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Re: christmas terror attack attempt
Yes AviatorDave the pilot has that authority, but in a world where our Seals are charged with assault because a frickin full blown terrorist mastermind got a fat lip, and where our cops have to consider every possible lawsuit before, during, and after they defend themselves, and our soldiers cannot conduct war but are instead asked to be cops….Do you think a Pilot would really risk an ACLU and CAIR lawsuit as well as possibly being fired from his airline for racial intollerence after pressure from those organizations? The Airline itself would be sued as well, then settle out of court for a few million $, which would immediately fund the next attack on the very same Airline.
This, I’m afraid, is the world we now live in…and it’s tremendously insane.Re: christmas terror attack attempt
quote JamesH:Yes AviatorDave the pilot has that authority, but in a world where our Seals are charged with assault because a frickin full blown terrorist mastermind got a fat lip, and where our cops have to consider every possible lawsuit before, during, and after they defend themselves, and our soldiers cannot conduct war but are instead asked to be cops….Do you think a Pilot would really risk an ACLU and CAIR lawsuit as well as possibly being fired from his airline for racial intollerence after pressure from those organizations? The Airline itself would be sued as well, then settle out of court for a few million $, which would immediately fund the next attack on the very same Airline.
This, I’m afraid, is the world we now live in…and it’s tremendously insane.I hear ya, but it happens quite regularly. It’s not company policy that allows them to do that, it’s FAA regulations. And the pilot’s union will back them up. The union would go crazy if a pilot was ever fired for an action he believed could affect the safety of his flight. The most recent example was a woman with a crying baby. It seemed a little excessive in that case, but she had to get off that flight and get another later one. I don’t think lawsuits against these actions go anywhere, as it’s a condition for buying a ticket.
I’ll look and see if I can find any lawsuits around passengers being denied from a fligt.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
Here’s one that happened, AirTran wouldn’t allow them to fly on ANY AirTran flight, and they were just a normal family, and had been cleared by DHS or the FBI. AirTran still refused to let them fly on one of their company aircraft.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/01/family.grounded/
I did find more on the 6 imams that were kicked off the flight. The lawsuit was not because they were kicked off the flight, but was because they were handcuffed and detained. They reached an out-of-court settlement in the lawsuit.
I bet the reason they sued for being illegally detained is that they didn’t have any legal standing to sue over the removal itself.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
quote resqr1:The only good terrorist is a dead one.The Israeli protocol for a suicide b@mber is a head shot to immediately eliminate the risk of detonation .
The other side of this though is when the London Metropolitan Police enacted their Israeli-inspired ‘Operation Kratos’ mode (shoot to kill – head shot) in the tense & chaotic aftermath of the 2005 London b@mbings – after a tragic series of terrible intelligence, operational and communication failures, an innocent ‘suspect’ – the Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menendez was shot and killed in a subway car.
Fwiw – the climax of the incident was so ultra aggressive and unlike regular London Met procedures that I always had the thought it may have been carried out by the SAS, UK special forces with a counter-t*rror unit , operating on the ground in plainclothes. Although the incident contributed to the eventual demise of the Chief of the London Met who departed with a tremendous ‘golden handshake’, the supervising officer in charge (the fantastically-named Commander Cressida Dick) received 2 major promotions thereafter – I always had to wonder if this was a reward for not breaking ranks about something like possible SAS involvement in the London shooting.
I think the reality is that out on the fringes of crazy stuff that can go down – in the US any LEO (or civilian) is far more likely to encounter a random shooter or suicide by cop situation than a t*rror£st attack. As an aside: for the LEO’s here – veteran police Sgt Richard Parent (Delta police – Canada) did a recent Ph.D on the subject & examined around 850 officer-involved shootings in North America, finding that fully 50% fulfilled criteria as suicide by cop incidents. http://www3.telus.net/parent/
Getting back to El Al / Israeli airline security – remembering the time I flew with them to Israel – after the tag-team grilling & baggage check the passengers went to a ‘sterile’ boarding area sealed off from the rest of the terminal. I remember heading to the rest room & noticing an undercover security officer had followed me in and was covertly watching my every move through the mirror as they washed their hands. After boarding, the El Al plane was escorted right up to the runway with El Al security officers in a Citroen BX on one side and an armoured car with machine gun turret from the local State’s military police on the other (!). These were just the visible elements – imagine all the behind the scenes activity. Talk about being on your game!
