While protection of the country is far more than just desirable, it's going to require a minimum level of competence.
Name Mixup Behind Air France Groundings
— Six cases of mistaken identity were behind the pre-Christmas grounding of six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles over terrorism fears, a police official said Friday.
The names of six passengers were similar to those of terrorist suspects provided by the FBI, prompting the French government to halt the flights, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Pierre Debue, director of the French border police, said one name on the list turned out to be that of a 5-year-old child. The Wall Street Journal on Friday said two other suspected terrorists turned out to be an elderly Chinese woman and a Welsh insurance agent.
French police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said errors in spelling and transcription of Arabic names played a role in the mix-up. But Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said it was better to err on the side of caution.
"It's a period of tension and a period of risk," he said. "I prefer the principle of precaution."
U.S. intelligence officials told their French counterparts that members of the al-Qaida terrorist network might try to board the planes over Christmas, French judicial officials have said.
But careful scrutiny of passenger manifests and the brief questioning of seven passengers failed to turn up evidence that a suicide hijacking was in the works.
Debue said that since the Christmas Eve cancellations, authorities have found a few passengers nearly every day who are considered suspicious by American intelligence authorities.
French authorities went ahead and authorized a flight several days ago "that American authorities didn't particularly want," Deputy Transport Minister Dominique Boussereau said Friday.
"We thought that all security measures had been taken, that the verifications of passengers had been such that this flight had every reason to fly," he said on Europe-1 radio. He did not identify the flight.
Meanwhile, two Air France flights, on Tuesday and Wednesday, were joined by F-16 fighter jets as they approached Los Angeles for landing, according to the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
Boussereau said French jet fighters also occasionally escort passenger aircraft.
"In periods of maximum security, this kind of procedure is common," he said without elaborating.
Undercover French agents were flying on some flights to the United States even before Washington asked this week that foreign airlines put armed air marshals on certain flights.
However, French officials have said that the extent of the program remained under discussion with U.S. officials.
abcnews.go.com
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