>> the systemic failure has occurredded. and i consider that totally unacceptable. >> this week on "inside washington," a very dangerous decade end with a failed terror attack. how did this one slip through the cracks? >> all after these red flags, one signal should have gone off. >> more than eight years after 9/11 and $42 billion to upgrade airport security, are we any safer? and are americans willing to bare it all in the interest of their own safety? >> i think the body scanner should be at every checkpoint in every domestic and foreign airport that has a plane bound for the united states. >> also a brief look back. >> it all comes down to the

state of florida. >> and a cautious look ahead. where is the economy headed? >> the worst is definitely over. captioned by the national captioning institute -- www.ncicap.org -- >> on december 16, 2009, a young nigerian man bought a plane ticket in ghana. he paid almost $3,000 in cash. he gave no contact information. didn't give an address. same young man was on a british watch list andast may the british had banned him from entering the u.k. in november of 2009, the same young man's father, one of the most prominent men in my year yeah, had warned the american em wassy about his son and met with a c.i.a. agent to talkbout his concerns. nonetheless the young man board

add plight in amsterdam, he lad explosives in his underwear, boarded a northwest airlines flight bound for detroit and just before landing he tried to light the explosives after which he was subdued by passengers and nightcap. at first the secretary of homeland security said there wasn't enough information to put the young man's name on the no fly list. >> throughout the law enforcement community, no information that no fly list. >> napolitano's boss the president concluded that was hog wash. >> without this one report there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together. >> and republicans went for the jugular. >> the president has been downplaying the threat of terrorism since he took office. >> that is was south carolina senator jim dimint preceded by janet that poll tan no, the director of homeland security. this was a very near miss. aside from the fact nobody spot add guy who paid $3,000 cash for

one way ticket to detroit, carried no luggage and walked into an airport with explosives in his underpants, aside from that we have a major lapse in our intelligence eight years after 9/11. evan how did that happen? >> inconceivable after all this money spent, the national terror center couldn't connect the dots. i mean, most americans are used to google and twitter. and myriad of i was to connect the dots. isn't there any program that connects the dots for the federal government? >> good question. colby. >> this is really hard. i've worked in em bass says and i've had walk ins to talk to give us information. in this case you have a very prominent nigerian, chairman of the first bank into the american embassy, speaking with the c.i.a. representative and the state department representative and telling them about his son becoming radicalized and living in yemen. at that point the state department had the ability to determine that this individual

had a visa. they have a cons lar section right there in the embassy. if they didn't check the records right there they could certainly check back and get an answer. at that point his name should have been flagged so it would show up at the airport in amsterdam he would have been stopped. but that didn't happen. and that's inconceivable that didn't happen. >> charles? >> well, the secretary of homeland security saying on all the talk shows on sunday that system worked, she's been ridiculed. and it will live in infamy like the statement that george bush george bush made after katrina or during katrina when he said heck of a job, brown yes, about his fema director at the time. it was a combination of system not connecting the dots and human error in the sense that those who got the story from the father into nigeria should have known that this not an em bittered ex-spouse, it was the father concerned about a son who called from yemen, this is a high level of index of

suspicion. and there was not an agency that you should have had. it was a combination of factors. >> mark? >> i agree with my colleagues. i just add this, that the irony is that janet napolitano, who was and has a reputation as the first woman attorney general of arizona, as an u.s. attorney, as somebody who is serious, will in fact be remembered for this statement which understand trying to reassure people at the same time that you're trying to get -- it was totally wrong. and this is a massive screwup. but it involves individual accountability and responsibility as well as systemic problems. this isn't just a rearranging the boxes and lines of communication. there are individual accountability that has to be changed. >> after 9/11 we said none of these intelligence agencies are communicating with each other.

>> a they're not communicating properly with each other. >> are we in the same spot now? >> no. no. there is more communication. there is a building out in suburban virginia which exists precisely to do this kind of thing, make sure the left hand is talking to the right hand. but the lack of a google search engine on this. it's so common in our lives, google, finding out information and all that, why can't the federal government? we've been asking about this in mississippi i-there are search engines. but -- in miss i-there are search gins, expensive, hard to run. it's notust the fact you've been talking about. more facts here. the intelligence community knew that the yemenis terrorists had the nigerian. that is in the system. they new in the system, there is a record that this young guy was talking to what's his name,

aklouwi the cleric who had been talking to moussaud, the shooter in fort hood. you would think that would pop up in the system. >> that's a lot of dots. >> that's an awful lot of dots. >> yeah. even if you had a nigerian desk and there is a nigerian desk in one of these agencies, the information should come together. information from the father, information from the intelligence service that the al-qaeda was working with the nigerian. in yemen. those should completely come together. i agree with evan, this beyond comprehension. >> associate myself with the governor jim thompson we saw in the opening piece, the 9/11 information, who talked about the full body scans. yes, they're expensive. yes, they're intrusive. and yes, they're effective. and i'm sorry if someone cease that i'm not built like an olympic athlete. as somebody who has two hip

