Security reviews under way after airliner attack

Associated Press ^ | December 27, 2009 | Pamela Hess and Calvin Woodward

[reaganaut1]

The Obama administration promised Sunday to review security procedures at airports and the government's system for checking suspicious travelers after an alleged terrorist bent on destroying a jetliner came close to succeeding.

An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the high explosive PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers subdued the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, of Nigeria.

Abdulmutallab was hospitalized with burns from the attack and was read an indictment filed Saturday in federal court in Detroit charging him with attempting to destroy or wreck an aircraft and placing a destructive device in a plane. He was released from the hospital Sunday to the custody of federal marshals, who would not reveal where he was being held.

Abdulmutallab was on a watch list, but not one that denied him passage by air into the U.S. His own father had discussed concerns about his radical religious views before the attack.

Still, in appearances on Sunday talk shows, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the traveling public "is very, very safe."

[...]

Even so, airport security and intelligence played no role in thwarting the plot. Abdulmutallab was carrying PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, the same material convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid used when he tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Abdulmutallab was on a "generic" terrorist watch list, which includes more than half a million names, but was not elevated to a no-fly list or even designated for additional security searches, Napolitano said. That would have required "specific, credible, derogatory information," she said.

[reaganaut1]

Of the half-million names on the generic terrorist watch list, how many had their own fathers warning that they were extremists?

[chuck_the_tv_out]

Yeah, and can we please close the “he’s Sudanese, we do this all the time” no-need-for-passport loophole?

Does America really NEED any more Sudanese anyway?

[chuck_the_tv_out]

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
a muzzie with a burning peepee.

On the secondday of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
a muzzie locked in the toilet,
and a muzzie with a burning peepee.

[goldstategop]

And now Napolitano's Homeland Security Department is proposing to ban passengers from subduing a terrorist in flight. Idiots are running homeland security in this country.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus

[Sacajaweau]

Obama’s gonna really, really promise this time.

[grey_whiskers]

Let’s report Janet to fishy@whitehouse.gov.

[babygene]

I’ve got a security fix for you... Muslims only get to travel by camel.

[ricks_place]

The bomber’s father alerted the US to his radicalism which appears specific, credible, and derogatory. This IS a POLICY decision of the Obama Administration. Janet Napolitano claims no search possible by her own departmental policy.

[mountainlion]

I wonder how much help the leaked ATC manual helped the insurgents (terrorists)?