Radioactive Dirty Bomb Misplaced by Baggage Handlers.

[NNadir]

NEW YORK—Even in the air-conditioned confines of New York's John F. Kennedy Airport back on June 14, Abu Basir Yousef was sweating.

His sole piece of luggage—a black duffel bag—was lost upon his arrival in New York...

...Airline personnel had searched the plane, the tarmac, and the gate, but were still unable to locate his bag containing his homemade dirty bomb.

"My trip was ruined," Yousef said. "But Allah will right this wrong."

Most Americans have grown accustomed to inconvenience in the name of security, be it color-coded anxieties or metal detectors at public libraries. But al-Qaeda member Yousef lived a nightmare scenario that would cause even the most frequent of flyers to shudder...

...According to U.S. Airways, the luggage lingered in St. Louis after an unscheduled side trip to Dallas, a short stint in Charlotte, NC and even a surprise UPS delivery to a suburban home in Michigan.

When informed that somebody had mistakenly taken his luggage home, opened it, and called the airline, who returned it—two days later—to Detroit's Metro Airport, Yousef could only shake his head.

"The U.S. truly is the Great Satan," he said...

...By the 22nd, over a week since Yousef discovered his bomb was missing, the duffel bag finally reached JFK. Yet even an attempt to contact him at his Bronx home about its arrival proved a comedy of errors. A mispronunciation of Yousef's name in the baggage claim office resulted in the bag being returned to another traveler in the airport that day—air marshal Abe Joseph.

"I took one look inside and realized that somebody was probably pretty upset to be missing such a complicated piece of equipment," Joseph said. "I brought it to security, and they held me up for more than an hour with the thing, and when they finally passed it through, what did they do? They dropped it. Twice."

Dirty Bomb Missing.