ignore it. from rene marsh who has seen the report. how does this happen? how is a convicted flopterrorist through? reporter: despite the explosives the passenger randomly picked for precheck. all coats, shoes, stay on and certain liquids and gels do not have to be removed from luggage. what s alarming this program reserved for low-risk passengers was opened up to a former domestic terror group member and essentially what it allowed for was a less stringent screening process. what s the satsa saying about all this? reporter: the traveler s name did not appear on a terror watch list. it didn t appear in a terror database. they also went on to say if authorities thought he was a threat the agency s position is
overruled. cnn aviation correspondent rene marsh is live in washington. rene with this kind of criminal background how would he or she be able to get this fast track through security? reporter: well you laid out some of his this person s background but this felon s criminal activities we want to add, involved explosives and includes murder. yet the felon sailed through precheck. that means shoes coats, belts, all were allowed to stay on. they don t have to remove certain liquids and gels from their luggage. there are two ways you can get precheck status. either apply or you are randomly picked. we know in this case the felon was randomly picked. that means the criminal background was not checked, no fingerprints were provided but we should point out the name was matched against a terror data base and we know that the name did not appear in the terror data base. that being said i spoke with a former tsa official today who says look this really
highlights the weakness of precheck. as this watch dog report states just because someone is not on a watch list does not make them low risk. rene how did this investigation get started? reporter: we know that a whistle blower came forward. we should also point out that there was a tsa officer there at the airport, recognized the felon, flagged a supervisor but the superior essentially gave the okay gave the clear for this traveler to go through. that tsa agent didn t feel he or she had the power to override the supervisor but that has all now changed in light of this report. tsa says that if an officer at the check point feels as if someone should not get that expedited screening, that person can be sent to the standard screening line. jake? rene what does the tsa have to say about this? reporter: the agency is really standing firm on the fact that this person s name did not appear in a terror data base. the argument is that if
checked luggage and carry it. it could be a box of stolen passports delivered to be somebody else, could be explosives, narcotics, you don t know. that s still a mystery and a lot of investigation needs to be done in thailand with that travel agency with this man. they were at two different places with thailand, a beach resort town. the tickets were purchased in another town of thailand and paid in thailand currency. when i heard the chairman of the house homeland committee talking about these two iranians, i thought that was discounted. what are you hearing from your sources? they ran these names by the u.s. terror database. they didn t find any matches with the two iranians and presumably they ve done this with the flight crew and others but we hear a lot of refocusing
the boeing 777 jet disappeared ten days ago and no new traces have shown up. joining me now to discuss, john hansman from m.i.t. as well as a former fbi assistant director. tom, if i can go to you first, when we last spoke a few moments ago, you were bringing up an important point we haven t heard on the air before. as they check the passengers on board this plane, as well as others involved with maintenance on the plane, et cetera, against u.s. terror database, that would only touch people who travelled to the u.s., is that right? there could be people involved with this plane who would not be on that list? yeah, that s possible, jim. the one other category i was trying to add was the idea that somebody could have scaled the fence at the airport and gotten to that aircraft from the ground