Pistole explains 8-month delay in responding to underwear bomb threat

[somone]

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/11/23/pistole.threat.delay/

Pistole explains 8-month delay in responding to underwear bomb threat
By Mike M. Ahlers, CNN

Washington (CNN) -- If the threat of underwear bombs became known last Christmas, why did airport screeners only recently begin aggressively checking for them? The answer is two-fold, Transportation Security Administration Director John Pistole told reporters Tuesday. First, the lack of a permanent leader at the TSA hindered change, he said. Secondly, the agency needed time to train screeners on the new pat-down protocols...

Pistole was sworn in as administrator in July and soon thereafter made the decision to go through "enhanced pat downs." Training time accounts for the rest of the delay, as the TSA quietly began pilot programs in Boston, Massachusetts, and Las Vegas, Nevada, in August, and rolled the program out nationwide in early November.

Pistole consistently has said it was his decision to implement enhanced pat downs. He said he opted not to publicize them in advance because he felt to do so would be to give a "roadmap" to would-be terrorists.

Implementation of the pat downs was further delayed because time was needed to train screeners on the new protocols, he said. Those protocols are considered sensitive security information, and have not been shared with the public...

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The real reason was to let Chertoff et al. do their work:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/fear_pays_chertoff_n_787711.html

...Chertoff launched his firm just days after President Barack Obama took office, eventually recruiting at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as former CIA director General Michael Hayden and other top military brass and security officials. Chertoff's clients have prospered in the last two years, largely through lucrative government contracts, and The Chertoff Group's assistance in navigating the complex federal procurement bureaucracy is in high demand. One example involves the company at the heart of the recent uproar over intrusive airport security procedures -- Rapiscan, which makes the so-called body scanners. Back in 2005, Chertoff was promoting the technology and Homeland Security placed the government's first order, buying five Rapiscan scanners.

After the arrest of the underwear bomber last Christmas, Chertoff hit the airwaves and wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post advocating the full-body scanning systems without disclosing that Rapiscan Systems was a client of his firm. The aborted terror plot prompted the Transportation Security Agency to order 300 machines from Rapiscan. Yet last spring, the Government Accountability Office reported that, "It remains unclear whether (the scanners) would have been able to detect the weapon" used in the aborted bombing attempt. And according to a recent report by DHS's Inspector General, the training of airport screeners is rushed and poorly supervised.

In the past year and a half, $118 million in stimulus funds have been used to buy technology from Rapiscan, but all that money hasn't produced many jobs -- the ostensible purpose of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. In fact, it accounts for only 84 positions, according to a HuffPost analysis of government data, meaning roughly $1.4 million was spent to create each job.

Rapiscan has upped its lobbying expenditures in recent years, spending $271,500 so far this year compared to $80,000 five years ago, USA Today reports. As a measure of the firm's influence, one of the honored guests accompanying President Obama on his recent trip to India was Deepak Chopra, the president and CEO of OSI Systems, which owns Rapiscan...

[TBF]

1. When you're dealing with the profit motive it's always the money ... nt

[high density]

2. Still haven't heard how nude-o-scopes and gropes from the TSA prevent a guy

who is wearing a bomb in his underpants from flying Amsterdam to Detroit.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Or just blowing up the airport as he stands in line to be screened on a holiday.

The message the government sends is : there are terrorists and they want to kill people who are in airplanes.

As if that is the only method a "terrorist" could think of.

[frylock]

4. al you'll get in response is that flying is a privelege and not a right