Last year, I blogged about my own (possibly unrepresentative) experiences with incompetence by the Transportation Security Agency, the federal bureaucracy responsible for airport security. I also pointed out that the Israeli system seems to be more rational. Now, Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg reports on his somewhat more systematic study in which he was able to bring numerous prohibited items on planes without the TSA noticing:
Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show—security theater is the term of art—I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness. Because the TSA’s security regimen seems to be mainly thing-based—most of its 44,500 airport officers are assigned to truffle through carry-on bags for things like guns, bombs, three-ounce tubes of anthrax, Crest toothpaste, nail clippers, Snapple, and so on—I focused my efforts on bringing bad things through security in many different airports, primarily my home airport, Washington’s Reagan National, the one situated approximately 17 feet from the Pentagon, but also in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, and at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport....
Among the prohibited items Goldberg successfully carried onto planes were "pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters [the weapons used by the 9/11 hijackers]."
Adding a touch of comedy to his experiment, Goldberg also brought with him some terrorist souvenirs:
[B]ecause I have a fair amount of experience reporting on terrorists, and because terrorist groups produce large quantities of branded knickknacks, I’ve amassed an inspiring collection of al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). All these things I’ve carried with me through airports across the country.
I suppose you could say that a real terrorist about to attempt a hijacking would be smart enough not bring his al Qaeda T-shirt or inflatable Yasir Arafat doll with him; so maybe the TSA was right to overlook those items. The same can't be said for their obliviousness about the knives and box cutters, however.
Toothpaste? That's a new variation on an old joke....
I do wonder how one manages to accumulate terrorist paraphernalia through the simple act of reporting on terrorism.
You're thinking of the old NEA. I think they've reformed, and I bet that they wouldn't want the TSA.
We are still told the same thing about car jackers. What has changed?
I think I'm preaching to the choir here.
We are still told the same thing about car jackers. What has changed?
because a carjacker most likely does just want your care and is not a terrorist planning on ramming into a building with you as a passenger.
Carjacking is primarily done to achieve basic economic or entertainment goals for the perpetrator, rather than to spread a message -- the same cannot be said for hijacking airplanes, unless you're that one guy who parachuted out of his plane with all that money (which was about thirty years ago.)
TSA didn't hassle him for carrying these, so he sneers at them for their ineffectiveness and lack of attention.
If TSA did hassle him for carrying these, he'd fulminate about them restricting his rights to freedom of expression and hassling him for no good reason.
TSA can't win.
Sure hope they put him on their "always hassle" list, though.
How ironically wrong you are. The first thing the Bush administration did when it had the federal government take over airport screening services was deny collective bargaining rights to all TSA screeners. Those employees stil can't bargain collectively.
Beyond that, and beyond the weirdness of the Arafat doll, I didn't know that "truffle" was a verb.
Yep, the Chicago TSA people didn't notice a full bottle of WD40 in a not-terribly-crammed 18x12x10-inch suitcase.
These people are baboons.
Go figure?!!!!
Seriously though, I still think the best security option for preventing aircraft hijacking would be to GIVE everyone a knife upon boarding.
The TSA guy looked astonished and embarrassed.
I considered asking him for my gel deodorant back, but thought better of it.
Hijacking a plane is a stressful situation. People in stressful situations do and say many things that aren't optimal. It's why you're not supposed to joke about bombing a plane: wouldn't a smart bomber be smart enough not to say anything? No, because not all bombers are smart, and many of them would joke about bombing the plane.
Remember in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing where the bomber asked for the security deposit on his truck back? People are stupid.
(And in this case I do agree that if the TSA did act based on the T-shirt or doll, they'd be accused of racial profiling and violating freedom of speech, making it a no-win situation.)
We weren't just told that, it was official policy to cooperate with hijackers. It was also official policy that the cockpit doors had to remain open for take-off and landings.
With a change in those two policies, a 9-11 style attack is just about impossible. The rest of the rigamarole is just theatre.
I basically agree--except the planes were not hijacked immediately after takeoff.
What did change, however, is that the cockpit doors are now closed and locked most of the time. And pilots know not to open a locked door for a hijacker, even if a knife is being held to their grandmothers' throats.
Israel is on to something, though the profiling it uses would have to be tempered to be constitutional here (also since, as we know, not all terrorists are Arabs, including the infamous shoebomber jackass Richard Reid).
If there is ever another airplane-based terrorist attack, a poorly-vetted TSA agent will be one of the accomplices.
I have enough T-shirts, but I could really use an Al Qaeda baseball cap. Anybody got a link to the AQ store? I hope they take Paypal.
According to Edward J. Epstein, no evidence exists show the 9/11 hijackers used box cutters.I don't know if more recent evidence exists to the contrary.
IMHO, atlantic reporters of the world, please help society publishing your stories of how it's still possible to drive 100 mph in America without getting caught, or to buy drugs in most American cities, or to illegally record rock concerts on cassette players. Because if we can distract enough bureaucratic busybodies with all of that equally easy nonsense, then maybe we can get some smarter people working on airport security.
Um... could that have something to do with the fact that those planes - and whatever weapons were used in their hijacking - rammed into two huge buildings, caused a smoking inferno that was hot enough to melt steel, and then got buried under hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble?
I guess it's possible that people went through the debris very carefully, especially near the planes, but it seems like "no plastic knives were found" isn't the most compelling of evidence.
Right and wrong.
Until 9/11, pilots were taught to comply with hijackers demands in order to protect passenger lives. Which, when you think about it, directly contradicts national policy to never negotiate with terrorists.
It was never policy to leave the flight deck door open during takeoff and landing.
Three things have changed since 9/11: intrusion resistant flight deck doors, a substantial number of Federal Flight Deck Officers (in other words, pilots with guns), and pilots trained, in the event of an attempted hijacking, to land on the nearest suitable piece of pavement and disable the airplane, no matter how many people are getting killed in back.
There will never be another hijacking. What the TSA needs to be looking for are the things that could bring down an airplane. Losing five or six jets on the same day would leave a significant mark.
There's a whole lot of stuff that doesn't belong on that list, but that the TSA looks for, anyway.
BTW, I am an airline pilot.
The only evidence that they used box cutters was Barbara Olson's phone call. This slate story says we do not know many details since they may not have used the same tactics on each plane and the recordings did not all survive.
Was that really a "myth" before 9/11? After all, without that as a precedent, would you expect hijackers to want to crash the plane? Haven't they mostly wanted to go to Cuba, or collect a big ransom or something?