US: Abdulmutallab Changed Our Approach to Aviation Security

The United States has said  the botched Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound American aircraft by a Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has changed its approach to aviation security.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, who made the remarks yesterday at the National Press Club, Washington DC, said since then organisations like the  National Counterterrorism Center and the FBI have been pushing a lot of information overseas so that individuals at foreign airports could have the opportunity to have the benefit of intelligence reports on terrorists and their modes of operation.

While noting that US had been making plans for the purchase and deployment of advanced imaging technology  (body scanners) before the attack,  she added:  “A lot of what we are doing right now, quite frankly, is because of what happened on Christmas Day.

“But I think (the events of that) Christmas Day put a very stark reminder in people's minds about the fact that aviation continues to be the target of threats, and that the new kinds of threats don't necessarily involve large-scale conspiracies that take months, if not years, to prepare - but displaying individuals who are carrying, not things that are metal that can be picked up in a magnetometer, but powders or liquids or gels that could be detonated in an airplane.

“Putting those materials in harder-to-find locations, making greater use of individuals who don't fit what we think of as a terrorist profile, they may have no derogatory information about them in any intelligence file.

“For example, we are seeing the use of women and the recruitment of women for these kinds of missions, which is also a change. So it's an ever-evolving world that we deal with, and an ever-evolving threat situation.”
Napolitano revealed that because Abdulumutallab was able to scale through checks  in Nigeria and Amsterdam, before trying to detonate a bomb on the Detroit bound plane,  President Barack Obama ordered an immediate review of  what went wrong that enabled Abdulmutallab get on the plane and possibly kill not just himself but individuals from 17 other countries.

According to the secretary, what went wrong was twofold: “One was he wasn't on the right watch lists. There was information, but because of some practices in the watch listing community, he didn't make it onto what's called the selectee list or the no-fly list - the two lists that are actually pushed abroad before someone boards a plane.

 “…And then, of course, the second thing that happened is that because he was not on a watch list, he wasn't given a secondary inspection. And of course, because he wasn't carrying something that was metallic, it didn't get picked up with standard screening equipment.”

Napolitano said US has been pushing more lists overseas, and domestically, in airports under its jurisdiction, it has displayed more types of different  equipment and mechanisms designed to give, in an unpredictable way, more layers of security, so that if the potential attacker gets through one, he  might not get through other layers.”

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