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Obama orders air security review after jet bomb attempt
US President Barack Obama has ordered a review of air security after a Nigerian man was charged with trying to blow up a transatlantic jet on Christmas Day. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Mr Obama wanted to know how a man carrying explosives had managed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.Mr Gibbs told ABC News the system of watch-lists used by US government agencies would be examined, after it emerged that the Christmas Day suspect was listed and known to officials. A US record for 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was created last month. The US government uses three watch-lists, which become shorter as risk increases. They include one with some 550,000 names on it, a "selectee" list with 18,000 people within the higher-risk category, and a "no-fly" list with 4,000 names of people who are not allowed to board planes. Mr Gibbs said the number of people on the watch-list was "a huge number". "The president has asked that a review be undertaken to ensure that any information gets to where it needs to go, to the people making the decisions. The president wants to review some of these procedures and see if they need to be updated," he said. Mr Gibbs said "air detection capabilities" would also be examined as part of the review. "The president has asked the Department of Homeland Security to answer the - quite frankly - the very real question about how somebody with something as dangerous as PETN could have gotten onto a plane in Amsterdam." Nigerian authorities, who on Sunday pledged to co-operate with the US investigation, said all passengers passing through the country's 22 airports would be screened. Wealthy or influential people and their families are often allowed to skip checks, media reports say. Speaking to ABC New, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there was no immediate indication that Mr Abdulmutallab was part of a broader terror plot, but that the investigation was continuing. Posted by: Pappy 2009-12-28 |
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