The last time I came back from Israel, on another carrier but still getting the full grill at Ben Gurion airport, for various reasons, I hadn’t been entirely candid about all the details of my trip & the officers (correctly) detected evasiveness – sending me off to a team of about 5 who individually checked every single item in my carry on, with special attention given to all electronic items.
Seeing as Israel has one national flagship airline, the ports they serve and one International airport to cover – adopting a full Israeli style system in the US seems unrealistic, though definitely there could be a shift towards trying to find the bad people instead of only bad objects.
Right now I’d think of investing in stocks of any openly traded companies supplying airport scanning & expl*sive detection devices. After this X-mas incident, I think its just a matter of time before these devices become part of the TSA SOP & arsenal.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
finding that fully 50% fulfilled criteria as suicide by cop incidents. http://www3.telus.net/parent/
it is difficult for me to fathom the selfishness of someone who wants to end his/her life, but to lay this act upon someone else. it is beyond my comprehension .
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
The Christmas Day Airliner Attack and the Intelligence Process
January 4, 2010 | 1840 GMT
By George Friedman
As is well known, a Nigerian national named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to destroy a passenger aircraft traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. Metal detectors cannot pinpoint the chemical in the device he sought to detonate, PETN. The PETN was strapped to his groin. Since a detonator could have been detected, the attacker chose ó or had chosen for him ó a syringe filled with acid for use as an improvised alternative means to initiate the detonation. In the event, the device failed to detonate, but it did cause a fire in a highly sensitive area of the attackerís body. An alert passenger put out the fire. The plane landed safely. It later emerged that the attackerís father, a prominent banker in Nigeria, had gone to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to warn embassy officials of his concerns that his son might be involved with jihadists.
The incident drove home a number of points. First, while al Qaeda prime ó the organization that had planned and executed 9/11 ó might be in shambles, other groups in other countries using the al Qaeda brand name and following al Qaeda primeís ideology remain operational and capable of mounting attacks. Second, like other recent attacks, this attack was relatively feeble: It involved a single aircraft, and the explosive device was not well-conceived. Third, it remained and still remains possible for a terrorist to bring explosives on board an aircraft. Fourth, intelligence available in Nigeria, London and elsewhere had not moved through the system with sufficient speed to block the terrorist from boarding the flight.
An Enduring Threat
From this three things emerge. First, although the capabilities of jihadist terrorists have declined, their organizations remain functional, and there is no guarantee that these organizations wonít increase in sophistication and effectiveness. Second, the militants remain focused on the global air transport system. Third, the defensive mechanisms devised since 2001 remain ineffective to some degree.
The purpose of terrorism in its purest form is to create a sense of insecurity among a public. It succeeds when fear moves a system to the point where it can no longer function. This magnifies the strength of the terrorist by causing the public to see the failure of the system as the result of the power of the terrorist. Terror networks are necessarily sparse. The greater the number of persons involved, the more likely a security breach becomes. Thus, there are necessarily few people in a terror network. An ideal terror network is global, able to strike anywhere and in multiple places at once. The extent of the terror network is unknown, partly because of its security systems and partly because it is so sparse that finding a terrorist is like finding a needle in a haystack. It is the fact that the size and intentions of the terror network are unknown that generates the sense of terror and empowers the terrorist.
The global aspect is also important. That attacks can originate in many places and that attackers can belong to many ethnic groups increases the desired sense of insecurity. All Muslims are not members of al Qaeda, but all members of al Qaeda are Muslims, and any Muslim might be a member of al Qaeda. This logic is beneficial to radical Islamists, who want to increase the sense of confrontation between Islam and the rest of the world. This not only increases the sense of insecurity and vulnerability in the rest of the world, it also increases hostility toward Muslims, strengthening al Qaedaís argument to Muslims that they are in an unavoidable state of war with the rest of the world. Equally important is the transmission of the idea that if al Qaeda is destroyed in one place, it will spring up elsewhere.
