AIRLINE INSECURITY
By Michael Hammerschlag 1280 wd
The battle in Afghanistan, despite
the bravery of our troops, isn’t really a war- for the last 15 years our
dominance has been so complete that we simply annihilate our designated enemies.
This war, as the President warned, would be fought at home- by bystanders and
victimized innocents. If so, they are still almost defenseless, because the
security measures taken to defend the air transport system have been pitifully
lacking. From the beginning the foolish conclusion was that the problem wasn’t bad people getting on planes, it was weapons; so little old ladies and pilots
were terrorized for their nail clippers without any thought or reason. Weapons,
though, can be made from anything- a plastic knife, a rope to strangle, a pen,
a baggage cart. 5 burly hijackers might not even need weapons. The screening
was promiscuous, stupid, overwhelming- not directed towards likely threats. The
only solution is armed skymarshals.
Meanwhile,
while pilots were subject to humiliating searches by minimum wage screeners; 3
million unsearched and unscreened checked bags a day were dumped into
the holds; and 600,000 ramp workers- cabin cleaners, gas refuelers, caterers,
cargo haulers were allowed access to planes with NO daily security check.
“It is assumed, dangerous as it may be, that if you’ve issued that badge to a
person, they have successfully undergone a background check of the last 10
years,” says FAA Northwest spokesman Mike Fergus. Although the law says all
bags must be inspected by end of the year, that’s impossible, unless Congress
and the new Transportation Security Administration take radical action. When
Transportation Secretary Mineta admitted they wouldn’t be able to make the
impossible Jan 17th deadline, he was pilloried instead of given the funding and
power necessary, so he just changed the rules to call passenger bag-matching
“screening”. The TSA has only been allotted $1.5 bil. of the $3-7 bil. they
need for airport improvements.
There
are only 162 of the about $1 mil. CT (computerized tomography) scanners
used to detect explosives installed in the US, but some 2200 more are needed to
scan all bags. 90% of these machines are made by one company- Invision, which
has been turning out only 8 a month but claims it could make 50. Another
company-L3, could make 40 a month, so if they both instantly had the orders,
funding, and facilities- it would still take over 2 years. But according to
Invision rep Alisa Hicks, “There have been
no new orders as a result of 911.” There is a $16 mil. order that was in
the works before that time, but the massive urgent order from the Department of
Transportation hasn’t materialized; finally on March 5th, 6
months after 9-11, they did order 100 machines and parts for 300 more. They
also ordered 10 more machines for the test-bed airport San Francisco, which now
screens 20% of checked bags with it’s 13 machines (“SFO ordered CTX’s directly
on their own”, said Hicks), but the average across the US is under 9%. Only 55
airports out of 429 even have bomb detector machines, which search for the
densities of explosives (now must operate 100% of the time by law). 1 out of 5
bags will trigger an alert, which “usually can be resolved by the operator” by
adjusting settings on the machine. There are also bomb sniffer machines, that
search for the chemical scent of explosives, which may be even more effective
than CT; and live human MRI scanners, which tend to be too anatomically
correct. Air cargo (60% on passenger planes), including postal
packages, must also be screened- Pan Am 103 was supposedly brought down by 8oz
of explosives.
The
truth is it’s a miracle that 5 to 10 planes haven’t been brought down by
checked luggage bombs- Ashcroft’s much maligned roundup may have been successful
in breaking up Al Qaeda cells. The lame compromise to allow bag matching to
passengers (done for years in Europe) to substitute for actual inspections
accomplishes nothing- if the fiends are ready to die. They even made an insane
exception for connecting flights, but Ramzi Yousef (the ’93 WTC bomber), in his
’95 plan to blow up 11 planes over the Pacific, was planning to do just that- put bombs on planes that went
from Philippines to Seoul, Taipei, + Hong Kong and get off as the planes
continued to LAX.
Before
he allowed the passenger screeners to become Federal employees (which 100
Senators had approved), President Bush was more worried about Democratic unions
than untrained screeners (who won’t even be required to be high-school
graduates). The Skymarshal program has been another disappointment- apparently
only a handful have been hired. A bitter pilot, in a devastating commentary
says, “I have yet to see an air marshal on any of my flights and I have not spoken to another pilot who
has (except those flying out of Reagan National Airport).” Like Enron execs, Congress ensured resources
go where they are needed.
I have a simple cheap solution: allow local + state police, and federal
cops, to fly free anywhere - they know how to handle weapons and recognize
shady characters. Train marksmen from larger departments in using low velocity
fragmenting bullets in aircraft, and certify them. Police Departments could
even donate officers for 1 or 2 days a month: wars should entail some
sacrifice. National Guardsmen in the airport are another cosmetic gesture- I’m
waiting for them to start firing into a crowded terminal when a late passenger
races for a plane and doesn’t hear the panicked order to stop. Put them on the
tarmac access to check ramp workers’ ID and belongings. Pilots, however, should
be allowed to carry aircraft guns, and flight attendants stun guns, which still
haven’t been approved. The USAir pilot led off in handcuffs said, “Why
are you worried about tweezers when I could crash the plane?” Zero tolerance? No, zero brains. Pilots are not the same as
everyone else, and a Middle Eastern man doesn’t present the same threat as an
elderly woman from Dubuque. Profiling is essential if we don’t want to waste
resources and cause huge delays.
I
was supposed to fly over Manhattan on 9-11 and did 4 days later. I’ve played
out again and again what I would have done in a hijacking to assuage my rage at
the terrorists and the government’s incompetence (The FAA might, if they had
issued a detailed warning instead of the cryptic “beware cockpit intrusion” at
9:05am, have saved the victims in the Pa. plane, which was hijacked about 45
minutes later). I think I would have known it was a suicide attack right away-
in a political newsletter I predicted a terrorist attack on New York or
DC… last July. The 911 attacks have
probably cost NYC, the travel industry, the economy, the world- over a hundred
billion dollars. Another mass downing of planes would cripple the entire airline
system, divide us into separate colonies again, and collapse the tentative
economy, which was Bin Laden’s last
instruction. In 2001 United lost $2.1 bil, US Air $2 bil, American/TWA $1.7
bil - they wouldn’t survive another blow. West German intelligence
estimates 70,000 went through the Al Qaeda training camps, and they can’t all
be as moronic as Richard Reid, who could have crashed a $150 million plane, but
for a 50¢ Bic lighter. In the Gulf War we moved ½ million troops and equipment
to the other side of the world in 4½ months, we put a man on the Moon in 8½
years; we can do this: take the proper defensive measures. We’ve reacted
stupidly and slothfully to the brutal attack of Sept. 11; and the evil ones
won’t wait forever.
Michael Hammerschlag has
written commentaries + articles for
Seattle Times, Providence Journal, Honolulu Advertiser, Columbia
Journalism Review, MediaChannel, Moscow News, Tribune, and + Guardian; was a TV reporter and a former travel agent.
His website is http://mikehammer.tripod.com e-mail
hammerschlag@bigfoot.com
TOWN MEETING w Sam Donaldson - TERRORISM + Airline Security
NPR TALK of NATION
- Comments on Promiscuous Airline Security - 11/21 3:10pm
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/totn/20011121.totn.02.ram
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