U.S. officials realized that underpants bomber Abdulmutallab was a risk after he was on the flight:
U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.
The new information shows that border enforcement officials discovered the suspected extremist ties involving the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in a database despite intelligence failures that have been criticized by President Obama.”The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection,” a senior law enforcement official said. “The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy — that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen.”
If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam, according to senior law enforcement officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
This is one thing I wondered about. I have flown internationally and I knew that the U.S. gathered a list of passengers on overseas flights to check against certain lists. So I guess the system worked kinda.
I think this incident is showing where we need areas of improvement. We need a a better watch list (they were able to keep Cat Stevens from flying to the U.S. but not an actual threat) – much smaller than the current one. Obviously the 500,000 people list is too unwieldy to be useful. We also need an fast check, before the person gets on a flight. I think we also might want to warn members of the flight crew if a dangerous person potentially gets on board.