SECRETARY JANET NAPOLITANO REMARKS ON

SECRETARY NAPOLITANO: Thank you. Thank you, Lisa [Piccione], for the introduction. Thank you to the Aero Club for giving me this opportunity to speak. I'm very glad to be here with you all today.

I can tell you that as the person who has FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] in her Department, to my knowledge, there are no new volcanoes erupting - at least within the United States. We have the Coast Guard in our jurisdiction, and we are heavily involved in events in the southern states and in particular, the sinking of a fairly major deep water oil rig off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi, and what all that means.

I'm not here to talk necessarily about volcanoes or about oil rigs before this audience. What I thought I would do is share with you what we have been doing at TSA [Transportation Security Administration], particularly in light of the attempted attack on Christmas Day, and some of the events that have unfolded since then, and say we are really moving, I think, in a very productive and cooperative way to make sure that not only does the domestic aviation environment remain safe and secure but the international—the global aviation environment is safe and secure.

Let me, if I might, make some remarks, and then I will open the floor for whatever questions you have on what I have discussed or any other topics of interest.

I think we begin with the fact that the aviation system has served us well. It has served us well as a country and it has served the international economic environment - the international environment very well.

Every week, some 2,500 commercial flights carrying half a million passengers land in the United States from Europe alone. When you expand it, we have about 2.2 billion passengers that fly every year, and more than 10 million business people, students and visitors board an international flight each week.

The international flight environment - the flight environment in general is a tremendous engine. It is a tremendous engine of economic progress. It is a tremendous facilitator for tourism - for families to get together. I think this audience - I'm seeing heads nodding - understands very well and very fundamentally how important this industry is.

Its importance, perhaps, leads to the fact that it has been and remains a central target of those who would ally to attack the global aviation environment, the world environment - who would ally to attack the United States or its allies—the U.K. [United Kingdom], for example.

We have the 9/11 attack and of course, the attempted attack in December to show that al-Qaeda affiliated groups continue to believe that aviation, commercial aviation, is the load star, perhaps, of their ability to really disrupt the western way of life.

By the way, they are not so concerned with just taking down citizens of the United States. The flight on Christmas involved passengers from 17 countries besides the United States who would have perished if Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been successful. They are not too concerned about limiting who, in fact gets killed - what they focused on is taking down a commercial airliner.

We also know that they are continuing to train, to evolve, to update their own trade craft - to exploit perceived gaps in the system. For example, on December 25, you did not see a big complicated conspiracy. You saw one individual - who by the way should have been on either the no-fly selectee list, but was not, and I will get to that in a moment - but carrying a powdered material that would not be picked up by a magnetometer, placed in a place where pat downs are not normally done, or not done carefully, exploited all those gaps to get PETN on a commercial airliner.

His very flight illustrates the global nature of the international system. He got on a plane in Lagos [Nigeria]. He was screened there. He got on another plane and was re-screened at Schiphol in Amsterdam, and then of course, boarded the plane for the United States.

The very attempted attack on Christmas really shows us that our adversaries are determined and fairly astute as to where perceived gaps in the system are.

What has happened since Christmas? The United States has deployed additional law enforcement officials, behavior detection officers, air marshals with explosive detection K-9 teams to airports around the United States.

President Obama has requested an additional $900 million in the 2011 budget to accelerate the pre-planned - already planned - deployment of the advanced imaging technology machinery in American airports. His funding also would in 2011 further increase the number of air marshals, K-9 teams, and explosive detection devices in airports around the United States.

I know that there has been some concern about the AIT [Advanced Imaging Technology] machines - some from a privacy perspective. Let me just say in my view, the current iterations of the machines, and there are different ones made by different manufacturers, we understand that, but the current iterations really have addressed the privacy concerns that were raised by the original introduction of the technology.

A second concern is just their physical placement within the airport environment - how that matches with where you set up for magnetometers, because they do require that those watching and reviewing the screens be located differently from where the machines actually are.

We have met and I have met with representatives of the actual airport associations, but that is one of the things we are working with you all on in terms of actual installation.

We think by the end of 2010, there will be 450 of the AIT machines that will have been installed and will be up over 1,000 by next year. They are objectively better than the magnetometers alone. They are objectively better in detecting anomalies by which people may be trying to bring powders, gels, other liquid explosives onto a plane.

But in addition to deploying those, we have entered into agreements through the Department of Energy, and they have now entered into agreements with the National Labs, to really think about at the cutting-edge level, what proactively is the airport checkpoint of the future, and how can we deploy some of our cutting-edge science to really think beyond even the AIT machines coupled with other things to different ways to make sure that whoever enters the airport itself, much less the airplane, is safe and secure and is not at risk.

That is underway and is all part of what President Obama directed immediately following Christmas Day. He also directed that the National Counterterrorism Center [NCTC] and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] - who are the two primary generators of the watch lists - fix the problems that led to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab not being a selectee or a no-fly on a name that was available at least in Amsterdam when he attempted to board Flight 253.

As you know, we don't screen terrorists abroad. We work with foreign airports and foreign authorities to do that. We also ourselves don't prepare the watch lists. We do have a role in providing some names for the watch list, but they are the primary responsibility of the NCTC and the FBI, who have already taken major steps to repair the series of errors that had to occur for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's name not to be on them.

