[Infowarrior] - DHS backpedals: The system "failed miserably"

[Richard Forno]

System to keep air travel safe failed: Napolitano
WASHINGTON
Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:45am EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BQ0Z420091228
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The system aimed at keeping air travel secure  
failed when a Nigerian man who was suspected of ties to militants  
managed to smuggle explosives aboard a flight, U.S. Homeland Security  
Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Monday.

"It did," Napolitano said in an interview on NBC's Today Show, when  
asked if the system "failed miserably."

"And that's why we are asking -- how did this individual get on the  
plane? Why wasn't the explosive material detected? What do we need to  
do to change" the security watch list rules, she said.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been charged with trying to blow up  
Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam  
on Christmas Day with almost 300 people on board. Passengers and crew  
overpowered him after he set alight an explosive device attached to  
his body.

On Sunday, Napolitano said the system to protect air travel worked,  
but in news shows appearances on Monday she said she meant the  
response to alert other flights and airports and impose immediate  
safety procedures was effective.

Appearing on Monday on CNN, she said the administration was reviewing  
other security policies "because clearly this individual should not  
have been able to board this plane carrying that material."

Abdulmutallab's father, a respected Nigerian banker, had told U.S.  
officials he was concerned that his son's radicalized behavior could  
pose a threat, and his name was on a broad U.S. list of possible  
security threats. But he was not on the much smaller "no fly" list.

Napolitano was asked on NBC if the attempt represented a new form of  
threat that the screening system was not equipped to handle.

"I wouldn't go that far," she said. "What I would say is that our  
system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied  
with that. An extensive review is under way."

"At this point we feel that with the additional screening procedures  
in place ... the additional protective measures within  
aircraft ...that air travel is safe while we work our way through this  
problem."

(Reporting by Deborah Charles, editing by Vicki Allen)