The Open Matt Project

On The Hotseat

I'm watching the September 11th Commission public report (before Congress) on CSPAN, and man oh man, what an assbeating.

Claudio Manno, Transportation Security Administration, Asst. Administrator for Intelligence is asked about why known, listed, terrorists that he knew about weren't on the no-fly list (of people who are forbidden from flying, to be clear), and he says that it was beyond the airline's ability to track the tens of thousands of potential terrorists. But the Navy guy breaks in and tells him that's just ridiculous - the airlines don't have any trouble tracking frequent flyer miles on millions of customers, but they can't track a static list of thousands? He tells the whole lot of them that they're total failures because they didn't do what made sense and they're just hiding behind the very policies that they are responsible for creating.

Ouch!

Cathal Flynn, Former Head of FAA Civil Aviation Security (1993-2000)
Jane Garvey, the former FAA Administrator (1997-2002)

Are also getting the grill, but it looks like Claudio is getting the most heat.

Posted by Matt at January 29, 2004 03:29 PM