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Bomb-making components were found in search of a carry-on bag
While aircraft, especially passenger jetliners, are still major targets of terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged Wednesday, there also continue to be significant vulnerabilities in aviation security – like not being able to detect liquid bomb components.
Chertoff told The Daily Telegraph that some airports are unable to detect the type of liquid explosives that alleged Al Qaeda members plotted using to blow up transatlantic flights in 2006 from the UK to America and Canada.
A jury this week was unable to convict the seven Britons who were accused of the plot. Prosecutors said Wednesday they will seek a retrial.
In the immediate aftermath of the arrest of the alleged terrorists, concerns that there was a second wave of attacks planned resulted in the ban on large amounts of liquids in carry-on lugguge.
But authorities have indicated that scanners currently in use are unable to identify liquids that could be used to make a bomb, and that certain combinations of liquids in amounts allowed in carry-on bags could still be used to make a small explosive.
Chertoff told The Daily Telegraph that new technology to detect liquid explosives is under development but not yet practical for long airport check-in lines.
"We have to strike a safe balance," Chertoff said. "The safest thing to do would be to prevent anything going on an aeroplane. We are working on technology that detects liquid explosives and is quick and efficient so there are not long lines at airports.
"When we are finally able to develop that technology we will be able to restore liquids in large quantities but it is some way off.”
"It is not that we can't detect it,” Chertoff said, but rather “it is the time it takes for each container to go through the machine. It's just not practical."
Whole body imagers which see objects concealed beneath a passenger's clothing will help detect hidden liquids, but they will not be in widespread use for some time.
Distrubingly, Chertoff said during an address Wednesday to the National Press Club that an astute Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Behavior Detection Officer (BDO) who detected suspicious behavior on the part of an airline passenger resulted in the person’s carry-on bag being searched and in it “found the various component elements of what could be made into a bomb.”
(TSA has more than 2,000 BDOs working at more than 150 of the nation’s largest airports to identify potentially high-risk passengers)
“There was a recent case where a Behavioral Detection Officer, without even going to the machines, was able to see something suspicious. We opened up someone’s baggage before we even put it through the scanner,” Chertoff said, explaining that in so doing the potential bomb-making materials were found.
Chertoff did not say whether the materials would have been identified as bomb-making components if left in the bag and ran through the scanner.
Undercover investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) repeatedly managed to get liquids and incendiary devices that could be used to make a bomb past TSA screeners, as HSToday.us earlier detailed.
The GAO investigators told lawmakers that the components they got past screeners could have quickly been constructed onboard an aircraft and detonated, causing a not insignificant explosion.
The BBC released a video of the damage that could have been caused by the liquid explosives that allegedly were to be used in the 2006 transatlantic bombings.
More recently, the August HSToday report, “Making Black Magic,” examined other potential methods terrorists have considered to get explosives-making materials past screeners and scanning machines.
Meanwhile, British counterterror police were nearly forced to abandon the searches that eventually uncovered the bomb-making materials that were used by the alleged terrorists in the 2006 transatlantic plot, it was revealed Wednesday.
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