In the week following the attempted bombing of Flight 253, we’ve already seen several stages in the government response to the incident. And, yes, I use the word “government” broadly, since we are talking about agencies, the executive and legislative branches. And, other goverments have responded too, but here I’ll just talk about the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano made quite the misstep, when she originally stated that “the system worked (clip from CNN).” In trying to assure people, her point was that the action taken subsequent to the fire on the flight was swift and appropriate. But, it was misinterpreted to mean there was proactive action, which clearly, there wasn’t.
One other issue has come up with this first statement. While she said all pilots in the air were informed, today the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association disputed that (via WOAW TV 9). She and President Obama have since identified some of the human and systemic failings and we are learning more every day. President Obama receives the report of preliminary findings today (via USA Today).
Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana was the first to call for Napolitano’s resignation (via The Hill). This has become political very quickly and Republicans in Congress have taken this opportunity to criticize the adminstration policy (via AFP).
Transportation Security Administration
The Transportation Security Administration was swift to implement a modified directive that was supposed to be in place through yesterday. But it was unclear at the time, if it applied to all flights, and for how long. Among some of the actions taken on flights were limiting passenger activity for the last hour of the flight and taking televisions and live maps offline. Since, at least, two bloggers received the directive via email and posted it, there was plenty of online discussion of its contents, relevancy and consistency in implementation. Many passengers were curious to know what would apply to them and the TSA was not very communicative. FoxNews had the story online, before the Department of Homeland Security got involved. Now many outlets are writing about the subsequent subpoenas and investigation. But, here’s the link to the USA Today story on what happened. I can say from my original interpretation, I don’t think they realized until later that they were the only ones who had it.
To our best knowledge, TSA is no longer following that directive. However, they are looking at expanding the use of full body scanners (via FoxNews), among other things.
Although Erroll Southers was nominated to be TSA Administrator in September, and is a former FBI special agent with counter-terrorism expertise, he has not been confirmed by the Senate. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has blocked the process over concerns the Southers is too friendly to collective bargaining (via WIBW). I can’t help but think that not having a leader may just as much challenge an agency’s effectiveness as having a leader friendly to labor. But, Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, says he will force a vote on the nominee in three weeks (Los Angeles Times).
Central Intelligence Agency and Department of State
I can only assume that these two agencies needed to contribute greatly to the preliminary report to President Obama. Since we now know the suspect’s father communicated his concerns to the U.S. Embassy and the CIA (via ABC News), there must have been serious study of what happened (or didn’t) with that information.
Intelligence and military leaders are also focused on the role Yemen likely played. Yesterday, NPR ran a good story on the challenges there.
Tags: Blog by Jillian Gustafson
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