This terror attack made another point, intended or not. U.S. President Barack Obama recently decided to increase forces in Afghanistan. A large part of his reasoning was that Afghanistan was the origin of 9/11, and the Taliban hosted al Qaeda. Therefore, he reasoned the United States should focus its military operations in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, since that was the origin of al Qaeda. But the Christmas Day terror attempt originated in Yemen, a place where the United States has been fighting a covert war with limited military resources. It therefore raises the question of why Obama is focusing on Afghanistan when the threat from al Qaeda spinoffs can originate anywhere.
From the terrorist perspective, the Yemen attack was a low-cost, low-risk operation. If it succeeded in bringing down a U.S. airliner over Detroit, the psychological impact would be massive. If it failed to do so, it would certainly increase a sense of anxiety, cause the U.S. and other governments to institute new and expensive security measures, and potentially force the United States into expensive deployments of forces insufficient to dominate a given country but sufficient to generate an insurgency. If just some of these things happened, the attack would have been well worth the effort.
The Strategic Challenge
The Westís problem can be identified this way: There is no strategic solution to low-level terrorism, i.e., terrorism carried out by a sparse, global network at unpredictable times and places. Strategy involves identifying and destroying the center of gravity of an enemy force. By nature, jihadist terrorism fails to present a single center of gravity, or a strong point or enabler that if destroyed would destroy the organization. There is no organization properly understood, and the destruction of one organization does not preclude the generation of another organization.
There are two possible solutions. The first is to accept that Islamist terrorism cannot be defeated permanently but can be kept below a certain threshold. As it operates now, it can inflict occasional painful blows on the United States and other countries ó including Muslim countries ó but it cannot threaten the survival of the nation (though it might force regime change in some Muslim countries).
In this strategy, there are two goals. The first is preventing the creation of a jihadist regime in any part of the Muslim world. As we saw when the Taliban provided al Qaeda with sanctuary, access to a state apparatus increases the level of threat to the United States and other countries; displacing the Taliban government reduced the level of threat. The second goal is preventing terrorists from accessing weapons of mass destruction that, while they might not threaten the survival of a country, would certainly raise the pain level to an unacceptable point. In other words, the United States and other countries should focus on reducing the level of terrorist capabilities, not on trying to eliminate the terrorist threat as a whole.
To a great extent, this is the American strategy. The United States has created a system for screening airline passengers. No one expects it to block a serious attempt to commit terrorism on an airliner, nor does this effort have any effect on other forms of terrorism. Instead, it is there to reassure the public that something is being done, to catch some careless attackers and to deter others. But in general, it is a system whose inconvenience is meant to reassure.
The Challenge of Identifying Potential Terrorists
To the extent to which there is a center of gravity to the problem, it is in identifying potential terrorists. In both the Fort Hood attack and the Detroit incident, information was in the system that could have allowed authorities to identify and stop the attackers, but in both cases, this information didnít flow to the places where action could have been taken. There is thus a chasm between the acquisition of information and the person who has the authority to do something about it. The system ìknewî about both attackers, but systems donít actually think or know anything. The person with authority to stop a Nigerian from boarding the plane or who could relieve the Fort Hood killer from duty lacked one or more of the following: intelligence, real authority and motivation.
The information gathered in Nigeria had to be widely distributed to be useful. It was unknown where Abdulmutallab was going to go or what he was going to do. The number of people who needed to know about him was enormous, from British security to Amsterdam ticket agents checking passports. Without distributing the intelligence widely, it became useless. A net canít have holes that are too big, and the failure to distribute intelligence to all points creates holes.
Of course, the number of pieces of intelligence that come into U.S. intelligence collection is enormous. How does the person interviewing the father know whether the father has other reasons to put his son on a list? Novels have been written about father-son relations. The collector must decide whether the report is both reliable and significant, and the vast majority of information coming into the system is neither. The intelligence community has been searching for a deus ex machina in the form of computers able not only to distribute intelligence to the necessary places but also to distinguish reliable from unreliable, significant from insignificant.
Forgetting the interagency rivalries and the tendency to give contracts to corporate behemoths with last-generation technology, no matter how widely and efficiently intelligence is distributed, at each step in the process someone must be given real authority to make decisions. When Janet Napolitano or George Tenet say that the system worked after an incident, they mean not that the outcome was satisfactory, but that the process operated as the process was intended to operate. Of course, being faithful to a process is not the same as being successful, but the U.S. intelligence communityís obsession with process frequently elevates process above success. Certainly, process is needed to operate a vast system, but process also is being used to deny people authority to do what is necessary outside the process, or, just as bad, it allows people to evade responsibility by adhering to the process.
