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fences for terrorists to evade. U.S. officials and lawmakers
acknowledge that broader revi- sions may be necessary, saying it is only amatter of time before the airport security apparatus fails. “Let’s be honest: We’ve been
lucky the last few times,” said Senate Homeland Security Com- mittee Chairman Joseph I. Lie- berman (I-Conn.). “With the Christmas Day bomber over De- troit and theTimes Square bomb- er and the air cargo attempt, they did not succeed, but that’s be- cause of their own inadequacies, not because we were able to stop them.” As a result of those attempts,
passengersmust surrender sharp objects (a response to the Sept. 11 attacks) and slip off their shoes (a response to the 2001 would-be shoe bomber). Theymust remove liquids from their bags (a result of a 2006 plot to blowup planes), and, as of a few weeks ago, they must submit to body scans or pat-downs (a process accelerated by the attempted airline bombing last Christmas Day). Yet lawmakers and govern-
ment reports question the capa- bility of some specific measures. Year after year, undercover test- ers manage to sneak loaded weapons past screeners in em- barrassing
evasions.More broad- ly, skeptics describe the extreme focus on airport checkpoints as incomplete, too often focused on the last attack rather than the next one. Even Transportation Security
Administration head John S. Pis- tole, in an interview, described his agency asmerely a “last line of defense on a continuum of gov- ernment national security ef- forts.” Like others interviewed, Pis-
tole said he hopes to move to a more intelligence-based system, but said the previous attacks could never be ignored. “We always have to look out for
yesterday’s threats,” he said. “Shame on us if there’s ever a repeat of 9/11 or the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber, if we haven’t hardened our targets.”
New layers of security
Some critics have given the
labyrinthine airport security sys- tem the nickname “security the- ater,” saying it is riddled with loopholes. Airport workers are not screened daily, making them capable of passing into secure areas with weapons. Lines inside the terminal are vulnerable to a would-be suicide bomber. Pack- ages sent as cargo go through a comparatively light screening process—one that is being tight- ened butwas exploited by al-Qae- da operatives in October when they sent bombs hidden in print- er cartridges. “After 9/11, the attacks failed
because of the poor skills of the terrorists rather than anything we’ve done,” said Rafi Ron, for- mer security director at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Air- port. “In every one of these later attacks, the security checkpoint was overcome by terrorists who took advantage of the loopholes.” For al-Qaeda, forcing the Unit-
ed States to continually add lay- ers of air security amounts to victory in its own right. “If your opponent covers his right cheek, slap him on his left,” its writers gloated in the organization’s magazine, Inspire. “The continu- ous attempts that followed 9-11 . . . have forced theWest to spend billions of dollars to defend its airplanes.” The strategy, they wrote, is one of “a thousand cuts” to “bleed the enemy to death.” The repeated attempts have
pushed U.S. officials into a costly pattern of trial and error, testing what works — and what the publicwill accept. Since 2002, the TSA budget has totaled $57.2 billion — about what the govern- ment spends on intelligence pro- grams in a single year. Still, there have been obvious aviation ex- cesses. Machines, such as the
$160,000-a-pop “puffer portals” introduced in 2004, have been introduced and then jettisoned. The color-coded terrorism alert programis on itsway out. Britain plans to abandon its restrictions on liquids in April, and U.S. officials say they would like to do the same, although they question whether it’s too soon. Other changes may soon fol-
low. Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.) wants to replace TSA workers with private screeners, as 17 air- ports nationwide have done, to make them more efficient and accountable. Others would shift to a system that incorporates more passenger data into the screening system, on top of the new identity markers — includ- ing a passenger’s sex and birth- day—that airlines recently start-
JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST Scanners, pat-downs and bomb-sniffing dogs are vital to airport screening but should be part a multi-layered system that includes data about people, experts say.
How terrorists are caught: Does the TSA play a role? A look at the effectiveness of various screening measures implemented by the Transportation Security Administration since Sept. 11, 2001.
When
September 2001: Hijackers crash planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Hijackers take control of United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark but passengers manage to subdue them, causing the plane to crash in rural Pennsylvania.
December 2001: Richard Reid hides explosives in his shoes and tries to ignite the fuse with a match on a flight from Paris to the United States.
