Security experts: People are key to preventing attacks

Editor’s Note: Stephen Flynn served on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. He is president of the Center for National Policy and the author of “The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation.” Frances Townsend is a CNN national security contributor and former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush. She is a partner at the international law firm Baker Botts.

(CNN) – Tougher airport security checks are in place today. Travelers flying into the United States from 14 high-risk countries will now be subject to body scans and pat-downs. Passengers on other incoming international flights will also be subject to more frequent random searches. But what does all that mean and will it really make us safer in the air?

On Monday’s American Morning we dug deeper into the new security measures with homeland security expert Stephen Flynn and CNN National Security Contributor Frances Townsend. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

Kiran Chetry: Anybody flying into the U.S. faces these random screenings. All passengers coming from those 14 ‘terror-prone’ nations will be patted down and have their carry-on bags searched. How much does that tighten the net? Does it go far enough?

Stephen Flynn: We have a real challenge here. Airline security was viewed as the crown jewel of our post-9/11 homeland security efforts and obviously this latest incident exposed some serious gaps. There are limits though to just what we can do to pat down and screen every bit of our way to security. One of the two key elements that were very essential for preventing this attack was first the report from the father about the terrorist. That's a very important tool that we need to be able to use.

The other piece was of course the actions of the passengers themselves on the plane to obstruct the attack. We need to remember that in the overall layers of security that we embrace that our greatest asset often is everyday people. And to the extent to which some of the prescriptions that are coming out are really centered around technology and just heavily around the inspection process here, we're losing sight of the bigger picture.

Tight security for those flying to U.S.

Chetry: Fran, a lot of people might be wondering why we weren't already using some of these enhanced screening procedures on people coming from countries that are on lists of state sponsors of terror or countries of interest. Why weren't we doing that before anyway?

Frances Townsend: Well Kiran, as you can imagine, immediately after September 11, a lot of these sorts of procedures were in place. Over time through diplomatic channels, through political channels, there were complaints from those countries. These sorts of targeted procedures against particular regions or countries do have political ramifications, and so over time, I think we scaled things back. You know, I agree with Steve, we can't rely solely on technology.

On the other end, I don't think we can comfort ourselves by saying there's always good passengers on a plane that will jump on a guy with a bomb. What we need is both. You need investments in long-term technology. You need random measures that the public isn't aware of, that get moved around based on the dynamic threat situation and you need to remind passengers that we have to take responsibility if you see a threat. You need all three.

Chetry: They say they are going to be doing pat-downs, right? And screeners are going to perhaps be able to touch areas of your body, including, these enhanced pat-downs, which is not pleasant to think about, but they include breast and groin searches under limited circumstances, they say. But others say they wouldn't have found the explosives on this man who had them sewn into his underwear, so what good does that get us but inconvenience and embarrassment for people doing nothing wrong just trying to get on a plane?

Flynn: It has gaps, obviously. We have a real issue here that these things can be gained successfully by a terrorist. Fran is right that we want to keep people guessing, keep things moving. One of the challenges that if we have rote, ritualistic procedures is that people can figure them out and bad guys can figure out how to compromise them. One challenge is maintaining a dynamic. You use measures and you try here and you move there and keep them guessing. That can help up to a point.

But again, it's more than just those tools that will make us secure. And we're not going to be 100% secure all the time. One of the things we need to do is take a deep breath as a country. Realize these are risks that we have to manage and that we have to avoid overreacting every time this happens. The Israelis, the British people are famous for their resilience. Americans are also resilient people but sometimes we get into this dynamic of needing to feel we can somehow protect ourselves 100% of the time. We can't always do that.

Chetry: Fran, the other side of this, the intelligence. John Brennan, the White House senior adviser on counter-terrorism, said there was no smoking gun, referring to this failed Christmas attack, that there was no intelligence out there that said this was a terrorist or that he was going to carry out an attack against an aircraft, that they had bits and pieces of information. You've been on the inside looking at intelligence. If you have the father going to the embassy, that's not considered a smoking gun?

Townsend: I think that's a regrettable phrase. It's sort of like Janet Napolitano saying the system worked. One, John Brennan hasn't completed his detailed review. Two, I agree with you. The father coming in and pointing to his own son as being radicalized is a problem, not to mention the intelligence communications with al-Awlaki. They were intercepted in August and not understood to be a reference to the plot in December.

After all, after the Ft. Hood shooting, where al-Awlaki, the radical Yemeni cleric, also communicated with the Ft. Hood shooter, you'd think that we would have by November gone back and understand the August communication of the same cleric, referencing this Christmas Day plot. There are an awful lot of pieces here that, all taken together, some might argue are the smoking gun. So I think we need to see what happens with John's more detailed review.

Chetry: He also went on to say, Stephen, that what we need to do as an intelligence community and as a government is to be able to bring the bits of information together. With all the changes we made in the wake of 9/11, aren't we supposed to be doing that? Or aren't we already doing that? Or is it unrealistic to think we can stop every attempted terror attack?

Flynn: The success of preventing attacks is dependent on intelligence, but our intelligence apparatus is broken in many ways. As we saw here most recently, one element of this is just not taking the information from non-official sources, in this case the father, as creditably as they need to be taken. There's a tendency in the intelligence community of only looking at what officials say and given that credibility. This is something that should have had alarms that went off and people should have acted on.

But when you get a lot of bureaucracy involved and managing the bureaucracy becomes an overwhelming task. Managing all this information does. Sometimes people lose sight of the forest for the trees. That clearly happened in this instance. The bottom line is investment in smart people, giving them the ability to exercise judgment, rewarding that judgment, that's a key part of how we go forward, not just throwing technology and lots of screenings, but we've really got to get the people involved with this.