On CNN this morning, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that prior to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, “the system worked.” As recounted by Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, she then added that there was “no suggestion that [Abdulmutallab] was improperly screened.” The would-be Christmas Day bomber boarded a plane with an explosive device that may have been capable of destroying an airliner, and yet “the system worked”?  One wonders: What would it take for the “system” to fail? And if Abdulmutallab was not “improperly screened,” then what is the point to screening anyone at all? As far as we can tell according to the press accounts thus far, there are two reasons Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt at mass murder. Neither reason has anything to do with the “system.” First, Abdulmutallab’s explosive device may have had a faulty detonator. Second, alert passengers pounced on Abdulmutallab, thereby preventing him from trying to rectify the problem, but only after Abdulmutallab had already started a fire on the plane. Again, neither of these reasons for Mutallab’s failure has anything to do with the “system.” In fact, contrary to what Napolitano says, there are an increasing number of “suggestion(s)” that the “system” failed miserably.  Abdulmutallab’s father says he contacted the U.S. embassy to warn American officials about his son’s radicalism weeks ago. If true, and he still wasn’t prevented from getting on an American-bound airliner, then this was a “system” failure. According to this accountfrom CBS News, U.S. officials knew about Abdulmutallab for two years and while he was not on the no-fly list (a failure in and of itself), he was “on a list that includes people with known or suspected contact or ties to a terrorist or terrorist organization.” So, how did the “system” work if U.S. officials were warned about Abdulmutallab by his father, after knowing about him for two years, and yet didn’t manage to do anything to stop him? There’s more. According to the New York Times:
PETN is the explosives compound similar to those used by al Qaeda agents in past attacks. That Abdulmutallab was able to get it onto the plane was certainly a “system” failure. The syringe full of chemicals (which may have included PETN) should have set off alarm bells too. And note the second part of the excerpt from the Times account above. Intelligence officials are combing through intercepts to see if any “clues were missed.” How does Napolitano already know that these intercepts don’t add up to anything? The bottom line is that a terrorist with admitted ties to al Qaeda and a comparatively “sophisticated” explosive device in his possession got aboard a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. No official in the American government stopped him. Vigilant passengers and perhaps a faulty detonator did. There is no way Napolitano or any other official can honestly claim “the system worked” given those circumstances.
