"Epitaph: They Killed People, Didn’t They?"

Friday, September 5, 2003

Commentary
Epitaph: They Killed People, Didn’t They?
BoydForbes, Inc.


It must be great to be a member of Congress, a public servant in the Federal
Aviation Administration, or a member of the Transportation Security
Administration. Soooo secure, don’t have to be held to account, a guaranteed
career regardless of what level of incompetence you have attained. Your
family thinks you are wonderful, so important, and what a good life, soooo
proud! The Constitution? We the people? How times change. How short the
memories become. Tread on them, those people. Just give me the money.

Is this the best we can do?

It was in 1972 that President Nixon ordered the introduction of air carrier
and airport federal security regulations to counter terrorist attacks on
civil aviation. Between May 1961 and March 1972 there had been 123
hijackings involving U.S. commercial aircraft, and most of these had
occurred since 1968. The FAA was the agency that from that time through to
February 2002 was in charge of the safety and security of American air
travelers – you know, those people who keep the industry alive, and who
trust government and industry to keep them alive.

The three decades that followed are a litany of miserable, shameful failure,
in which members of congress and the FAA hierarchy – yes even some of those
whose eulogies and gravestones will bear testimony to their service – sent
Americans to their deaths.

Studying this story in depth I have come upon the awful realization, that
September 11, 2001 was not the culmination of this tragically avoidable
history of slaughter. It was the mid-peak point. There is more to come,
guaranteed because of one thing. The United States congress and repeated
administrations have learned nothing. They have not looked closely at
themselves.

The evidence is there to see if you care to look, and it is imperative that
our children know about it. At the rate of progress so far, it will take
several generations before America finally ‘gets it’. What kind of world
will we have by then? Will it be too late to make a real difference?

Lest We Forget

Between March of 1972 and early 1989, there were 55 reported explosions on
board civil aircraft worldwide. Fourteen involved American operated
aircraft, with a loss of 393 lives and many more injured. Not many lives
lost, some might say, given the seventeen years reported, But it is very
important to remember this: Every day the terrorists get better at what they
do. This was a learning period and they continue to study for opportunities,
big opportunities, every hour of every day. They are also better educated
today, and have arguably better technical advisors than many of their
targets. They know our weaknesses, because many of them are predictable.

In May of 1990 The President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism
published a 182 page report centered on the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan
Am 103, which blew apart over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 on board and
eleven on the ground.

The report, under the subheading Lack of Accountability, stated

‘Security is a shared responsibility, both at U.S. and foreign airports. FAA
sets the security requirements, inspects both air carriers and airport
operators for compliance with the requirements, and proposes civil penalties
for non-compliance. Implementation of this split responsibility results in a
lack of clear accountability for security.’

In the Executive Summary, the Report used words that should now be haunting
the U.S. Congress:

‘National will and the moral courage to exercise it are the ultimate means
for defeating terrorism’ and –

‘Rhetoric is no substitute for strong, effective action.’

Try telling that to the families of the many victims of aviation terrorism.
Try mustering a national will from the thousands of former security
screeners and many of the current screeners, whose lives have been trampled
on. Tell it to the Sky Marshals, tell it to the FAA Security Red Team
members who resigned in disgust because their alarming security findings
were suppressed. Then while you are about it, ask those serving and former
managers of FAA now working as security consultants how they manage their
consciences these days.

So, we know now, Mr. President and congresspersons, you find a commission of
inquiry a useful vehicle to placate, to defer, to buy time while you hope
the pain and the anger subsides. While you meet with special interest
lobbyists who are concerned about public pressure affecting their industry
dollars, you dilute your duty to the citizenry.

That pathetic piece of third-rate literature, the 1996 Gore Commission
Report did nothing for aviation security, and even less for the families of
the 230 victims of that July 1996 disaster. It did much by all accounts, for
the election coffers that were topped up shortly after its publication by
airlines looking for reassurances. But before you discount that entire
report, I recommend you take a look at the Dissent Letter submitted by
Commissioner Victoria Cummock, published February 19,1997 after she found it
necessary to sue in order to have her opinion heard. It is the only
worthwhile part of the report. Victoria is the President, Families of Pan Am
103/Lockerbie.

 Some more facts?

 Mary Schiavo, DOT Inspector General from 1990 to 1996, in her book "Flying
Blind, Flying Safe" refers to the FAA as being built and run on a culture of
lies; suppression and manipulation of reports that have been factually
accurate and raised serious safety and security issues.

 FAA Security Red Team and other security specialists left the FAA between
1999 and 2001 because of the culture of lies and manipulation. They were
instrumental in warning about the extreme vulnerability of US airports but
have been persistently ignored.

 Fox25 News featured the extraordinary concern about Boston’s Logan airport
security vulnerabilities in May 2001. Former FAA security people saw to it
that members of congress and top FAA officials were immediately aware of the
story, sending them video copies in the process. Nothing was done. The word
came down; don’t give the airlines a hard time.

