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Released: March 18, 2010

Airport body scanners may not have thwarted bombing

Source: Spencer Hsu, Washington Post (Free Registration)

President Obama’s push to deploy body-imaging scanners at airports will cost U.S. taxpayers roughly $3 billion over eight years, congressional investigators report, but it is unclear whether the controversial devices would have caught the man who allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner with explosives hidden in his underwear.

The administration has cited the Christmas Day bombing attempt, with which alleged al-Qaeda terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is charged, in pushing to double its planned deployment of scanners at U.S. airports by 2014, when it hopes to have 1,800 of the machines in place. It also has cited the case to encourage foreign governments to use the same new technologies at airports that send flights to the United States.

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