Those Damn Magic Sticks: The ADE 651 Bomb Detector Blows Up Under Scrutiny

It‘s bad enough that pseudoscience, flummery, and deception have become accepted by the public. What concerns me more is that government agencies are accepting this nonsense and incorporating it into their national policymaking. As U.S. forces prepare to leave Iraq, that nation’s security forces are still relying on a device that is claimed to detect explosives, bombs, and weapons. It’s called the ADE 651 Detector—a small hand-held wand with a telescopic antenna on a swivel—and for the past several years the JREF has offered James McCormick, who heads a London-based company called ATSC, our long-standing one-million-dollar prize if he or anyone else could demonstrate, in a simple controlled test, that the thing works.

The Iraqi government, financed by U.S. tax dollars, spent $32 million on more than 1,500 of these magical devices in 2008, and $53 million for a larger quantity in 2009. The devices cost from $16,500 to $60,000 each. So the total expenditure exceeded $80 million. These dowsing rods—for that’s what they are—have been thoroughly tested at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the agency which does official testing for the U.S. Department of Defense. The detector failed spectacularly. Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, stated that the Labs had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.” 

Despite this definitive finding, the detector has been sold to other governments as well. The Lebanese Army, for example, bought them for use in sniper and landmine detection. An interested official there set up a simple test with five boxes, one of which contained TNT. You see, to detect specific materials, the operator of the ADE 651 is supposed to put one of an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable, which supposedly “tunes” the device for that specific explosive. The operator used three units for the test. He removed the card of one so that it was effectively “blank,” and on another unit he simply disconnected the cable so that it wouldn’t work at all. On the 3rd unit the cable was actually connected, with the proper card inserted. Twenty soldiers in all tried the test. Every one failed, with the two dummy rods performing no differently than the “real” one. The Lebanese army paid nearly one million dollars for these units. 

Use of this device costs human lives, both civilians and security forces, both Iraqi and American.

Our good friend, retired USAF officer Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod, a failed woo-woo notion that has been extensively researched and found to be without validation. The device “works” on the same principle (and with the same accuracy) as a Ouija board through a phenomena known as the “Ideomotor Effect” (an idea or thought unconsciously guides motor movement in the arms and hands). Nevertheless, nearly every police checkpoint guarding access to Baghdad and many Iraqi military checkpoints still have one or more of these devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles. With violence dropping over recent years, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki took down protective blast walls along dozens of Baghdad streets, saying that Iraqis would safeguard the nation as American troops leave. But recurring bombings of government buildings—following the establishment of the ADE 651 as the primary security device—simply underscore how unprepared the country remains. 

Use of this device costs human lives, both civilians and security forces, both Iraqi and American. As an example, on October 25th, 2009, suicide bombers managed to drive two tons of explosives deep into downtown Baghdad. Three ministries were destroyed and 155 people were killed after the ADE 651 “detector” had been used to scan the vehicles at the various checkpoints. That is death by woo-woo. 

Happily, the American military does not use the devices. Said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military: “I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives. If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work.” However, Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives, declared 

Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is, it detects bombs … I don’t care about Sandia [Labs] or the Department of Justice, or any of them. I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world. 

Well, the James Randi Educational Foundation sent the General a formal invitation to participate in a simple, definitive, test of the ADE 651, the reward being the JREF one-million-dollar prize, and he simply ignored it. Why? I think you know. 

Here’s an invitation to Major General Jehad al-Jabiri: “Sir, why aren’t you to be found standing at my door demanding the prize, armed with your vastly superior knowledge and supreme confidence—waving a carefully-chosen ADE 651?” One reason, I suspect, is that the system of everyone-shares-the-graft is much easier to keep in operation in your country. You see, Iraqi officials paid up to $60,000 apiece for the ADE 651 units—with our money!—when they could have been purchased for as little as $18,500 directly from James McCormick of ATSC. That is simply the way business is done in Iraq, with every official in the chain of command taking his piece of the pie. We American taxpayers bought that pie for them to share. Too late, we’re told that Iraqi officials have now begun an investigation into the no-bid contracts with ATSC. Gee, thanks … 

While this matter was under discussion, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine different police checkpoints in Baghdad that were using the ADE 651 for detection. None of the checkpoints detected two AK-47 rifles and a supply of ammunition inside that vehicle. Subsequently, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651. In his naivety, he placed a grenade and a machine pistol on a desk in plain view. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman. How could that be? Because the policeman obviously saw the weapons in place, knew that General Jabiri expected the ADE 651 to point at them, and it did because he tilted it in that direction—the very embodiment of the ideomotor effect. The Times reporter was under no such pressure. Why didn’t General Jabiri conceal the location of the weapons? That’s what the device is supposed to do: find concealed weapons and explosives, not just point at them when their location has been revealed! This is simply an idiotic “test”! 

