Thwarted Terror Plot In Great Britain

Monday, August 21, 2006

By Alex Witt, MSNBC

August 10, 2006

Transcript

MS. WITT: And we continue to turn our attention to the foiled plot here in the United States and in Great Britain involving perhaps as many as 10 transatlantic planes heading from London here to the United States.

Joining us now to talk more about this is (former) Democratic Congressman from Indian, Tim Roemer, who, notably, is also a former 9/11 commissioner.

Congressman Roemer, thanks for being with us.

MR. ROEMER: I'm happy to be with you.

MS. WITT: Is today a success story for U.S. and British officials, or is it cause for concern that al Qaeda, or whichever terrorist organization is responsible for this, believes they still can infiltrate airline security?

MR. ROEMER: Well, it is a success story on intelligence sharing that the British and the Americans continue to probably set the stage for the world for getting this information back and forth to one another in a quick and decisive way.

It's a huge level of concern for the United States. Al Qaeda, terrorist groups, other organizations seem to be changing all the time and adapting. If we look at airplanes and airline efforts by terrorist groups, they have tried to infiltrate cockpits, they have tried to put suicide pilots on board, as they did on 9/11; they've tried shoe-bombers. Now they're trying, as they did with the Bojinka plot in 1994, a liquid kind of explosive device.

MS. WITT: And that is the concern --

MR. ROEMER: They're tenacious.

MS. WITT: -- Congressman Roemer, because you bring up a very good point, this is a tactic that they literally looked back in their playbook 10 years prior and decided, hey, let's give this a whirl again.

What holes are there still in security where we're just now -- okay, no one can bring liquid onboard, but yesterday they could. That has to be concerning for someone like you, who has worked very hard since 9/11 to try and close those gaps in security.

MR. ROEMER: Well, on the one hand, this is a success story. On the other hand, it's an area of concern. We have to make sure that we have integrated watch lists for our passengers. That still hasn't been completely accomplished. We have to make sure that we have comprehensive cargo x-raying. That hasn't been completely accomplished. We have to make sure that the detection equipment at our airports might be able to detect this kind of liquid. We don't have that fully in place.

And then, when we approach the 9/11 anniversary, there are a lot of other things that we need to accomplish in terms of first responders equipment and communication, in terms of FBI 21st century communications. This is a wake-up call for the United States that we have to do a lot more because these terrorist groups want to hit us and want to hit us hard.

MS. WITT: The terror threat level had been made fun of in the past, our different levels, our color levels. Today we heard that we are now at a Code Red for aviation in terms of those flights going to and from Great Britain, and Code Orange for all domestic flights.

Was that an appropriate reaction, and how long do you think these should be in place?

MR. ROEMER: Well, it certainly will be in place for the foreseeable future, in the next few days, to try to make sure, first, the plot is completely thwarted. Homeland Security Director Chertoff said that they think they've got it all, but they're still doing some work there. We're still finding out about intelligence. There was a report from London Times about cooperation with the Pakistani intelligence on this effort, and we're bringing more information about that. I think the British intelligence and MI5 are still trying to scour some of these neighborhoods in London and outside London and try to figure out what that ongoing threat is.

And so I think that this is an ongoing situation for the United States. In many ways, these terrorist groups are re-energized, regrouping and poised to do more harm to the United States in the future.

MS. WITT: Congressman Roemer, it is interesting to note that a few days ago, we had been talking about these 11 missing students. Now, I believe, there are still eight missing students from Egypt who are unaccounted for. They're in no way associated with this story, but it is interesting because it's been said -- it was said that before 9/11, we would never have had a way of keeping track of this type of missing student from another country. Does this speak to some of the changes that have been put in place since 9/11 and can speak directly to our heightened security?

MR. ROEMER: I think it's part of this theme that we are improving, but we're not improved enough, that pre-9/11 we had people like Ziad Jarrah and Hani Hanjour that violated their status on immigration -- we weren't really equipped to track them down and look for them, and we weren't communicating very well. We missed opportunities to do that.

With this instance that you have just pointed out, the missing Egyptian students that came into the United States several days ago, we now have two systems to try to track that, the SEVIS system, which is a student exchange system. Montana State alerted us that they hadn't shown up. And we have a US-VISIT system that tries to track people coming into the country and then exiting the country. We still haven't attached the biometrics up to that. Only about 12 airports and two ports do the exiting from that system.

So again, the theme is we are improving, but we're not improved enough. We're safer; we're not safe enough. We have a lot to do as we approach the 9/11 anniversary coming up, and hopefully, this instance this morning will re-energize our politicians and our public servants in this country, from the White House down to Congress, to finish the unfinished agenda of making this country safer.

MS. WITT: All right. Congressman Tim Roemer, former 9/11 commissioner, thank you for your insight. We appreciate it.

MR. ROEMER: My pleasure.