sunflower

Airport screeners missed bomb parts

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer 53 minutes ago

Government investigators smuggled liquid explosives and detonators past airport security, exposing a dangerous hole in the nation's ability to keep these forbidden items off of airplanes, according to a report made public Wednesday.

The investigators learned about the components to make an improvised explosive device and an improvised incendiary device on the Internet and purchased the parts at local stores, said the report by the Government Accountability Office. Investigators were able to purchase the components for the two devices for under $150, and they studied the published guidelines for screening to determine how to conceal the prohibited items as they went through checkpoint security.

At the end of the testing, investigators concluded that terrorists could use publicly available information and a few cheaply available supplies to damage an airplane and threaten passenger safety.

"It is possible to bring the components for several IEDs and one IID through TSA checkpoints and onto airline flights without being challenged by transportation security officers," said the GAO, Congress' investigative arm.

The covert tests were conducted at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at 19 airports in March, May and June of this year. The GAO did not identify the airports.

In August 2006, the TSA changed its screening policies after officials foiled a plot to use liquid explosives to blow up commercial airlines headed toward the U.S.

TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said the exercise tested only one of the agency's 19 layers of security and therefore doesn't mean the overall system is unsafe.

"While people think about us in terms of the checkpoints and they see us as the checkpoints, there's a lot more layers of security," she said. In addition to the checkpoints, the TSA uses different technologies and has officials who check the validity of documents and observe people's behaviors throughout the airport. "Just because somebody gets through one layer doesn't mean they're going to get through all of the layers."

The report released Wednesday is a version of a classified report with sensitive information left out. The report notes that the covert operations were intended to test only security at checkpoints and not all of the TSA's security layers.

The report listed several instances in which investigators were able to make it through security checkpoints while carrying prohibited items:

• On March 23, a TSA screener would not let one investigator through a checkpoint with a small, unlabeled bottle of shampoo, even though it was a legitimate carry-on item. But the same investigator was able to bring through a liquid component of bomb that would start a fire.

• On May 8, an investigator placed coins in his pockets to ensure he would receive a secondary screening at the checkpoint. But after doing a pat-down and using an electronic hand wand, the screener was not able to catch the prohibited items the investigator brought through the checkpoint.

The TSA agreed with the investigators' recommendation to introduce "more aggressive, visible and unpredictable security measures," as well as the recommendation to deploy new detection technologies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071115/...rport_security

What a joke.

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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”.

George Orwell

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The owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream....'cos you have to be asleep to believe it.

George Carlin

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r...m8fo8ne6xy.gif

VKMHVM2

The Airline Terrorist Hoax

The more I think about the above, the more inescapable the conclusion becomes.

Tests conducted using fake explosives demonstrated that the TSA security at the airport, for all its annoyance value, is unable to find most of the bombs being taken on board airplanes. This leads us to a startling conclusion. If just half the bombs out there can get past TSA, and no planes have exploded, then there ARE no bombs out there!

Let me put this another way. Based on the recent tests, real terrorists have a better than 50/50 chance of taking down American passenger aircraft IF THEY TRY. There have been no explosions, and more tellingly, no arrests at the gates of people with bombs. Quod Erat Demonstradum, there are no terrorists out there trying to bomb our planes. If there were, more than half of them would succeed.

Aside from the one event on September 11th that occurred just in time to justify Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been no real terrorist threat. It’s all a hoax, to make it look like we face a threat that only constant invasions of other countries (which all happen to sit on top of vast oil reserves) will save us from.

See also: TSA Travel Security Rule Absurdities Continue Non-Stop

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It's All Here!

Dr. Albert Pastore: An Independent Investigation of 9-11 and the War on Terrorism

dadakarma

"What Does a 99-cent Bic Lighter Tell Us About the Bush War on Terrorism?"
By Michael Moore

On September 22, 2001, just 11 days after the terrorist attacks in New York and Arlington, I had to fly. I had actually wanted to fly on September 11, and in fact had a ticket on the 3:00pm American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. As we all know, that flight never made it off the ground as hours earlier four California-bound flights, two on American and two on United, were hijacked as part of a coordinated suicide mission to attack the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, DC.

Stranded in Los Angeles, my wife and I (out there for the annual Prime Time Emmy Awards for our series, "The Awful Truth"), were awakened that morning by my wife's mother, calling us from Flint at 6:15 a.m., L.A. time. I answered the phone and heard her say that "New York was under attack, New York is at war." I remember thinking, "So what's new," but she suggested we immediately turn on the TV. I fumbled for the remote and switched on the hotel room TV. And there it was. The twin towers on fire, black smoke billowing upward.

"OK," I thought, "a really bad fire." But then they ran the replay from 15 minutes earlier, of the second plane hitting the south tower. This wasn't an accident. We tried to call our daughter in New York. The phone lines weren't allowing any calls. We tried calling our friend, Joanne Doroshow, who works a few blocks from the towers. Again, the lines were jammed.

