Screening for liquid bombs isn't possible with existing scanners, The New York Times reports:
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.
But the feds knew this as far back as 1995, when the Manila bomb plot was thwarted:
James Jay Carafano, senior fellow at Heritage Foundation in Washington and an expert on domestic 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.
--David Axe
