Skeptics in the Pub returns to The Canalhouse for a fresh year of talks with Meirion Jones, a former producer on BBC’s Newsnight.
Jim McCormick is now serving 10 years for his part in a scam that saw $85 million worth of bogus bomb detectors sold to Iraq. Multi-million dollar bribes were paid in Baghdad and the UK government turned a blind eye as it was boosting exports. It’s estimated that around 2,000 people died as a result of these devices.
Meirion brings in two examples of the fake bomb detectors – a $10,000 one and a $40,000 one. The more expensive one, the ADE651, has a trigger grip and connects to a card reader that allows it to detect more than just explosives. In 2009 it was announced that the Americans were afraid that the devices didn’t work. Surely, at this point the British government would do something about it? Of course not. Jim McCormick, the man behind the devices, gave a press conference in Baghdad where the head of the Baghdad bomb disposal services stood next to him and defended the bomb detectors. He had been receiving kick-backs from McCormick’s company. The Iraqi troops on the ground had no idea that they didn’t work.
McCormick refused to give Newsnight one of his detectors to test so they were trying to find a whistle-blower. Meanwhile Professor Brian Hood was trying to get him to do a demonstration. Despite claiming that in ideal conditions, the devices could detect a bomb from a kilometre away, McCormick pulled out at the last minute when he realised that he probably wouldn’t be able to fool Hood. Eventually a whistle-blower did come forward – a man who worked at the company that made the cards for the detector.
While in Iraq, the cars were programmed to detect bombs, in Kenya the same devices were being used to find ivory. The whistle-blower thought that all of the cards just had the same “junk” program on them. So Newsnight took some of these cards to Cambridge computer lab. While the cards were supposed to be the key to how the detector worked, they contained no processor, no micro-controller and in fact were little more than shop theft prevention cards. They could not be programmed at all. Supposedly the brain behind the $40,000 detector, the cards cost just 1p each.
The MOD and several other government departments said that it would take a long time to do anything about this. This was just before the 2010 General Election and so Newsnight pointed out that they could invite some opposition MPs on to sling some mud at the government (Meirion points out that there is nothing in the BBC guidelines regarding blackmail) At 20 to 6, just before the prime-time news bulletin, which was going to cover the story, Lord Mandelson banned the detectors. Why had the government not been willing to do something about them? When the police first tried to go after McCormick, they received no support at all from any government agencies.
In the mid-1990s, two men in the US, Quad and Rowe, invented a “golf ball detector” to find lost golf balls. They then sold the same devices to schools as knife and gun detectors and then started selling them to the police force. James Randi offered them $1,000,000 to prove that their devices worked but they declined. As the heat rose, they left the US and fled to the UK due our more forgiving libel laws. Post the September 11th attacks, more of these devices came onto the market and the government supported them even though they failed tests. At one point Jeremy Paxman’s brother, who was working as the UK ambassador to Mexico, was helping to sell these things. Even the Royal Engineers were going to arms fairs to sell bomb detectors that they themselves would never use.
Guy Boulton, one of McCormick’s associates created a bomb detector called The Mole. He took this device to America but it failed all the tests so he took a leaf out of the book of the DC10 and Sellafield and simply renamed the device the DT200. It was around this time that Boulton and McCormick fell out.
When the case finally got to trial, the men involved could only be tried for fraud because it was impossible to tell which bombs had been taken in Baghdad through checkpoints that were using the bogus devices. Fraud cases of this type have two stages. Firstly, you have to prove that the devices don’t work. Secondly, you have to prove that the manufacturers knew that they didn’t work. McCormick’s defence team found an “expert” who claimed that the devices did work. Under questioning he also claimed to have found an alien spaceship in a forest. Meanwhile a Romanian physics professor also appeared in court after having a paper published about these devices. He maintained that there were forces of attraction at a very low level that made them work. The judge favoured the evidence that proved that they just worked by the ideomotor effect and McCormick got ten years.
Meanwhile, Simon Sherrard, who had sold $21 million worth of devices to Thailand, managed to get off. McCormick appealed, claiming that he only got such a long sentence because Newsnight made so many films about him. Meanwhile another defendant had tried (unsuccessfully) to have any mention of bogus bomb detectors removed from the internet. McCormick even went as far to claim that he had heart trouble when he went to his bail hearing.
Unfortunately, this hasn’t been the end of bogus bomb detectors. Colonel White, a bomb disposal expert, has been selling devices made in Bulgaria made by someone who fled the US and is wanted by the FBI. There is also still an outfit in Romania making them. They are still being used in Pakistan and were also being used in Egypt when the Russian airliner was shot down, the action that led to Russia getting involved in Syria.
After the first film was aired by Newsnight, more whistle-blowers came forward. One told how training for the devices had taken place in Turkey. Concerns had then been raised in Niger about the detectors not working but McCormick said that they did exactly what they were supposed to do, “make money”
McCormick had the good fortune to get in touch with a Lebanese general who told him exactly who he needed to bribe in Iraq. These bribes were then paid in Beirut, into nameless bank accounts. Iraqi officials were then given bank cards so that they could take the money out at their leisure without ever being linked to the account or where the money had come from.
McCormick made millions from the scam – he bought Nicholas Cage’s old house in Bath (which Nicolas Cage had actually purchased from his fee for Lord of War, ironically a film about arms dealers) He also bought properties in Cyprus and Florida, cars and a yacht. While much of this has been impounded following his fraud conviction, he probably still has millions stashed in accounts in Beirut and Hong Kong that can’t be touched – depressingly, he’ll still be rich when he comes out of jail. In the end attempts by British authorities to get the money back will probably only get around half.
Initially there was a placebo effect when the devices were deployed. Bombers believed that they actually worked and so didn’t carry out any attacks. However, they soon realised that they were hokum and resumed their atrocities. This was the point where the US blew the whistle.
The other thing that this whole sorry affair shows is that we do not have adequate whistle-blower protection here in the UK. This means that something like this could happen again the in the future. The first whistle-blower that came forward was the number 2 at a plastics company and he would have lost his job if his employers had found out that he had gone to the BBC.
Skeptics in the Pub returns to The Canalhouse at 7:30pm on the 7th of February where Alice Sheppard will talk on “Grasping the Cosmos” For more information, visit the SitP website: http://nottingham.skepticsinthepub.org/
By Gav Squires
@GavSquires
