Slashdot Mirror
Mastermind of 9/11 Attacks Designs a Secret Vacuum Cleaner
HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "AP reports that while confined to the basement of a CIA secret prison in Romania about a decade ago, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked his jailers whether he could design a vacuum cleaner. After all KSM earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering, the agency had no long-term plan for him, but might thought he might someday prove useful and might even stand trial one day and for that, he'd need to be sane. They were concerned that his long imprisonment might do so much psychological damage that he would no longer be useful as source for information. "We didn't want them to go nuts," said a former senior CIA official. So, using schematics from the Internet as his guide, Mohammed began re-engineering one of the most mundane of household appliances. It remains a mystery how far Mohammed got with his designs or whether the plans still exist and even Mohammed's military lawyer, Jason Wright, says he is prohibited from discussing his client's interest in vacuums. 'It sounds ridiculous, but answering this question, or confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design, a Swiffer design, or even a design for a better hand towel would apparently expose the U.S. government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger,' says Wright. So now, says Doug Mataconis, if you happen to start seeing ads for the CIA's revolutionary new home cleaning device, you'll know where it came from." Sounds perfect for In-Q-Tel.
I don't care how many marbles it can grab up from the floor
He was tortured in order to obtain the confession, I don't know what good it is.
a terrorist vacuum? i bet that shit sucks...
Now we know who sent the bomb
U.S. nuclear submarine fire linked to vacuum cleaner - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/06/us-usa-submarine-fire-cause-idUSBRE8551DT20120606
4/1
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The CIA gave the design to the NSA - they would have got it anyway. The NSA realized what they had, how efficient a weapon it really was, and built it.
Now they are using it on everyone and everything.
How is he still alive?
Simple. We threw him in Gitmo instead of treating him like the a criminal, and trying him by jury. He'd already have been executed if we would've done that. But since due process was not afforded, we are now paying the bills for keeping him alive. Funny how that worked out for us..
Thank you, we really needed all of your intellectual commentary.
If the vacuum starts looking like a giant metal guy with a glowing center light maybe they should rethink this idea.
He'd already have been executed if we would've done that.
So Gitmo has a use after all. Honestly, the US should become a civilized country and just get rid of the death penalty (which costs more in the long run anyway because they want to make sure that the people they're going to execute are actually guilty, and even then innocent people get executed).
Because he hasn't gone to trial yet. Presumably the powers that be figure that detaining someone forever without trial, but it's another thing to execute a person without trial. In terms of PR if not in terms of ethics.
Perhaps it was just a ruse for Internet access, or maybe I have just been watching too much Prison Break.
What does "chimping out in Florida" mean?
Al-Roomba, from the creators of Al-Qaida.
Because it takes a scumbag to know dirt!
...his design sucked.
Thank you! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
It's interesting how many terrorists are trained as engineers.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Making things that suck since 1987.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I could do with a decent Vacuum cleaner. My old Henry is losing suction and I read horrible reviews about that new Dyson's cyclone blabla, it sucks everything but dust. So what's out there and doesn't suck?
He think vacuum cleaners out to be able to blow up properly.
You sound like he should be burned at the stake, even. Why not. But death penalty is useless, and insanely expensive in the US (which doesn't even prevent innocent niggers from being executed regularly)
I don't know why it still exists in a handful of first world countries. Just abolish it : if anything this tends to prevent backwards comment like yours that call to murder in a legal way.
I'd also rather have war criminals, dictators etc. not face execution when tried. E.g. the likes of Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Richard Perle et al. should face trial by a international court and imprisonment in my book, but I don't want to kill them. ICC doesn't do it for instance. Killing prime ministers etc. is hairy, this can even give them an exit way like Goering who managed to commit suicide before getting executed.
Life imprisonment is a good enough sentence and even then the maximum sentence could be life imprisonment with no possibility to be freed before 30 years.
Surely there's something more worthy of our nerdly attention at the moment....
Graham Greene LIVES!
YAY!!
Doctor Octopus
Doctor Doom
Doctor Evil
Doctor No
Doctor Horrible
It's interesting how many evil geniuses have an advanced degree.
