The nation's controversial airport pat-downs and full-body scanners are here to stay, at least for now.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the systems on CNN this morning, crediting them with preventing unknown numbers of potentially dangerous devices from making their way on to airplanes.

"The new technology, the pat-downs, is just objectively safer for our traveling public," Napolitano said. "We pick up contraband now, and we pick up more contraband with the new procedures and the new machinery. What we know is that you can't measure the devices that we are deterring from going on a plane."

It was a year ago on Christmas when a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was accused of trying to blow up a Northwest flight to Detroit with plastic explosives hidden in his underwear.

Despite concerns among civil libertarians and many travelers subjected to intimate pat-downs, Napolitano said safety is the No. 1 priority.

"Everything is objectively better than it was a year ago, particularly in the aviation environment," she said.

(Posted by Richard Wolf)