Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
ANALYSIS by Susan Katz Keating
A Virginia man was arrested today in connection with pipe bombs planted in Washington, D.C., the FBI confirmed. The devices – set outside the Republican and Democratic national party headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021 – have haunted investigators for nearly five years.
Even with Brian Cole of Woodbridge now named as a suspect, the case doesn’t add up. The bombs emerged from a mind that understood chemistry and control, and how to cook and pack high‑grade homemade black powder with lethal precision. And yet, the devices depended on a timer so crude they clearly came from an amateur.
That mismatch isn’t just sloppy; it also screams the possibility of more than one mind at work inside a deadly “engineering shop.”
The FBI investigated this case for nearly five years.
Consider what it takes to make black powder from scratch. It is a dangerous, technical, and unforgiving process. It requires a specialized machine to grind the ingredients – potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur – in precise portions, milling them into an extraordinarily fine, uniform powder. The milling is meant for maximum punch, creating small particles to enhance both surface area and burn speed.
The milling itself can be lethal. Even the dust is flammable. You cannot mill indoors. You cannot be anywhere near the mill while it is running. You must wear long sleeves and pants made of cotton, because anything synthetic will melt and fuse into your skin during a flash fire. You also need safety glasses, nitrile gloves, and a dust mask, along with a five-gallon bucket of cold water to plunge a burning arm or hand into. Every stage demands discipline, planning, and respect for the material. One wrong move, and you become part of the explosion.
The black powder that went into the Jan 6 bombs, then, is not the product of an impulsive tinkerer. It is the work of someone knowledgeable, careful, and methodical.
READ MORE about non-state bomb builders: Guns, Bombs, and the IRA: Talking to Patrick Ryan, Ireland’s Deadliest Priest
Now contrast that with the timers attached to the Jan. 6 devices.
Photos of them show clumsy construction, including what looks like a paper clip reconfigured to create the crucial metal connection that triggers the explosion. According to investigators, the devices failed to detonate because the timers jammed or the batteries died.
This is amateur-hour engineering – nothing like the clean, disciplined triggering systems used by serious non-state bomb-makers, such as the Provisional IRA, whose timers were notoriously reliable.
It is difficult to reconcile the precision and safety discipline required to produce homemade black powder with the sloppy, failure-prone timer that rendered the bombs inert.
Jan. 6 bomb timer. (FBI photo)
There is another element pointing toward intent, and possibly collaboration. The bombs appear to have been meant to be found. Notably, trained bomb-detection teams didn’t spot the device in plain sight outside the DNC. Instead, a woman doing her laundry finally found it, giving the would-be bomber what the pros could not.
A viable device placed in a public, high-traffic location with a visible kitchen timer is not a covert murder weapon. It’s a signal flare, designed to trigger alarm and response.
It is difficult to reconcile the precision required to produce homemade black powder with the sloppiness of the timing device, and the evident desire for the bombs to be discovered.
And that is the point.
The explosives suggest the hands of someone competent. The timers and the placement suggest the hands of someone careless, performative, or entirely different.
Soldier of Fortune was not immediately able to reach Cole’s family for comment.
Taken together, the Jan. 6 pipe bombs look like the product of different skill sets, and more than one mind.
For now, the arrest casts more shadows than it dispels.
