WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have been wrestling with how to get airport screeners to think more creatively about detecting possible terrorism threats.
“You don’t want them just going down a checklist and pulling out prohibited items,” Transportation Security Administration Administrator Kip Hawley said recently. Terrorists “know what the checklist is,” he added, “and will come up with something you are not going to be able to identify.”
So the TSA sent out detailed intelligence bulletins on emerging threats. One, leaked during the height of the summer travel season, noted a “surge in recent suspicious incidents at U.S. airports that may indicate terrorists” are involved in pre-attack dry runs. It said that screeners had intercepted items resembling bombs that were made out of everyday items such as cheese, cellphone components and claylike substances. “The nature and number of these improvised items raise concern,” the bulletin noted.
Soon after the bulletin leaked in the news media, it became obvious that the TSA may have overreached. The bulletin noted an incident that occurred at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport last year in which checked baggage contained a plastic bag with a block of cheese taped to another plastic bag holding an electrical adapter for an electronic device. Just who would do that, except for a terrorist conducting a dry run?
The answer: a couple worried that their chargers or adapters might be swiped. In a three-page report, just released under Maryland’s Public Information Act, airport police wrote that the two were flying to a family reunion and birthday party — and the cheese was for the festivities. The adapter was for their DVD player.
“The subject stated that the adaptor was taped to the cheese because he had checked power cords in his luggage in the past that for some reason did not make it to the final destination,” the report said. Police believed the couple’s story and let them continue on their flight — with the cheese and adapter in their luggage. No word on whether the adapter made it to Arizona.
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