 From a selection of the many OIG reports on FAA security performance, four
separate reports between May 1998 and March 2000 list sixteen serious
weaknesses in aviation security. Included were Explosive Detection System
equipment not performing to certification standards, or seriously under
utilized; agents successfully penetrated secure areas of airports and gained
access to aircraft (117 times); airport access control accountability in
question; inadequate background checks on employees, (etc. etc.) Result? No
real impact, just more FAA negligence.

 The General Accounting Office reported to congress on numerous occasions
before 9/11 about the shortcomings of aviation security. Again, just a
selection shows that FAA was truly deaf, blind, indifferent and at the very
best negligent (I say criminally so) in the face of so called federal
watchdog auditing and reporting. And where was congress? Between August 1996
and March 1997, five reports disclosed concerns about lack of FAA progress
in the wake of the TWA 800 disaster and the Gore Commission report. FAA had
spent only a little more than $150 million on developing explosives
detection needs in the five years between 1991 and 1996; and of course they
were still talking about ‘selective’ baggage screening through 2001 - when
America was attacked.

While European and Asian airports and airlines had long been matching
baggage and screening checked bags with technology, the USA had steadfastly,
through industry resistance and FAA complicity, resisted security measures.
That is still going on today, mostly because before 9/11 the USA was so far
behind the curve, the boom years dividend having been spent, we have no
slack left, no flexibility to develop efficient security operations quickly
enough without accepting a very severe compromise on air service
performance.

With all due respect to my friends in the world of aviation, we also have to
acknowledge that this sloppy treatment of security over three decades has
cost us much more than we may have realized when it comes to passenger
screening. The indifference penetrated deep down into consumer behavior,
something that has now surfaced as the checkpoint screening has become ever
more intrusive. There is no going back on the detection of weapons.

The FBI guide to concealable weapons, 89 pages of it, is enough to tell us
that we can no longer afford to regard passengers as ‘innocent’ just because
they are American citizens. That is a sad fact. Copycat crimes are a
phenomenon well known in law enforcement circles. What kind of nutcase hides
a firearm or a large knife in a toy or in an artificial leg? The passenger
sitting next to you maybe? If such items have a legitimate use and reason
for transit, there are plenty of other options. Unfortunately, the uncommon
but threatening conduct of certain types of passengers comes without advance
warning. The sanity of individual passengers is something we cannot take for
granted, and short of having a shrink test at the departure gate, we can do
little else than deprive the mentally disturbed of weaponry. Passenger
profiling? Well that’s another big issue but ultimately it will prove
unavoidable. It brings with it many more justifiable anxieties about the
conduct of government agencies, and their private sector cohorts.

The Screener Anachronism

The haste, the historically tainted allegiances and the dictatorial culture
employed to create the federal screening force under the TSA, has imposed an
un-American experience on what was a very American experience, affordable
and unhindered air travel. If checkpoint and baggage screening had grown and
developed, as it most surely should have, in parallel with the growth of the
industry since 1972, the process today would not be so readily referred to
as ‘airport hassle’. The TSA is a time warped product of desperate
politicians who have no understanding of the industry while apparently
accepting no accountability for their own past failures in policing it.

In this respect we must go back. Back to the values that are so loudly
proclaimed as being quintessentially American. Back to respectful treatment
of employees and to recognition of them as being complimentary and even
superior to, the technologies we are asking them to operate, especially when
it comes to aviation and homeland security.

Then, what about those American business employee motivation books, tons of
them crowding bookstores and libraries worldwide, from Drucker, Covey,
Peters and others – what happened, were they just so much fashionable
education and training fodder? Did they really mean anything? If so, why are
we treating good citizens and employees with such contempt today?

I speak of the many screeners, too many to mention by name, so grievously
hurt by their own countrymen and women whose greed and plain nastiness
deprived them of opportunities to earn an honest living.

For months now, former contract screeners, former and current TSA employees,
have been writing and exchanging their stories. Their passion, anger and
disappointment will one day find its way to the ballot box, and along that
route they will tell their family and friends and anyone who will listen,
how a government that used them in the name of security and to preserve
American freedom treated them. I hope that they name, and repeatedly name,
the scurrilous individuals in the TSA and with TSA vendors who call
themselves managers and who have put their own necks first while
decapitating the lives of people who believed they were helping their
country. People, who have opinions, people who believe that constitutional
freedom should not be suspended in the workplace and in the hiring process.

The families of the victims of 9/11 will be in the thoughts and prayers of
all right thinking people as the second anniversary approaches. It is
regrettable that there is no sign on the horizon of a worthwhile legacy from
that terrible sacrifice, and that history is doomed to repeat itself.

And when all is said and done, those names, of the politicians, the federal
agency executives, the managers, who have aided the enemies of the United
States through years of incompetence and self-gratification, should be
recognized only for what they achieved. Their epitaph should be "They Killed
People Didn’t They?’

David Forbes September 5, 2003

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