Not only does the process relieve individuals in the system from real authority; it also strips them of motivation. In a system driven by process, the individual motivated to abort the process and improvise is weeded out early. There is no room for ìcowboys,î the intelligence community term for people who hope to be successful at the mission rather than faithful to the process. Obviously, we are overstating matters somewhat, but not by as much as one might think. Within the U.S. intelligence and security process, one daily sees good people struggling to do their jobs in the face of processes that canít possibly anticipate all circumstances.
The distribution of intelligence to the people who need to see it is, of course, indispensable, along with whatever other decision supports can be contrived. But, in the end, unless individuals are expected and motivated to make good decisions, the process is merely the preface to failure. No system can operate without process. At the same time, no process can replace authority, motivation and, ultimately, common sense.
The fear of violating procedures cripples Western efforts to shut down low-level terrorism. But the procedures are themselves flawed. A process that says that in a war against radical Islamists, an elderly visitor from Iceland is as big of a potential threat as a twentysomething from Yemen might satisfy some ideological imperative, but it violates the principle of common sense and blocks the authority and the motivation to act decisively.
It is significant that this is one of the things the Obama administration has changed in response to the attempted bombing.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced Jan. 4 that anyone traveling from or through nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism as well as ìother countries of interestî will be required to go through enhanced screening. The TSA said those techniques would include full-body pat downs, carry-on luggage searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology. The U.S. State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers will face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. A rational system of profiling thus appears to be developing.
In all likelihood, no system can eliminate events such as what happened on Christmas, and in all likelihood, the republic would survive an intermittent pattern of such events ó even successful ones. Focusing on the strategic level makes sense. But given the level of effort and cost involved in terrorist protection throughout the world, successful systems for distributing intelligence and helping identify potentially significant threats are long overdue. The U.S. government has been tackling this since 2001, and it still isnít working.
But, in the end, creating a process that precludes initiative by penalizing those who do not follow procedures under all circumstances and intimidating those responsible for making quick decisions from risking a mistake is bound to fail.
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/11/yeffet.air.security.israel/index.html
How the Israelis do airport security
January 11, 2010 9:55 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- U.S. authorities have stepped up airport screening after failed Christmas Day attack
- Consultant Isaac Yeffet says Israel safeguards planes by interviewing all passengers
- He says well-trained agents can detect attackers and prevent incidents
- Yeffet: Security people need to be constantly tested — and fired if they fail
New York (CNN) — In the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253, authorities are ramping up air passenger screening, particularly for those flying from 14 nations that the U.S. describes as “state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest.”
Hundreds more full body scanning machines are on order for U.S. airports. But some airline security experts say the real answer to greater security is to follow the approach used by Israel’s airline, El Al.
Isaac Yeffet, the former head of security for El Al and now an aviation security consultant in New York, said El Al has prevented terrorism in the air by making sure every passenger is interviewed by a well-trained agent before check-in.
“Stop relying only on technology,” Yeffet told CNN. “Technology can help the qualified, well-trained human being but cannot replace him.”
Yeffet spoke to CNN Friday.CNN: What do you think we’ve learned about airport security from the failed bombing in Detroit?
Isaac Yeffet: We learned one thing. We do not have a good security system to be able to prevent tragedies in this country.
After Lockerbie, everyone thought, now we’ve learned the lesson of how to be proactive instead of being reactive. Unfortunately, September 11 came and we know the result. Thousands of people lost their lives. Security totally failed, not at one airport, at three different airports around the country.
In 2002, we had Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. This man gave the security people all the suspicious signs that any passenger could show. The man got a British passport in Belgium, not in England. Number Two: he flew to Paris, he bought a one-way ticket from Paris to Florida. He paid cash. He came to the airport with no luggage. What else do I need to know that this passenger is suspicious?
What did we learn from this? Just to tell the passenger from now on, you take off your shoes when you come to the airport? This I call a patch on top of a patch.
Now we face the story with [Umar Farouk] AbdulMutallab. We had all the information that we could dream the security people could get. He was on the list of people connected to al Qaeda. I don’t need more to understand that when he comes, I am not looking for more evidence. He is suspicious; I have to take care of him.
