LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
National security issues will dominate the political landscape this week. President Barack Obama is reviewing hundreds of pages of reports he demanded from his security and intelligence agencies about the attempted bombing of an American airplane on Christmas Day. Congress wants answers, too, and many top chairmen are already planning hearings.
NPR's congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook is here to give us a preview. Good morning, Andrea.
ANDREA SEABROOK: Good morning, Liane.
HANSEN: So, what's likely to happen in the coming days and weeks?
SEABROOK: Well, we know that Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, this is the Independent from Connecticut, is definitely planning hearings. His first hearing is already titled "Layers of Travel Security Evaded by Christmas Day Terrorist." And that is the question there - questions on all levels here from how airport security screenings failed to how the National Counterterrorism Center failed to not get this man on a no-fly list, et cetera. There are just so many.
So, you can expect, also, the House Homeland Security Committee headed by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, everyone will be weighing in here. And, you know, the phone lines are already burning up across America. Everybody is trying to figure out which piece is theirs in Congress.
HANSEN: So, from what's known at this point, the problems seem to be similar to the ones the government had before the 9/11 attacks. Will these hearings have a different focus now?
SEABROOK: Well, that's the thing is that a lot of these structures that are in place, in fact, the Homeland Security Department itself came about because of the 9/11 attacks. These were responses to the 9/11 attacks. So now these committees will have to look at the new structures that have been in place since 9/11, how they worked. In a way, it's almost a test run of this system. We've got the new Transportation Security Administration, as I said, the Homeland Security Department itself, the National Counterterrorism Center, all of these will be looked at.
But, remember, and this is critical here, Liane, that after 9/11, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission made recommendations to Congress, many of which were not enacted by Congress because of the political challenge at stake in some of those changes, including some of the change were in the structure of Congress itself, its oversight of security issues. And so, while lawmakers ask: Who could've done something different? Which agencies? Which officials? The same questions should and will be asked of the Congress itself.
HANSEN: And what about the politics at play this time?
SEABROOK: Politics, yes. Well, of course, Happy New Year. It's 2010 and it is an election year - everyone in Congress, a third of the Senate. So, you know, you're already seeing the blame game of both sides. Republicans are keen to come back. They've lost majorities in both chambers. And conventional wisdom says national security issues favor the Republican Party, so they'll keep talking about this.
The Democrats are mad. They want to be seen as doing something about this. At the same time, the Obama administration is saying, goodness, it's unseemly to make politics out of this. It's, you know, it's what you'd expect from Congress.
HANSEN: And before we let you go, talk a little bit about the president's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration. Now, where does that stand in the Senate?
SEABROOK: Right. This is the man named Erroll Southers, former FBI agent, security official who ran background checks on his estranged wife's boyfriend two decades ago. Since then had increasing responsibility in security. Lots of people support him, including Joe Lieberman. The question is: Will this be a big snafu that there wasn't a head of the TSA on the day that an attempted bombing happened? That's not, in fact, why he's held up in the Senate. It's political reasons purely, and we'll just see lots of politics play out.
HANSEN: NPR congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook. Thanks, Andrea.
SEABROOK: My pleasure.