Larry Today on CNN, Interviewed by Kyra Phillips

BELOW, the transcript from Kyra Phillips’ interview on CNN, December 29, 2009:

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We are pushing forward now on some of our top stories of the day.

The Christmas day bomb suspect sitting in a federal prison in Michigan right now. Some lawmakers would prefer Guantanamo Bay. Congressman Peter King, top republican on House Homeland Security Committee, says Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should be tried by a military tribunal not in a civilian court.

No reaction so far from the White House. President Obama has promised an aggressive response to terrorists, though, plotting to harm Americans. And he implied that the U.S. would go on the offensive, not strengthen its offenses.

And a funeral home goes on the offensive in the run up New Year’s, promising free funerals for drunk drivers. More on Operation Stop and think later this hour.

So, would you give up your carry-ons to make air travel safer, or to feel safer in the air? In the wake of last week’s failed attempt to blow up a plane from the Netherlands bound for Detroit, carry-on crackdowns are on the way, especially in Canada. There, at least for now, carry-ons are mostly forbidden on U.S.-bound airliners. They’re also being screened and double screened all across America. In many cases, they are swabbed for explosive residue and passengers are patted down, or put through body scanners that the feds are scrambling to put in many more airports.

And who is overseeing all of this? TSA and Customs and Border Protection are both without permanent leaders. Confirmation votes are being held up in the Senate, but we have late word that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will try to force a vote on the TSA nominee Erroll Southers in the next few weeks.

Now I want to get some insight from Larry Johnson. He’s a terrorism analyst and business consultant who used to work in the Office of Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department.

We spoke to him yesterday by phone. He joins me live from D.C.

Larry, good to see you.

LARRY JOHNSON, TERRORISM ANALYST: Hi, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right. First of all, Canada saying no more carry- on baggage. Is that really an effective answer to all of this, and could we start to see that in the United States?

JOHNSON: It’s a Band-Aid on the sucking (ph) chest wound. I mean, what the Canadians are admitting is they have no effective system in place for detecting the possibility of somebody bringing explosives on board a plane. And what’s so disturbing about this is we’ve known for 15 years about this threat.

Let’s recall that it took 13 years for the United States to react to bags with explosives and to finally put in place a system to check bags that are checked into the body of the plane for explosives. That finally came into effect in 2001, 13 years after the bombing of Pan Am 203.

Here, we had December of ’94, Ramzi Yousef took components on board a plane, built the bomb, left the bomb under the seat, got off of the plane. It detonated in the air. He was doing this as a test run to blow up 12 jumbo jets. So we’ve known about this for that time, and so Canada’s gesture, then, it’s one that will probably last three or four weeks, and then they’ll go back to business as usual.

And the unfortunate thing is, what we need to do is start putting in place existing technologies that we have that are both trace detectors and bolt detectors, and then move the effort, advance it, to start really developing a comprehensive technological solution. Because that’s our only hope in the long run.

PHILLIPS: Interesting that you say that, trace and bolt detectors, because I had a chance to talk to a man last hour. We were calling him Tony because his work doesn’t want him identified, but he used to work for the TSA, the DHS, and also the FAA. And he said exactly what you just said. He said that is the answer to prevent, for the most part, our best chances, at least, because, of course, nothing is 100 percent, but this is the way to prevent bomb-making materials to get on board an aircraft.

Take a listen to what he told me. I want to get your response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

“TONY”, FMR. TSA, DHS, FAA OFFICIAL: Knowing what I know from the outside, since Richard Reid, in 2001, eight years ago, there is not adequate screening using the technology which is currently available on passengers coming into this country on inbound flights. TSA, at least until very recently, has been very reluctant to take much care or notice of security on flights coming inbound, not going at all beyond what was in place before Richard Reid.

Richard Reid showed that we needed some way of screening incoming passengers for trace residues of explosives. This could easily have been done by equipment that is deployed all over the United States now, but we don’t require it, such equipment to be used on passengers coming in from overseas.

PHILLIPS: And that’s my question. Why do we not require this type of equipment for passengers coming into this country from overseas? We have, and you refer to this in this very extensive report that you put together, these chemical detectors in more than a dozen airports in the United States. Why don’t we have that internationally?

TONY: Yes, those chemical detectors, I believe, are in more than 100 airports in the United States. They could be deployed internationally. There’s a few countries that have done it on their own, which is fine. But we should be requiring that on all flights coming into this country. And you will have to ask the TSA why they haven’t done this for eight years, let alone for the last year or two.

We got another tip-off in August, 2006, when a plot to do the same thing, to bring explosives aboard aircraft on flights coming in to the U.S. from London was discovered. And then, again, people reminded TSA, you should use screening overseas on flights coming in.

And they do inspections, they do standard x-rays, they do pat- downs, but they don’t use this very well known, functioning, relatively inexpensive and easy to operate system which is all over this country. The TSA, informally, I have heard, leadership talk about how difficult it is to get other countries to agree to such measures. I do not think that it’s true, because they agree to other measures which are far more intrusive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: So, Larry, two questions.

