Expert: ISIS soda bomb is plausible

TAMPA (FOX 13) - The former chief of the Tampa Police Department's bomb squad says the picture shown by ISIS that is supposedly the bomb that brought down a jetliner in Russia last month, was large enough to do so.

"It would have created a massive hole in the aircraft," said Jim Diamond, who founded the bomb squad in 1971.

The picture of the Schweppes pineapple soda can is in ISIS' latest monthly magazine, alongside pictures of the downed plane and aftermath of the Paris attacks.

They claim they compromised airport security in Egypt and said it was the bomb that killed 224 people.

"The size, shape and container are limited only to the imagination of the person making it," said Diamond.

Diamond says there's a lesson in the otherwise-boring soda can.

He adds it's important that American security focuses just as much on gathering intelligence as they do on airport screening.

The questions they need to be asking:  Who is buying plane tickets?  Where have they traveled?  Are no-fly lists being updated and cross-checked with passenger lists?  Who is working at airports?

"What we are not finding is the individual who is placing or carrying the device," said Diamond. "That's what we have to be looking for."

The tragedy is that one-pound bombs cost a few dollars, while the effort to stop it from getting onto a plane costs billions.

And terrorists only have to succeed once.

"It doesn't take a great deal of sophistication. What it takes is practice," he said. "Unfortunately, the bad guys have had years of practice."

ISIS claims they originally intended to put the bomb on a plane from a country that was part of the American-led western coalition, but decided on a Russian one after that country also started bombing ISIS in Syria.