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Airport Idiocy
By Ilana Freedman
August 30, 2006– Five years after 9/11, our air-security system still misses the main point. We screen for things, but largely ignore the obvious: Terrorists are people - so we need to be examining people, not just what they carry on board.
As is, air security is always fighting the last war. After the 9/11 terrorists used boxcutters for their hijackings, we banned sharp implements of any kind from the passenger compartments. After "shoe bomber" John Reid tried to set off explosives in his sneakers, screeners started checking our shoes. Now, in the wake of the foiled London plot, we've banned all liquids and creams.
In each case, we responded to the last attack by putting measures in place that would foil that exact same attack if it were tried again. Yet terrorism is characterized by continual change and adaptation; fighting the last war is worse than useless: It threatens our security at every level.
Terrorists succeed because they're flexible, adapting their tactics to our changing vulnerabilities. They study what we do and how we think, and craft their attacks to take advantage of the holes.
Many Americans are upset by the politically correct refusal of our security screeners to engage in profiling. They're right - and wrong. It's important to screen everyone who gets on an airplane. But some require closer screening than others - and the faster we understand that, the safer we will be.
Should we be looking more closely at Middle Eastern men aged up to 40? Absolutely. All the 9/11 terrorists fit that description, as did hundreds more who carried out the deadly attacks against the USS Cole, the U.S. embassies in East Africa, Khobar Towers and public transit in Madrid and London.
But we also need to screen grandmothers, pregnant women and babies. Why? Because they make good "mules" - who can carry aboard items that they may not even know about.
Anne Marie Murphy, a young, pregnant Irish woman, tried to board an El Al plane with luggage in which her Muslim fiancé had hidden enough plastic explosives to blow up the plane, his unsuspecting "bride to be" and their unborn child. Only the trained eye of Israeli screeners, who recognized signs of danger, averted a major air disaster.
Terrorists are happy to use the elderly, the disabled, pregnant women and even babies. One Palestinian baby was used to carry two detonators, inserted into his rectum. Only his screaming caused the inspector to insist that his mother undress him. The bloody detonators were found in his diapers.
Many things can be done to improve aircraft safety, but the most important, bar none, is to recognize that it is the terrorist who needs to be identified - not the weapon.
Here are a few basic recommendations:
Continue to use our outstanding technology such as puffers and baggage screeners, but enhance them with passenger screening.
Interview all passengers in the airport. This should be done before ticketing by bright, observant, well-trained screeners, who have been trained to identify those passengers whose answers or demeanor suggest that further screening is required. For most passengers, it will mean just a brief interview - no more inconvenient than today's maddening, random patdowns.
Carry out more detailed screening of individual passengers whose responses or body-language warrant further examination. This can be done in a side-bar, away from the primary line of passengers so it does not hold up the process of others.
Hire and train bright, highly motivated people as screeners - and pay them significantly more than minimum wage. If we want competent and effective screening to protect air travel, we must hire those most qualified to do the work well. And work them on short shifts - no more than three or four hours. Serious screening is intense, exhausting work; acute perceptive powers fade as the shift lengthens.
Since the London plot was revealed, the Transportation Security Administration has driven the screening process in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of decreasing the screeners' hours, it's put them on 12-hour shifts. It makes no sense to rest our air security on exhausted personnel.
TSA chief Kip Hawley said recently that he wants to reduce the number of passenger screenings, that "it's all about finding the IEDs . . . that is our job." Exactly wrong. Hawley's job is to find both the bombs and the terrorists. And that requires more screening.
Air travel is no longer a luxury for the wealthy; it's a form of mass transit, with an average of three quarters of a million travelers in the air above North America all the time. It's time we took the mission of protecting our air travel truly seriously, using American brains and ingenuity instead of high-tech brawn and politically correct methods that don't work. We can't win the next battle against terrorism if we concentrate only on fighting the last one.
Ilana Freedman is an analyst and adviser in counter-terrorism.
ilana@gerardgroup.com
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