A disturbingly confused Janet Napolitano, confidently proclaimed Saturday that the security system that failed to spot a terrorist on a terror watch list worked just fine. Yesterday she must have added a shot of truth serum to her coffee and admitted the obvious.The system failed.
To put it more bluntly, she failed.
Of course aviation security experts weren't buying her initial CYA line about the system working just fine. You see, when the only thing that prevents an airliner from blowing up is the fact that the detonator went bad, unless the government supplied the terrorist with the bad detonator, from a security standpoint, the plane was as good as lost.
From the Washington Post.
"Security failed," said Doron Bergerbest-Eilon, Israel's senior-ranking counterterrorism officer from 1997 to 2000 and a former national regulator for aviation security. It is of little comfort that Abdulmutallab was stopped only after he allegedly failed to properly detonate the bomb, instead igniting a fire that alerted fellow passengers, Bergerbest-Eilon said.One wonders why a guy named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was on a terror watch-list because his father was worried about his militant behavior and reported him, was allowed to get on a plane. Call me a simpleton, but why wasn't that guy on the list to get the full-proctology screening at the airport? As the WaPo article notes, the explosive he was using is easily detected by security equipment. But aside from the equipment, what about just using common sense? The hard work was already done: He's already on the watch-list. Why should he fly anywhere without a full body search?
"The system repeatedly fails to prevent attacks and protect passengers when challenged," he said, adding that, in the minds of security experts, "for all intents and purposes, Northwest Flight 253 exploded in midair."
Or perhaps we are worried that he might be offended?
After all, it is not nice to offend your enemies, they might try to blow you up or something.