Google "Dancing Israelis"
Remember the Grahame Greene novel "Our Man in Havana"? The protagonist is a CIA agent who gets tired of his job trying to uncover missile silos and communist plots in Cuba and starts microfilming close-ups of vacuum cleaner schematics and sending those back to Washington.
So now we have a Guantanamo detainee drawing vacuum cleaner schematics? Which are no doubt being photographed and pored over by CIA agents for evidence of terrorist plots.....
I thought Dick Cheney had designed a secret vacuum cleaner
It's a message to his accomplices! Quick, rally our forces to the Hoover dam! We may yet make it in time!
This kind of hyperbole is what makes people ignore warnings.
I think that if you were to overlap all of the schematics, you would find that they are in fact for a mechanized suit designed to break out of jail and also prevent shrapnel from entering his heart, via a magnetic push.
But death penalty is useless, and insanely expensive in the US (which doesn't even prevent innocent niggers from being executed regularly
innocent niggers? really? was that necessary?
My brain swelled three sizes when I read that.
his handlers never watched the first Iron Man movie.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
... it was designed to clean up the mess left by 9/11. Could you imagine the fuss that would cause? Some people would treat it as an admission of guilt (seeking redemption through sucking up). To others, it would prove innocence (it was the only way he could show his compassion while behind bars).
"from the your-snide-response-must-include-the-word-sucks dept."
Well, there are worse things he can do in his spare time (something he has a lot of in a prison cell) than design a vacuum cleaner. While the world does not need another terrorist since the so-called Third World and American fringe element nut jobs are very good at making those, the world can always use another good vacuum cleaner. My Dyson vacuum cleaner is good but I need one that is powered by a tame black hole for better sucking qualities. Also, with a tame black hole, I won't need to empty the dust container. Perhaps he can design one, even build it, make a mistake and suck himself out of existence!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Here's a preview of the new vacuum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXOAc5yt218
-- L8R, guitardood
I thought bin laden was the mastermind? Right? He "admitted" to it? After all, he's the guy that everyone aimed for. When did this change?
I still remember the day I saw on the news where the reporter said he said he didn't do it. Then it changed to him saying it was his idea or whatever.
Need a bit of clarification here.
Strange as it may be sound, after earning a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a M.S. in Physics, I worked for eleven years as a senior scientist growing synthetic crystals for use primarily in military and medical laser applications. As I worked during the early and mid-90s, I set up a website retailing parts for various household machines including vacuum cleaners (all OSS-based.of course). Because this happened at just the right time during the infancy of the internet, the business took off. By the late 90s I was earning more online than at my "real" job, so I quit and went full-time working for myself. I miss blowing stuff up in the lab, but you go where the money is. Now I have 13 employees, but I still enjoy getting out from behind the computer 50% of the time to do warranty and general repairs on all manner of machines including vacuum cleaners. My dream is to pulverize a Dyson vacuum with a sledge hammer. They're made of the cheapest possible plastic. Parts cost in insane amount of money, and they're a nightmare to repair. Special tools are sold to simply change a belt (http://c.shld.net/rpx/i/s/pi/mp/23438/3117083808?src=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.reversede.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51NsDuXnccL.jpg&d=7d638a9264fa02aea1c34b59f85f8316ae81342f). No matter how bad you think this guy's vacuum design might be, I can promise that it's mo worse than a Dyson.
Operated in reverse, the vacuum cleaner was an efficient anthrax delivery device.
Graham Greene rolls over in his grave.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Have any number of qualified and competent engineers (good ol' America-loving ones, of course) pick it apart and analyze it. Boom, problem solved.
There's no danger, it's a chickenshit excuse to avoid the negative PR of a "terrorist vacuum cleaner."
This is friggin' hilarious. Racist, but against Dick Cheney and capital punishment, so Slashdot lets him off with a single -1 mod. :)
Dark Reflection
How is this for impressive then:
Britain admits to using 'brutal' vacuum bomb against Taliban
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/britain-admits-using-vacuum-bomb/story-e6frg6to-1111116704067
Is this where KSM got the idea?
I fucked up I guess.
The term may usually be considered racist, but his use of it was sarcastic: He was refering to the well-known but somewhat embarassing fact that minorities conficted of crimes in the US tend to recieve much harsher sentences than would a white person convicted of the same crime under the same circumstances.
