As the authorities continue to understand the plans behind the attempted car bombing in Times Square, there's relief that suspect Faisal Shahzad was arrested just before his flight to Dubai took off but there's concern about how he nearly got away. Not only did Emirates Airline ignore an update that Shahzad, a Pakistani national who became a U.S. citizen last year, was added to the no-fly list, the feds lost track of him for a number of hours on Monday during their surveillance.
According to the NY Times, because the FBI surveillance team didn't have Shahzad within its sights, "investigators did not know he was planning to fly abroad until a final passenger list was sent to officials at the federal Customs and Border Protection agency minutes before takeoff. In addition, the airline he was flying, Emirates, failed to act on an electronic message at midday on Monday notifying all carriers to check the no-fly list for an important added name, the officials said. That meant lost opportunities to flag him when he made a reservation and paid for his ticket in cash several hours before departure." Yes, you can still buy airline tickets with cash.
Newsweek's Declassifed blog has more details about the no-fly snafu, explaining that the "list only slowly makes its way into reservations computers operated by private airlines" and that Shahzad was able to buy a ticket at 7:30 p.m. at JFK Airport. It was only when Customs and Border Protection "got the passenger list for Shahzad's flight" at 10:40 p.m.—when his flight was boarding—that his name was flagged by the Terrorist Screening Center. "They located Shahzad quickly. The bombing suspect's reaction was one of resignation, said the official familiar with events. 'I was expecting you,' he told the officers. 'Are you NYPD or FBI?' The officers then showed him their badges and told him they were from Customs and Border Protection."
The plane's door had been closed, but CBP had it reopened to apprehend Shahzad. After his arrest, the plane then closed its door again and pushed off to go to the runway, but the plane was called back and two other people were taken off the plane. It's unclear why they were taken off. When asked about the lapses, the FBI told Newsweek, "This was a complicated and fast-moving investigation which took only 55 hours from the incident to the arrest. We are not going to discuss specific operations."
Mayor Bloomberg, always ready with 25-cent thoughts about the situation, commented yesterday, "Clearly, [Shahzad] was on the plane and shouldn't have been, and we got very lucky that he didn't [escape]."
