Explosives Advice Ignored?

A retired Homeland Security official said he tried for years to persuade his bosses to deploy machines overseas to screen passengers coming into the U.S. for trace explosives, but without any success.

"This is a major gap in homeland security that we still are not closing," said Tony Fainberg, a retired manager who helped oversee explosive detection research in the Department of Homeland Security.

Fainberg said he went to top officials about the problem in 2002, several months after Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane using material hidden in his shoes. He said he recommended then that the U.S. government deploy small trace detectors that cost about $40,000 each for use in overseas airports, and made another report last year.

"Would they have detected what these guys in the British terror plot were planning to do? I don't know, because I don't know enough about what explosives they were going to use," Fainberg said. "However, if they had a detonator that contained small quantities of explosives, as most detonators do, that might have left residues that would have been detected."

Despite the billions spent on hardening aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the deployment of explosives detection machines in every airport in the nation and the expansion of the federal air marshal service, the foiled British terror plot underscores a number of continuing vulnerabilities - most of which have been repeatedly identified by security experts and the government's General Accountability Office.

Some, like screening overseas passengers for traces of explosives, can be plugged with current technology. Others pose technical or logistical issues, such as screening carry-on bags for liquid explosives, or scanning cargo and mail in the belly of a plane for explosives.

With those gaps in mind and amid continuing concerns about copycat attackers, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that U.S. airlines will remain on high alert. As part of more stringent regulations, airlines have also been ordered to turn over over passenger names to be checked against the government's "no-fly" terror watch list before international flights take off for U.S. cities.

But even with heightened security, slip-ups have occurred. After a trans-Atlantic flight from Heathrow to Washington's Dulles Airport in Washington was diverted to Boston on Wednesday morning because of a woman's erratic behavior, investigators found a screwdriver and several cigarette lighters in her bag, said FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz. Marcinkiewicz said it was unknown how the woman, Catherine C. Mayo, 59, of Braintree, Vt., got the banned items past security.

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Ann Davis said yesterday she had no knowledge of Fainberg's proposals for trace detectors in airports overseas, but stressed the agency has no authority to regulate screening in other countries. "We work closely with foreign governments, but we can't dictate what technology they choose to use," she said.

But Fainberg said that other nations had little reason to object if the United States paid for the machines, which are used widely, including by the New York City Police Department. "We have 8,000 of them in use in U.S. airports," he said. "We could easily have spared less than 10 percent of the ones we use, or purchased others."

He also said that machines to test for liquid explosives might have been developed and tested sooner, had research money not been diverted in 2003 and 2004 to cover shortfalls in other programs. More than $60 million of the $110-million research and development budget in 2003 was reallocated to other aviation security programs deemed higher priorities, according to the General Accountability Office.

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