The country still hasn't entirely gotten over the old racist ways. They are much diminished now, but not eliminated.
CIA is launching the new GuantanaMoBrands Home Appliances
Just mark it classified and file it.
"but it's another thing to execute a person without trial."
Osama was executed without trial.
I watched Zero Dark Thirty last night and it made me so sick.
Why America did you act like fucking children?
The state is supposed to be better than that. The state is supposed to represent what's best about a society. If the best that America has to offer is the endorsement of sneaking into a sovereign nation and murdering a bunch of people in the night, then I'll say it again, FUCK YOU AMERICA.
I do not, for the life of me, understand why, if they knew where OBL was, they couldn't invoke regular measures and have the police go to the house and arrest him. He could then be charged and extradited to the US. He could be represented in court. And then once the due process is followed, he could be executed (as per the laws of your own land) or jailed for life (as per the preferred punishment in the rest of the civilised world).
The US does not represent freedom in any form. My advice (FWIW) is to get your shit together and start respecting human rights again!
he is NOT a criminal. He is a combatant in a war. The traditional laws of war say you lock such people up in a prison camp until the war is over and then you hold his country accountable for the war while ONLY holding him to account for his actions that are not widely accepted as "legitimate" acts of war. (for example, combatants who line-up and gun-down innocent civilians are generally considered war criminals but average soldiers who killed many opposing soldiers are not guilty of anything, though their county might be guilty for the overall war)
In a normal situation, the guys in GITMO would be sent home at war's end... but these morons made their own purgatories by taking-up arms in a war without being in the uniformed services of any nation. We ought to have squeezed them for "intel" and then killed them, but our politicians went all wobbly in the face of accusations of "racism" and "islamophobia" tried to figure out a solution to an unsolvable dilemma; There is no way to return these nasties to their nation when they were not fighting for any nation, no way to return them at the end of a war that may never end (or that may last for decades), and no proper legal framework to legitimately try them for criminal acts (because putting captured enemy soldiers into "trials" has, itself, always been considered an evil war crime).
Light 'em on fire or slowly saw their heads off and send 'em to Allah... it's what they wanted to do to innocent civilians and they put themselves in this position.
And, during this same time Dyson came up with several brave new vacuum designs. A unique room cooler/heater and even a futuristic hand dryer for bathrooms. All suddenly, out of thin air. Perhaps they were his designs, and that's why they can't let anyone know. It would imply the u.s. and its allies uses indentured slaves in secret prisons to invent new technologies. Scary thought.
Actually, you probably don't want an appliance powered by a black hole, because those convert matter into energy via Hawking radiation and the energy output actually ramps UP as the size decreases. A very small black hole, say, 1 kg in weight (a little over 2 pounds) would convert itself into energy in about 84 attoseconds and release the same energy as a 21 megaton nuke or so.
You'd need a pretty big one for it to be stable, and I doubt you really want a vacuum cleaner weighing as much as the Everest :p
On the other hand, if we ever tame one, it would make an awesome source of energy for something that needs a lot more energy. Such as a continent. Or a warp-capable ship. Hmm, the Romulans were up to something.
Of course, it would still be a Tamagochi that blows up with the fury of a supernova if you forget to "feed" it, but, hey, it's all good as long as we call it a warp core breach. Right?
Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Romulan singularity warp cores though... I hear the Tal'Shiar are nastier than the NSA and CIA put together ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Don't expect this or other mainstream sites to tell the truth on this one ever. It will probably be like the gulf of tonkin incident 20 years from now, CIA admitted it was all fake and all fabricated 10 years ago yet local school history book still stick with the official story.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
...he's hoping to clean up in the book sales?
The 9/11 attacks weren't by terrorists. The United States violated United Nations law and the UN enforced that law through the attack. If you don't believe me, look it up in the United Nations Law books.
10 years in prison without due process.
Tortured.
Nice democracy you have there.
The Super Fucker Upper O_O
... he's got a really nice clean cell now.
No left turn unstoned.
Yep, I can see why this makes slashdot. After all it's way more important than the fact the guy was arrested, tortured and is being held for years in an American Gulag without so much as a show trial.
I was shocked to read the CIA operates a prison in Romania. When the government doesn't like the laws in the country it is sworn to serve the government just moves its activity to another country with lenient laws. Time to send President George Walker Bush and Vice-President Richard (Suck My Dick) Cheney to this CIA prison. President Barack Hussein Obama can join them.
The CIA has secret prisons in Romania??? WTF?
After all, how do you know there IS a bomb? If you are already certain enough to torture someone who could be innocent, you must have enough information to find out without torture.
We, as the viewer of 24 hours know that there's a bomb. We saw it being planted. We know that the story is going to be one where there is a bomb.
In Real Life (tm), we don't know that unless we were there like the cameraman was for 24 hours.
If only our legislature was as intelligent as random slashdot posters.
He didn't come up with the idea, he just watched what Israel and the US were doing on a daily basis. Even the suicide element had already been tried.
""We didn't want them to go nuts," ????.... KSM was water boarded 183 times.
so we only waterboarded him 180 times or so.
Same thing it means anywhere else. Going apeshit and acting like a Ballmer.
Human life's worth is absolute, it has no modifiers nor quantifiers. The idea that the life of an "innocent" is somehow worth more or less is absurd.
The last 2 presidents have been a cancer on our nation. Reagen and Clinton weren't perfect, but they were a damn site better.
This was discussed at length on Slashdot: being jumped and having head hit against the pavement justifies using firearms in self-defense. Being stupid is not a crime, while jumping someone who did not even touch you is.
All I know is, the next nigger who mugs me is going to die.
You are an idiot.
You don't even understand the difference between "site" and "sight".
When I become president, white trash like you will be sterilized and
sent to labor camps.
And Reagan was an idiot who fucked the US up big time. Fuck you, you
stupid trailer trash piece of subhuman waste.
Chimping normally refers to the ritual of reviewing a newly taken photo on a camera's LCD.
I wouldn't count on an article that claims "The cloud of burning aluminium powder means victims often die from asphyxiation before the pressure shreds their organs." to be terribly accurate. Considering the blast wave is about 2 seconds later and humans can hold their breath for at least 30 seconds, that's absurd.
Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that thermobaric weapons don't produce a vacuum wave. Internal organs are pounded by a high air pressure shockwave which is literally the exact opposite. Other than that, it's spot on. Great reporting.
Sorry, but that is not something that is referred to as torture. When you find out what we are writing about here you will be truly sickened and will get a glimpse of how evil people can be.
The US legal system is a fucking joke. Some hot shot lawyer would try some bullshit tactics to get him off and then be a famous, high paid defense attorney for the rest of his life. It's basically American Idol for lawyers when high profile cases come up. Everyone everywhere knows he did it so skip the stupid trial.
Oh and in case you didn't notice, HE'S NOT AN AMERICAN CITIZEN! You think the constitution applies to everyone worldwide? Go ask everyone worldwide what they think of us passing laws that pertain to them even though they don't live here.
The US is not a democrapcy. It's a Republic!
May the Maths Be with you!
Osama was chased all over the world and then killed by the US government because he kept trying to attack the US.
A constitutional republic is a type of democratic government.
A direct democracy is not the only democracy.
When the average person says 'democracy', they are merely referring to the fact that the citizens vote to elect their leaders.
Now quit being a douche, pack up your semantics, and kindly fuck off.
...
Innocent until proven guilty is one of the major ideals we regard highly in our constitution...or at least used to...
We assassinated him without trial in a full military operation inside foreign land, without their consent, that could rightly be viewed by the foreign Govt. as an act of war.
now was he innocent? unlikely. is the world better off without him? quite possibly. but i still don't think we handled this in the correct way.
Actually, they do create a vacuum when the fuel is consumed. However, the victims definitely die of having their lungs ruptured rather than simple asphyxiation.
The Constitution applies to the government wherever it may act. That is frequently ignored but is nevertheless true. So long as the U.S. controls Gitmo, the Constitution certainly applies.
I bet his design really sucks!!
Vacuum cleaners must be kept in every household
He sucked back then and evidently he still sucks, or at least tries to suck now.
I was shocked to read the CIA operates a prison in Romania.
They just took over the prison being operated formerly by the USSR. Sounds about right with the current government.
This is being a troll. If you put Reagan into this position as being somebody who screwed up the country, you likely need to mention every President since Calvin Coolidge as having messed up the country so completely that it could even be said that the American Republic as it formerly existed is dead.
