Flight 253’s close call raises ominous questions

Flight 253’s close call raises ominous questions

It was nonsense for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to suggest Sunday morning that “the system worked” after a would-be suicide bomber failed to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit Friday. It appears that the bomb didn’t work and that passengers quickly responded to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to ignite the bomb.

By yesterday, Napolitano had become more realistic in her assessment, helped perhaps by a night’s sleep and the fact that no one — including President Barack Obama — was buying what she tried to sell.

As frightening as the possibility of an airliner with nearly 300 people in it disintegrating over Detroit at Christmas time might be, it is even more frightening to contemplate what the Flight 253 incident tells us: That we have not even established procedures to adequately guard against known security hazards. If that’s the case, what has the government been doing to guard against those hazards that most of us can’t even imagine — but which terrorists are surely dreaming about?

Monday, President Obama vowed to hold those responsible for the attempt to bring down Flight 253 to account, even as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was boasting on the Internet of its involvement in the attempt and congratulating Abdulmutallab on how close he came to success.

He could fly?

The fact that Abdulmutallab even got on a plane, much less got on carrying the makings of an explosive devise, is raising questions about security failures on several fronts. Abdulmutallab’s own father had warned the U.S. embassy of his terrorist inclinations, His name was in a massive data base of possibly troublesome air passengers, but had been upgraded to higher priority lists. He paid for his ticket in cash (like the 9/11 hijackers). He boarded an international flight with nothing more than a carry-on. And the British knew enough about him to reject his application for a visa.

Logic would dictate that some combination of those factors should have combined to set off an alarm bell somewhere.

Certainly, congressional hearings are in order to examine the specific failures that allowed Abdulmutallab to come within one misstep and a passenger’s intervention of killing all those men, women and children and making a statement of the most dramatic and frightening kind on Christmas Day.

But the hearings will also have to examine what other levels of protection — electronic body scans and chemical screenings — could have or should have been in use. And, of course, what other technologies, procedures and sharing of information are in order and feasible.

Through all of this, it must be remembered, that air travel is an integral part of the nation’s economy. Keeping planes in the sky is, truly, a matter of national security.

In the long run, however, Congress, which has been busy with health-care reform, economic recovery and reinvestment, two wars, budget deficits and environmental policy can’t lose sight of its shared responsibility for protecting America.

Which brings us back to questions about larger terrorism threats and what is or isn’t being done about them. If we haven’t yet figured out how to protect air travelers from the likes of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, how confident are we about fending off computer attacks — whether they are aimed at our financial markets or our electrical grid? How safe are we against a dirty bomb smuggled through one of our ports? How secure are our water supplies, our landmarks, our theaters and malls?

The events of recent days would suggest that Homeland Security may not be living up to its name.