The Anarchist Cookbook

Every day we learn a new term. Sadly, they are all associated with mayhem and tragedy. Yesterday it was “anhydrous ammonia.” The other day it was “ricin” in the mail. Shortly thereafter it was the “pressure cooker bomb.”

Because the discussion in the newsroom was about pressure cookers, I initially thought the topic was food and someone had mispronounced “raisin.” You need a certain type of expertise to be even aware of the existence of a substance called ricin and the consequences when it is daubed on mail and the letter is opened.

You also need a certain type of expertise to obtain knowledge and safely put together an improvised explosive device or IED out of nails, bolts and an ordinary pressure cooker.

I don’t remember pressure cooker bombs mentioned in “The Anarchist Cookbook,” which I read when I was a crime reporter. This is a book published in 1971, with illustrated instructions on bomb-making and hacking into telecommunications systems to intercept conversations or make free calls.

Anarchist political philosophers disowned the book, published by Lyle Stuart. The writer, William Powell, later regretted releasing the dangerous information and sought to have the book taken out of circulation. Powell had written the book in his rage over being drafted by the US government to fight in the Vietnam War.

The book is out of print and much of the information likely outdated and useless with all the rapid advances in defense and telecommunications technology.

But the book, whose basic instructions may still be useful, surely has been read not just by people like me who are not merely idly curious about deadly weapons, but by those who intend to use the information for murder.

Since the publication of the book, whose instructions were dismissed as “unreliable” by bomb experts, many other types of IEDs have been developed, with detailed do-it-yourself instructions that can be accessed on the Internet. We found an article, complete with illustration, about the possible way the pressure cooker bomb used in the Boston Marathon was assembled and set off.

Free societies thrive on the free flow of information. In several countries, information disseminated through digital media brought down entrenched despots and rendered it harder for repressive regimes to control their people.

In the Information Age, to suggest controls on anything that can be accessed easily on the Internet is heretical. And old-fashioned. There’s a generation gap in the way people handle information. In my youth, kids kept diaries under lock and key. Today’s kids want the world to know, if possible in real time, what they are doing, eating and drinking, their thoughts on everything, complete with photos and video.

There are people who consider it a human rights violation and a danger to free societies when their access to any type of information is blocked – even if the articles and video feature hard-core porn and bondage, snuff films, and yes, detailed instructions on fashioning lethal weapons out of household materials.

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Societies do put curbs on access to digital information. Child porn and human trafficking sites are shut down and their operators hunted down. Intellectual property laws are enforced, limiting online access to certain types of business, research and economic information. The entertainment industry is trying (with little success) to stop online piracy of intellectual property.

Maybe those trying to access information on bomb-making can be required to pay and leave a detailed digital trail. This should be no problem to law-abiding individuals.

By this time, terrorist groups already have all the information they need on manufacturing explosives, hacking websites and tapping phones. But regulating bomb-making information can prevent more people – bored or despondent teens, for example, or ordinary folks who want to play God or are mad at the world – from indulging their inner mass murderer.

For basic bomb-making, however, all the information needed is already out there. A primitive IED can be fashioned out of materials available in supermarkets. The best that societies can do is increase vigilance and, of course, catch and punish troublemakers.

The 9/11 attacks in the United States led to biometric security systems and other measures worldwide to make international travel safe. Now that a relatively low-intensity attack was staged in Boston, the world is watching the new security measures that America will put in place. Will pressure cookers now have traceable individual serial numbers? Surely security will be tightened during marathons.

The other thing that can be done is to prevent those trying to sow fear from achieving this objective. The British are doing this, by announcing that the London Marathon is pushing through as scheduled.

It’s easier said than done for the favorite targets of every self-respecting terrorist on the planet, but Americans have done this in the past, showing that life must go on and the purveyors of fear must not succeed.

We have done the same here following terrorist attacks. The Light Rail Transit, bombed in 2000, quickly resumed regular operations. The SuperFerry, whose ship was bombed by the Abu Sayyaf in Manila Bay with over 100 fatalities, is still doing good business. Dos Palmas in Palawan did not bother to change its name after an Abu Sayyaf raid a decade ago. Many of its employees were laid off after visitor arrivals plummeted throughout the province, but the resort management did not lose hope. Today the upscale resort is thriving, and so is Palawan.

It must be business as usual, despite heightened security risks. You defeat terrorists by refusing to be terrorized.