HOME / fighting words: A wartime lexicon.

Terminal FutilityRoutine airport security won't thwart jihadists, but it does inconvenience and endanger the rest of us.

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, June 6, 2005, at 4:02 PM ET

Is there anyone reading this column who would agree with Mark O. Hatfield Jr., spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, that in the past year "the average peak wait time at [airport] checkpoints has dropped a minute ... to about 12 minutes"? This is what he was cited as having said, in a New York Times report of a confidential document from the Department of Homeland Security. The last time I was at Dulles Airport, the line for security began at the entrance to the terminal and wound itself in several rope-line convolutions, like a clogged intestine, for about 40 minutes. I had allowed the usual two hours and was checking no luggage, but this and other banana-republic conditions almost made me miss my plane. Nor was it a "peak time." In any case, a passenger cannot know what a "peak time" will be. Only the TSA knows how many people are booked on how many flights at a given hour and can make provision of enough machines and personnel. Or not, as the case may be.

RSS

So, Hatfield was telling me something that I didn't know. The rest of the report, however, contains things that everyone does know to be true. We learn that there is no real capacity to detect explosives, for example. And we learn that, "If, say, a handgun were discovered, the terrorist would have ample ability to retain control of it. TSA screeners are neither expecting to encounter a real weapon nor are they trained to gain control of it." Who hasn't worked that out?

Related in Slate

In February, Andy Bowers discovered a loophole that makes identity checks useless. Timothy Noah (not a terrorist) described how his name ended up on the No-Fly List, and in May, Keelin McDonell explained why Cat Stevens was allowed on a plane when his name is on the list. Steven Aftergood gave the legal reasoning behind the TSA's policy of secrecy, and the authors of Safe assessed the newest gizmos for finding terrorists.

I think I had also noticed that there are not enough plastic bins or tables to line them up on, and that "X-ray machines that examine carry-on baggage sit idle as much as 30 per cent of the time." The time elapsed between Sept. 11, 2001, and today's writing (1,364 days) is only slightly less than the time between Pearl Harbor and the unconditional surrender of Japan (1,365 days). And airport security is still a silly farce that subjects the law-abiding to collective punishment while presenting almost no deterrent to a determined suicide-killer.

There is one mercy at least: One no longer sees people smiling and saying, "Thank you" as their wheelchairs and their children are put through pointless inspections. But the new form of servile abjection—standing in sullen lines and just putting up with it—is hardly an improvement. One sometimes wants to ask, "What's my name?" or, "To what database is this connected" when someone has just asked for the third time for you to put down a bag and produce a driver's license. But I think the fear of making some inscrutable "no-fly" list may inhibit many people. There has never yet been a hijacker who boarded a plane without taking the trouble to purchase a ticket and carry an ID. Members of the last successful group were on a "watch list," for all the difference that made. The next successful group will not be on a watch list.

Flying from London to Washington the other day, I was told that I was no longer required to take my computer out of its case. Apparently, there are scanners that can see though soft cases as well as through the hardened lid of a laptop (and apparently the United States hasn't managed to invest in any of these scanners for its domestic airports). On the other hand, I was asked if I had packed my own bags and if they had been under my control at all times. This exceptionally stupid pair of questions—to which a terrorist would have to answer "yes" by definition—is now deemed too stupid for U.S. domestic purposes and stupid enough only for international travel. This makes as much sense as diverting a full plane that carries a notorious Islamist crooner, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, from one airport to another.

Routines and "zero tolerance" exercises will never thwart determined jihadists who are inventive and who are willing to sacrifice their lives. That requires inventiveness and initiative. But airport officials are not allowed to use their initiative. People who have had their names confused with wanted or suspect people, and who have spent hours proving that they are who they say they are, are nonetheless compelled to go through the whole process every time, often with officials who have seen them before and cleared them before, because the system that never seems to catch anyone can never seem to let go of anyone, either.

