Conversations with Klarevas: Faisal Shahzad and how the system worked

Dr. Louis Klarevas

“Was the United States lucky or not with Faisal Shahzad?” asks Dr. Louis Klarevas, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs who serves as the graduate coordinator for the transnational security studies program. “No, America was not lucky,” he answers.

“Everything clicked, from the public awareness campaign of, ‘If you see something, say something,’ to the New York City Police Department’s rapid local response and the fact that Shahzad simply could not get the products he really needed to build a proper bomb,” Klarevas said, when he sat down to talk with GSN: Government Security News about the current state of homeland security in America.

“Since 9/11, the government has basically shut down the ability of terrorists to obtain the precursor materials that would allow them to build a bomb,” Klarevas added. “Think about Najibullah Zazi [ringleader of the February plot to bomb the New York City subway system during rush hour] getting caught buying products at the beauty store.”

“Shahzad wasn’t able to buy the type of fertilizer that is explosive because it is now the hardest to get your hands on,” he continued. “He couldn’t get detonators, so he tried to use firecrackers that he bought in Pennsylvania.”

Shahzad also used propane tanks, which were recovered from the SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1. On May 3, GSN posed the question – in an article also featured in the May print edition – who is monitoring propane tanks?

“When a journalist asked NYC Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at a May 2 press conference, ‘Do propane tanks need to be registered in any way?’ the Commissioner was not entirely correct when he answered, ‘I don’t believe they have to be registered. No,’” GSN reported.

“In fact, when they are used in New York City, liquefied petroleum gases – also known as LP gases, LPG or bottled gas, the most common of which are propane and butane – obtaining permits is required in certain instances, and it must be stored in portable cylinders… Of course,” the GSN article continued, “a would-be terrorist may not feel duty-bound to check the fitness of two propane tanks he is planning to detonate in Times Square.”

But Dr. Klarevas is less concerned about the threat. He tells GSN, “The propane tank is not likely to kill anyone. An exploded propane gas tank will most likely make a fireball and singe people, but it probably would not kill them.

“I don’t think having restrictions on them is a bad thing though,” he adds, “but you have to remember to weigh the risk and cost to society by slowing down commerce and creating obstacles to it. Part of the terrorist agenda is, after all, economic.”

Dr. Klareavs agrees with the basic premise – which was highlighted in a recent report published by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank, – that the nation’s homeland security system is essentially working.

“Is homeland security really that bad? No, the system works,” Klarevas tells GSN. “There are flaws in homeland security and people have every right to point to things like the amount of liquids you can take on a plane -- these things are definitely questionable.”

Although many commentators have demonized the Obama administration and the Department of Homeland security for allowing the incident to occur, and especially after it was reported that Shahzad had boarded a plane bound for Dubai that was preparing for takeoff when authorities apprehended him, Dr. Klarevas thinks that Shahzad getting on the plane was, “Where we got lucky.”

“Some people were very critical of the government for letting Shahzad get on the plane. But if there was one place where we got lucky in that manhunt, it was him getting on the plane.

“Three things happened that were advantageous,” Klarevas tells GSN.

“One, pre-flight screening. That means if he had a gun on him, he had to ditch it. Guess what?” Klarevas said. “He had a gun. Had he wanted to have a shootout with police, he could have, but the airport was safest place to apprehend him because he was unarmed and the authorities knew it.

“Two, you don’t need a warrant to go through his bags. You relinquish control of your personal belongings for screening purposes, so there is no warrant necessary. If something had been in his bags that was incriminating, it’s more help to the authorities.

“Three, he was arrested in a contained and secure area. He was on the plane – he was not going to get away. He’s unarmed and you have access to his personal belongings and he has nowhere to run.

“There is a method to the madness,” Klarevas pointed out. “There is a strategy, in letting him go through the screening process.”

But at the end of the day, a wide-scale tragedy was averted because Shahzad was not the master bomb maker that his terrorist handlers in Pakistan had hoped he would prove to be.

“There was a regular guy in West Virginia who set off a pipe bomb [on May 22], and he killed himself. The pipe bomb was more successful.” Klarevas said. “Shahzad’s was really the crudest of crude bombs.”

In the next installment of “Conversations with Klarevas,” Dr. Louis Klarevas discusses what he believes to be the biggest threat to the nation in regards to homeland security: terrorists with guns.