May 2002: Jose Padilla is arrested at Chicago O’Hare International Airport upon his return from the Middle East and is charged with planning a “dirty bomb” attack.
June 2005: Umer and Hamid Hayat, a father and son are arrested in California in connection with lying to the FBI about the son’s attendance at an Islamic terrorist training camp.
August 2006: A plot to blow up 12 planes from London to the United States with liquid explosives hidden in carry-on luggage is interrupted.
June 2007: Suspects are arrested in a plot to allegedly destroy fuel supplies and pipelines at JFK International Airport.
July 2009: Daniel Boyd, a North Carolina resident, and six others are charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Boyd allegedly spent time training at terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is also charged with conspiring to recruit young U.S. men and with helping them travel overseas to kill or maim.
Sept. 19, 2009: Najibullah Zazi is arrested for allegedly planning a bomb attack in the United States.
Dec. 25, 2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is arrested on suspicion of trying to ignite his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
May 3, 2010: Faisal Shahzad is arrested for allegedly attempting to blow up a car in New York’s Times Square. He is taken off a flight from JFK International Airport to Dubai and into custody.
October: Yemen cargo plot. Who caught them? Would new security measures have stopped them?
No one, except on Flight 93
Likely. Aſter Sept. 11, cockpit doors were secured, passengers began to fight back and boxcutters were banned. Te Department of Homeland Security is created, along with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Awareness of hijacking in the United States is heightened for the first time, setting a security bureaucracy into motion.
Fellow passengers
Yes, if he had traveled in the United States, because new requirements following his arrest require passengers to take off shoes for screening. But because he traveled from Paris, no.
CIA and FBI
No. Padilla was arrested as a result of CIA and FBI surveillance overseas.
aviation checkpoints, it is impos- sible to know how many were deterred by airport security from even trying. Several took aim at softer targets:NewYork subways, as in the case of Najibullah Zazi, or a car in Times Square, as in the case of Faisal Shahzad. Butwould today’smechanisms
even block a future Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? The question troubles security experts,who see persistent flaws — from gaps at checkpoints for flights originat- ing overseas, as Abdulmutallab’s did, to problems with the way full-body scanners work. The advanced imaging tech-
FBI
No. Hamid Hayat was on the no-fly list but was allowed to board a flight from Pakistan to San Francisco.
British authorities, in cooperation with U.S. authorities
FBI
Yes. Suspects were monitored by video and audio surveillance on a tip from an informant and captured in raids on their apartments in the United Kingdom. TSA prohibited carrying liquids onto planes in response.
Perhaps. One of the plotters was a former airport freight handler who was able to gain unrestricted access to cargo areas at JFK International Airport. TSA has a program of random checks for airport workers, but there is no evidence that these checks would have prevented an attack.
FBI and local law enforcement
No. Te FBI surveilled Boyd and his associates for three years. Tey were arrested in a coordinated raid on the suspects’ homes.
nology scannerswere in use at 19 airports when Abdulmutallab al- legedly tried to ignite explosives in his underwear on Christmas Day last year as his flight from Amsterdam landed in Detroit. The administration accelerated the machines’ rollout, to 500 nationwide by this Christmas, in case someone tries the same tac- tic domestically. Some critics question whether
the machines expose travelers to too much radiation. Even more are concerned about the technol- ogy’s intrusiveness and whether the method will work. According to independent analyses, itwould not detect explosives placed deep inside a body cavity or in large rolls of body fat. “It remains unclear whether
the AIT would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident,” said a Govern- ment Accountability Office re- port inMarch. “If you’re hiding something in
FBI and local law enforcement
Fellow passengers
No. Zazi travelled by car to New York City, where authorities think he was going to detonate bombs.
According to the General Accountability Office, “It remains unclear whether [the scanners] would have been able to detect the weapon Mr. Abdulmutallab used.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with assistance from the TSA watch list and the government’s no-fly list
British authorities, on a tip from Saudi officials via Germany
SOURCE: Washington Post research by Julie Tate
ed to gather. More immediately, Pistole said
he wants to see modifications to the scanning machines that caused such an uproar, “so you see a stick figure of the blurred image versus the, quote, ‘naked photos,’ ” he said. The new tech- nology is being tested but yields too many false positives to be used, he said. Even the system’s fiercest ad-
vocates acknowledge its imper- fections, saying alterations are
Yes. Shahzad was placed on the no-fly list, but Emirates Airlines did not check the updated list when he bought his ticket. He was pulled off the plane when Customs and Border Protection received the flight list. Tey had data from one of his return flights to Pakistan that helped authorities track him down aſter the attack.
