Congressman Bill Keating joined Boston Public Radio on Tuesday to discuss ways the intelligence community has learned from the Boston Marathon bombings and his current fight to prevent ISIS militants from profiting off the sale of ancient artifacts.
Highlights from the interview included:
On the lessons the intelligence community has learned from the Boston Marathon bombings:
"Looking at what happened, the most important thing is we know where the failings were. We know what red flags are missed. They have to be corrected, not just in the report but in implementation...Remember, [Tamerlan Tsarnaev] was going in and out of the country. There should have been secondary screening, perhaps even stopped from going back and forth...That has been changed. That shouldn't happen again."
On the security issues he sees in Europe:
"We have countries where we have easier access back and forth. I'll give you one example. Istanbul, the airport, we toured that and talked to the airport people. 40 million people go through that airport. That's roughly 7 times the size of Massachusetts every year. People who are leaving there, they're not passing any information back about who's leaving. Other EU countries where they travel inside, you can travel without a passport, just an ID...They are reluctant to do something we do every day here: when you go on an airplane, there's a passenger name record. We check it against a watch list and check where people have gone...There's an unwillingness to take that step, particularly because of privacy concerns."
On a surprising revenue stream for ISIS: selling ancient artifacts:
"In one site alone, it's estimated they made $36 million dollars pilfering and looting. Just that one site. The U.S. is one of the major destination points for these illegal artifacts and artwork. The U.K. is another. I'm working with people in Parliament to stop that from happening."
To hear more from Congressman Bill Keating, tune in to Boston Public Radio above.