Our research here at CNN says it’s more than a dozen airports have this technology and use this technology. However, Tony is telling me, no, there’s 100 airports that have it.

So, does that mean there are airports that have these detectors and they are just not using this them?

JOHNSON: Yes. I mean, there’s no requirement to use it, so human nature kicks in. If you are not required to do something, you don’t.

I flew two weeks ago from Cairo to JFK, direct flight on Delta Air Lines. There was no screening of the shoes. You know, in the United States, you have to take your shoes off. Inbound flight, they don’t do any checking of the shoes to find out if you have anything unusual in the sole that might possibly be an explosive.

So, what we have is still a lack of standardization across the board. There is some of it within the United States, where the federal security directors in the various airports, they can pose different standards.

For example, at one place, if you’re a woman and you’re wearing, like, a shirt over an undershirt, they may require you to take it off, and then at another airport, they won’t. That is sort of minor. But when you go overseas, the United States is in a position to require any air carrier flying into the United States to adopt very specific measures of security, and TSA hasn’t, and really, there’s no excuse for it except incompetence.

PHILLIPS: Interesting, incompetence, because Tony mentioned the TSA is reluctant. Why should the TSA be reluctant about anything when they are in charge of our security?

JOHNSON: Because security, a lot of times, you wind up being the Rodney Dangerfield. You get no respect, you get beat up, you get pressure. Security is bad news.

Whenever you see the security director at an airline coming through the door, he is not telling you how you’re going to save money and, in fact, increase your bottom line. He’s bringing you costs, because security involve costs and personnel and equipment. But it’s one of those things that’s necessary.

This is one of those few areas where you should have a genuine partnership between the federal government and the commercial sector. And it is — the federal government has a clear role to play in ensuring that the security is done properly in order to keep people safe, because just one or two airlines start going down with explosives, it is going to have a dramatic negative economic impact on this country that will then affect other people who don’t even fly.

PHILLIPS: Mary Schiavo, former inspector general at the Transportation Department, also told me last hour, we have got the money, it’s politics that’s holding everything up.

Take a listen to what she told me.

JOHNSON: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY SCHIAVO, FMR. DOT INSPECTOR GENERAL: We’ve been relying on profiling since 1988. This equipment will stop them, and it will stop all known explosives used by terrorists. So I don’t want to say it’s 100 percent effective, because you could always mix something on the plane that isn’t detected by this equipment. But for the known explosives used by terrorists today, this equipment is 100 percent effective.

We just have to put it in place. And then that will stop them.

Senator DeMint is from our home state of South Carolina, and there are many political interests that have prompted (ph) this. But it’s too important.

The same thing happened when I left. The inspector general job was open for several months because it got bogged down in political issues.

This is not an issue of politics, this is law enforcement. And when we treat it like law enforcement, just as Tony says, we give the equipment to the cops on the beat, except this case, the cops are the TSA agents. And that’s how we have to treat it. We do not let politics come into law enforcement in this country, nor should we ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: But it is. We don’t have the head of a TSA, we’ve got these chemical detection systems all across airports in the United States. And, by law, we are able to tell airports overseas that they need to assure us that they are doing proper security measures. And none of that is happening.

What’s wrong with this, Larry?

JOHNSON: Well, because we have gone — these incidents are few and far between. If you look at the attempts to put explosives on board planes successfully, there has been, I think, a total of five incidents worldwide since 1994. And so what happens is they argue, well, it’s a low risk, low threat, but unfortunately, it’s…

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIPS: But Larry, when it happens, look at how devastating it is.

JOHNSON: Yes. That’s the point.

PHILLIPS: 9/11 happened one time, but, my God, that changed our entire — all of our lives and our world and politics, and you name it. I mean, why do we have to look at this as, oh, it only happens once in a while? It’s like totally devaluing life.

JOHNSON: Well, I agree. We shouldn’t look at it this way because for commercial airlines, they can’t afford a 90 percent success rate. They have to be 100 percent successful in protecting those aircraft and ensuring that they’re mechanically sound, as well as that no threat item gets introduced on board.

And, you know, frankly, the Bush administration still needs to answer — they did some very good things in strengthening TSA, putting official trained people at those checkpoints and requiring checked baggage to be detected — to be interrogated for explosives. But why didn’t they do that at the passenger checkpoints?

You know, you’ve got Frances Townsend on the air with you and Tom Ridge. We ought to ask them, why didn’t you do that? I mean, what was the reason? Because from a strictly technical standpoint of aviation security, there is absolutely no reason that that should not have been done.

PHILLIPS: Larry Johnson, great talking to you. Thanks again for your time today.

JOHNSON: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: You bet.

Well, we’re not finished yet. We’re going to get the latest on the holdup in naming the head of the TSA and the probe under way on the forensics of the failed attack on Christmas.