In addition to that, we are pushing out a lot more information abroad so that it is available overseas before somebody boards an airplane, not just at customs when they attempt to enter the United States.

That has allowed us to do one very important thing, and it may have affected some of your customers or representatives or the like, but as you know, we entered into a 14 country protocol immediately after Christmas with the consultation and agreement of our State Department—that anybody who was from or whose itinerary had taken them through one of 14 countries, was to be subject to enhanced screening. That, of course, was a very rough way of getting at the problem we were trying to solve from a protection standpoint.

We are now able and have been able to withdraw that 14 country protocol and substitute for it a separate one that is a rules-based protocol, and the rules themselves are derived from intelligence that is provided to us from a variety of sources. The rules are ever-changing, but it allows us to focus on evolving risks and passengers as opposed to something as rough cut as 14 countries.

That system is being deployed now. We are in the process of making sure it is fully implemented.

What else are we doing? We have in addition to the enhancements for domestic airports and in addition to a better way to deal with the watch lists and the 14 country rule and its withdrawal, we have also embarked on an international aviation initiative.

The fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got on in Nigeria and within an hour was in Amsterdam - and within hours was on his way to Detroit - illustrates the very global nature of the problem. The fact that once somebody gets on in one airport - that is an international airport -they potentially have access to all of them.

Really, the week after Christmas when we really backed up a little bit from the initial flurry to say, “Alright, how do we work the problem? What is the problem we are trying to solve?” We immediately recognized that we could do all these things domestically but it was the international part that we also needed to work on simultaneously.

I sent the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and the Assistant Secretary for Policy on an around the world trip—around the world in 12 days - to meet with security and other staff in a variety of countries. I won't give you their itinerary. I can tell you they looked a little weary when they got back to Washington, D.C. - I will tell you that.

In any event, the goal was to really think of this globally and to start preparing a series of meetings at my level - ministerial level - that's how they are known in the global environment, on raising airport and airline security.

At the same time, the Undersecretary for NPPD [National Protection and Programs Directorate] went to Montreal to meet with the new Executive Director of ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] - the U.N.'s [United Nations] aviation branch - to talk about ICAO being a participant and a leader in a global aviation initiative. They readily agreed.

We have since then had a series of meetings beginning in Toledo, Spain, where we had a number of the EU [European Union] countries present there, the Spain Minister of the Interior allowed us to sort of interject ourselves in their pre-established agenda, and out of that came a very strong declaration know as the Toledo Declaration.

We went to Mexico City where we had the countries of the western hemisphere represented, from Canada all the way through South America. They entered into a joint declaration—a joint consensus, known as the Mexico City Declaration.

We went to Tokyo and we had two dozen or so Asian countries represented there at the ministerial level. They entered into a very strong joint declaration and consensus known as the Tokyo Declaration.

The most recent one was in Abuja, Nigeria. The Nigerians are very anxious, of course, to be associated with that airport security because of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and there we had 20 plus African nations represented at their ministerial level entering into a very strong declaration known as the Abuja Declaration.

We are going to the Middle East in the next few weeks to meet with a number of Middle Eastern countries. The goal is by the ICAO General Assembly in late September/early October to have a global resolution that will focus on better information collection and sharing, stronger cooperation in the development and deployment of best practices in terms of airport screening and implementation of new technologies, and modernized aviation security standards over and across the world that can be regularly audited, inspected, and the results of those audits or inspections shared - or at least shared with ICAO.

I think that - in and of itself - will allow us to really use it as the catalyst to raise aviation standards globally.

We have not been doing this without the private sector. For example, immediately after I was in Spain, I went to Geneva to meet with IATA [International Air Transport Association]. We had a very good meeting there - you know who I mean. That was a very, very successful meeting. We continue to involve IATA in all of our international activities and meetings.

I met with IATA but we also have been meeting with the CEOs of the American Flag Carriers and with the ATA [Air Transport Association] to make sure that we are really thinking through this and working through this in a way that takes into account operational needs, structural needs, the absolute need for security even as we deal with that massive passenger traffic that I described at the opening of my remarks.

A number of countries have already taken unilateral action. The U.K., for example, for the first time has created its own no-fly list. Canada is contributing substantial monies to ICAO. I share that with you only to say that this is something that now that it is moving, it's moving very rapidly and indeed, globally.

Let me conclude on a very positive note. I believe, as I said before, that these efforts will achieve a binding international consensus that will make significant strides toward a more safe and secure aviation system—not only for the United States but for all nations.

I believe that the nations of the world have an important and indeed an urgent opportunity to strengthen what has been the global lifeblood of travel and commerce over the past 50 years. I believe that the peoples of all nations of the world share the threat of violence and terrorism -violence resulting from violent extremism. That being the case, we all share the responsibility for safeguarding a system that is so essential to the world and the world of the 21^st Century.

There is in my view a false dichotomy that is sometimes created between being able to have security and protection and being able to also protect our privacy and our civil liberties. I believe that to be a false dichotomy - that we can do both.

I also believe there is a false dichotomy between what the government does and what industry does. We have to - particularly in this area - be knit together and create and maintain a very secure architecture of security in the aviation arena, and we are doing just that.

We want to make aviation safe, secure and as efficient as possible. I know that's what the members of the Aero Club want to do as well. I thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.