His father called the U.S. Embassy a month before he took the flight and told the U.S. Embassy that his son had called and said this was the last time you were going to hear from me. And the father warned the U.S. Embassy that his son was going to do something bad, watch him. What happened to this information?
The guy bought a ticket and paid $3,000 cash. … No one knew the information that we had about him, no one could interview him and to ask him why is he flying to America.
CNN: What needs to be done to improve the system?
Yeffet: It’s mandatory that every passenger — I don’t care his religion or whatever he is — every passenger has to be interviewed by security people who are qualified and well-trained, and are being tested all year long. I trained my guys and educated them, that every flight, for them, is the first flight. That every passenger is the first passenger. The fact that you had [safe flights] yesterday and last month means nothing. We are looking for the one who is coming to blow up our aircraft. If you do not look at each passenger, something is wrong with your system.
Every passenger has to be interviewed by security people who are qualified and well-trained.
–Isaac YeffetCNN: What is El Al’s approach to airline security? How does it differ from what’s being done in this country?
Yeffett: We must look at the qualifications of the candidate for security jobs. He must be educated. He must speak two languages. He must be trained for a long time, in classrooms. He must receive on-the-job training with a supervisor for weeks to make sure that the guy understands how to approach a passenger, how to convince him to cooperate with him, because the passenger is taking the flight and we are on the ground. The passengers have to understand that the security is doing it for their benefit.
We are constantly in touch with the Israeli intelligence to find out if there are any suspicious passengers among hundreds of passengers coming to take the flight — by getting the list of passengers for each flight and comparing it with the suspicious list that we have. If one of the passengers is on the list, then we are waiting for him, he will not surprise us.
During the year, we did thousands of tests of our security guys around the world. It cost money, but once you save lives, it’s worth all the money that the government gave us to have the right security system.
I used to send a male or female that we trusted. We used to give them tickets and send them to an airport to take a flight to Tel Aviv. We concealed whatever we could in their luggage. Everything was fake, and we wanted to find out if the security people would stop this passenger or not.
If there was any failure, the security people immediately were fired, and we called in all the security people to tell people why they failed, what happened step by step. I wanted everyone to learn from any failure. And if they were very successful, I wanted everyone to know why.
CNN: Let’s say all the airlines instituted the system that you’re talking about. So let’s say I go to an airport for a flight to London. What should happen?
Yeffet: When you come to the check-in, normally you wait on line. While you wait on line, I want you to be with your luggage. You have to meet with me, the security guy. We tell you who we are. We ask for your passport, we ask for your ticket. We check your passport. We want to find which countries you visited. We start to ask questions, and based on your answers and the way you behave, we come to a conclusion about whether you are bona fide or not. That’s what should happen.
CNN: Every passenger should be interviewed, on all flights?
Yeffet: Yes, 100 percent…
I want to interview you. It won’t take too long if you’re bona fide. We never had a delay.Number two, I have heard so many times El Al is a small airline. We in America are big air carriers. Number one, we have over 400 airports around the country, why hasn’t anyone from this government asked himself, let’s take one airport out of 400 airports and try to implement El Al’s system because their system proved they’re the best of the best.
For the last 40 years, El Al did not have a single tragedy. And they came to attack us and to blow up our aircraft, but we knew how to stop them on the ground. So let’s try to implement the system at one airport in the country and then come to a conclusion…CNN: What do you think of using full body scanners?
Yeffet: I am against it, this is once again patch on top of patch. Look what happened, Richard Reid, the shoebomber, hid the explosives in his shoes. The result — all of us have to take off our shoes when we come to the airport. The Nigerian guy hid his explosives in his underwear. The result — everyone now will be seen naked. Is this the security system that we want?
We have millions of Muslims in this country. I am not Muslim, but I am very familiar with the tradition, I respect the tradition. Women who walk on the street cover their body from head to toe. Can you imagine the reaction of the husband? Excuse me, wait on the side, we want to see your wife’s body naked?… This is not an answer.
I appreciate what the president said, but we need to see the results on the ground at the airports. … I strongly recommend that TSA call experts … and not let them leave before they come to conclusions about what must be done at each airport to make sure that we are really pro-active. Let us be alert, let us work together, and show no mercy for any failure, no mercy.