A horrible panic started settling inside me. Finally, I reached Joanne's office. A woman answered, frantic. I asked if Joanne was there. "NO!" she shouted. "She's not here! We have to go! Ohmygod!" She dropped the phone and I heard a loud roar, like a train. My wife said, "Look at the TV." I did, and I saw from L.A. what I was listening to over the phone: the collapse of the south tower.

It would be another four hours before we were able to reach our daughter, and seven hours before Joanne calls us, safe inside her apartment (she had ducked into a building just in time as the cloud of debris rained its way down the street).

That night, as we watched the images repeated on the TV, a ticker began running the names of some of the dead who had been on the planes. Along the bottom of the screen came the name, "William Weems." A friend of ours the next morning confirmed that this was, in fact, the same Bill Weems, a line producer from Boston with whom we had recently filmed a batch of humorous TV spots targeting the tobacco companies. Bill was on the Boston-to-L.A. plane. He died as the jet, traveling at 586 miles per hour, slammed into the south tower. He left behind a wife and 7-year old daughter. It was all so unbelievably horrific.

The airports were closed and all planes were now grounded. I found a Hertz dealer who would rent me a mini-van for $1,700 -- and 43 hours later we pulled out of our hotel on the Pacific Ocean and began our 2,990-mile journey home to our apartment in New York City.

Somewhere around Oklahoma City, the airports were all open again, but my wife did not want to ditch the mini-van and get on a plane. So we continued on home for the next few days, the first ever trip each of us had made driving coast to coast. It was, as it turned out, well worth it, as it gave us a chance to gauge the reaction of average citizens, especially as we passed through Bush and Ashcroft country (The internet letters I wrote – and read – from the road can be found on my website).

By September 22, I had no choice but to get back on a plane. I had been scheduled to give a talk in San Antonio, and so off I went on an American flight out of Newark. At the airport there was a newly, hastily put-together list of all the items that I could NOT bring aboard the plane. The list was long and bizarre. The list of banned items included:
No guns. (Obviously)

No knives. (Ditto)
No boxcutters. (Certainly now justified)
No toenail clippers. (What?)
No knitting needles. (Huh?)
No crotchet hooks. (Now, wait a minute!)
No sewing needles.
No mace.
No leaf blowers. (OK, now it's personal)
No corkscrews.
No letter openers.
No dry ice.

The list went on and on. A lot of the items made good sense. I wasn't quite sure if terrorists also made quilts in their spare time, and I guess I must have missed the terrorist incident where some poor bastards smuggled dry ice aboard a plane (were they trying to keep their Popsicles cold until they ate them and then used the sticks for their attack?).

Frankly, I was a little freaked-out about flying so soon after 9-11 and I guess there was just no way I was going to fly without a weapon for my protection. So I took the New York Yankees-signed baseball that Mayor Giuliani had given me on "TV Nation," put it in a sock, and – presto! Whip that baby upside somebody's head, and they're going to take a little nap. Note to budding terrorfuckers: If you try something on a flight I'm on, I'll Clemens ya. That, or the smell from my ratty sock, is going to do you in.

Though I now felt "safe" with my makeshift weapon, as I continued to fly through the fall and winter, I did NOT feel safe being greeted at airport security by weekend warriors from the National Guard holding empty M-16s and looking like they shop in the same "special needs" department at K-Mart which I visit from time to time.

More importantly, though, I kept noticing something strange. The guy in front of me, while emptying his pockets into the little plastic tray to run through the x-ray machine, would take out his butane lighter or matchbook, toss them into the tray, then pick them up on the other side -- in full view of security. At first I thought this was a mistake until I looked at the list of banned items again -- and saw that butane lighters and matchbooks were NOT on the forbidden list.

Then came December 22, 2001. Richard Reid, on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, attempted to light his shoes on fire, using matches. His shoes, the police said, contained a plastic explosive and, had some passengers and flight attendants not taken quick action to restrain him, he would have been able to blow the entire plane out of the sky. But his lighter would not light the shoes fast enough, and everyone survived.

I was sure after this freakish incident that the lighters and matches would surely be banned. But, as my book tour began in February, there they were, the passengers with their Bic lighters and their books of matches. I asked one security person after another why these people were allowed to bring devices which could start a fire on board the plane, especially after the Reid incident. No one, not a single person in authority or holding an unloaded automatic weapon, could or would give me answer.

(continues)

dadakarma

(conclusion)

My simple question was this: If all smoking is prohibited on all flights, then why does ANYONE need their lighters and matches at 30,000 feet -- while I am up there with them?!

And why is the one device that has been used to try and blow up a plane since 9-11 NOT on the banned list? No one has used toenail clippers to kill anyone on Jet Blue, and no one has been blowing away the leaves in the aisle of the Delta Connection flight to Tupelo.

BUT SOME FRUITCAKE DID USE A BUTANE LIGHTER TO TRY AND KILL 200 PEOPLE ON AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT #63. And this did nothing to force the Bush Administration to do something about it.

