Napolitano Flip-Flop

KEEPING AMERICA SAFE?

On Sunday, in answering a question during a CNN interview about the terrorist traveling on a Northwest Airlines flight who failed in his attempt to detonate a bomb on the plane as it was landing in Detroit, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said:

".....And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action..."

After a day of being criticized for saying that the "system worked" when an admitted Al-Qaida trained bomber was able to board a flight to the US with explosive material embedded in his underwear and a syringe hidden in his pants with a chemical that would have ignited the home-made bomb, she did an about-face and said in interviews on Monday:

"... our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that."

Fortunately for President Obama, he did not say at any time: "Heck of a job, Janet!"

All those who were so surprised by Napolitano's initial reaction that the system worked were just not familiar with the system as it is viewed by the Homeland Security Department. Passengers seem to be literally considered by Madam DHS and her department to be part of the "system", as noted on the Transportation Security Administration website which says: "You Play a Part" in transportation safety. See: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/

On December 26 (one day before she announced that the "system worked"), Napolitano's first press release regarding the terrorist's attempt to kill almost 300 innocent people on Christmas Day started with these words:

"I am grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 who reacted quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results...."

Obviously, she thought the system worked because passengers, who are part of the system in her view, helped save the day! However, when more rational thinking people heard her statement and criticism poured forth, even by the mainstream news media, she changed her tune and said that the system failed, as everyone else recognized right away.

Now, as I noted in my post on Sunday, the inquiries of what went wrong have started. Fortunately, the President found time between trips to the gym and the golf course during his vacation in Hawaii to order quick internal investigations into the use of the various lists of suspicious characters that are compiled by the intelligence agencies and the National Counterterrorism Center. Obama wants to know why a young single man who paid cash for a one way ticket to Detroit from Amsterdam and was reported by his father to the US Embassy in Nigeria as having radical Islamic views did not get his name put on a list that would have alerted airport authorities to subject him to closer scrutiny before being allowed to board a flight to the US.

As I previously noted, the process for identifying those who should be put on watch lists involves a number of steps in the federal bureaucracy. The Washington Post published a graphic depiction of that process in today's edition: You can see it at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/12/29/GR2009122900017.html

Maybe the Washington Post can be of assistance to those charged by the President to analyze the systemic and human failures that allowed the Underwear Bomber to get on NW Flight 253 on Christmas Day. Sphere: Related Content