Experts wary of \'shoe bomber\' communication with family

Convicted \"shoe bomber\" Richard Reid was given permission to correspond from prison with members of his family this summer, after the Justice Department allowed restrictions on him to expire, according to a report on www.cnn.com.



But several homeland security experts say that even with wardens screening every letter, they\'d prefer to see imprisoned terrorists held completely incommunicado.



\"If a terrorist can communicate with his family, with other associates even with monitoring, he could use codes; he could be directing other terrorist acts,\" said former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir, who is now a security consultant. \"This is somebody who tried to blow up hundreds of innocent people on an airliner, and in my view, he should be totally restricted.\"



The British-born Reid pleaded guilty seven years ago to trying to blow up a jetliner flying from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida, in December 2001 using explosives hidden in his shoes. He was sentenced to life in prison and is jailed at the high-security \"Supermax\" federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.



A Justice Department spokesman said that after a thorough review, the special administrative measures that Reid had been under were not renewed in June, on the recommendation of three agencies: the FBI, the prosecuting United States Attorney\'s office and the Justice Department\'s Counterterrorism Section.