I began asking this question in front of audiences on my book tour. And it was on a dark and rainy night in Arlington, Virginia, at the Ollsson's Bookstore a couple miles from the Pentagon that I got my answer. After asking my Bic lighter question in my talk to the audience, I sat down to sign the books for the people in line. A young man walks up to the table, introduces himself, and lowering his voice so no one can hear, tells me the following:

"I work on the Hill. The butane lighters were on the original list prepared by the FAA and sent to the White House for approval. The tobacco industry lobbied the Bush administration to have the lighters and matches removed from the banned list. Their customers (addicts) naturally are desperate to light up as soon as they land, and why should they be punished just so the skies can be safe?

The lighters and matches were removed from the forbidden list.

I was stunned. I knew there had to be some strange reason why this most obvious of items had not been banned. Could the Bush mob be so blatant in their contempt for the public's safety? How could they do this, and at the same time, issue weekly warnings about the "next terrorist threat"? Would they really put Big Tobacco's demands ahead of people's lives?

Yes, of course, the answer has always been YES but not now, not in a time of national crisis, not NOW, so soon after the worst domestic mass murder in U.S. history!

Unless there was no real threat at all.

The hard and difficult questions must be asked: Is the "War on Terrorism" a ruse, a concoction to divert the citizens' attention?

Accept, if you will for just a moment, that as truly despicable as George W. Bush is, he would not be so evil as to help out his buddies in tobacco land that that would be worth suffering through another 9-11. Once you give the man that – and for once I am asking you to do just that – once you admit that not even he would allow the murder of hundreds or thousands more just so Marlboro addicts can light up outside the terminal, then a whole other door opens – and that door, my friends, leads to the Pandora's Box of 9-11, a rotten can of worms that many in the media are afraid to open for fear of where it might lead, of just how deep the stench goes.

What if there is no "terrorist threat?" What if Bush and Co. need, desperately need, that "terrorist threat" more than anything in order to conduct the systematic destruction they have launched against the U.S. constitution and the good people of this country who believe in the freedoms and liberties it guarantees?

Do you want to go there?

I do. I have filed a Freedom of Information Act demand to the FAA, asking that they give to me all documents pertaining to the decisions that were made to allow deadly butane lighters and books of matches on board passenger planes. I am not optimistic about what the results of this will be.
And let's face it – it's just one small piece of the puzzle. It is, after all, just a 99-cent Bic lighter. But, friends, I have to tell you, over the years I have found that it is PRECISELY the "little stories" and the "minor details" that contain within them the LARGER truths. Perhaps my quest to find out why the freedom to be able to start a fire on board a plane-full of citizens is more important than yours or my life will be in vain. Or maybe, just maybe, it will be the beginning of the end of this corrupt, banal administration of con artists who shamelessly use the dead of that day in September as the cover to get away with anything.

I think it's time we all stood up and started asking some questions of these individuals. The bottom line: Anyone who would brazenly steal an election and insert themselves into OUR White House with zero mandate from The People is, frankly – sadly – capable of anything...

Kanadesaga

You can't make this stuff up people. You know what? You know why the Republicans were so derisive of the Clintons? Cause their little crimes were just that, little. they didn't think on the grand scale of criminality that BushCo and friends have. Think of it, kill 3000 of your citizens, blame one group of people but attack another instead, to further a geopolitical ideology of American world domination.


Fucking Amazing!

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"..., because hope don't park the motherfucking car."

jdanton

Some of us have been of the opinion that NOTHING this administration has done makes us any safer.

In fact, we are less secure than ever.

Aside from the obvious, there's the debt, the depletion of our military, etc.

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Author: Memoirs of a Sleepless Mind, a book you CAN judge by its cover.

voodoo

Uh, yeaaaahhh. Intuitively that has been clear to me since late 2001 even before I had a clue about 7, etc.

"Hunt them out of their caves" type rhetoric are things you DO not things you SAY. Unless the target audience is domestic.

Remember the world wide solidarity that followed 911? What happened to that? It is not only gone - the world has turned against us. That's the scariest thing of all in my mind. If there were 10k potential terrorists before 911, there are a million today. How did it work out that way?

Then you add in the disconscerting notion that the Repubs have not implemented a border security plan - which is a conservative slam dunk? That makes since how? It does'nt of course.

It is easy to focus on individual incidents which have occurred the last few years and miss the big picture. But if you step back and take a holistic view of things, if you are like me, a deep unsettling feeling sets in.

We'll never really get to the bottom of it, I've sadly concluded. Even if a 'smoking gun' came forward. How could they let 'the people' know this? They can't. All of Washington would be burned to the ground.

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It's the truth, stupid.

jdanton

I remember all too well. I even remember what most here have forgotten. Bush had world support for disarming Saddam using the military if it was needed.

He decided to remove Saddam, and he lost that support.

Imagine if he had taken that Oct. 2002 resolution and the Nov. 2002 UN resolution and simply gave the weapons inspectors a military escort. In a fairly short period of time, the world would know Saddam had no WMd's, our troops would be out of Iraq and back into Afghanistan.

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Author: Memoirs of a Sleepless Mind, a book you CAN judge by its cover.

voodoo

What about the oil? What about breaking up Iraq? What about Iran? What about domestic civil liberties and the assault of the constitution?

And with the Pak police state? I'm not sure if that was planned. But I've come to look at it this way - if it happened it was planned. I get more right that way.

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It's the truth, stupid.