The Risk Professional: capture of bomb suspect - success or failure?

Faisal Shahzad is exactly the sort of person that terrorism officers hate. They don't hate people like him, specifically, because he's a terrorist but rather because he's so normal.

Shahzad was born in Pakistan and is a naturalised US citizen. Nothing odd there: there are many. He's young: again, nothing odd. He lived an unremarkable life in a small country town where he lived with his wife and children, never came to the notice of anyone.

Or so it seemed.

But the FBI clearly had a substantial amount of data on him: after a street vendor saw smoke coming from a four-wheel drive vehicle parked in Times Square and it was discovered that it contained a home-made bomb, the FBI were able to identify and begin to search for Shahzad. It took them a matter of hours to build his profile and to add his name to the airlines No Fly list.

From discovery of the bomb to the removal of the suspect from the Emirates aircraft took just 53 hours.

The focus of the investigation has now shifted. The FBI placed Shahzad on the No Fly list shortly after 12:30 pm on Monday, New York time. Shahzad bought a one-way ticket to Dubai about seven hours later for a flight at 11pm. He paid in cash. But his finances were in a mess: while he spent more than four months in Pakistan, the mortgage on his home fell into arrear and repossession proceedings were under way.

Emirates complied with all requirements relating to the no-fly list, as they were on Monday. Since then, the rules have changed. It's a surprise to learn that airlines are not required to check the No-Fly list in real-time i.e. at check-in. It is this security buffer that has been touted as the reason for earlier check-in and increasing scrutiny. It's not the fault of the airlines and in particular it's not the fault of Emirates that Shahzad was able to buy his ticket and go through all formalities. It shows up the reality of the situation that the systems are window dressing.

However, Emirates should have identified and reported the purchase of a one-way ticket paid for at short notice in cash as a suspicious circumstance. Perhaps they did: the airline is refusing to give details of its involvement - and it is right that it should. It was knowledge of how the system worked that allowed that last minute purchase to mean that the no-fly list had already been checked.

Yesterday, airlines flying out of the US were ordered to check the No-Fly list every two hours.

But this still leaves one glaring hole: where are the government agencies in all of this. How is the No Fly List not linked, in real time, to immigration checks? The answer is simple and shocking: the US government relies on the airlines as a last line of defence in such cases.

The L A Times quotes an un-named Department of Homeland Security official as saying "the airline seemingly didn't check the name, and the suspect was allowed to purchase a ticket and obtain a boarding pass."

Nor, it seems, did the US Government.

But it's worse: the FBI had traced Shahzad to his home in Bridport, Connecticut on Monday. He left home openly and the FBI followed him. Then they lost him, having no idea where he was until he turned up in the economy section of the aircraft.

The USA requires international carriers to transmit, two hours before takeoff, passenger lists for all aircraft bound for the USA. But its own systems did not provide a similar tight window for outbound aircraft.

As Shahzad is questioned, he is giving considerable information on his contacts in Pakistan where he attended a training course. As that information becomes available, unprecedented international co-operation is demonstrated. It is passed to the authorities in Pakistan who are acting immediately: even before Shahzad has appeared in a US court, arrests have been made in Pakistan.