After billions of dollars spent, a new bureaucracy, thousands of additional federal workers and slow-downs to air transportation TSA wants more money to stop the same threats. First we need control of the organization and get our intelligence services speaking with each other.
Appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Napolitano did not specify what those implications might be. But she said in written testimony that her department would be accelerating deployment to U.S. airports of advanced passenger screening technology, explosives-trained dogs and security personnel. She said the department would be working to enhance the training and size of the Federal Air Marshal Service and to develop better security technology in cooperation with the Department of Energy.
I am amazed that a department of the government that has spent billions with virtually no Congressional oversight is coming back for more.
In the same hearings the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dennis C. Blair said that the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) had recently faced a $30 million cut.
This administration has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to securing the country. One after the other intelligence officials admitted that “they personally deserved part of the blame for failing to disrupt the plot.”
The system should have been able to piece together multiple tips hinting that Mr. Abdulmutallab presented a threat, including a warning to State Department officials given by his father and intercepts from militants in Yemen discussing an unnamed Nigerian man whom they had recruited to carry out an attack, they said.
Part of the problem, Mr. Leiter conceded, is that despite the government’s having spent billions of dollars since 2001 to strengthen the nation’s defenses against a terrorist attack — including the creation of the National Counterterrorism Center — analysts inexplicably still cannot do a simple Google-like search of various computer databases to automatically search for links.
So far we have learned that
1. Our intelligence programs were focused on the wrong threats
2. Intelligence, Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of State still aren’t working together effectively.
3. An airport security checkpoint did not find a bomb in the underpants of a terrorist.
All the failures we can control are with our intelligence system. Even full-body scanners couldn’t have identified this particular explosive.
So why are passengers being punished for the failures of the intelligence and security operatives. Let’s leave our system intact and operational. It works fine if the people running the counter terrorism systems of our country would do their work and communicate effectively this latest episode of the Christmas bomber would have stopped in Amsterdam instead of over Detroit.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
“So why are passengers being punished for the failures of the intelligence and security operatives?”
Because it’s the easiest knee-jerk thing politicians and bureaucrats can do in reaction to embarrassing failures. It apparently reassures enough people that the government is “doing something,” and conveniently deflects attention from the real failures. And it can be implemented quickly with no debate or opposition, since no member of Congress would risk being labeled “soft on terrorism” by questioning or opposing “enhanced airport security,” let alone suggesting that the TSA be subject to any restrictions or oversight. That’s how the TSA continues to get its blank check to do whatever it wants regardless of its effectiveness or cost.
The TSA may be absolutely worthless at providing actual protection for aviation (it may be worse than worthless because false security is worse than no security at all). It may waste uncountable time and money with all the passengers it punishes. It may ultimately destroy the beleaguered airlines by convincing passengers that the increasingly intrusive punishment makes flying no longer worthwhile. But the TSA serves a vital function for incompetent politicians and bureaucrats. Rather than facing the difficult (if not impossible) task of herding all the bureaucratic cats so they’ll work together and correct the real causes of the failures, they can just call on the TSA to punish passengers with “enhanced airport security.” Then they can claim success at “doing something,” while those who are actually responsible for the failures are free to continue to fail. And apparently enough travelers buy into the TSA’s belief that hassle equals security to make it “successful.”
Unfortunately, the TSA is becoming one of the least important afflictions from which our country is suffering.
How are the failures in Amsterdam and Nigeria airports the fault of US TSA?
The airport screening was not the fault of TSA. However the failure to get this terrorist on the homeland security/FBI/Counter-terrorism center no-fly or secondary check list is the fault of Homeland Security and other organizations that are still not speaking with each other.