NY Times: Liquid Threat Is Hard to Detect

Liquid Threat Is Hard to Detect

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — Despite knowing for years that liquid explosives posed a threat to airline safety, security agencies have made little progress in deploying technology that could help defend against such attacks, security experts say.

Since September 2001, the federal government has hired tens of thousands of government screeners and upgraded its metal detectors and X-ray machines. But most of the equipment is still oriented toward preventing a metallic gun or other easily identifiable weapon from being carried aboard; it cannot distinguish shampoo from an explosive.

Cathleen A. Berrick, director of the Government Accountability Office’s homeland security and justice division, told a Senate committee in February 2005 that the Transportation Security Administration, part of the Department of Homeland Security, redirected more than half of the $110 million it had for research and development in 2003 to pay for personnel costs of screeners, delaying research in areas including detecting liquid explosives. It has continued to redirect some research and development money, she said Thursday.

snip...
James Jay Carafano, senior fellow at Heritage Foundation in Washington and an expert on homeland security, said that in the last year, officials at the highest levels of the department recognized the seriousness of the threat posed by liquid explosives and had been pushing aggressively to introduce equipment that could help.

But no such devices are ready to be rolled out.

“This is not a case of them being caught like a deer in the headlights and saying, ‘Oh my god we never expected this,’ ” Mr. Carafano said. “In fact they expected this threat.”

more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11threat.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

“This is not a case of them being caught like a deer in the headlights and saying, ‘Oh my god we never expected this,’ ” Mr. Carafano said. “In fact they expected this threat"

I don't know - I just thought of someone immediately when I read that quote.

they give a no-bid contract to Halliburton to develop, implement & install equipment that detects explosives in liquids... And voila, problem immediately solved...

BTW, I'll bet this equipment does already exist...it's just waiting for the right marketing opportunity. And now Bushco has created the need, so the price goes up...

(I didn't used to be this cynical. Honestly. It's this regime's fault...)