transplants i set off alarms everywhere i go. and i've asked for this. and i've found out that at several airports they do have it. it's not available because of privacy concerns that people have. >> i saw the greatest irony of all is that amsterdam has the most everywhere in the world but americans on the way to the united states are not allowed -- you're not allowed to use them on americans for privacy reasons. >> i saw the testing of these machines up in atlantic city right after 9/11. former vice-president chaney joined senator jim dimint claiming the president is soft on terrorism. he told mike allen the president is trying to pretend we're not at war on terrorist. the statement said he knows we're at war but he didn't have to beast his chest to prove. >> it's not a question of rhetoric, beating one's chest. look at what happened after this guy was apprehended. we put him in a civilian

setting, he got a lawyer right away and as a result he got lawyered up and he stopped talking. at the beginning he talked until he had an olympics now it's over. what he should have done is apprehended him as an enemy combatant and kept him in that status and -- supreme court ruli at homdi. it won't prejudice getting a military trial but at least have him interrogated. he's got a lot of information on yemen that's going to be our next front. that was all gone out the window when he got read his miranda rights. >> this is worth further discussion and we'll do it next.

>> iraq was yesterday's war. afghanistan is today's war. if we don't act preemtively, yemen will be tomorrow's war. that's the danger we face. >> senator joe liberman,

chairman of the senate homeland security and government affairs committee on fox. anybody want to respond to the chaney comments? >> yes. or liberman. we already are in a war in yemen. we've got a lot of assets over there and predators and we're going to be more and more. i think the obama thing is speak softliers don't use a whole lot of rhetoric. but be pretty serious on the counter terrorist side. i'm pretty sure that the defense. and there is evidence in yemen they're doing a lot. they're having air raids on these al-qaeda bases on december i think it was 14th or no, 17th and 24th. those are american-staged. i mn, they may have been yemen airports but that was america at work. >> in nearly seven years the united states has been at warp in iraq, there's no al-qaeda influence in iraq or involvement in iraq. now we're at afghanistan where according to general jim jones and according to general david

petraeus there are fewer than 100 al-qaeda agents in afghanistan. i mean, if it's a war against al-qaeda then it couldn't have been more misspent. our resources, our time, our sacrifices and our blood, than the war in iraq. >> for the record eight americans were killed at a c.i.a. base in afghanistan this week, suicide bombing. 24 people were killed in iraq in anbar province and the governor of the provinceas wounded this week, suicide bombing. u.n. is pulling its staff out of pakistan for security reasons. so now yemen which has an unemployment rate of 40% and is running out of oil and water, do we open up a third front in yemen? >> well, i'm like -- unlike a lot of americans, i've been in yemen, the capital of yemen. it's only nine years old as a republic. at the time i was there it was a divided country. that was in north yemen.

south yemen was under the control and influence of the soviet union. this is a country which was almost a feudal state. you had men who walked around with rhinocerus horns hanging from their belt and sword. you have people that were accustomed to chewing khat. >> make sure they're high. >> as in somalia. >> and you try walking through with people with ak-47's and rhinocerus horns high on khat, that is not the kind of place like we're talking about baghdad or afghanistan. this is a real feudal society. >> it's primitive, wide and it's almost ungoverned. and before talking about americans direct involvement in that, we ought to think about how we are contributing to the problems in yemen.

the two leaders of al-qaeda in yemen are are ex-graduates of guantanemo. the bush administration to its demarry its released them in -- demerit released them in 2007. this administration has released six yemenises in the last month and it's got 91 yemenis in guantanemo. as you know, obama is dead set on closing guantanemo. all of this is suspended. they're going to re-examine these guys. because if these guys are released they're going to end up in yemen and in al-qaeda. the idea that we are to feed the insurgency in yemen by releasing the people as we have in the past is rather insane. and rather than speak about the event in detroit as complicating as closing guantanemo, we ought to speak about it as having us re-examine the idea of closing guantanemo. >> mark, as the one who guantanemo got us released --

went to art therapy rehabilitation. [overlapping speakers] >> head of weather. >> there are two major party nominees in 2008, john mccains the republican, the prob the democrat. they were both committed to closing guantanemo. john mccain said it would be his first act as president of closing guantanemo. jim burnett, the senator from south carolina has held up the appointment and the nomination of a permanent head of the transportation security agency because of his concern about labor unions. i would point out to senator dimint on september 11th, when 23new york firefighters walked into the jaws of death and the fires of hell to serve the abandoned, the scared, and the search for life, every one of them was a dues-paying union member. >> in addition to chaney's misstatements about obama on terrorism, i thi the worst is

from peter holstrom the republican campaign committee both using this tragedy to ask for campaign contributions. that was disgusting. >> all right. let's change gears now and talk about the american economy one year after the collapse next.

don't seat same desperation has we had last year. i see -- mostly what i see today are recently unemployed folks. >> that's a job fair at ashville, north carolina, four days after christmas hundreds of people lined up for jobs, that scene is repeated in city after city all over the country. let me do a correction. "new yk times" did a correction the other day which they said the underwear bomber purchased a round trip ticket. for the record. in year's end the labor department saying that new claims for unemployment insurance fell to their lowest

rate since july of 2008 which apparently surprised wall street economists. any signs the economy will be better in the new year, mark? >> when it comes to jobs, the market is totally out of character. the market seem to be growing on the basis of hope in the set of cosmic sense that economy is getting better. but jobs is where the nation lives and where politically we live. and to me that is the test. >> but fewer people are unemployed, that's good. but are people being hired? and that's the real question. >> lost something like 7 million jobs over a two-year period. the big question going forward is that the spirit was based on something that was phony, it was based on leverage, people running up debt. the paper. it wasn't based on manufacturing or on anything real. we now have to find something real to make us grow again. [overlapping speakers] >> and we're spending less. consumers are saving more.

