Air Terror: Implications For Aviation Security

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab may not have succeeded in his Christmas day attempt to bring down a commercial flight by a US airline en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, but his actions have reverberated through the aviation security sector and raised renewed concerns about the vulnerability of commercial flights to terrorism.

From what is known about the incident, Abdulmutallab attempted to ignite an explosive substance - believed to be Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate or PETN – which he had strapped to his body, using a syringe filled with acid as a detonator. Fortunately, for the passengers and crew of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, the attempt was unsuccessful. Had Abdulmutallab succeeded in detonating the PETN, it is very probable that the aircraft would have been destroyed in mid-air.

The incident has raised significant questions about both the capability of the US officials monitoring counter-terrorism watchlists, law enforcement agencies and the effectiveness of security measures at international airports. US authorities have conceded that Abdulmutallab was on a watchlist after intelligence – and a report from his own father some weeks prior to the incident – indicated that he held extermist anti-Western views and could be linked to one or more terrorist movements based in Africa. Current information suggests that the plot to bring down Flight 253 was in fact planned and orchestrated by an Al Qaeda faction in Yemen, who trained Abdulmutallab and sent him on his mission. The fact that Abdulmutallab not only had a valid US visa but was not listed on watchlists provided by the US authorities to either Nigerian or Dutch civil aviation officials prompted US President Obama to point to 'systemic failures' in the intelligence process and insist on better analysis and dissemination of information to relevant authorities. According to George Nicholls, the CEO of Pasco Risk Management, “President Obama's sentiments echoes blame apportioned to the US intelligence community in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, reverberating again recently when the most senior US intelligence officer in Afghanistan slated US intelligence estimates in country as 'unable to answer fundamental questions' about the theatre.”A key problem, Nicholls notes, is that there is a distinct difference between intelligence and actionable evidence. The former refers to information that is collected from secret or disparate sources, and to which there is attached varying degrees of credibility, reliability and collateral, whereas the latter has some level of tangible collateral associated with it. Reportedly, US intelligence sources were working on building a case against Abdulmutallab when he dramatically came to public attention. “It is quite probable that by that stage there was a level of suspicion attached to Abdulmutallab and hopefully some coverage of his activities”, Nicholls believes, “but the problem that western security services find themselves in is that if authorities act on information prior to exhaustive evaluation and verification, we could end up living in an authoritarian dictatorship that is the antithesis of Western ideals of democracy and personal freedom”. Inevitably, attempting to balance a nation's security requirements with democratic rights results in gaps; the now often termed 'intelligence failures'. According to Nicholls, this may explain the discrepancies between two US terrorist watchlists: One a relatively expansive list comprising thousands of names of persons in respect of whom there are suspicions but not substantive enough proof or substance to act against, and a narrower list of several hundred persons against whom there is sufficient weight of evidence (in the minds of US authorities) to bar from traveling to the USA. It could be possible that Abdulmutallab may have been in the process of being classified as moving from the expanded list to the narrow list when he set off on his mission.

Questions have also been raised about airport security at both Lagos and Amsterdam. Nicholls notes that here the problem is that as an explosive powder PETN would not have raised alarms on either metal detectors or X-ray scanners. As a result, airports around the world have been scrambling to install sophisticated full body scanners or, at least, to introduce full-body pat-downs. It is however by no means certain that a body scanner would have detected the PETN that Abdulmutallab had sown into his underwear: trials suggest that in some cases powders are not detected unless carried in bulk and they are unlikely to be detected if ingested. Even proponents of the equipment concede that it cannot guarantee detection of hidden explosive chemicals. Full body pat downs have similar limitations and are entirely dependent on the experience and alertness of security officers.

Unfortunately, Nicholls concludes, the issue is therefore not if a determined terrorist is able to circumvent body scanners and pat-downs, but how long it will take for these systems to be probed and tested by terrorist organisations and how robust the security response will be.

Short of conducting a detailed strip-search of every passenger traveling on at-risk airlines and routes – which would be a logistical nightmare as well as a significant invasion of privacy – are there any other techniques that can assist airport and airline authorities?

Dr Mark Welman, Pasco's Managing Director for Africa and a behavioural specialist with several years experience in criminal profiling, argues that too little attention is currently given to the art of behavioral observation of passengers at airports. Welman, who has advised airlines and provides training to aviation security officers, believes that “there are a number of significant behavioural clues that provide important indicators of suspicious behaviour and can differentiate passengers who pose a threat from those who do not”. For example, Welman notes, this training has assisted customs officials to identify suspicious behaviour among arriving passengers in their attempt to intercept drug couriers. “A terrorist or criminal can do their best to maintain a normal appearance when checking in or passing through security check-points”, Welman notes, “and outwardly they may even appear to be reasonably calm. But intrinsic anxiety about the possibility of being detected and the success of their mission translates into micro-behaviours that to a trained specialist provide definitive red flags to indicate that further processing of the individual is required”.

In the quest to protect travelers from air terrorism, it appears that a combination of technology and the application of behavioural science may, for now at least, represent a best practice solution. All that is certain, in the interim, is that air travel to the US from countries listed in the recent announcement will become more complex as procedures are implemented to ensure ongoing safety and security of international air travel.