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For the Obama Administration, and Janet Napolitano in particular, this has been a week full of security mishaps and terrible outerwear.
As the country struggles to understand how a man who was reported to American authorites as having joined Al Qaeda by his own father managed to purchase an airline ticket with cash, board a plane in Nigeria with a suspicious bulge in his shorts, switch planes in Amsterdam and try to set his undies afire over the Atlantic was allowed to fly in the first place. Thanks to the quick thinking of a few courageous passengers, the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit arrived intact. Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano's reputation and, judging by her choice of clothing, dignity, did not.
In an interview with CNN the day after Christmas, Napolitano decided that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the system designed to protect Americans from renegade pantybombers "worked."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked."
Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who has been charged with trying to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions."
Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened."
Shortly following this announcement, Janet ditched the excuses and the skinned La-Z-Boy and took back her statement on the Today show where she announced that: "Our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that." As Fausta of Fausta's blog states, it was quite a nice Emily Litella moment.
Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press points out that the Obama Administration is facing tough criticism from both sides of the aisle both for Napolitano's comments and for President Obama's own behavior following the attempted attack.
The Obama administration claim that "the system worked" after a failed aircraft bombing wasn't quite as jolting as President George W. Bush's "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" when New Orleans was sinking under deadly Hurricane Katrina. But both raised disturbing questions about presidential response in a time of crisis...
Until Monday, the president had not been heard from publicly since the Christmas Day scare. He was ordering stepped-up security measures and after-action reviews behind the scenes, but also enjoying his Hawaiian vacation with games of golf, basketball and tennis and trips to the beach.
He drew questions about his level of involvement by not getting his first briefing on the incident until two hours after it was all over - and then only for 15 minutes, when he departed for the gym.
His aides defended it as a carefully crafted response, but Monday morning, everyone was back on message and trying very hard to explain away the "mishap."
Like most Americans, I try not to think too hard about what happens in the bowels of government, assuming, wrongly, that the government has my best interests in mind when it executes its policies and is doing all it can to protect me. Now, of course I know better from the one experience I had reporting “suspicious activity” on the CTA to the Department of Homeland Security, who was fairly convinced that my report of a squirrelly-looking, vaguely Middle Eastern dude using a Handicam to record major Chicago landmarks from the El was a figment of my imagination, possibly brought on by bad sausage before a nap.
But I never suspected that the "system," was, instead of a real system designed to anticipate and head off terrorist attacks before they get the point where airline passengers are entrusted with the responsibility of putting out, quite literally, deadly fires, the system DHS has in place actually relies on average people to do its job for it. And by "its job," I think I mean the most basic activity necessary to root out and prevent acts of terrorism.
And in this case, they didn't really need to do much more than take a phone call. The terrorist's dad called up DHS and flat-out told them that his son had received his Welcome Package from Al Qaeda International and had started his first homework assignment. Granted, his dad didn’t have any specifics at the time, but if the former Economic Minister of Nigeria calls you and tells you that a dude with a lot of money and a lot of spare time has suddenly thrown in his
