Al-Qaida has accomplice in TSA

Only the Transportation Security Administration could screw up a thank you.

"It was a very good year for TSA," wrote acting TSA Administrator Gail Rossides to the agency's employees.

There was just one problem with that nice sentiment.

The year wasn't over yet.

Ms. Rossides wrote the e-mail on Christmas Eve.

A few hours later, an al-Qaida stooge tried to blow up an overseas jetliner landing in the Midwest by igniting some smuggled chemicals.

Even though the guy resembled a Chicago street gang punk more than a Yemen-backed terror operative, he made a mockery of the TSA year-end accolades.

"Our front line has screened more than 570 million people and more than 420 million bags," Rossides wrote in her greeting just before person number 570 million and one sneaked through the system.

The premature timing of Ms. Rossides' Christmas Eve memo also overlooked a serious breach of TSA security a few months earlier that could have enabled the attempted Detroit attack.

I'm talking about the unforgivable release of a top-secret Transportation Security Administration guide that showed up on the Internet last spring. The 93-page official TSA operating manual explained how federal officers search airline passengers at O'Hare and other airports; what the screeners look for and who they look at.

The playbook also revealed such juicy details as technical settings for airport X-ray machines and bomb detectors.

Whether or not the plot to bomb the plane on approach to Detroit Metro Airport actually used that Transportation Security Administration manual as a template, the attack planners were certainly given a dose of confidence that they were dealing with an inept system.

At the very least, last year's unintended public release of TSA's employee handbook confirmed for all of al-Qaida that the agency's management is their best friend.

"This year, our officers found more than 830 guns and prevented them from getting on planes," wrote the acting director in her Christmas Eve message.

While we appreciate such diligence, today's terrorists really aren't Dillingers and probably won't try to smuggle through a Tommy gun or even a .38 special.

Then, as if the handbook release, the Christmas Eve memo and the thwarted assailant weren't enough proof of TSA incompetence, the chronology of horrors continued.

Just hours after the Detroit incident, TSA's response plans were also posted on the Internet, having been leaked to some travel bloggers.

That top-secret, supposedly confidential directive outlined new screening measures: additional boarding gate searches such as passenger pat downs of the upper legs and torso, physical scrutiny of all travelers' belongings and a careful inspection of syringes with powders and liquids. It also required passengers to remain in their seats one hour before landing.

Of course at first the White House blamed lax security overseas for the Detroit near-miss. President Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, promised to tighten things up on flights coming to America.

Only when faced once again with evidence of a dismal performance by U.S. intelligence agencies did the truth settle in like a deep chest cold. Despite trillions of dollars spent on homeland security, we are only one slip-up away from a catastrophe.

You only have to go through security at many overseas airports to realize how lax things still are at our own. As TSA screeners futz with trying to interpret passenger body language and airport food line behavior, many nations are doing it sensibly. They hand search, pat down and pull apart baggage and then they do it again right before boarding. Everybody, twice.

That was my experience last weekend heading back to O'Hare from a trip to Central America. After several thorough-but-efficient airport searches by scanner and by hand, I felt confident that nobody could have smuggled on a plastic bag of explosives sewn into their underwear and some detonating liquid in a syringe as did the Detroit-bound terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Regardless, I am glad Abdulmutallab or any other agent of terror with bomb powder sewn into his Yemeni boxers wasn't on my flight home last weekend.

Halfway through, out over the ocean, one member of the flight crew decided to use the front bathroom. The cockpit door was left open with nothing standing between 175 passengers and the controls of the 757.

There wasn't a metal gate pulled across the aisle, as has been installed on some aircraft since 9/11. The catering cart wasn't even rolled across the walkway in front, to provide at least a facade of security.

There was only a petite flight attendant with her back to the cabin, chatting up the flight crewman as he came from the bathroom, the cockpit door still wide open at 36,000 feet. Anybody could have flung the flight attendant aside and rushed past the crewman into the cockpit.

Maybe the flight crew had stun guns charged up or 9 mm Glocks locked and loaded. Or maybe there was an invisible Star Wars-style force field across the threshold.

To passengers though, the sight of a wide open cockpit looked like an invitation to any terrorists onboard.

This must all be part of what TSA considers a "very good year."

But before another year goes by, the Obama administration should start practicing another kind of TSA.

Time for Some Accountability.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie