http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226054,00.html...As in other parts of DHS, some of the best minds in the explosives unit have left in frustration. "There has been a hemorrhaging of talent," says a former senior U.S. official. DHS has spent $732 million this year on aviation R&D for explosives-detection programs. Jackson said he did not have figures on hand for how much went to detecting liquid explosives in particular. Far more is spent on homeland security now compared with before 9/11, but many security experts say it's still not nearly enough. "The Pentagon's budget is 10 times that of DHS," notes Clark Kent Erwin, a former inspector general for DHS.
...Once terrorists decide to bomb an airline with liquid explosives, how likely is it that they will succeed? Some 2,000 bombs are planted every year on U.S. soil, and almost none are liquid explosives. That's because they are extremely volatile. Some explode if dropped a couple of feet. Friction can set off TATP. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to check such a bomb in a suitcase. Even if the components are carried on separately—the safest strategy to avoid detection and premature detonation—mixing the materials produces a foul stench that would probably attract attention, according to a U.S. airline explosives expert.
...Investing in body-scanning machines or prohibiting carry-on luggage might provide a degree of security against liquid explosives, but such steps would do nothing about the fact that most of the cargo shipped on passenger planes goes entirely uninspected—for bombs or anything else. DHS relies instead on a program it calls Known Shipper, which leaves it up to air carriers and freight forwarders to screen regular cargo customers so they can load boxes onto planes with only spot inspections. The Government Accountability Office warned last October that the industry isn't adequately investigating shippers. But the Bush Administration and the airlines, which make about $17 billion a year from cargo on passenger planes, have resisted introducing tougher rules.
...Most terrorists make mistakes, just as other criminals do. Mohammed told cia interrogators that he had inadvertently packed a copy of the Bojinka plan with all the targeted flights and explosion times in his bag on the Philippine Airlines test run. Nobody noticed. Today someone might—just as a flight attendant noticed Richard Reid trying to light his shoe in a failed attempt to blow up a transatlantic plane. "We're lucky the people we're up against are so incompetent," says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism official.
The trick is to find that narrow space between vigilance and paranoia. After the Bojinka plot was uncovered in 1995, aviation officials banned carry-on aerosols and most liquids and gels heavier than an ounce on U.S. planes leaving Manila. Eventually, the ban faded away. And people kept flying.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14323311/page/3/...At the same time, his vice president, Dick Cheney, darkly warned that the Connecticut primary victory of antiwar candidate Ned Lamont over Sen. Joseph Lieberman would only encourage "Al Qaeda types." (Interviewed by NEWSWEEK, former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge bridled at his former colleague's remark: "That may be the way the vice president sees it," he said, "but I don't see it that way, and I don't think most Americans see it that way.")
...Alarm bells went off louder when British intelligence discovered that
one of the alleged plotters worked in security at Heathrow airport, the major hub outside London, and possessed a badge that would allow him entree into any part of the terminal. (One of the suspects arrested was identified as Amin Tariq, a tall, unshaven young man who, according to neighbors, worked at Heathrow.)
...The question is whether the enemy has learned faster. Killing or capturing top Qaeda operatives like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed hasn't stopped Al Qaeda from reinventing itself. "I find it very troubling that it looks like the old Al Qaeda," said Richard Clarke, the former counterterror chief who served under President Bill Clinton, and, briefly, under President Bush. "This is not good news. It means that Al Qaeda is still around." The group seems to be able to replicate and multiply. "This is whack-a-mole," said Clarke. "It's almost to the point where for everyone we kill and capture, they grow three."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14325177/...In March, NBC News revealed that government investigators smuggled materials for homemade bombs through security at all 21 airports they tested—materials similar to those involved in the London plot. But nothing was done until last week, just as shoes were not removed at airport security until Richard Reid tried to explode a shoe bomb in 2002. "We keep chasing yesterday's story," says Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia and author of a new book, "Americans at Risk.""The terrorists always seem one step ahead of us."
The focus may be wrong. Aviation consultant Michael Boyd calls TSA "the gang that can't screen straight." Boyd thinks the new restrictions will inconvenience travelers—without stopping terrorists. "They can strap liquids to their legs" when they go through security, Boyd says.
The view from inside isn't much different. "The people who work for
do a good job. But there aren't enough of them, things break down and go so slowly, and they don't have adequate technology," says a veteran United Airlines pilot, who requested anonymity so he wouldn't get in trouble with his employer. Under budget pressure, Congress has cut the number of TSA screeners by more than 25 percent since their post-9/11 peak.
Every year since 9/11, Reps. Edward Markey and Chris Shays have introduced a bill to require the screening of all air cargo, and every year the president and Congress has defeated it because they don't want to burden the air-shipping industry. Instead, they rely on the "Known Shipper" program, which requires shipping companies to submit details of their operations and undergo random inspections. But overseeing thousands of companies is impossible, and the database of those packages with "elevated risk" has been problematic. Congress cut funding for air-cargo screening in half to $55 million and rejected a 9/11 Commission recommendation that each passenger airliner contain at least one hardened container for suspect cargo. "On this cargo thing, they're praying," says Markey. "It's faith-based homeland security."
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