Airport Security Follies

The New York Times December 28, 2007
The Airport Security Follies
By Patrick Smith

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security
remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following
the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two
kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful
and pointless.
The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes.
Explosives scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long
overdue and is perhaps the most welcome addition. Unfortunately, at
concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger
screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the
senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe
removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids
and gels. We can only imagine what is next.
To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to
revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was
the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says
the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling
aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our
mindset -- a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record
of hijackings.
In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs;
crews were trained in the concept of "passive resistance." All of that
changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with
the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little;
the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of
surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not
to fail.
For several reasons -- particularly the awareness of passengers and
crew -- just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a
planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what
you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources
on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September
11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.
No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything
found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length
of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and
untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that
has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time,
subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings.
The folly is much the same with respect to the liquids and gels
restrictions, introduced two summers ago following the breakup of a
London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid
explosives. Allegations surrounding the conspiracy were revealed to
substantially embellished. In an August, 2006 article in the New York
Times, British officials admitted that public statements made
following the arrests were overcooked, inaccurate and "unfortunate."
The plot's leaders were still in the process of recruiting and
radicalizing would-be bombers. They lacked passports, airline tickets
and, most critical of all, they had been unsuccessful in actually
producing liquid explosives. Investigators later described the widely
parroted report that up to ten U.S airliners had been targeted as
"speculative" and "exaggerated."
Among first to express serious skepticism about the bombers' readiness
was Thomas C. Greene, whose essay in The Register explored the extreme
difficulty of mixing and deploying the types of binary explosives
purportedly to be used. Green conferred with Professor Jimmie C.
Oxley, an explosives specialist who has closely studied the type of
deadly cocktail coveted by the London plotters.
"The notion that deadly explosives can be cooked up in an airplane
lavatory is pure fiction," Greene told me during an interview. "A
handy gimmick for action movies and shows like '24.' The reality
proves disappointing: it's rather awkward to do chemistry in an
airplane toilet. Nevertheless, our official protectors and deciders
respond to such notions instinctively, because they're familiar to us:
we've all seen scenarios on television and in the cinema. This,
incredibly, is why you can no longer carry a bottle of water onto a
plane."
The threat of liquid explosives does exist, but it cannot be readily
brewed from the kinds of liquids we have devoted most of our resources
to keeping away from planes. Certain benign liquids, when combined
under highly specific conditions, are indeed dangerous. However,
creating those conditions poses enormous challenges for a saboteur.
"I would not hesitate to allow that liquid explosives can pose a
danger," Greene added, recalling Ramzi Yousef's 1994 detonation of a
small nitroglycerine bomb aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The
explosion was a test run for the so-called "Project Bojinka," an Al
Qaeda scheme to simultaneously destroy a dozen widebody airliners over
the Pacific Ocean. "But the idea that confiscating someone's
toothpaste is going to keep us safe is too ridiculous to entertain."
Yet that's exactly what we've been doing. The three-ounce container
rule is silly enough -- after all, what's to stop somebody from
carrying several small bottles each full of the same substance -- but
consider for a moment the hypocrisy of T.S.A.'s confiscation policy.
At every concourse checkpoint you'll see a bin or barrel brimming with
contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the
volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in
those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they
seized in the first place? But if so, why are they dumped
unceremoniously into the trash? They are not quarantined or handed
over to the bomb squad; they are simply thrown away. The agency seems
to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it's going
to steal them anyway, and either you accept it or you don't fly.
But of all the contradictions and self-defeating measures T.S.A. has
come up with, possibly none is more blatantly ludicrous than the
policy decreeing that pilots and flight attendants undergo the same x-
ray and metal detector screening as passengers. What makes it
ludicrous is that tens of thousands of other airport workers, from
baggage loaders and fuelers to cabin cleaners and maintenance
personnel, are subject only to occasional random screenings when they
come to work.
These are individuals with full access to aircraft, inside and out.
Some are airline employees, though a high percentage are contract
staff belonging to outside companies. The fact that crew members, many
of whom are former military fliers, and all of whom endured rigorous
background checks prior to being hired, are required to take out their
laptops and surrender their hobby knives, while a caterer or cabin
cleaner sidesteps the entire process and walks onto a plane unimpeded,
nullifies almost everything our T.S.A. minders have said and done
since September 11th, 2001. If there is a more ringing let-me-get-this-
straight scenario anywhere in the realm of airport security, I'd like
to hear it.
I'm not suggesting that the rules be tightened for non-crew members so
much as relaxed for all accredited workers. Which perhaps urges us to
reconsider the entire purpose of airport security:
The truth is, regardless of how many pointy tools and shampoo bottles
we confiscate, there shall remain an unlimited number of ways to
smuggle dangerous items onto a plane. The precise shape, form and
substance of those items is irrelevant. We are not fighting materials,
we are fighting the imagination and cleverness of the would-be
saboteur.
Thus, what most people fail to grasp is that the nuts and bolts of
keeping terrorists away from planes is not really the job of airport
security at all. Rather, it's the job of government agencies and law
enforcement. It's not very glamorous, but the grunt work of hunting
down terrorists takes place far off stage, relying on the diligent
work of cops, spies and intelligence officers. Air crimes need to be
stopped at the planning stages. By the time a terrorist gets to the
airport, chances are it's too late.
In the end, I'm not sure which is more troubling, the inanity of the
existing regulations, or the average American's acceptance of them and
willingness to be humiliated. These wasteful and tedious protocols
have solidified into what appears to be indefinite policy, with little
or no opposition. There ought to be a tide of protest rising up
against this mania. Where is it? At its loudest, the voice of the
traveling public is one of grumbled resignation. The op-ed pages are
silent, the pundits have nothing meaningful to say.
The airlines, for their part, are in something of a bind. The
willingness of our carriers to allow flying to become an increasingly
unpleasant experience suggests a business sense of masochistic
capitulation. On the other hand, imagine the outrage among security
zealots should airlines be caught lobbying for what is perceived to be
a dangerous abrogation of security and responsibility -- even if it's
not. Carriers caught plenty of flack, almost all of it unfair, in the
aftermath of September 11th. Understandably, they no longer want that
liability.
As for Americans themselves, I suppose that it's less than realistic
to expect street protests or airport sit-ins from citizen fliers, and
maybe we shouldn't expect too much from a press and media that have
had no trouble letting countless other injustices slip to the wayside.
And rather than rethink our policies, the best we've come up with is a
way to skirt them -- for a fee, naturally -- via schemes like Registered
Traveler. Americans can now pay to have their personal information put
on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security. As cynical as
George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens
offering up money for their own subjugation.
How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary
politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the
American public to accept almost anything in the name of "security."
Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but
security spectacle. And although a reasonable percentage of
passengers, along with most security experts, would concur such
theater serves no useful purpose, there has been surprisingly little
outrage. In that regard, maybe we've gotten exactly the system we
deserve.
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Patrick Smith, a commercial airline pilot, is the author of
Salon.com's weekly Ask the Pilot air travel column; his book of the
same name was published in 2004. He lives near Boston.
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