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...lingering signs of holiday relaxation were absent on Tuesday when Barack Obama emerged from the subterranean Situation Room and a high-pressured meeting with his top national and homeland security staff. The same President who played golf along Oahu beaches the day after a Christmas bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner now appeared stone-faced and grim. In a brief statement to the nation, he used the word "failure" six times to characterize his government's performance...
...ongoing, and Obama promised on Tuesday to make public over the "next few days" a summary of the preliminary report on the failures that led to the near deadly Christmas bombing plot. But there is little doubt that a new tone has been set among Obama's senior staff, which through much of 2009 was able to celebrate a number of key intelligence victories that thwarted developing threats in Denver, New York, Texas and Illinois, among other places. In the meeting with his staff, Obama used words that he would not repeat before the television cameras an hour later...
...reported at least some extra security, such as pat-downs or second checkpoints at their departure gates. Coming from Paris, Laurent Mellier said he passed through "two [security] checkpoints instead of one, but nobody was complaining. The only complaint was that it was a very big line. But the staff was very professional. And everybody understands." At the same time, Mellier said the extra scrutiny did not make him feel significantly safer...
...explosives had in fact been planted in the passenger's bag by security staff at Poprad-Tatry International Airport in northern Slovakia as part of a test of screening procedures. The Slovakian Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that a sniffer dog had discovered the explosives but the officer got called away to another task and forgot to remove the materials from the bag. The electrician then boarded his Danube Wings flight, completely unaware of his hidden cargo. The Slovakian government says the airport authorities then contacted the pilot, who decided the explosives did not pose a safety risk as they...
...real passenger. "I've never heard of an incident like this before," says Tim Ripley, a British security expert who writes books about defense issues. "It's very unusual for a civilian to be used unwittingly in these kinds of tests. Normally an airport would use its own staff for tests. So to hide explosives in someone's bag and just hope for the best seems very strange indeed." (Read "Threat of Homegrown Islamic Terrorism May Be Exaggerated...