Is Janet Napolitano to blame for Flight 253 security failure?

"Janet Napolitano has been busy trying to pass amnesty for illegal aliens and casting suspicion on American citizens who are fed up with government corruption and failures, instead of doing the job of protecting Americans against terrorist threats," said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC).

Congress to turn up the heat

This scrutiny will move to congressional hearing rooms next month, as at least four panels prepare oversight hearings about security failures that led to the attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack.

The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Thursday that it was launching an investigation, effective immediately, with a hearing on Jan. 21.

“The Christmas Day incident revealed some serious failures in our nation’s system of security,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, who chairs the panel, echoing Obama’s call on Tuesday for an investigation of the “mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security.”

The ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, called for a close look at personal accountability in this case. "Somebody screwed up big time, that plane would have gone down if the suicide bomber was more competent or the passengers and crew were less heroic," he said in a joint statement with Senator Feinstein Thursday.

'A convenient scapegoat'

“Secretary Napolitano can be a convenient scapegoat both for President Obama and for the Republicans – and her remarks [on Sunday] just added fuel to the fire,” says Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, who released a new book this week on national security policy, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security – From World War II to the War on Terrorism."

“For Obama, the focus on Napolitano takes attention away from the rest of the administration. For Republicans, it’s a way to avoid discussing the homeland security system which was put into place under Republicans,” he adds.

The public might accept a Napolitano rebuke or resignation as sufficient action, Professor Zelizer says. “Even for the public, there’s something about a person who made a mistake that’s more satisfying than looking more broadly at what’s gone wrong in the system: If it’s just one person who made a mistake, you can replace or reprimand that person, but if the system is the problem, it’s a lot harder.”

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