US officials reached out to Putin over fears of Russia ‘enabling terrorism,’ report says
US officials reached out to Putin over fears of Russia ‘enabling terrorism,’ report says
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‘The risk of catastrophic error was clear,’ Alejandro Mayorkas says. This summer, cargo shipments began to catch fire at German, British, and Polish airports and warehouses. Both Washington and the Europeans believed that the Russians were responsible.
In August, the White House grew concerned that the Russians were also planning to bring their sabotage to the U.S., according to secretly obtained intelligence. The problem was simply how to get a warning to Putin, who hasn’t spoken to Biden since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
After the Russians figured out how the packages made it past screening procedures and how long they took to ship, the plan was to send them on planes to the U.S. and Canada, where they would lead to fires after being unloaded. The top worry was cargo planes, but passenger planes at times take smaller packages in their cargo holds if there’s space to spare.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the paper that “The risk of catastrophic error was clear, that these could catch fire in a fully loaded aircraft.”. Mayorkas put in place new screening restrictions on cargo bound for the U.S. in August. When the warnings once again arose in October, Mayorkas pushed the executives at the largest airlines flying into the U.S. to take further measures to make sure there wasn’t a disaster in the middle of a flight. Some of the measures reached the public eye, while some didn’t.
