The public furor over enhanced security screening policies
implemented by the Transportation Security Administration has its
roots in the September 11 terrorist attacks. On that date, 19
Muslim foreigners who were terrorist sleeper cells boarded four
jetliners, overpowered the aircrew, and attempted to use the
aircraft as deadly missiles. Three of the four hijacked jetliners
reached their destinations of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The
fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania as passengers fought to retake
control of the plane.
The federal government’s immediate response was to sack
all of the private security screeners at the nation’s airports who
were diligently following government inspection protocols and
replace them with an agency of more than 43,000 employees. TSA has
since grown by more than 55% to 67,000 employees.
Washington, D.C. decision-makers obviously believe TSA is
doing a great job. Its employees received more than $98 million in
bonuses and
pay raises in 2008 due to superior performance.
Moreover, the percentage of TSA employees receiving bonuses
exceeded the average of the entire federal
workforce.
As has been well-documented, a number of terrorism-related
incidents have occurred since 9/11 that have forced the TSA to
increase its invasive security screening of elderly widows in
walkers, toddlers traveling on family vacations, servicemen on
R&R from Afghanistan, firefighters traveling to weddings, the
disabled wearing prosthetic devices, longtime airline crewmembers
and anyone else who poses a threat identical to those who have
actually attempted or carried-out a terrorist attack. How anyone
believes he could differentiate between Great Grandma, three-year
old Jimmy, and a Muslim would-be bomber is beyond me.
Major U.S. air travel terrorism attempts since 9/11
include the following.
A British national, Richard Reid was in and out British
prison since his teen years for a variety of crimes. Upon the
advice of his immigrant father he converted to Islam. One reason
was that he would allegedly receive better food in prison than
would non-Muslim inmates.
After his conversion Reid aligned himself with Al Qaeda
and traveled to Afghanistan where he received terrorism training
and a pair of shoes laden with explosives. The plan was to detonate
his shoes on a U.S.-bound flight.
In December 2001, Reid failed in his first attempt to
board a Miami-destined flight as Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport
security screeners thought it odd the scruffy Reid had not checked
any luggage for an international flight. Undeterred, Reid boarded a
flight the following day and was overpowered by passengers when he
attempted to light the fuse protruding from one shoe.
As a result of this overseas-originated
terrorism attempt, new U.S. airport rules demand all travelers on
flights originating in the U.S. remove their shoes for x-ray
screening. This is a security measure that is not employed at
foreign airports.
In August 2006, British law enforcement arrested a dozen
Muslim men who were in the final stages of a plot to simultaneously
blow-up seven U.S. and Canada-bound airliners using explosives
contained in sports bottles that were to be carried onboard the
flights.
Most of the plotters knew one another from their
association with a London Islamic charity. Several of the men had
traveled frequently between the UK and Pakistan and some had
ongoing contact with Pakistanis under terror
surveillance.
British intelligence officials became aware of the
plotters about two months before their arrests and began
surveillance of their activities. Law enforcement moved in when
they thought carrying-out the plot was imminent.
The elaborate plan, concocted overseas,
called for adding gel explosives to sports bottles with the
explosive material colored orange to appear as a sports drink and
to mask the detonating mechanism inserted in each bomb.
As a consequence, the TSA banned all drinks from being
transported through the airport screening process. All remaining
liquids and gels must be in 3-ounce or smaller containers and
collectively all containers must fit into a quart-sized plastic bag
that must be screened separately from the rest of carry-on baggage.
The hotel industry has yet to report an increase in guests
demanding extra miniature bottles of shampoo and
conditioner.
Twenty-three-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a
devout Muslim born into a wealthy Nigerian family. He attended
college in the UK where he obtained a bachelors degree and also
engaged in various Islamic activities. He left the UK after
graduation and he was subsequently denied a follow-on visa to
return as British authorities became suspicious of him. About the
same time, U.S. authorities issued Abdulmutallab a multiple-entry
visa to enter America.
Abdulmutallab spent a number months in 2009 in Yemen
engaged in what is believed to be Al Qaeda-associated training.
British officials notified the U.S. of a potential threat posed by
Abdulmutallab but without providing his entire name. Around the
same time, Abdulmutallab’s father contacted CIA officials in
Nigeria and warned them about his son’s involvement in radical
Islam. In spite of the father’s warning, Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa
was not revoked and his name was not added to air travel screening
lists detailing potential threats.
