By Tom Kando
I’d like to talk about two interesting aspects of the aftermath of flight 253 and of Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow it up:
(1) The inevitable Monday-morning quarter backing, the fact that the authorities always react rather than protect, always close the barn after the horse is gone, and (2) the mutual finger-pointing:1) What happens, every time, is this: (a) there is a one-time incident; (b) we pass new laws and policies to deal with it retroactively, hundreds of millions of people are inconvenienced forever, and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent; (c) the next event comes from a totally different and unanticipated direction; (d) we never find out whether the hundreds of millions of dollars and the inconvenience to hundreds of millions of people have helped or not. There is no such thing as evaluation research when it comes to anti-terrorism policies.
...or anti-crime policies either, for that matter. Indeed, it’s the same thing with crime. Politicians pass ever more draconian laws and lock ever more people up on the basis of rare, celebrated cases. That’s the origin of the three-strikes laws, the Jessica laws, the Megan laws, the sex-offenders laws, etc. For example, a horrendous crime such as the murder of Polly Klaas happens, and as a result, the nation’s prison population increases ten-fold over the following two decades. This is no way to run a railroad.
But back to terrorism. Because of flight 253, travel will become even more cumbersome. As a result of a single (and even failed) attack, hundreds of millions of us will now be inconvenienced in perpetuity. Same thing happened after Richard Reid’s shoe bomb attempt. Ever since then, we have had to take our shoes off when passing security. Has this inconvenience been useful? You say, “well, there haven’t been any further shoe bomb attempts,” and, “even if the inconvenience only saves one life, it’s worth it,” or, “what if it were your life?”
My answer to your first argument: Most overseas airports don’t require you to take off your shoes, and they haven’t had any shoe bomb attacks either. As to your second point, actually, no, it is not true that the sky is the limit when it comes to saving a human life. Everything must be cost-benefit analyzed. There is always a point beyond which we simply have to accept some risk, and forego our futile quest for 100% security. About your third point - I’m note sure.
What bothers me is our tendency to favor policies that make us feel good, whether they are useful or not, and whether their cost is exorbitant or not.
The flight 253 incident has led to a debate about airport body scanners. There are pragmatists, such as myself, who favor their use, and civil libertarians, who see them as a violation of privacy. Instead of using these highly effective machines, we hear about plans for drastic new security measures, such as forbidding all bathroom use a full hour before landing, and requiring international passengers to show up three hours before departure. Nuts!
2) The other tragic-comic aspect of the Schiphol-to-Detroit incident is the mutual finger pointing. Republicans are having a heyday blaming the Obama administration for its alleged laxness on terrorism. Ridiculous. Obama is plenty bellicose enough. Hasn’t he already escalated one of our two wars on terrorism? And under whose watch have terrorists killed more Americans so far - Obama or his predecessor(s)? The Homeland Security bureaucracy is what it is. Sure, it can, should and will improve, but it makes little immediate difference who the President is. The National Counter Terrorism Center was created after 9/11 to coordinate the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and all the other disparate agencies. It has a list of 600,000 suspects. But it seems that a new layer of bureaucracy has yielded little progress since 9/11. The partisan accusations are just silly politics.
And then, there is international finger-pointing: The other day, a friend teased me at the club saying, “haha, Kando, your socialist Dutchmen can’t even protect travelers against terrorists.”
At the same time, a Dutchman was quoted saying that Schiphol airport has the largest number of body-scanners in the world, but that the American government objects using them on US-bound passengers, thus tying the Dutch authorities’ hands.
Both accusations are absurd: For one thing, Schiphol is one of the safest airports in the world. Dutch security is as thorough, professional and effective as it is in the US. They did everything by the book. Abdulmutallab would have been able to board an airplane at any American airport just as easily.
As to the Dutchman’s allegation - false: It’s the European Commission which has opposed the use of scanners. I am very happy to hear that the Dutch have just decided to use them.
In conclusion: (1) be pragmatic, not a zealot. Do what works. You can use the damn scanners on me all you want - I have nothing to hide. (2) At the same time, realize that we will never achieve 100% safety, even if we spend ourselves into bankruptcy, or reduce air travel to a living hell. (3) Stop the finger-pointing. There is only one bad guy here - Abdulmutallab. (4) As usual, the finest response came from the passengers themselves, who courageously subdued Abdulmutallab like the heroes of flight 93 eight years ago. leave comment here
10 comments:
I don't know all the details, but I have heard a number of rumors, including one that this was a staged attempt to scare people into passing legislation that would require the purchase of the body scanners in all airports. Someone said that an FBI handler was with the suspect the entire time, waved his badge to escort him around security in Holland, and immediately took photos when the incident happened.
