Janet Napolitano
It’s “really hard” to say whether al Qaeda has tried to launch another attack on the aviation system since the failed Christmas Day bombing, but no one has been taken into custody for attempting to carry out such a plot, according to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
“It is always difficult to talk about what you have deterred and what has been prevented,” she said in a wide-ranging and lengthy interview with Fox News.
Since 23-year-old Umar F. Abdulmutallab boarded a plane in Nigeria and then allegedly tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit, Napolitano has been trying to persuade countries around the world to boost their aviation security measures.
“There has been remarkably little resistance,” said Napolitano, who over the past several months has met with officials in Europe, Africa and South America. “When al Qaeda and al Qaeda-related groups go at aviation, they’re really going at the citizens of the world and the global aviation system.”
Asked whether an al Qaeda operative could access the aviation system by simply going to a country that has not agreed to boost security measures, Napolitano suggested such a scenario is unlikely.
“We have processes in place that allow us to identify travelers who may be trying to avoid” countries or airports with boosted security measures,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about that any more than that.”
Most recently, Napolitano met with African authorities in Nigeria, where officials were “eager” to host international officials to help dispel any notion that Abdulmutallab is a “typical Nigerian,” she said.
Nigeria has already deployed “new types of technology” to the airport in Lagos, and U.S. partners around the world have implemented new procedures for collecting information and “vetting” passengers, according to Napolitano.
Among the new measures, airports across the globe have added more K-9 teams, more explosive detection equipment, and different kinds of scanners, including the “advanced imaging technology scanners,” she said.
On a broader scale, the United States has “totally reconfigured” how U.S.-bound and U.S.-based passengers are screened, with officials now focusing on intelligence rather than time spent in at least one of 14 worrisome nations.
Napolitano dismissed the idea of using both intelligence-based screenings and a 14-nation list, saying a list of nations was “helpful as an immediate tool” right after the attempted Christmas Day attack but isn’t practical today.
“It’s too much and too little at the same time,” she said. “It’s too much because [there are] too many people you don’t need to be spending time on. They’re innocent travelers. They just happen to be from a particular country. … And it’s too little because you’re not focusing on intelligence that may be derived from passengers who are coming from other places in the world.”
In addition, Napolitano acknowledged that some countries face “capacity issues” when it comes to boosting their security measures.
Specifically, she said some countries have “resource issues,” difficulties with maintenance and repairs, or “electrical supply issues.”
While the United States, for example, may deploy technology to boost security, in some counties it’s “easier to deploy more people to actually do pat downs and physical screening than it is to deploy new types of technology,” she said.
Napolitano said these “capacity issues” will be addressed by international partners when they meet in Canada in early Fall, after which nations “will need” to discuss offering resources to less fortunate nations.
Since the failed Christmas Day bombing, U.S. flights have increasingly been diverted for security reasons.
According to a study by USA Today, in the first three months of this year, 35 U.S. flights were diverted from their destination to a different airport for security reasons. In the same period last year, 17 U.S. flights were diverted for security reasons.
Napolitano defended the uptick.
“Where airline security and air security is concerned, those are judgments that should not be second-guessed,” she said. “You always have to act in what you believe is the security of the passengers. There’s really not room for error there.”
Asked whether she thought the failed Christmas Day bombing might have hurt the Obama administration’s standing with the public, she emphatically said, “No.”
“I think the administration responded very quickly and also identified that there were problems that needed to be addressed and fixed,” she said. “We have obviously on the security side … taken material steps forward and really used Christmas Day as an opportunity to address the world-wide aviation system as a whole.”
She said the issue would not impact Democrats in mid-term elections later this year.
Napolitano travels next to the Middle East, where she’ll urge nations there to boost aviation security measures in their airports.