Abdulmutallab began his overseas travel
to the U.S. on Christmas Day 2009 on an Amsterdam-to-Detroit
flight. He purchased the one-way ticket with cash and had not
checked any luggage for this international flight. Airline
passengers subdued Abdulmutallab as he attempted to light the
explosives sewn into his underpants.
Abdulmutallab’s bungled bombing attempt forced the TSA to
implement new security screening policies for flights originating
in the U.S. that include naked, full body scans (using machines
that the GAO states
will not likely detect underwear explosives) and “enhanced
pat-downs” including “genital probing.”
Such extensive practices are not in routine use in
overseas airports. However, in some countries suspicious and
unusual
behavior (or what U.S.
critics refer to as the racist policy of
“profiling”) may attract the interest of screeners who would then
direct the suspicious-acting passenger to secondary screening
measures.
So far, the TSA has yet to identify a common thread tying
together these terrorism incidents thereby necessitating the deeply
invasive inspections of Americans boarding flights in airports such
as Alpena, Michigan; Havasupai, Arizona; and Johnson City,
Tennessee.
That the perpetrators were all foreign-born Muslims who
consorted with radical Islamic clerics, attended suspect mosques,
worked with questionable Islamic charities, espoused anti-American
or anti-Western views, and traveled to countries known for
terrorism can only be chalked up to coincidence. The TSA is clearly
justified in its
policy that it “does not conduct ethnic or
religious profiling.”
(At this very moment, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations is interrupting its lobbying campaign that Muslims should
be permitted to conduct
self pat-downs in order to immediately launch an
argument that associating a Muslim with any single act of terrorism
is a false and racist allegation based on western
bigotry toward the “religion of peace.” Readers
may be interested to know that the Department of Justice has named
CAIR an “unindicted
co-conspirator” in the criminal case of an Islamic group
whose leaders
provided material support to the terrorist group,
Hamas.)
Let us now review the facts. The number of Americans who
perished in 2009 due to bombings on U.S.-originated airline flights
is in the low zero digits. The same in 2008. And 2007. And for a
bunch of years before that. This doesn’t mean that a rogue IBM
executive, despondent Baptist minister, or former U.S. House
Speaker being reintroduced to commercial airline travel doesn’t
pose a legitimate bombing threat. Of course they do. TSA tells us
so.
Yet, it is time America put TSA to a more effective use to
combat an even bigger threat to the homeland. No doubt, it will
require the willing suspension of disbelief to accept that there
are indeed larger threats to America than the one posed by a
wheelchair-bound, double-amputee veteran of the Iraq war who claims
he is traveling to Boise to see his family but in reality is
probably intent on blowing-up the 19-passenger Beech 1900 turboprop
commuter jet on which he would be traveling to that municipal
outpost in fly-over country.
The larger threat to American society that begs the
considerable expertise of the TSA is homicides.
According to the FBI, 13,636 people were murdered
in the U.S. last year, which are 13,636 more than were killed in
U.S. airline bombing incidents during the same period. There were
14,137 homicides in 2008, 14,831 in 2007 and 14,990 in 2006. The
corresponding number of deaths due to terrorism on U.S.-originated
airline flights during the same years was zero, nada, and
zip.
Fortunately, TSA can easily narrow-down its suspect pool
of likely perpetrators in which to investigate in order to find
America’s cold-blooded killers. Offenders include males, females,
adults, minors, nearly every race and ethnicity, relatives,
friends, acquaintances and complete strangers. In other words,
everyone is a likely murderer. Everyone is a suspect. Just as they
are likely to be an airline suicide bomber.
What is even more disturbing is that just as every
antiques dealer from Fire Island, New York may be ready to blow
himself up on his JetBlue flight to Rutland, Vermont, every corn
farmer from Lincoln, Nebraska, is not only a likely murderer but
may also be a serial killer.
It is beyond comprehension that a security-conscious U.S.
Department of Homeland Security with such talented government
employees as it has in the TSA would allow these homicidal maniacs
to remain at-large without being stopped, frisked, grabbed, groped
and otherwise patted-down for a murder weapon or other evidence of
evil-doing.
TSA must stop them before they kill again.
