The Transportation Security Administration said the Port Authority overreacted when it evacuated a terminal at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday.
The Port Authority said the TSA was to blame.
The TSA told WCBS 880 that at about 1:30 p.m., a mother and her baby went through a metal detector at Terminal C – a United hub – and the machine alarmed.
The mother then handed the child to the baby’s father, who had already been screened.
The mother was then cleared, but the baby was never actually screened. The parents and baby left the checkpoint and headed to their gate, WCBS 880 reported.
A TSA spokesperson said TSA officers began to look for the family in the secure area of the terminal and, per protocol, notified Port Authority Police of the situation.
The spokesperson said the TSA pointed out that this was a low-risk situation and indicated that TSA officers were looking for the family in the terminal.
TSA officials said they told Port Authority Police the circumstances of the screening issue and recommended against evacuating the terminal due to the low risk factor presented in the situation.
However, the TSA said that Port Authority Police unilaterally made the decision to evacuate the terminal, sweep the terminal for explosives, and re-screen all of the passengers.
The Port Authority decision caused the “inconveniencing of hundreds of passengers, and delaying of numerous flights,” TSA officials said.
The Port Authority said that no security breach is a minor issue and there is no case-by-case basis for adjusting protocol.
The Port Authority added that it was the TSA which was behind the security breach in the first place, because it did not properly screen all passengers.
The terminal re-opened at 2:50 p.m.
(Source: WCBSTV)
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5 Responses
You left out the key part. Did the baby explode? Maybe it was a stink bomb? I’ve heard complains from the hilonim that in Eretz Yisrael frum terrorists throw dirty diapers at the police, so who knows?????????????????
it is refreshing to see that someone is using some comman sence here, however it is very disturbing when others don’t allow that to happen.
Evacuating was the right thing to do.
Do you know how many ‘white’ Muslims there are nowadays, converts? Do you know how many of those radicalize?
For all we know, the parents could have been terrorists and the baby could have had explosives in his diaper.
You don’t need that many explosives to blow a hole in an aircraft (a window, for example). Blowing even a tiny little hole in an aircraft at high altitude will likely cause a major disaster.
Would you have wanted to be the Port Authority person in command who then, retrospectively, after 200-300 people died in that attack, had to face the fact that if he *had* evavuated the terminal, they wouldn’t have died?
#3, it’s very unlikely, and the tiny risk does not justify the enormous expense of evacuating the airport. What you write about the perverse incentives for the person in charge is precisely the problem. He knows that if he does let a bomb through he will suffer the consequences, while if he closes the airport unnecessarily 50 times he will not suffer any consequences, so what does he care about the enormous damage he is doing? All he cares about is avoiding the blame for a bombing.
1. Suicide bombers don’t take their kids with them. The might blow up someone else’s kids, but not their own. If they determined the child was with its mothers (and they should be checking that for non-terrorism reasons), there wasn’t much danger.
2. Even if there were explosives in the diaper, it would be quite small and fairly easy to detect.
3. They could have simply called for a check of all babies entering planes (a manageable number), and further limited it by a description of the family.