Must be Presbyterians?
Airport security screeners in Birmingham, Alabama first stopped al Soofi and referred him to additional screening because of what officials said was his “bulky clothing.”
And they go on to Chicago and through to Amsterdam?
Yup,
Soofi was apparently allowed to travel to Chicago, where he checked luggage on a flight bound for Washington-Dulles and eventually Yemen. But instead of boarding that flight, Soofi joined Al Musiri on the United flight from O’Hare to Amsterdam.
On learning this, Customs and Border called the Dulles flight back to the gate and removed Soofi’s luggage. No explosives were found
Meanwhile, let your 90-yr old grandma try to carry a nail file into her plane…
UPDATE
Annie Jacobsen writing at Pajamas Media
Holes continue to grow in the dry run story. Interviews with law enforcement and airline personnel have brought up a key question.
It remains unreported where exactly al Soofi went through customs — namely in Birmingham or Chicago. This would help explain whether or not al Soofi’s luggage had been cleared all the way to Yemen in Alabama. If not, he would have had access to the box cutters and knives in his bags, as well as his mock bombs, at the airport in Chicago when he retrieved them to transfer to an international flight. If he was cleared all the way to Yemen, then when he was in Chicago he would have moved through a secure area during his transfer process. Once an international passenger has been cleared by U.S. customs, the federal security rules change considerably. If al Soofi was cleared for international travel in Birmingham, Alabama, then he should not have been able to change his ticket to an entirely different continent (Europe) so easily in Chicago — certainly not without his bags coming off the Yemen-bound airplane. The air carrier involved in the Yemen-bound flight has not been named and United Airlines has not returned calls.
