Official says flaws in screening air passengers

BRUSSELS - A top US security official said on Tuesday mistakes had been made in screening airline passengers to fight terrorism, saying the Department of Homeland Security drove "the truck into a ditch" on the issue.

In response to a scathing final report issued on Monday from the former Sept. 11 Commission, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Michael Jackson also said that changes would be made to a planned "secure flight" programme.

The report said the US administration was failing to keep the country safe four years after the hijacked airliner attacks and criticised anti-terrorism measures in a range of areas including US efforts to screen airline passengers.

"I am going to say very bluntly that DHS (Department of Homeland Security) started down this road to work through the screening issues. They are tremendously complex and we drove the truck into a ditch," Jackson told an event in Brussels.

"We have to pull it out of the ditch, we have cleaned it up and we are putting it back on the road and we are driving it where it needs to go," he said during a trip to Europe to meet European Union counter-terrorism officials.

The Commission investigated the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington before disbanding officially in 2004. It has re-emerged as a private non-profit group to assess the implementation of 41 recommendations it made.

In a final "report card" on government efforts to protect the United States from future terrorist attacks, the 10-member panel gave a lowly "F" on airline passenger screening, saying few improvements had been made since the September 11 attacks.

The panel also called on authorities to begin checking passengers against a comprehensive terrorist watch list.

Jackson said progress had been made in recent months on screening passengers, but added more changes were planned.

"We have ... in very recent months made some significant progress on the screening issue ... with our secure flight programme," he said.

"We will be, very shortly, talking in a very public way about some refinements to that programme," he added without disclosing any details.

Secure flight, which has been delayed repeatedly over privacy concerns, is a programme that would pre-screen and check passengers against terrorist watch lists.

- REUTERS