WASHINGTON — Scrambling to plug holes in cargo security revealed by the mail-bomb plot in Yemen, the Transportation Security Administration announced Tuesday it was planning an overhaul of its passenger and cargo screening methods.
Top Homeland Security officials met during the weekend to decide how best to shore up the cargo vulnerability and identify remaining gaps in security.
TSA Director John Pistole said he would like to see more advanced screening technology, better information sharing, more flexible search procedures that can adapt to a particular threat, and less emphasis on “cookie cutter” approaches, like the systemwide limits on liquids in carry-on luggage.
The Yemen plot highlighted the capabilities of a “determined and creative enemy,” Pistole said, adding that he would “reshape our security approach” to improve the agency’s focus on intelligence and new technology.
One measure discussed over the weekend is requiring the shipping industry to transmit more detailed information on cargo before it departs for U.S. soil.
Without multiple pieces of intelligence, the mail bombs sent last week would have likely made it to within hours of landing in the U.S. “If the target had been the planes, that would have been too late,” said an administration official not authorized to speak on the record.
Intelligence analysis of a tip from a Saudi militant combined with information about a “dry run” shipment of three packages from Yemen to Chicago in September enabled authorities to locate the two bombs on Friday, said officials.
“It is evident that had we not had the intelligence, our security countermeasures would not have identified these improvised explosive devices,” said Frank Cilluffo, the director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.
The “dry run” shipments may have been a test by al-Qaida to better understand how the cargo system works, said a U.S. official not authorized to speak on the record. Those three packages were identified by “solid intelligence” as being linked to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, said a U.S. official. No explosives were found, but the incident put the system on alert.
At the moment, package details are transmitted electronically to Homeland Security’s National Targeting Center four hours before a cargo flight lands in the U.S. The packages coming from Yemen would have likely been considered “high risk” and flagged for screening after the flight landed, by which time they might already have exploded.
Pistole, who brings extensive counterterrorism experience to the job from his 26-year career at the FBI, highlighted the current liquids ban as an example of a cookie-cutter approach to security. “We shouldn’t spend time trying to decipher between 3 ounces and 100 milliliters,” Pistole said.
In the future, Pistole wants to see the deployment of new machines to scan liquids as well as explosives trace technology that might pick up evidence of explosives such as PETN, which was used in the Yemen plot and in the attempted jetliner bombing at Christmas.
For air cargo security, Homeland Security officials are exploring stronger data-mining methods similar to those used to identify dangerous people on flights for selecting dangerous cargo for screening. Officials are also turning their sights to the screening methods used by companies and by other countries. “We rely on those that ship to do the screening overseas,” said an administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record. “We are looking at how to beef those requirements up.”
There are some cargo companies that don’t have the data of every parcel that has been consolidated into its pallet containers. But the big shipping companies such as FedEx and UPS are able to give the U.S. the data in the electronic shipping record for every parcel. This includes names, addresses and phone numbers.
“Maybe there is a changing tone at TSA, there is an understanding that screening alone for items in past attacks may not be enough for a future attacks,” said Rick Nelson, director of the homeland security and counterterrorism program at CSIS. Cargo is different from passenger, said Nelson. “The cost to screen all the cargo in the global systems is unaffordable and impractical. You can’t do that.”
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