I have personally offered to go to Iraq, armed with the JREF prize money, to confront Iraqi Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, chief of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives, in a simple double-blind test of the ADE 651 that he so adores. That’s $1 million General! 

The normal remote explosives detection machinery often employed in airports, weighs tons and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but there are two basic systems for detecting explosives that we already know really work. One is direct inspection of shipments, personnel, and vehicles; simple, portable, electronic sniffing devices can assist this procedure. Second, another “sniffer”—far more sensitive and dependable—is the use of trained dogs, who pick up on nitrogen compounds instantly and regardless of how well shielded they are. Yes, we must admit that checking cars with dogs is a slower process than waving useless magic wands, which takes only a few seconds per vehicle. General Jehad al-Jabiri complained: “Can you imagine dogs at all 400 checkpoints in Baghdad? The city would be a zoo!” 

Dammit, General, Baghdad is already a zoo—a dangerous, deadly zoo regulated by woo-woo notions that don’t work and take human lives regularly! Yes, I know that you’ve claimed the Times reporter was “untrained” in the use of the magic wand. Makers of the wand argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device. Okay, then find the most experienced, rested, capable, calm, serene, prepared operator of the ADE 651 that you can locate—one with a constant body temperature, of course, and with no other distracting items such as perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth, all of which you say can doom the test. I’d suggest the best possible individual is none other than James McCormick! And we’ll do any number of tests, any number of times, under your conditions, to test the thing, okay? And if the test is passed, you’ll be presented with one million dollars sir! 

The ATSC advertising material says that this device can find guns, munitions, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory—duh!—at distances up to a kilometer, even though the target may be underground. It works, they say, through walls, underwater, or even from an airplane three miles high! How? Simple: it works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction.” Oh, now I understand. 

The Sniffex works no better than any other dowsing rod does, but who knows that as a fact, and who might actually have been taken in by the claims?

One of the other devices popular in woo-woo circles is the Sniffex® rod—the same thing as the ADE 651 (but much more elegant) and just as efficient. The body of the heavy turned-brass handle contains a sealed brass cylinder stamped “P 079,” which the makers claim contains a “proprietary gas mixture” which I suspect is about 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen. The handle is branded on one side “Arsenal® made in Bulgaria.” The device appears to have been designed so that the handle is insulated from the “antenna,” since it has an insert of white non-conducting plastic in which the antenna is held, but examination and a simple continuity test shows that it’s all one piece, electrically speaking. 

The Sniffex works no better than any other dowsing rod does, but who knows that as a fact, and who might actually have been taken in by the claims? Anyone who has been self-deceived by the ideomotor effect and who has little or no basic technological knowledge, can honestly accept that the Sniffex works as advertised, though I find it difficult to believe that a grade-school student could not see that the circuitry of the device is a farce. Only one aspect of that setup proves the case: the claimed critical feature of the “proprietary gas mixture” said to be sealed in the brass cylinder cannot enter into the circuit because the highly-conductive cylinder itself short-circuits out the gas, which is thereby not in any way involved in the circuit! Add to that the fact that—as with the ADE 651—there is no power input of any sort. 

There are two agencies involved here that we must consider. First we have the actual manufacturer—the “Arsenal” company. Arsenal, the biggest Bulgarian military and special equipment supplier, manufactured the first 100 Sniffex units in May 2004. The device was then presented at the International Military Fair in Paris in June. It’s possible that Johnson was sold the idea by this company, or saw a demo but just didn’t see the impossibility of their claim, chose to believe them, and was thereby deceived into investing in the device and then contracted to advertise and distribute it. Or, he might have originated the idea himself and commissioned Arsenal to manufacture the Sniffex for him. A third possibility is that both Arsenal and Johnson were deluded, though I cannot accept that no one employed on either side had the simple technical skill to see the farcical nature of what they were promoting. Those at NAVEODTE CHDIV—which is the U.S. agency that tested the Sniffex and to whom I spoke—observed Johnson’s demeanor and comments during their tests of the Sniffex, and said that they felt he might be simply ignorant of technology, especially after he commented to them, following a stretch of failures, that the Sniffex unit he was using “might have gotten tired”! Others just felt that Johnson was a con man … 

I was also told that an engineer at NAVEODTE CHDIV said that Sniffex couldn’t be a dowsing rod—as some suspected—because it wasn’t made of “organic” materials. And remember, this was a trained U.S. Government employee, not some kid off the street … 

And the rubber duckies just keep on popping up after we push them down. Alas …