Stopping Terrorists 101: Back To Basics
Airline passengers walk into a security checkpoint Sunday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport outside Washington, D.C. Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
Airline passengers walk into a security checkpoint Sunday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport outside Washington, D.C.
Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty ImagesFor Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the second time was the charm. After initially claiming success under the system that "worked really very, very smoothly" in allowing a suspect to board a U.S.-bound plane in Amsterdam with explosives strapped to his body, she now admits: The system did fail.
So, what failed?
It's not simply aviation screening. Identifying bombs that have no metallic parts and are cleverly strapped to the body is difficult. Sure, there are technologies that can sense explosives or see them under clothing, but these are expensive and require a lot of time and resources to employ. It would, of course, be hard to make every international airport that dispatches planes to the United States employ them. Even if we did, it would be difficult to make certain every passenger bound for the U.S. had passed through the most stringent security procedures.
On the other hand, there are pretty inexpensive ways to find body bombs — if you know they are coming. A simple pat-down in secondary inspection would have found the device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to detonate as the plane prepared to land in Detroit. A bomb dog deployed at security would have easily sniffed it out. A swipe of the carry-on bags or clothing of anyone with such a device would have registered in the explosive detection machines that are routinely used in secondary inspections.
James Jay Carafano is senior research fellow for national security and homeland security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Courtesy of James Carafano hide caption
James Jay Carafano is senior research fellow for national security and homeland security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Courtesy of James CarafanoThe next step is up to us. We could spend a lot more money and waste a lot more of people's time trying to child-proof airplanes. Odds are, the terrorists will just find another way to run around security. Sooner or later, they'll get lucky.
The right answer would be to get as far ahead of the curve as we can. That means keeping terrorists off planes, and the way to do that is to connect the dots.
There were more than enough red flags to stop the suspect before he got onboard. There were plenty of systems and policies in place to react to him. People just failed to do the job. That is a failure in homeland security. That is a failure in leadership.
The U.S. government needs to get the terrorist networks before they get us. This latest attempt was not the work of a lone wolf. The perpetrator of such an attack would have been recruited by someone; he would have worked with a bomb-maker and a travel agent. That's a terrorist network.
The fact that a global terrorist network is out there, and we don't know what it is doing to get us, is inexcusable. That is a failure in counterterrorism operations. That's a failure in leadership, too.
In Detroit, we got lucky. Next time, we may not.
James Jay Carafano is senior research fellow for national security and homeland security in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.