>> japan got into this a few years ago. they didn' want to spend anything. >> right. and japan has stayed in it for over a decade, almost two decade. i think our recovery competing where we were a year ago is remarkable in the sense that we were headed over a brink and thanks to wall sen and bernanke and geithner and the ones team and others, -- the obama team and others we have avoided a catastrophe. and from these numbers from what i hear from economists is there was a stablization in the sense that the fall in jobs is arrested and we'll probably see a slow regrowth. it's not going to be a sharp rebound as happened in the reagan rescission. -- recession. but the idea that we are not headed over a cliff is an important one. and people have a sense that there's going to be a slow and gradual rehiring but over a longer period of time. >> and congratulations. we are majority owners we taxpayers of gmac. colby you're the banker. the giant banks are raking it in

and not shelling it out. how about the smaller banks in terms of the commercial property they hold, the paper they hold on that? any surprises? >> well, yeah, there'll be some surprises there. rather the paper is going to be very bad paper. but i went back and looked at the "washington post" for january 2nd, 2009. i looked at words "crisis." there were about seven or eight mentions of that word. most of them problems in the financial sector and undealt with problems in russia. all those problems now don't merit the word "crisis" today. and that's an indication of where we have come on the pressure on our financial markets gobblely and here in this country. -- globally and here in this country. we are not facing the prospect of a meltdown in our financial system. >> but in the past we've always been able to grow ourselves out of our fiscal crisis. not because congress has stepped

up to the bar and cut spending or raised taxes all of it's been growth. in the 90's a technological revolution. in the first decade there was this phony leverage thing. where is the growth coming from in the next decade? >> i don't mean to be a cassandra here my rosy predictions from my two book end friend, but let's get one thing. nobody runs for things would have been really worse if we hadn't been in office. that is not exactly a winning slogan in 2010 for the democrats or anybody else. >> all right then let's take a look ahead and a brief look back next. you know, truck guys like to get the job done right. measure twice, cut once i always say. lemme give ya a hand there. did you know that this silverado has 315 horsepower? how about your f150? less. silverado's powertrain is backed for 5 years or 100,000 miles. yours? 40,000 miles less. don't blame the carpenter, blame the tool. now get 0% apr for 72 months, or during the chevy red tag event, use $2,000 holiday cash to get $5,500 total cash back on

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>> although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest ceiling this time, thanks to you it's got about 18 million cracks in it. [cheers] >> the next vice-president of the united states, governor sarah palin! >> according to a recent u.s.a.

today gallup pole, hillary clinton and sarah palin just about tide as the most admired american woman, president obama most admired man. mark, biggest political story in the decade? >> biggest political story in the decade is the united states losing our optimism and our confidence. i mean, we went into this decade with the biggest surplus in the nation's history. we'll come out of it with the biggest deficit in the nation's history. we went into it upbeat, we go out of it bogged down in two wars and being urged into a third by some people. you know, it's been been a decade that can't be over quick enough. >> biggest political bonehead play of the decade? anybody have a nominee? >> yes, i do. and it's not a funny one. it's the invasion of iraq. that is a mistake that will haunt us for a long time. it cost us a lot of blood and

treasury. and ends up with a country that we say is democratic and -- this is a country now where christians are being persecuted on christmas. >> can i disagree on the leading story of the decade? i think it's not that we went around starting wars gratuitously. it is that we on september 11th, the holiday from history which was 1990 in which we imagined that all the great struggles of the world were over, ended, and we discovered that we had an enemy in the world who had been working against us, we had ignored it in the 1990's, and that struggle which is now going to be with us for a generation, not our invention, it's the invention of our enemies, is the story of our time. >> i think it was the decade that concerned the tragic year of history. we came into this decade with talking about his roll and all

that. and then all sorts of surprising stuff started going on. the lesson is that you got to keep going, anyway. endless eternal war, we got economic problems but you got to just keep chipping away at them. >> just keep going. nobody intensifies that better than governor mark sanford who changed the state sign of south carolina to "happy trails." >> and we all agree it's the biggest political story of the decade was the election of the america's first african-american president, barack obama. happy new year. see you next year.

>> ♪ >> hello, and welcome to "clean skies sunday," a weekly half-hour look at the energy issues facing washington and america. i'm tyler suiters. as 2009 ends, we look to new beginnings, as well as a continuation of events, discussions and arguments in 2010. and the first place to look, naturally, is copenhagen. with the accord in place at the climate talks, world leaders