TSA officers at Indianapolis International Airport caught a traveler trying to smuggle two live smoke grenades in his checked luggage — one buried inside a full jar of peanut butter — but federal authorities have yet to announce any charges, and the agency refuses to say why the man had live explosives or what he planned to do with them.

The bust is being pitched as a victory for airport security. It isn't. If a man can walk into an airport with live grenades based on a tip from a buddy that peanut butter beats the scanners, every American who flies should be asking how many real threats slip through the cracks of federal incompetence.

Here's what happened, according to a June 25 TSA release: The man's checked bag set off an alarm, pulling it for extra screening. A supervisory officer and explosives specialist Michael Dunphy — an 18-year TSA veteran and former Navy explosive ordnance disposal technician — searched the luggage and found two devices. One was wedged into a full jar of peanut butter.

"After all contents were removed from the bag, I thought, 'Weren't there two grenades in this bag?'" Dunphy said. A second inspection revealed the peanut-butter-concealed grenade. Indianapolis Airport Authority Police verified both devices were live.

The passenger had already been paged back to the airline's ticket counter. When officers questioned him, he admitted a friend told him hiding grenades in peanut butter would get them through checked-baggage screening, the TSA release stated.

So a known workaround — apparently circulating among whoever passes for this man's social circle — was enough to get live explosives into the airport pipeline. The system only caught it on a secondary alarm.

Federal Security Director Aaron Batt warned that concealing banned items brings stiffer penalties and said cabin pressure changes could accidentally set off smoke grenades mid-flight. "Imagine in this case, had the pressurization caused the device to accidentally release smoke filling the cabin and aircraft while in flight," he said.

Fair point. But the New York Post ran with a headline declaring the traveler "arrested" — then buried in the body that it "wasn't immediately clear if the man was arrested or faced other consequences." The Daily Caller, more honestly, reported that no charges have been announced, citing Scripps News, and that TSA declined to explain why the man was carrying the grenades or his intentions, according to NewsNation.

A man gets caught with live explosives at an airport, admits he was tipped off on how to beat security, and walks without charges — or at least without any announced charges. The agency that missed the grenades on the first pass is now patting itself on the back for catching them on the second. Dunphy called it his "most memorable call over the last few years."

Maybe so. But memorable isn't the same as reassuring. TSA wants credit for stopping this one. They still haven't answered for why it almost worked — or what else is getting through.