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Security chief: Air travel safer
December 28, 2009

WASHINGTON - -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the suicide bomber who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas apparently was not part of a broader plot to attack U.S. targets and that commercial flying is safe.

The administration announced two sweeping formal reviews into the incident, and Republicans accused the government of not taking al-Qaida or the safety of air travelers seriously enough. The incident, in which a 23-year-old Nigerian allegedly tried to set off an incendiary device as Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit prepared for landing, heightened nerves worldwide.

On Sunday, another Nigerian man aboard the same flight triggered alarm when he spent about an hour in the bathroom. Fearing another suicide bomber, the pilot asked authorities to meet the plane. Later, the FBI determined that the young man was sick, not plotting to blow up the plane, one FBI official said in Washington. President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident, which set off alarm bells amid partisan sniping at high levels in Washington.

On Sunday talk shows, Napolitano sought to reassure a jittery public, saying commercial flying had been safe before the incident on Christmas and was even safer now because of intensified security measures that U.S. authorities and their allies have put in place. She said the accused suicide bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, appeared to be acting alone on Friday. After his arrest, Abdulmutallab said he had obtained an explosive chemical compound and a syringe from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with the terror network. But Napolitano said, "Right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger."

She acknowledged that U.S. authorities had placed Abdulmutallab on a general counterterrorism watch list that contains about 550,000 names, which is shared with airlines and foreign security agencies. Administration officials acknowledged Abdulmutallab was placed on that list a month ago after his father, a respected Nigerian banker, went to U.S. authorities in Nigeria with concerns about his son's ties to militants.

Source :- http://www.chicagotribune.com