Two solid analysts, ex–Bush 43 speechwriter Marc Thiessen and Hudson Institute intelligence scholar Gabriel Schoenfeld, have published defenses of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) controversial new scanning and patdown policies. They argue that TSA’s policy is a necessary reaction to the evolution of terrorism. Their analysis rests on eight air-security myths.
1. The fact that there have been no attacks since 9/11 vindicates TSA.
The logical fallacy here is known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore on account of this”). There is zero reason to credit TSA’s new tactics with anything save annoying unlucky travelers. We can see this by looking at incidents in which governments actually foiled terror plots. None of them involved TSA-style measures.
Advertisement
Remember the 2006 ten-jetliner plot hatched at Heathrow? The 1995 “Bojinka” terror plot hatched by 1993 World Trade Center–bombing mastermind Ramzi Youssef? The 2006 plot was broken up by the Brits, and the Filipinos broke up the second. Neither used TSA’s methods. The Brits used shoe-leather investigating, phone taps, and intelligence from a Pakistani interrogation of one detainee. And in 1995, Youssef was interrogated by the Philippine government, and confessed.
No other government uses the TSA scanners. No one — including the Israelis — uses intimate patdowns.
2. The Christmas Bomber’s near-success requires scans.
The underwear bomber who nearly ruined America’s 2009 Christmas flying season used PETN, an explosive that is difficult to detect even with the new scanning machines. (So are twelve-inch razor blades, apparently.) What was easily detectable by the U.S. was the bomber’s dad’s visiting our embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, and warning us about his son — several times. Israeli experts tell us that most of their security is applied before a traveler reaches the airport. Kids and lawmakers likely do not get stuck on Israeli no-fly lists.
3. Each method terrorists use requires a targeted response.
Because terrorists have hidden stuff in their underwear, we must pat them down. So when terrorists use body cavities to conceal things, as surely they will, will TSA attempt to search everyone’s orifices? Not a chance: Americans will not stand for anything like this. Which is why the excuses for today’s patdown molestations are so infuriating and phony.
We need to catch people before they bring down planes. But we do not do this by making flying, already a grim business since 9/11, a humiliating ordeal. Making travelers cringe gives terrorists a victory even without bringing a plane down.
4. The U.S.’s air-travel volume precludes TSA from using Israel’s methods.
Yes, America is bigger than Israel, is home to 45 times as many people, and has 75 times as many flights travel through its airspace every day. But America also has vastly more resources to draw upon; its per capita flight total is less than twice Israel’s.
5. Passengers know what the new procedures entail, and if they don’t want to fly, they can just as easily take some other form of transportation.
Actually, TSA chief John Pistole admitted he withheld pat-down details, thinking it would fool terrorists. He fooled us instead.
Also, care to travel coast to coast for Thanksgiving weekend by train? By bus? By car? How about Christmas weekend in Paris, going by boat?
As someone who travels to Israel once or twice a year on business, all I can say is "Amen"! In a country of 325 million, we should be able to hire and train people capable of replicating the Israeli system.
I am a dedicated capitalist. Therefore I am always looking for the most monetarily and resource efficient means of production.
Catching or deterring terrorists is the product being produced.
In addition to intelligent profiling techniques and other sensible measures, for a mere $5000 a bomb sniffing dog can be trained and the cost of deployment is minimal.
Comparing this with the $200000 radiation spewing machine that demonstrably can not detect the types of threat posed by underwear or any other foundation garment bombers one must wonder why these animals are not being deployed?
Furthermore, even a third date, second base groping by a government goon will not detect what these canines can do and without having to stick anything, including some federal lackey's paws, down anyone's pants. I reiterate, why are these animals are not being deployed?
I learned long ago that people who rise to positions of high power are not, at least only very rarely, stupid. Therefore since so many intelligent people are engaged in an activity manifestly incapable of achieving its stated goal something else is clearly motivating their actions.
I leave it to other , wiser people to speculate. I can only say from my years in strategy that although your opponent may be a fool it is very unwise to act on that assumption. If your opponent's plans seem crazy it is much wiser to reanalyze their actions and seek to find an alternative strategy that makes their actions seem sensible. And then take action on your part accordingly.
