Congress to look into bomb plot on Detroit-bound jet

WASHINGTON — Congress begins investigating the alleged bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound
airliner in earnest Wednesday , with counterterrorism experts saying
the focus should be on whether security measures are enough to detect
and disrupt future attacks.

“This guy should have been caught,” said Amos Guiora , a law professor at the University of Utah and an expert on international security issues. “Was he checking to see how incompetent we are?”

Nearly four weeks after the alleged Dec. 25 bombing attempt, which was disrupted by people on the flight after the device failed to detonate, three Senate
committees are to hold hearings Wednesday to begin asking that question
and more, such as how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was allowed on the
aircraft despite intelligence linking him to a Yemen-based terrorist group.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee —
one of the panels meeting Wednesday — will look not only at security
procedures but information-sharing among various intelligence and
security agencies, as well as whether the system for drawing up watch
lists of terrorism suspects is strong enough.

“Clearly, some elements of our homeland defenses are not working as we need them to be,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent who chairs the Homeland Security panel.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, said policy-makers should try to learn whether the planning of the incident ends with those taking responsibility — al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — or if the terrorist group’s wider leadership, including Osama bin Laden and those who helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, intended it as way to test U.S. security.

“Is this a test run or was this it?” said Riedel, now with the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Senators have called some of Obama’s top
intelligence and national security advisers — among them National
Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert Mueller — to explain the failures that allowed Abdulmutallab to board the plane with explosives.

Abdulmutallab’s father had earlier contacted U.S.
officials to warn them his son may have joined with extremists, but he
was not placed on a no-fly list. And despite the fact he was traveling
without bags — or a coat — to Detroit, the 23-year-old Nigerian was not flagged for more scrutiny.

“My 13-year-old child knows enough not to let this guy on the plane,” Guiora said.

Guiora said airport security needs to become less
machine-based and concentrate more on putting trained experts in a
position to observe fliers.

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