washington d.c. so as soon as a couple people see this and decide to do it, they are going to launch. in the united states, these terrorists only need to bring a toothbrush. any 14-year-old in new york or chicago can get a gun. on that picture isis released of that soda can they say blew up that was a bomb inside and killed the airliner with 224 people on board. here is the question, why would they tell the world how they did it? under normal circumstances they would want to keep that secret presumably to do it again. reporter: well, we saw the same thing with al-qaeda and yemen with the underwear device, they released details and the printer bomb and perhaps because they want to send a significant until to western security agencies they were indeed responsible for this but it could just be propaganda and
intercepted. here is the clever end of the scale there is no doubt about this. this is an ingenious way of doing it. reporter: alford deconstructed, remade the bombs, explained al qaeda s deadly cunning. three, two, one! in 2014, a few years later, i came to see alford again. so that is a t-shirt dipped in explosives and dried, blown up and that would bring down a plane. reporter: american sources fearing the next terrorist bomb could be a clothing bomb. he shows me how easily it can be done, leaving out some key details. this is where the t-shirt bomb was sitting on the steel plate, thick steel plate. imagine if that was the skin of an aircraft? thin aluminum. it would have blown a hole right through it. the underpants bomb, the printer bomb were made by al qaeda s top bomb maker in yemen.
believed to be motorized paragliders like those seen here. those innocent looking pleasure craft that the suspects may have intended for far deadlier purposes since al qaeda has long been obsessed with arming aircraft. how much explosive substance could you actually put on something look this? you can see underneath the pilot there is room where they could put explosive. or in the past, a suicide vest. carry the explosives on his body and perhaps detonate as he flew into a crowd, flew into a stadium, some place where he could make the terror attack and create fear. reporter: the paraglider would add to the creative lethal bomb delivery systems terrorists have used over the years. there was the printer bomb, the shoe bomb, the underwear bomb. but also used or contemplated, explosives hidden in teddy bears, cameras, laptops, prosthetics including one molded
hands. plus, an election of evil and a major change of course by a leading ally, france elected it s first socialist president in two decades, we re looking at what it means for the united states. i m wolf blitzer, you re still in the situation room. the vice president joe biden said over the weekend he s fine with gay marriage and arnie duncan says he believes gay and lesbians should be allowed to marry. putting him at odds with the president of the united states. jessica yellin is working the story for us. jessica, causing quite an uproar there, what s going on? reporter: this is clearly an unwelcome topic for a white house that pronounces to make all decisions based on principle not on politics. it certainly looks as if the vice president supports gay marriage. who do you love? the president sets the policy. i am absolutely comfortable that the fact that men marrying wo i and women marrying women, are entitled to all the civil rights and the civil liberties. report
square last year. an extraordinary development and we mobilized cnn correspondents around the world to cover this breaking news story for us from the pentagon to istanbuistanbul. it s hard to indicate just how important al awlaki was to the organization, but here s a frightening reality. he may be more dangerous dead. that s exactly what our nic robertson has been covering to this point. let s go straight to you. what exactly do you know with regard to how he was targeted and is it possible to give credit to an agency at this point? well, i think what we just heard from fran townsend perhaps nails it down very well. that is that it can t be nailed down because nobody wants to go on the record. the past track record, however, of against al awlaki in may this year was credited to the united states, to a drone strike. missile bumped off the fender of his car as he made a get away. politically sensitive. right now the president does not need the united states to announce that i