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A test of security screeners at 19 airport terminals by federal watchdogs was the Story of the Day. Both ABC and CBS led with a probe by one agency, the Government Accountability Office, of the performance by a second, the Transportation Security Administration. A pair of GAO operatives successfully passed through security with common household ingredients that could be used to build a $150 bomb, if assembled MacGyver-style on the other side of TSA checkpoints. NBC scored a pair of Exclusives: one, a follow-up on yesterday's CIA guilty plea, led the newscast; a second contained chilling images of depravity in Serbian mental institutions.

The TSA flaws exposed by the GAO were not really serious enough to deserve such fanfare. CBS' Bob Orr hyped the expose by asserting that "six full years after 9/11 US aviation remains a vulnerable target." But the improvised explosive device envisioned by the GAO would be useless in mounting a 9/11-style attack: it could not hijack four planes simultaneously nor crash them into skyscrapers. Worst case, Orr reported, was that the handmade bomb "could cause severe damage to an airplane and threaten the safety of passengers." NBC's Tom Costello (at the tail of his United-Delta merger videostream) concurred that such an explosion "would have caused significant damage to an airplane, possibly injuries or loss of life." On ABC, David Kerley (subscription required) noted that the GAO found no fault with airport terminal personnel: they "appeared to follow TSA procedures and used technology appropriately." The problem was that each of the bomb's components was, singly, both harmless and legal--and that there are "publicly available instructions" for its assembly.

Andrew Tyndall 11/15/07 8:44:46 pm

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