In this case, the government had information about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but no one added him to either the no-fly list, which would have prevented him from boarding a U.S.-bound plane, or the selectee list, which would have triggered secondary screening that might have caught the explosives hidden under his clothes.
Nigerian who managed to bypass security and fly across the U.S. with a day-old boarding pass, I got to thinking about boarding pass security and what the TSA can do about it if they would just use their imagination.
Because AbdulMutallab didn't make the screening database, his name could not then be sent onto the watch lists maintained by the TSA: the "selectee list, " which law enforcement sources say includes about 14, 000 names, and the "no-fly" list, which those sources say bans some 4, 000 people from boarding any commercial flight destined for the United States.