If we do this system, believe me we will show the world that we are the best proactive security system and the terrorists will understand that it’s not worth it to come to attack us.
CNN: Would it be more expensive to provide the kind of security system you recommend?
Yeffet: For sure El Al spends more money on security than the American air carriers. But the passengers are willing to pay for it if we can prove to them that they are secure when they come to take a flight.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
I don’t know the numbers, but I’m guessing the number of daily flights in Israel hardly compares to those in the US, making these procedures less than feasible.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
In this day and age, is there anything wrong with bias profiling? I am a big fan of it myself.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
wow. the concept of hiring an educated highly trained security agent…what will we do with our highschool dropouts.
Re: christmas terror attack attempt
Thoughts from Fred Burton (former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the U.S. State Departmentís Diplomatic Security Service)..
Airline Security: Gentle Solutions to a Vexing Problem
January 13, 2010 | 2130 GMT
By Fred Burton and Ben West
U.S. President Barack Obama outlined a set of new policies Jan. 7 in response to the Dec. 25, 2009 Northwest Airlines bombing attempt, which came the closest to a successful attack on a U.S. flight since Richard Reidís failed shoe-bombing in December 2001. As in the aftermath of that attempt, a flurry of accusations, excuses and policy prescriptions have emanated from Washington since Christmas Day concerning U.S. airline security. Whatever changes actually result from the most recent bombing attempt, they will likely be more successful at pacifying the public and politicians than preventing future attacks.
At the heart of President Obamaís policy outline were the following key tactics: pursue enhanced screening technology in the transportation sector, review the visa issuance and revocation process, enhance coordination among agencies for counterterrorism (CT) investigations and establish a process to prioritize such investigations. While such measures are certainly important, they will not go far enough, by themselves, to meaningfully address the aviation security challenges the United States still faces almost nine years after 9/11.
Holes in the SystemFor one thing, technology must not be seen as a panacea. It can be a very useful tool for finding explosive devices and weapons concealed on a person or in luggage, but it is predictable and reactive. In terms of aviation security, the federal government has consistently been fighting the last war and continues to do so. Certain practical and effective steps have been taken. Hardening the cockpit door, deploying air marshals and increasing crew and passenger awareness countered the airline hijacking threat after 9/11; requiring passengers to remove their shoes and scanning them prior to boarding followed Reidís 2001 shoe-bombing attempt; and restrictions on liquids and gels followed the 2006 trans-Atlantic plot. Not enacting these measures would have meant not learning from past mistakes, and they do ensure that unsophisticated ìcopycatî attackers are not successful. But such measures ó even those that are less technological ó fail to take into account innovative militants, who are eager and able to exploit inevitable weaknesses in the process.
Even advanced body-imaging systems like the newer backscatter and millimeter-wave systems now being used to screen travelers cannot pick up explosives hidden inside a personís body using condoms or tampons ó a tactic that was initially thought to have been used in the Aug. 28 assassination attempt against Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. (It is now believed that the attacker in that case used an underwear bomb like the one used in the Christmas Day attempt.) Moreover, X-ray systems cannot detect explosives cleverly disguised in carry-on baggage or smuggled past security checkpoints ó something that drug smugglers routinely do.
Preventing attacks against U.S. airliners would require unrealistically invasive and inconvenient measures that the airline industry and American society are simply not prepared to implement. El Al, Israelís national airline, is one international carrier that conducts thorough searches of every passenger and every handbag, runs checked luggage through a decompression chamber and has two air marshals on each flight. The airline also refuses to let some people (including many Muslims) on board. While these practices have been successful in preventing terrorist attacks against the airline, they are not in line with American and European culture and President Obamaís insistence that measures remain consistent with privacy rights and civil liberties. It is also economically and politically unfeasible for major U.S. airlines operating hundreds of flights per day from hundreds of different cities to impose measures such as those followed by El Al, an airline with fewer planes and a smaller area of operation.
And as long as U.S. airport security relies on screening techniques that are only moderately invasive, there will be holes that innovative attackers will be able to exploit. While screening technology is advancing, there is nothing in the foreseeable future that would be able to do more screening with less invasiveness. The U.S. prison system grapples with the same problem, and even there, where inmates are searched far more invasively than air travelers, contraband is still able to flow into facilities.
