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American Morning

Analysis of Airline Security

Aired January 06, 2004 - 07:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The Saudi man who was charged with carrying that firecracker-like device -- devices, rather, already had gone through two airports overseas before he was intercepted in the U.S.
With us this morning is aviation security expert, Charles Slepian. He is the CEO of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center.

Good morning. Nice to see you. Thanks for being with us.

CHARLES SLEPIAN, AVIATION SECURITY EXPERT: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: A complicated story. Obviously many questions just at the early stages of understanding exactly what this guy's plans were, and he has obviously variations on his own stories. He's been changing them apparently, according to authorities.

Where do you think the hole was? He went from Riyadh to Frankfurt to Logan. Where was the gap?

SLEPIAN: Well, clearly, we have a lack of procedures on the other side of the ocean, and that's something that we need to plug. If we're talking about putting air marshals on planes that originate outside the United States, how about just doing the normal security checks?

This is an individual who in the first instance had met all of our profiles. He is a male from Saudi Arabia between the ages of 21 and 40. He is coming to the United States allegedly on business, and he speaks English well. The only bag he has with him is his backpack. He has gone through two security checks, one in Frankfurt, one in Riyadh. He is carrying these devices with him, presumably. Nobody has ever found them.

He comes into the United States, and he's going through a Customs and Immigration final check, and they decide to question him for whatever reason. I don't know what the reasons were. And in that questioning, they notify him they're going to search his bag, and they do. And they come up with three incendiary devices.

O'BRIEN: They've been described as 1.5 inches long, yellow in color, sort of cylindrical in shape. Give me a sense of exactly what these are, or to your best guess what these are.

SLEPIAN: Well, these are -- incendiaries can be used to set off an explosive -- a plastic explosive usually. You can also start one heck of a fire with them. He's got three of them. He describes them as artist's crayons to the inspection officer. When asked how they got into his bag, he says he doesn't know. He said he may have seen them around his house. He says he took his bag to the desert on a trip, and these devices were presumably inside the bag at the time. His story just doesn't fit well.

But given the profile that we have of terrorists -- now, remember, 11 of the 19 terrorists on September 11 met a profile, but we did nothing about it. Fifteen of them were from Saudi Arabia, and they got through without a secondary search. This individual meets all of the profiles. And at a time when we were at an orange level you would think we would insist on more scrutiny.

O'BRIEN: Would the screening systems that were announced earlier in the week have stopped this?

SLEPIAN: No, they would not have, because we still are not talking about improving the screening on the ground outside of the United States. And this is really the issue here. Also the profiling system that we have within the United States apparently does not apply outside the United States, or he would have gone through more intense screening. You know, catching people on this side of the ocean isn't good enough if their goal is to blow up airplanes.

O'BRIEN: Charles Slepian, thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.







Aired January 6, 2004 - 07:06   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The Saudi man who was charged with carrying that firecracker-like device -- devices, rather, already had gone through two airports overseas before he was intercepted in the U.S.
With us this morning is aviation security expert, Charles Slepian. He is the CEO of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center.

Good morning. Nice to see you. Thanks for being with us.

CHARLES SLEPIAN, AVIATION SECURITY EXPERT: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: A complicated story. Obviously many questions just at the early stages of understanding exactly what this guy's plans were, and he has obviously variations on his own stories. He's been changing them apparently, according to authorities.

Where do you think the hole was? He went from Riyadh to Frankfurt to Logan. Where was the gap?

SLEPIAN: Well, clearly, we have a lack of procedures on the other side of the ocean, and that's something that we need to plug. If we're talking about putting air marshals on planes that originate outside the United States, how about just doing the normal security checks?

This is an individual who in the first instance had met all of our profiles. He is a male from Saudi Arabia between the ages of 21 and 40. He is coming to the United States allegedly on business, and he speaks English well. The only bag he has with him is his backpack. He has gone through two security checks, one in Frankfurt, one in Riyadh. He is carrying these devices with him, presumably. Nobody has ever found them.

He comes into the United States, and he's going through a Customs and Immigration final check, and they decide to question him for whatever reason. I don't know what the reasons were. And in that questioning, they notify him they're going to search his bag, and they do. And they come up with three incendiary devices.

O'BRIEN: They've been described as 1.5 inches long, yellow in color, sort of cylindrical in shape. Give me a sense of exactly what these are, or to your best guess what these are.

SLEPIAN: Well, these are -- incendiaries can be used to set off an explosive -- a plastic explosive usually. You can also start one heck of a fire with them. He's got three of them. He describes them as artist's crayons to the inspection officer. When asked how they got into his bag, he says he doesn't know. He said he may have seen them around his house. He says he took his bag to the desert on a trip, and these devices were presumably inside the bag at the time. His story just doesn't fit well.

But given the profile that we have of terrorists -- now, remember, 11 of the 19 terrorists on September 11 met a profile, but we did nothing about it. Fifteen of them were from Saudi Arabia, and they got through without a secondary search. This individual meets all of the profiles. And at a time when we were at an orange level you would think we would insist on more scrutiny.

O'BRIEN: Would the screening systems that were announced earlier in the week have stopped this?

SLEPIAN: No, they would not have, because we still are not talking about improving the screening on the ground outside of the United States. And this is really the issue here. Also the profiling system that we have within the United States apparently does not apply outside the United States, or he would have gone through more intense screening. You know, catching people on this side of the ocean isn't good enough if their goal is to blow up airplanes.

O'BRIEN: Charles Slepian, thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.