While people are treated as packages, we learn from the same New York Times account of the still-secret Homeland Security document that "air cargo on passenger planes is rarely physically inspected today." Imagine, if you will, the wolfish grin of an al-Qaida fan who reads that sentence. I sometimes don't want to mention all the other loopholes, in case it gives ideas to the wrong people, but just imagine for a second that we imposed our current airport rules on trains, or the subway, or the tunnels and bridges …

What we are looking at, then, is a hugely costly and oppressive system that is designed to maintain the illusion of safety and the delusion that the state is protecting its citizens. The main beneficiaries seem to be the pilferers employed by this vast bureaucracy—we have had several recent reports about the steep increase in items stolen from luggage. And that is petty theft that takes place off-stage. What amazes me is the willingness of Americans to submit to confiscation at the point of search. Every day, people are relieved of private property in broad daylight, with the sole net result that they wouldn't have even a nail file with which to protect themselves if (or rather when) the next hijacking occurs.

Last month, cigarette lighters were added to the confiscation list. There's probably some half-baked "shoe-bomber" justification for this, but I hear that at Boise airport in Idaho there's now a lighter bin on the way out of the airport, like the penny tray in some shops, that allows you to pick one up. Give one; take one—it all helps to pass the time until the next disaster, which collective punishment of the law-abiding is doing nothing to prevent.

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

…every obstacle to seizing, controlling, bombing or shooting at a passenger airliner is one more that must be overcome by the successful terrorist, creating a different calculus for al Qaeda and its lesser fan clubs than existed prior to 9/11.

The very existence of watch lists creates the possibility -- however small -- that an operative may be on it. The more extensive personal searches and baggage screening makes it somewhat more difficult to bring on board anything that might be of value to a person bent on violence. Randomly performed, more extensive screenings create an additional hurdle by shining a spotlight on an individual, depriving him of essential anonymity and imposing an added burden of training on the terrorist group. Better training of air crews to enable them to respond to real or potential hijackings at least provides some degree of added resistance, where before there was the assumption of passivity. Sealed and bulletproof cockpit doors make it harder, though certainly not impossible, to take physical control of the aircraft. New procedures and technical capabilities put in place a more reliable alert system to let ground personnel know about hyjackings. The apparently random and unannounced presence of armed air marshals establishes a strong deterrent, even if there are no marshals on 95% of flights. And so on…

--Publius

(To reply, click here)

…There are only two ways that a passenger can bring down a plane. The first is to attack the cockpit, and the solution is the simple, inexpensive cabin door change that was implemented unobtrusively and rapidly after that particular horse had left the barn. Many of us wondered pre-9/11 why the piece of cardboard that doubled as the cabin door was always unlocked. Now we know. The FAA hadn't yet had fair warning.

The other way is putting a bomb on board. Every piece of checked luggage travels on multiple conveyors, any one of which could be routed through a device (there are several different technologies) that detects plastic explosives. But only 10% of all bags - four years on - are checked, because the TSA insists on using the highly visible but low-volume temporary machines parked in the terminal, to make as big a production as possible. Watch how fast 100% coverage gets affected after a jihadist blows up a plane.

For now, TSA can't give complete explosive screening more than a fraction of its attention. It is too preoccupied with wand rapes of grandmas and burying any common-sense measure that might possibly suggest that 19 out of 19 hijackers on 9/11 were all of the same gender, age group, and ethnic background. Better to misallocate security resources by scrutinizing 12 year old girls and octogenarians in wheelchairs to sustain the fiction that any passenger is as likely as any other to be a terrorist. You might not appreciate your government's fecklessness in screening for explosives but at least the passengers in the next doomed plane will not have been ethnically offended prior to departure.

--nasrullah

(To reply, click here)

The new security is the proverbial fall out shelter,emergency broadcast system test, and nuclear air raid drill from the fifties brought out for the new millenium. Did anybody realistically believe that running down to the basement of the local YMCA or hiding under your desk at school would help you survive a real nuclear attack? Of course not, it just gave the illusion of control over the unthinkable. Have you ever heard a real emergency being broadcast over the emergency broadcast system?

…The whole point of the post 9/11 security is to give the middle class the same illusion that something can be done to prevent a domestic terror attack, so it is working as designed. Cargo, in planes and ships, is probably a far greater threat to security, but nobody will see or perceive it if real security measures are increased so it is not done. The porous border we have with Mexico is another huge threat, but again, there are political reasons we don't want to address…

We need to believe that something is being done, even if it is ridiculous like a fall out shelter.

--koplaw

(To reply, click here)

(6/7)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES