FBI Asked Homeland Security to Refrain From Notifying All Airlines About Shahzad 'No Fly' Listing

The FBI asked officials at the Homeland Security Department to limit the number of airlines which were given special emergency warning that the name of Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad had been added to the U.S.  government's "no fly" list in the early afternoon on May 3, 2010, Declassified has learned. The FBI asked Homeland officials to limit special notifications about Shahzad's fresh no-fly listing because it feared that telling too many airlines about it might lead to news leaks, which the bureau feared were already interfering with its investigation and threatening to spook the suspect, said two Obama administration officials familiar with the issue, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information. An FBI spokesman declined to discuss the matter.

Because it sometimes takes hours, or even days, for all airlines to enter new no-fly listings in their reservation computersthe idea being that once someone is put on the no-fly list no airline should sell that person a ticket or give them a boarding passin cases where a name (like that of a major crime suspect) is added to the list at the last minute, Homeland Security does maintain procedures for sending out what amounts to an APB about the new listing. In the case of Shahzad, who was added to the no-fly list around 12.30 p.m. on May 3 after investigators determined he was the prime suspect in the failed car bombing on the evening of May 1, Homeland Security started to make phone calls to various airlines to warn them that Shahzad's name had been added to the list and that they should check their reservations and passenger manifests carefully.

However, the officials said, at the FBI's request, some, but not all airlines, were notified of the new listing. The official said the FBI was concerned that giving out Shahzad's name to too many people might fuel news leaks that grew into a torrent during the afternoon of May 3. Among the airlines that were not phoned with the APB about the new no-fly listing for Shahzad: Emirates Airlines, the very carrier Shahzad had chosen to try to evade a massive dragnet by the FBI and various local partners, including New York Police Department, had set up to collar the Times Square attack suspect. Homeland Security officials have accused airlines of stalling federal efforts to get them to upgrade computer systems so that no-fly information would move much more quickly from the feds who draw up the list to airport ticketing and check-in counters.

As we reported last week, Shahzad, possibly alerted by news leaks about how investigators were hunting for a suspect from overseas, somehow managed to slip out of a surveillance net that had been cast around his residence in Bridgeport, Conn. He drove, unhindered and apparently unwatched, to New York's Kennedy Airport. There, even though his name had been officially added to the no-fly list hours earlier, he managed around 7:30 p.m. to acquire a ticket and boarding pass for an Emirates flight to Dubai, where he planned to change planes for his native Pakistan. He managed to board the flight; the plane's door was shut and the jetway linking the terminal to the door had already been retracted when officers of the Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection unit, who had sent the flight's final passenger manifest to an interagency Terrorist Screening Center in Washington for a last-minute review, received notice that Shahzad had boarded the plane. The officers got the plane door reopened, and went on board the flight to retrieve Shahzad, who told them, with resignation, that he had been expecting them.

Administration officials say that under a new Secure Flight program that Homeland Security has been trying to introduce, in the future officers from the Transportation Security Administration, another Homeland unit, will take more responsibility for making sure passenger and reservation lists are screened against the most up-to-date no-fly information. However, an official said, full operation of the new procedures still is not expected for months.

In the meantime, some Capitol Hill Republicans are focusing on the no-fly fumbles of May 3 to question the Obama administration's counterterrorism competence. Sen Kit Bond, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, complained about "loopholes that are being exposed about our watchlisting process and the No Fly list. Once we knew who this terrorist was, why couldn’t we have put out an APB to the airlines? The whole idea of a No Fly List is to make sure that the person never gets close to boarding a plane. We can’t rely on being able to turn a plane back because the next terrorist might not be just trying to escape he might be trying to blow up a plane.” 

Richard Kolko, a spokesman for the New York office of the FBI, said: "We don't discuss specific operations or investigative techniques" in response to a request from Declassified for comment on the bureau's handling of the no-fly notification.