircraft? thin aluminum. it would have blown a hole right through it. the underpants bomb, the printer bomb were made by al qaeda s top bomb maker in yemen.
well, we wanted to find out. brian todd took a look at exactly that question. and, brian, it s pretty amazing. it could be one small tube, what, 4.2 ounces, but it could do a lot. reporter: that s right, erin. we found it really does not take much. 6.3 ounces of an explosive, actually, not much more than the amount of toothpaste in these two carry-on size containers can blast a hole in the fuselage of a passenger plane. here s a look at what that amount of explosive did in the test we commissioned. explosives hidden inside a toothpaste tube can be powerful and potentially deadly. this bomb in a toothpaste container blew off a car door, sent parts of it across the quarry in southwestern england where cnn commissioned this test with the help of sydney alford, an expert who helps first responders understand explosion irvs. what kind of damage could this bomb do? i wouldn t like to be in an airplane when that exploded, not even a big one. reporter: for this test, ail
were there any warning signs? whitney houston s final hours. nuclear standoff. it happened in japan. could it happen here? i thought it was fatally floud. unfortunately fukushima proved me rate. concerns over a nuclear facility. deadly cargo, would you believe this laser printer is a weapon of terror? we ll show you how al qaeda got these printer bombs through security and onto planes. revealing investigations, fascinating characters, stories with impact. this is cnn presents with your host tonight randy kay and dr. sanjay gupta. good evening. whitney houston will be remembered as one of the greatest voices of her generation and many of her closest friends say the troubled star was poised to make a comeback. that was tragically cut short with her untimely death. whitney houston s soaring talent was shadowed we her troubles with addiction and her marriage and don lemon looks at her rise to tame fame, had her fall from superstar dom and the final hours in her troubled l