I thought TSA is in security business, not in investigations. It is a little distasteful to use a planeload of passengers as test subjects on which the two may or may not demonstrate their intentions.
Humans are dangerous to themselves and to everything else not because we have weapons, but because we think in a certain way. Do you believe that someone like Bruce Lee needs a 10" knife to kill someone? A pair of martial artists can kill everyone on the airplane if they want to, before anyone will even understand what's happening.
It looks to me like the TSA simply screwed up; those guys raised lots of red flags, but the bureaucracy couldn't figure out what to do... and so they let them go. While they were en route the message propagated to some other bureaucrat who realized what just happened and then ordered the pair arrested as soon as they land.
Greysard, in #64, I think you’ve got it exactly right.
It boggles the mind to think we have entrusted our nation's air security to people who think that because they confiscated the box cutters and knives of these two, and found no explosives, there's no risk.
And even if...IF...the presence or absence of weapons somehow defined safety, there was no way in hell TSA could determine that these two men were the only threat aboard. If history tells us anything, it's that Islamic terrorists run in packs, even for their dry runs and probes. An innocent item, combined with other innocent items once aboard...
Bureaucrats chose to risk the lives of a planeload of people rather than risk a reprimand in their personnel files. That is not just distasteful, it's despicable.