sophistication put into constructing it through this timer device. it just wasn t successful from the terrorist s point of law. thankfully on that. matthew chance thank you very much. joining me paul crew zang. paul in terms of the bomb itself, the fact that it didn t work is a huge blessing for investigators, in order to figure out the signature of the maker if that i have seen one like this before. that s absolutely right, i think the forensics and the lab that s there is excellent. they got to figure out what kind of device it was, whether there were any bomb signatures which might lead back to a particular bomb maker. the reason they re alert right now is because they believe the bomb maker is still at large and could put together more devices. this was essentially a dud bomb, the initial assessment was there a likelihood that contained
on the aircraft. that is a huge risk. i would think of going in the other direction. requiring travelers put a laptop into the belly of an aircraft so you don t have a system that requires every screener to be perfect every time. that s a lot of risk. can t you just blow it up from the belly of the aircraft? that s right. you could. it could be on a timer device. how does that solve the problem? a couple ofs things make it difficult for the terrorist ex-ploet in the belly. you need higher sophistication. nobody at the keyboard. the second is technical. if you put it in the belly of the aircraft, you can t even sh ensure it is at the skin of the aircraft. the idea you cannot bring your camera or laptops or ipad or gaming devices on a plane. those game changers. alisyn, buy a book. i don t know.
they re not examining a repair job on the tail that was damaged hitting the ground 14 years ago. they re also searching the airport where the plane took off, questioning those who serviced it, caterers, cleaners, baggage handlers. the terror group isis is active in egypt and claims it downed the plane. the truth will likely emerge from the two flight recorders, investigators analyzing these now, but making nothing public. and indeed making it clear that they won t make anything public for a long time. within the last hour, isis has repeated its claim saying we downed the plane. we don t have to tell you how we do it, you look at your black boxes. nbc news can t identify rather that claim. if it was a bomb, there will be evidence, explosive residue, fragments of a circuit board, a timer device just like in the case ofman am 103 in december 1988 that exploded over
terrible injuries and hospitals reported seeing shrapnel wounds. there s a lot of small metal debris. some people have have asked already about whether these were bbs or parts of bombs. i just don t think we re able to say whether these were small bits of metal placed there intentionally or part of the environment. reporter: shrapnel is just one of the clues investigators will be looking at. there are fragments everywhere, there are fragments everywhere, there are fragments within the victims. fragments in the sidewalk. what they re going to be able to do is probably reconstruct the timer device, what was used, they re going to look at the components of the bomb, able to tell them is this just somebody that put this together over the internet or is this a bomb maker? reporter: hundreds of state and federal investigators have descended on boston to try to find out who could have built the bombs and set them off. there are federal, state and local law enforcement all on scene
ahold of a pressure cooker, fill it up with shrapnel. a very common anti-personnel device that does just what this did. to injure, maim and create terror. to your point, 1976, a croatian nationalist place ad pressure keerk bomb in a locker in grand central terminal. that device went off as technicians attempted to dismantle it, killing one nypd officer and badly injuring another. that was in 1976. these types of explosive devices have been used many times, including as you said, with the bomber who was in time square. yeah. it is an easy to get ahold of device. i think the challenge for the authorities right now is they will try to trace back the device as your previous guest said. the size of the bbs, the shrapnel, we ll be for that. we ll try to determine if it was a timer device or if it was a