Today, TSA announced a new round of security checks for international flights. Extra security in the wake of the failed underwear bound bomb for Detroit made sense as a measure of over abundance of caution. A rash of new permanent procedures, however, appears more like a knee-jerk response than anything else. Requiring one hundred percent inspections on travelers from 14 “terrorist” countries is a kind of feel good, but useless idea. Terrorists route their attacks through the international air hubs that are not the most suspicious. Nor is geography an indicator …
According to the LA Times, John Brennan, the senior Obama counterterrorism official, declared there was “no smoking gun” in the Christmas Day Detroit bound bombing. Putting aside the frantic phone calls from the father — pardon me, Mr. Brennan, but that’s a big deal. There was no smoking gun found after Pearl Harbor or 9/11. There is almost never a smoking gun. There was no smoking gun in 26 of the 28 terrorist attacks foiled by the US since 9/11 (Abdulmutallab and Richard Reid were stopped by dumb luck). We …
Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), the explosive Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate aboard Northwest Airlines flight 253, is among the most powerful of explosives in the world and was widely used to blow up airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s. The only reason the passengers of Flight 253 are still alive today is because Mr. Abdulmutallab’s syringe detonator failed for still unknown reasons. Yet despite the facts that PETN is easily detected and Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father warned the U.S. embassy in Nigeria about his son this November, Homeland Security Secretary Janet …