The cause of airline terrorism is the Muslim "church's" refusal to condemn any of these attacks. If a Christian tried to set off a bomb at the Medina shrine, there would be immediate Christian condemnation. I have not heard one muslim word against the attempted bombing of the Portland Christmas tree. The only way to encourage the Muslim religion to act responsibly, is to profile muslims, all of them, and have them pressure their religious leaders to condemn terrorist attacks on innocent, especially women and children. Because the Muslim leadership does not condemn, but rather encourages uncivilized behaviour, I think that all their followers are fair game for targeted profiling. Muslims who support the church leaders should put themselves on the no fly list, rather than demand special reduced screening. It is absolutely amazing that we allow Napolitano to persecute an innocent majority, while seeking reduced screening for a very guilty minority.
You make an excellent point. If during WWII an American citizen was a publicly acknowledged memeber of the NAZI party while simultaneously claiming to be a loyal American it is certain that he would have been watched very closely. And in order to head off the obvious reply, I am not advocating internment but definitely close observation is appropriate.
And to those of you who say we are not at war with islam consider this. If, in our current war on terror, we eliminite all muslim combatants then who would be left to oppose us? With whom would we still be fighting?
Not all muslims are our enemies in the war on terror but all of our enemies in the war on terror are muslims. Only a fool refuses to accept such an obvious fact.
The last time I flew was in 2005, Syracuse to Miami. I don't fly anymore.
I felt very unsafe taking my shoes off and having a zip-lock baggie of travel-size bottles filled with hygiene items scrutinized. It gave the succinct impression that, in all the attention paid to such detail, actual risks were being thoroughly ignored.
This all stems from 2001-2002, when the Jim Jeffords-led Senate demanded that: 1) there be a new federal executive cabinet department created for purposes of overseeing many pre-existing federal agencies (which became DHS); and 2) all airport security personnel from 9/10 would become federal employees instead of former security workers.
New levels and layers of bureaucracy were created, and the workers who had proven unqualified for airport security were given whole new layers of protection for their poor job they did. They've been hard to fire ever since, even in the absence of unionization (which will simply increase the cost of airport security and give heavy incentive for bad work).
The motivation behind the mindset of the current fashion in which our government secures airports is to govern our security procedures from the perspective of the terrorist. We allow the terrorists' actions to dictate how we attempt to find them. This is absurd - they will constantly develop a new method as soon as a procedure is deployed to detect the previous one.
As for orifices: IT'S ALREADY HAPPENED! A terrorist in, I believe Saudi Arabia, hid an explosive device in his tush. Needless to say, the Saudi government didn't prod the man's insides. They had him in their cross-hairs days before his flight. He was followed to the airport.
Janet Napolitano is just the type of person to eventually authorize by executive regulation that all passengers receive a DHS-administered enema upon arrival at the airport.
Nothing would better symbolize how liberals and progressives generally seek to govern - by worming their way up my a%&!
I read somewhere (perhaps here?) that one of the reasons these new scanners are being foisted on us, is that former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff owns a big stake in the company that builds them, OSI Systems. You can read about it here: External Link
When one of these terrorists successfully blows his colon up during a flight, then I will stop flying. I am not getting a TSA sponsored colonoscopy just to fly. Although that would increase GI doctor health care spending. We could even force the insurance companies to cover it "free" like our preventative care. There may be a stimulus program here.
I like every point in this article. While I suspect the Israeli screening model won't scale exactly the way proponents of it's use here think it will, some version of this approach is well overdue. Whether American political realities will allow it is another matter. I do have to disagree that the measures we've put in place haven't done any good at all; the problem is they are not in any way the best we can do.