What I do know is that bureaucracies work on an authority model. They take orders from above and you need to please your boss to keep your job. Such structures are no good at catching terrorists, who are better caught by good old methods of listening for horizontal input--like from this fellow's father. Or, like the FBI agent in Minnesota that tried to alert Washington about Mohammed Attah to no avail.
Further, people in our bureaucracies are more likely to be there for a job and benefits, than out of actual concern for the mission. I think we probably did better before the TSA, when airports and airlines provided security. They had a much greater stake in a good result because they owned the planes and the buildings. I believe that people that have such a stake will try harder.
Further, if you have to have people in the bureaucracy, let them be there as a form of public service. For example, if you have to have a TSA, hire high school grads at a minimum wage, and give them college tuition after 3 years of service. It would cost less money to staff the TSA, you would have more educated Americans, and it would really be a form of civil service, with no disgruntled employees in unions.
This is an excellent comment. Your analysis of bureaucracy is flawless and knowledgeable. It is impossible to disagree with anything you write.
I agree - this is well written - I must point out that your comment on politicians is spot on - A fellow in politics once told me that being reactive is a political part of the job - just imaging if all these rules were applied at airports prior to any attacks - the politicians will be ridiculed - hence it's easier to react when the political climate allows them to.
Tom:
You truly captured the outrageous reactions and flimsy corrective actions to the incident. Punishing planeloads of weary travelers helps deflect attention away from the real culprits. There are tons of red flags that were ignored in this case. It is outrageous to think that rules such as not using the restroom or putting a book on your lap during the last hour of flight could be sincerely put in place. What's next? Why not put windows in the restroom doors to catch those terrorists off guard? Maybe the next step is stripping and putting our underwear through the scanners. It would make us all safer!
Thanks, Cheryl.
Your proposals are intriguing. But let's hold off before presenting them to the TSA.
The real governmental incompetence was reading him his Miranda rights and giving him a public defender rather than declaring him an enemy combatant and transporting him to Guantanamo for interrogation. It's probably going to take another two years to get to the heart of the Yemeni Al-Qaeda gang as a result.
Information obtained through torture is worthless.
Again the French wiped out the FLN cells in Algiers through the information gained through torture.
Not to mention that Saddham Hussein broke the back of every internal threat through torture.
In any case, Abdulmutallab should have been interogated by the FBI HIG group as an enemy combatant, rather than as a crimminal.
From FOX News today:
Two top senators urged the Obama administration on Monday to transfer the suspect in the failed Christmas Day airline bombing to the Pentagon, blasting the Justice Department for reading him his Miranda rights and treating him like a common criminal.
Citing reports that Abdulmutallab was "speaking openly about the attack" and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's involvement in it before he was read his Miranda rights, Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins said that reading the suspect his rights shortly after his arrest was an opportunity lost.
Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Collins, R-Maine, the committee's ranking Republican, said officials would be able to continue interrogating Abdulmutallab and try him before a military commission if they treat him as an enemy combatant.
"The decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than (an unprivileged enemy belligerent) almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks," the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.
"Though the president has said repeatedly that we are at war, it does not appear to us that the president's words are reflected in the actions of some in the executive branch, including some at the Department of Justice," they wrote.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., also released a written statement Monday urging Obama to revoke Abdulmutallab's "civilian status," saying the administration "squandered an invaluable opportunity to gather intelligence from a captured terrorist fresh from Al Qaeda's operation in Yemen."
Though Abdulmutallab has already been indicted in anticipation of a civilian trial, attorney Edward MacMahon said there is precedent for treating suspects as enemy combatants before trying them in civilian court.
MacMahon, former attorney for Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, said the administration would be in its right to treat Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant and interrogate him, despite the case that is already underway. He said the administration would not have to worry about jeopardizing his confession, since there's enough physical evidence and witness testimony to convict him.
The calls for the Justice Department to do an about-face on Abdulmutallab's civilian trial come after new questions were raised during congressional hearings last week about the way the suspect was handled after the attempted bombing.
In one hearing, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Abdulmutallab should have been questioned by the recently created High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG.
Fox News has confirmed that local FBI agents interviewed the suspect for about 50 minutes after he was taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center. One official said he spoke freely during this period and claimed to be a trained recruit for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
After that, he went into surgery. He was then advised of his right to remain silent, and he subsequently obtained a lawyer.
Lieberman and Collins wrote Monday that the "unilateral decision" by the Justice Department to treat the suspect as a criminal "and to forego information that may have been extremely helpful to winning this war demonstrates" that some in the department are not acting as if the country is at war.
"The administration can reverse this error, at least to some degree, by immediately transferring Abdulmutallab to the Department of Defense," they wrote.
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