WillCAD

THere is no need to read between the lines, Ron. The Reuters article says it explicitly - the C4 was in his bag when he flew from NC to TX.

Link to Yahoo article

"Was it the same bag? Maybe, maybe not." Who's making unwarranted assumptions now? Have you seen ANY mention, ANYWHERE, that he was carrying TWO bags? That the smoke grenade was not, in fact, found in the same bag which contained the C4? ANYWHERE? The mere suggestion that TSA might not have missed the C4, because it might have been in a different bag than the smoke grenade, is preposterous on its face - it doesn't matter if he was carrying 50 bags, they found a smoke grenade in one of them, ALL of them should have been given a thorough secondary search.

Face it, Ron - your colleagues in NC missed FIVE POUNDS OF C4 that was in a bag carried by someone who they should have been giving a thorough secondary search due to the fact that he was carrying a highly prohibited item. Your colleagues give thorough secondaries to people who opt out of the AIT, to people who don't respond to their illegal interrogations, to people who try to photograph the checkpoints, and yet...

They either failed to give a secondary to a man who was caught carrying a smoke grenade through the checkpoint, or they gave him a secondary and missed five pounds of C4.

In my opinion, this is the biggest screening failure in the 10-year history of your agency. Almost all of the other controversies stem from deliberate abuses by the agency or criminal activities by individual employees, but this one was definitely a total and complete failure of the screening process - it failed to detect five pounds of undisguised, unhidden high explosive in a carry-on bag, after the traveler had already triggered an alert that should have mandated a secondary hand search of ALL of his carry-on items.

MASSIVE FAIL. MASSIVE.

chollie

And unlike all the other items confiscated/surrendered (guns, knives, martial arts toys, cupcakes, lotions), this is something that possibly could have caused serious damage (I don't know enough to know if it was enough to bring a plane down or not).

Boggie Dog

Would have require a detonator but 2+ lbs of C4 would do the job on an airplane.

Letitride3c

I must say it's one of the worst excuse that I've heard over the years - that a trained solider forgot that he's carrying an extra 5 lbs+ of gears that originated from the war zone, half way around the world. One of my traveling Dell notebook is about 5 lbs. and when I pickup my backpack to travel, I can easily tell that something heavy is inside the padded compartment (like a 5 lb. notebook) without looking - even if it's empty of everything else.

So, the elite solider trained in demolition was found to be in possession of a smoke grenade, LEO was called ?? but no terminal dump or bomb squad - it just went into the bins along with other "amnesty" items like chocolates & water bottles, expired OTC meds - a report presumably written up & a "reprimand" given, and he was clear to fly. Hmmm, something smell here - kind of fishy to me ...

Perhaps Sgt. TSA was given a quick, courtesy secondary screening so that his family traveling along wouldn't be delayed further, and they're on their way - they trusted him & took his words for it, he wasn't a threat to anyone ... (priority boarding & F seating upgrade per availability, etc.)

The demolition expert instructor, I believe, is qualified to improvise and fashion the detonator using whatever is available in the field, as they are trained to handle adverse conditions in their given assignments - whether it's taking down a plane in the air or blowing up a concrete reinforced structure, such as a terminal building or anything else as needed.

From the standpoint of defending this absent-minded elite Army Ranger, playing dumb is probably the best tactical move for his attorney/counsel ...

IrishDoesntFlyNow

In his defense here, if one is accustomed to carrying around a certain weight of equipment (a 5 lb notebook or 5 lbs of C4), it's not unexpected or out-of-the ordinary for the bag to weigh five pounds. I doubt that you go through a little mental checklist ("oh, this is heavy; must be that laptop") every time you pick up the bag. It weighs what your muscle memory tells you it should weigh and that's that. We're all structured that way. We're hard wired to notice/pay attention to differentness, not sameness. It would be instantly noticeable if the laptop you're accustomed to carrying around in that bag wasn't there. Try it. I'm not defending the action -- it was truly dumb -- but I can easily understand how it happened.


^ Exactly what I surmise happened.


^


~~ Irish

WillCAD

There is a lot of speculation going around, and I'm not immune from it. My mental picture of the sequence of events is like this:

Sgt. Atwater brought home 5 pounds of C4 and a smoke grenade from Afghanistan. Whether he brought it home accidentally because he forgot it was in his bag, or deliberately for some reason, I don't know. I have seen several posters here and on Facebook comments on this incident saying that, in their experience, returning soldiers are required to go through a thorough inspection to prevent them from bringing weapons and explosives home from a war zone without authorization, and that such an inspection would have found the C4 and smoker, but I don't know that for a fact. It's possible that, as an elite Green Beret, Sgt Atwater went through a different process when he returned home and his bag wasn't inspected. It's possible that such inspections are no longer performed for some reason. It's also possible that Sgt. Atwater deliberately smuggled the C4 and smoker home for some reason.

He says he put the bag into his garage when he returned home, then retrieved it and filled it with Christmas presents for his children prior to his trip to Texas. Somehow, he didn't notice five pounds of C4 and a smoke grenade in the bag when he filled it with presents. This is the part where my imagination comes up short of reasonable, rational explanations. How do you not notice something weighing five pounds in a bag that you're about to fill? Was the bag already so full that he didn't notice the five pounds? If so, why would he choose it for packing Christmas presents? Did he only have a couple of presents? What else was in the bag before the presents, aside from the C4 and smoker?