For now. Te United States banned printer cartridges weighing more than 16 ounces on passenger planes, as well as all cargo from Yemen and Somalia. But the real success came from intelligence agencies and diplomats. THE WASHINGTON POST
almost certain. “Nothing’s per- fect. The strategy is evolving, and it’s a work in progress,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), the incom- ing chairmanof theHouseHome- land Security Committee. “We’re fighting the lastwar;we’re trying to anticipate
thenextwar.There’s inconvenience. Some things have worked; others haven’t. There’s no silver bullet.” He added: “But let’s face it:We
haven’t been attacked. If anyone back on September 12, 2001,
would have said we’d go eight, nine years without a successful aviation attack, no one would have believed them.”
Fighting the last war Whether the new patchwork
system deserves credit for the stability of the past nine years is up for debate. Although none of the dozens of suspected terrorists arrested in the United States during that time were caught at
an orifice, that’s hard to detect,” said VahidMotevalli, head of the department of mechanical engi- neering technology at Purdue University. Senior U.S. officials played
down those concerns, saying that in order for a bomb to explode properly it must be close to the body’s surface. The body acts as “a retardant for the explosion,” said one senior official, who spoke on the condition of ano- nymity sohe coulddiscuss securi- ty issues freely. Therefore, it is unclear whether body-cavity bombs will become the wave of the future.
The importance of intelligence
Although profiling carries the
burden of a racist history in the United States, amore sophisticat- ed version is an integral part of the Israelimodel. Israeli profiling targets more than Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims, though they may receive the closest scrutiny. The most widely celebrated ex- ample was the interception in 1986 of Anne-Marie Murphy, 32, who was six months pregnant when she attempted to board an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv, unaware that her fiance had placed a bomb in her bag. Experts say the United States
is unlikely to adopt the Israeli model. It “includes ethnical and
national profiling, ” said Ron, the former Israeli airport security director. “Being a Palestinian in Israel is not an advantage, obvi- ously. In the U.S., any ethnical or national profiling is illegal or unacceptable for the American public.” But more than a dozen U.S.
officials, lawmakers and experts interviewed said they would like to move to a system that relies more on passenger data than on airport checkpoint screening. “I would like to see a lot more
profiling,” said the Israeli-born Yossi Sheffi, who is an expert on risk analysis and directs theMas- sachusetts Institute of Technolo- gy Center for Transportation and Logistics. “If you’re tall and dark and
going to Yemen and your name is bin Laden, you should be searchedmore thananoldgrand- mother from Kansas City with a walker,” he said. But as the recent furor—albeit
temporary — over the full-body scanners illustrated, there are obstacles to introducing new measures, especially those that invade privacy. After Sept. 11, 2001, the George
W. Bush administration pro- posed a $380 million program that would have combined com- mercial data about passengers with flight manifests to give a more complete picture of travel- ers. Civil liberties groups object- ed and the programwas dropped, but some now say it might make sense to consider a revised ver- sion. Department of Homeland Se-
curity officials already have ac- cess to some commercial data about passengers traveling from overseas. But if the security sys- tem were allowed to access even more — such as personal infor- mation collected by companies that do credit ratings — suspi- cious passengers would be more readily identified, experts say. Asked whether he would be
open to revisiting that idea, Pis- tole replied: “Sure, if Congress said we should do that.” “Honestly, the more we know
about a person, the more in- formed we can be and the more intel-based approach we can use the better,” he said. “But it just comes down to civil liberties, privacy, all those hot-button is- sues.” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-
Miss.), the outgoing chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, also said hewould be open to collectingmore commer- cial data, and King, the incoming chairman, agreed. But, Thomp- son said, concerns about civil liberties remain a “delicate bal- ance.” “I’d be open to looking at it,”
Lieberman said. “You have to give some weight to privacy concerns, but I wouldn’t close the door to it.”
kornbluta@washpost.com halseya@washpost.com
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2010 In airport screening, experts call for a focus on people
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