Experts Warm To TSA’s Warnings
The Transportation Security Administration’s warning that terrorists might be testing whether innocent-looking bomb components can be smuggled onto an airplane has been praised by security experts and politicians.
The TSA’s intelligence circular that leaked demonstrates that the agency has matured beyond confiscating nail clippers, tweezers and lighters, according to the Associated Press.
The experts agreed that this judgment holds true even if the four incidents that triggered the warning turn out to have innocent explanations, as two of them – in San Diego and Baltimore – appeared to.
“This is what TSA should be doing whether it turns out to be a whole bunch of harmless coincidences or part of a plot,” says James Carafano, a security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation who in the past called for TSA’s abolition. “This kind of analysis wouldn’t have happened before Sept. 11, 2001,” or even for some time afterward, he told the Associated Press.
What TSA’s office of intelligence told air marshals, transportation security officers and law enforcement nationwide on July 20 was eye-catching, although TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe emphasized there is “no credible, specific threat.”
Citing four incidents since last September at the San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore airports, the agency said screeners had found in checked and carry-on luggage various combinations of “wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances,” including block cheese. “The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern.”
Security officers were urged to keep an eye out for “ordinary items that look like improvised explosive device components” in case terrorists are conducting dry runs to probe what components could get past security for assembly into a bomb in an airplane bathroom.
Cheese is a good stand-in for explosives, such as C4 and Semtex, that are favored by terrorists because they can look similar to X-ray scanners, he said.
This security bulletin, plus TSA Administrator Kip Hawley’s decision to stop confiscating most cigarette lighters on Aug. 4, “shows someone is thinking somewhere,” Schneier says.
