WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. is adding air marshals to overseas flights because of concerns about potential terrorism threats originating in Britain and Europe, the homeland security chief said Sunday. "I think given what we know now, we're comfortable that we're at the right posture," Michael Chertoff said during a round of talk show appearances.
U.S. airports and mass transit systems are tightening security ahead of the Fourth of July holiday and more air marshals will travel on overseas flights. "We will be doing operations at various rail locations and other mass transit locations in cooperation with local authorities. Again, not because of a specific piece of credible threat information, but because we are going into a holiday season. There will be a larger number of people traveling," Chertoff said.
Airports are at the second of five security threat levels - orange - indicating a high risk of terrorist attacks. The current national threat level is yellow, or the third highest, indicating an elevated threat.
Chertoff said he has spoken out for some time about U.S. worries involving potential terrorist threats originating in Britain and Europe. "I think one of the issues we're increasingly concerned about is the movement of Europeans, including people with European citizenship, into areas of South Asia to get trained and get experience and then the prospect of these people coming back to carry out operations in Europe or in the United States using Europe as a departure point," Chertoff said. "It's one of the reasons we've been very focused on increasing our security for people incoming from Europe. And that's something we're going to be looking at for the rest of the summer," he said.
The U.S. increased the number of air marshals on flights between the United States and Europe last August and stepped up the pace over the past few months, Chertoff said. "We haven't singled out Glasgow until a couple of days ago as a particular location for focus, but there has been a strategy of mixing up the deployment of these air marshals, sometimes more in one destination, sometimes more in another destination," he said. "Going forward, we will be doing some enhanced air marshal work and similar types of activities with respect to U.K. travel." |