Of course you likely think Coolidge as a screw up too, but at least he paid down the national debt (not just reduced deficits) and cut 2/3rds of the federal government at the time into unemployment lines.... not that it made too many people unemployed by doing that. Even the War and Navy departments were quite small and only a fraction of the government even in proportion to what they are today.
Empty threats like sending people into labor camps and sterilizing people shows that you are also singularly incapable of becoming President, as you won't even understand the oath of office that you would be taking. Then again, I don't think any of those last dozen Presidents have kept their oaths either.
It is *nominally* a republic with a constitution. The actuality is somewhat different.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...they now have a torture method called "Vacuum sucking"?
You do not understand how Pakistan works. If they called for the police to get him his buddies in the Pakistanian secret services would ensure he would get notified before getting arrested.
I suppose one could say he really sucks at engineering
Terrorism Sucks
Table-ized A.I.
I disagree in general with how the government's been acting with respect to the drone assassinations and all that, but I can't get too upset about OBL. Because it seems like Pakistan knew exactly where he was the whole time, or that was at least the fear. Someone in their government, at the very least, almost had to have been colluding with them. There was pretty much no way of legally getting him out of Pakistan. I do wish we had taken him alive, though. It sounds like they didn't need to shoot him there, after storming the place.
I fucked up I guess.
If only because sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality.
I thought your post was clearly tolerant rather than racist; the fact that you weren't screamed at by hordes of ACs suggests others understood too. That 'n' word sure does have the ability to cause plenty of uneasiness though..
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
"but it's another thing to execute a person without trial."
Osama was executed without trial.
What's your point? That we did it once so we should have no problem doing it again under different circumstances?
The US does not represent freedom in any form.
That's quite the hyperbole. Osama bin laden wasn't promised any freedom by the US: he wasn't a citizen. And anyway, there's quite a bit of room between "killing someone who admitted to attacking you" and "no freedom whatsoever.
Even POW's have rights..Now via the Geneva accord, but even before then... Only coiuntries to ignore such conventions entirely and without conscience have been North Korea, Japan, Germany, and now the US..
here clean up ur dirty system with this vaccum
It is the official position of the united states government that Khalid Sheik Mohammed masterminded nine-one-one in 1996, which is a year after I was briefed about the CiA's plans for that day by its' de facto director Dr. John Chadwick Rockwell, who was trying to recruit me from the Defense Intelligence Agency, and I reported about Project Flat Horizon, Project Commander And Chief and Project Sand Blast to hundreds of news organizations around the world, including in video recorded interviews with ABC, FOX, and CBS. This is in part why I'm being subjected to a Trial By Ordeal.
Of course I didn't because those that defined it are far better suited than either of us. I'm not going to make up my own definition just because you are, I'm going to use the established one from experts instead of delving into irrelevant relativism shit.
So at one point you are saying I did define it and at another that I did? Make up your mind instead of arguing with yourself. I'll make it simple - I leave the definition to such people as Amnesty International and earlier US governments instead of weasels like Dick Chaney who decided to take the twisted line you appear to be pushing and then pretending that I agree with. Suggesting that I should have my own private definition of something is ridiculous bullshit and a barrier to communication - so piss off and read the fucking dictionary.
is there a story here?
There's no argument to "win" - you are just baring an amazing amount of baggage to somebody who has written little more than something along the lines of "you are wrong - go look it up".
I really don't get how a bomb can be inhumane. Is there a humane way to bomb someone? does it count as humane if it just drops a building on top of them? I suppose the most inhumane thing I could think of is something that only kills intended victims days, months and years later, after the conflict has been long over. asphyxiation would be roughly equivalent to bleeding out or something.
You misrepresented my words - thus a lie. Read the comments above and you will find several examples as you most certainly are away so please stop playing such a stupid and childish game of merely wasting my time reading over your disgusting rants of which I haven't had the stomach to do more than skim.
In all this very long thread I have had nothing to prove anyway since you are putting forward a ridiculous, amoral and gruesome position that torture is a beneficial thing. It's up to the person that puts an unlikely position to justify it, and not to try to trick other people into making up private definitions of words and other schoolyard tricks.