I regret to say I think conservatives haven't really approached this matter in the most productive way. Anyone who has been in this field for even a little while can tell you that behavior is what to look for; there are too many ways to conceal prohibited items. Unfortunately, instead of finding ways to bring that professional viewpoint into the public discussion on their side, conservatives have been too busy railing on about TSA checkpoint officers being goons, incompetent, thuggish, stupid, etc. Well, yes, there are some (full disclosure: I work for the TSA, but in my defense, I have cut back on the number of puppies I eat per week). But there are also a lot of seasoned professionals, many of whom have military backgrounds and years of service in the field (like me), and they can tell you in no uncertain terms what ought to be done. Unfortunately, they're government employees, so conservatives don't seem to want to ask. Not the smartest approach.
1.A ten second scan is a reasonable search within the scope of the 4th Amendment.
2.Israil is not a model of security, but if you are willing to show up three hours early, take a questionaire, and wait while they decide if you need further screening, you have more time to waste than I do. It is no substitute for a scan that shows a flint or ceramic knife. There are firearms that have no metal and there is ammo that has no odor.
I want to subscribe to your digital issue, I go to the correct page, I correct an issue with safety (the only safe kind of address involves "https", your link for that was "http"), and when I have filled in the form as good as is possible, and I submit the filled-in form, I get:
No state or province chosen, wrong ZIP-code.
Hey, dude, I don't live in the same neck of woods that you do, and in this day and age, a serious publisher knows this, and make sure their systems handle international subscriptions!
Get back to me on email (you have the address) when you have fixed the problem(s)!
You didn't mention that none of the ground crew such as bag handlers, aircraft refuelers, and those head-scarved ladies who clean the airplane after it comes into the gate, go through any of the TSA Security Theater fol-de-rol.
The TSA as now constructed is a farce. Let's hope some of these 4th amendment challenges get some traction (but I doubt they will).
The problem with the American system is not the screening per se but the staffing. Can we get the people with the intelligence and temperament to do proper behavioral screening? Everything in the unionized federal civilian employee culture argues against it. We need to screen and if the public believed that the right people were looking at the scans or questioning them or patting them down, and that real knowledgeable Managers and Supervisors had control over the process, then they would support the TSA.
OMr. WOHLSTETTER is exactly correct. Keep up the good work. We need more like you. A few responses below to some of the other people posting comments:
One of the posters (John Lloyd Taylor) says :
"Israil is not a model of security."
Oh really? It's 42 year safety record is perfect, a lot better than TSA's record. It was TSA who let the underwear bomber get on a flight when he was on a no-fly list. It was the plane's passengers who stopped the bomber. The TSA agents on the ground were all to busy frisking 6 year old kids and 80 year old grandmothers.
Taylor goes on to say: "but if you are willing to show up three hours early, take a questionaire, and wait while they decide if you need further screening, you have more time to waste than I do."
In America for overseas flights, you have to show up 2 hours early so the TSA can check your luggage and then spend several more minutes in a line waiting for everybody to take off their shoes and empty their pockets and have your carry on baggage rifled through and now in addition, being scanned or groped. So the 3 hour wait time is about the same. The difference is, in Israel the 3 hour interviews actually makes everybody safe while flying. In America the 3 hour humiliating search ordeal inflicted on us by TSA does not make you safer and probably less safe.
Another poster (gotroygo) who admits he works for the TSA says:
"I regret to say I think conservatives haven't really approached this matter in the most productive way" and goes on to criticize conservatives for calling TSA agents "incompetent, thuggish, stupid, etc. " Those adjectives accurately describe the TSA's current policies and conservatives and everybody else has a right and duty to point out the facts. Of course in doing so you risk being labeled a "domestic extremist" and maybe put on a watch list along by Big Sis and hassled whenever you fly.
Gotroygo also says that there are former military people in the TSA who are trained for behavioral profiling but conservatives don't want to talk to them because they "work for the government."
Let me point out that it is conservatives who favor behavioral profiling instead of treating everybody the same which the politically correct liberals are forcing us to do. The fact that the TSA has people trained in profiling who can actually do some good but can't because of Big Sis's liberal rules is just more evidence that the TSA is hopelessly incompetent.
If all it will take to avoid scanning and searching is Muslim garb, we can all rest easy. Looking Islamic is as close as a mouse over. For example: External Link
Well at least I have now saved TSA from the folly of trying to "excuse" those who would be most "offended." Of course some protest too much, eh?
