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From August 8, 2004 Washington Post:

THE WORLD AFTER 9/11 : The Truck Bomb Threat
Impervious Shield Elusive Against Drive-By Terrorists

By Spencer S. Hsu and Sari Horwitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 8, 2004; Page A01

Government bomb technicians have packed Chevrolet sedans, Dodge vans and Ryder trucks with 10 tons of explosives and have blown them up in the desolate New Mexico desert hoping to analyze the flight of debris over the sand.

Federal agents in Front Royal, Va., have trained more than 400 Labrador retrievers to sniff out the chemical compounds used in 19,000 separate explosives formulas.

A D.C. police officer finishes inspecting a truck near the IMF building in Northwest Washington. Last week's orange alert bulletin noted that "there is no standard type of vehicle associated with" a car bomb and urged special attention to limousines as well, which often get close access to buildings. (Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)

Law enforcement officers have left thousands of calling cards across the country -- from a farmer's co-op store in McPherson, Kan., to a chemical company in West Haven, Conn. -- asking sales managers to report unusual interest in fertilizer or other components of homemade bombs.

The United States has spent more than $1 billion on these and other efforts to stop a single threat: the explosion of a car or truck bomb at a government installation or other structure. But 11 years after Muslim extremists used an explosives-laden van to attack the World Trade Center and nearly three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, even senior federal agents acknowledge that the country has virtually no defense against a terrorist barreling down the street with a truck bomb.

"If a person doesn't care about dying, they can pull right up to a building, push a button and the building would go," said Michael E. Bouchard, assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "That's why we have checkpoints and try to keep large vehicles away from buildings..."

The rest of the story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48677-2004Aug7?language=printer