The only reasonable scenarios I can imagine that would fit with his contention that he forgot the C4 and smoker were in the bag, and failed to notice them when he packed it with his kids' presents, are rather involved and far-fetched. All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, so my gut feeling is that he's lying - he DID know that he had 5 pounds of C4 and a smoke grenade in his bag, and was intentionally taking them with him to Texas. But that's entirely speculation.

Why would he deliberately bring home 5 pounds of C4 and a smoke grenade, then take them from NC to TX when he visited his kids for Christmas? There are three possibilities: A) Fun, B) Profit, C) Evil intent. Given who he is and that fact that there were no terrorist attacks or other crimes involving C4 in Texas over the holidays, I find C to be unlikely. B is certainly possible. Heck, for all we know, he could have had 20 pounds of C4 when he arrived in TX, sold 15, and the 5 that were in his bag on the return leg were just leftovers he couldn't find a buyer for. Again, though, there were no crimes in TX that I'm aware of involving C4 over the holidays, so this seems unlikely. Which brings us to A.

I believe that Sgt Atwater took the C4 and smoke grenade to TX with him deliberately, to put on a demo show for his friends and family. Either the show never took place, or he had more C4 when he arrived and the 5 pounds he was caught with were just leftovers, which is why he was trying to take them back to NC with him. But that's entirely speculation.

When he arrived at the airport in NC, he transited a TSA checkpoint, which discovered the smoke grenade in his bag and confiscated it. Did this trigger a full secondary search of the bag, it's owner, and all of his other carry on items? It should have; if it didn't, TSA fails miserably. If it did, and that secondary search failed to discover the 5 pounds of C4 in the bag, TSA fails miserably. Was the C4 wrapped up like a Christmas present to avoid visual detection? Or was it sitting in the bottom of the bag in its original wrappers, clearly marked "C4 HIGH EXPLOSIVE", and the TSOs simply didn't see it? Was it in a side compartment and the TSO simply didn't look in there? No matter how you imagine this scenario, TSA fails miserably.

Most importantly, was an ETD swab test performed on the bag? If it was, did it come up positive? It it did, why was the bag not emptied out for inspection? If it came up negative, with 5 pounds of C4 in the bag, then what good are they? Are the ETD swabs, which sometimes give false positives from things like hand lotions, completely useless for detecting massive quantities of the very thing they're specifically tasked with detecting? Either option, that the swab wasn't done or that the swab failed to detect the C4, is disturbing in the extreme.

The only reasonable scenario I can come up with in my imagination is that the smoker was spotted by the carry-on x-ray operator, but Sgt Atwater was able to convince the TSOs at the checkpoint that he forgot the smoker was in there, and that as an active-duty US Army soldier, he was so low on the threat scale that he didn't deserve a thorough secondary search of himself and his belongings, even after discovery of such a highly prohibited item. I think he played the "I'm an American hero fighting to keep you safe, on my way home to see my children for Christmas" card, and the TSOs tripped all over themselves to get him through the checkpoint with adoration and fanfare. But that's entirely speculation.

In short, I think Atwater knew he had C4 with him and deliberately attempted to smuggle it from NC to TX, then back again. But that's speculation.

I also think that TSA has failed miserably at its primary mission - keeping weapons, explosives, and incendiaries off airplanes. And that's not speculation - that's a fact.

doober

Congress needs to subpoena Pistole to appear before it to explain how this serious breach happened. The subpoena needs to be issued so that Pistole can't refuse to appear or send an underling in his place.

TSA is working very hard to cover up this serious FAIL on its part.

Lara21

I also have a very bad feeling that they are also in a backroom somewhere thinking up a new secret screening technique to add to the already invasive screening procedures.

chollie

Wouldn't do much good. He'd ignore it and whoever issued the subpoena would just look silly.

Where's Leahy? Why isn't he using the bully pulpit? Or Mica?

Wally Bird

I don't buy the claim of forgetfulness for an instant.

Unless 'special' has taken on a different meaning from that I'm familiar with, SF personnel always know what materiel they are carrying and where it is. Where these items came from I'm not going to guess; Afghanistan isn't the only possibility.

chollie

In a recent incident involving a bag being opened and cremated remains being tampered with, TSA was quick to review the tapes and announce that SOP had been followed and the tapes revealed no problems on their end, ergo, it must have been baggage handlers who damaged the belongings.

It is hard to understand why Bob hasn't posted that the Fayetteville tapes have been reviewed and that the TSOs searched and swabbed the bag thoroughly when they detected and confiscated the grenade and 'admonished' the soldier. SOP was followed, the flying public was never in any danger and any further questions are outside the TSA's area of responsibility and should be addressed to military authorities.

doober

Thought I'd responded to this earlier on my phone, but apparently my response wasn't posted.

Ignoring it would leave him open to a charge of contempt of Congress.

Wally Bird

Not really.

doober

Of course, not really. The TSA is working overtime to cover up this egregious act of incompetence.

chollie

But do you have proof or are you, um, merely assuming?