Focusing on the visa issuance and revocation process also leaves holes in the system. The Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been given a multiple-entry U.S. visa, which allowed him to travel to the United States. When Abdulmutallabís father expressed concerns to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on Nov. 19, 2009, that his son might have been involved with Yemen-based Islamist militants, Abdulmutallabís name and passport number were sent from the U.S. Embassy in Abuja to Washington and placed in the ìVisa Viperî system, which specifically pertains to visas and terrorist suspects. His name and passport number were also logged into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, but not the ìno-flyî list.
This standard operating procedure (which does not automatically result in a visa revocation) passed the responsibility from the CIA agents who spoke to Abdulmuttalabís father on to the U.S. State Department, where agents unfamiliar with the specifics of the case did not, apparently, decide to act on it. In hindsight, the decision not to take the fatherís warning more seriously appears to be a glaring mistake, but in context it seems less obvious. The fatherís tip was vague, with little indication of what his son was up to or, more important to U.S. CT agents, that he was planning even to travel to the United States, much less attack a U.S. airliner.
Intelligence LimitationsThe possibility of yet another jihadist suspect emerging in the Middle East does not pose an existential threat to the United States, so this raises the third challenge: prioritizing CT investigations. Vague warnings such as the tip from Abdulmuttalabís father spring up constantly throughout the world and CT investigators have to prioritize them. Only the most serious cases get assigned to an investigator to follow up on while the rest are filed away for future reference. If the same name pops up again with more information on the threat, then more action is taken. U.S. CT agents are most concerned about specific threats to the United States, and with no actionable intelligence that Abdulmutallab was plotting an attack against the United States, his case was given a lower priority.
Nevertheless, not acting immediately on the fatherís vague threat proved to be a near-fatal move. This highlights the danger of the unsophisticated, ill-trained militant, referred to in U.S. CT circles as a ìKramer jihadistî (after the bumbling character in the sitcom ìSeinfeldî). By himself, a Kramer jihadist poses a minimal threat, but when combined with a trained operative or group, he can become a formidable weapon. Abdulmutallab had been radicalized, but there is nothing to suggest that he had extensive jihadist training or any tactical expertise. He was simply a willing agent with a visa to the United States. When put in the hands of a competent, well-trained operator (such as those involved with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), a Kramer jihadist can be outfitted with a device and given a support network that could supply him with transportation and direction to carry out an effective attack. There are simply too many radical Islamists in the world to investigate each one, but immediately revoking visas to keep suspects off U.S. airliners until they can be investigated further is a fairly simple process and would be an effective deterrent.
Finally, the lack of coordination among agencies in CT investigations is an old problem that dates back well before 9/11. This challenge lies in the fact that the U.S. intelligence community is broken up into specific agencies ó each with its own specific jurisdiction and incentive to leverage its power in Washington by controlling the flow of information. This system ensures that no single agency becomes too powerful and self-interested, but it also fractures the intelligence community and bureaucratizes intelligence sharing.
National Counterterrorism CenterIn order to investigate a case like Abdulmutallabís, agents from the CIA must work with agents from the FBI, and the State Department is tasked with coordinating the requests for information from various foreign governments (whose information is not always reliable). For foreign threats specifically aimed at airlines, agents from the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Director of National Intelligence, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement must be notified. Rallying and coordinating all the appropriate actors and agencies to respond to a threat requires careful bureaucratic maneuvering and presents numerous opportunities to be bogged down at every step. Certainly, the more overt the threat, the easier it is to move the bureaucracy, but a case as opaque as Abdulmutallabís would not likely inspire a quick and decisive follow-up.
The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was created to aggregate threats from various local, state and federal agencies all over the world in order to streamline the threat-identification and investigation process. However, the additional bureaucracy that was generated with the formation of the NCTC has essentially canceled out any benefit that the center might have contributed.
When it comes down to it, modern airliners ó full of people and fuel ó are extremely vulnerable targets that can produce highly dramatic carnage, characteristics that attract militants and militant groups seeking global notoriety. And Abdulmutallabís efforts on Christmas Day certainly will not be the last militant attempt to bring an airliner down. As security measures are changed in response to this most recent attempt, terrorist planners will be watching closely and are sure to adapt their tactics accordingly.
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
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