"Editorial: Are we safer?"

Sunday, September 7, 2003

Editorial
Are we safer?
The Oregonian


E ven the humble potato could be used against us. No kidding. The FBI warned
late last week that al-Qaida may be planning to employ two naturally
occurring toxins, solanine in potatoes or nicotine in tobacco, to poison
U.S. food and water supplies.

To avoid scrutiny, terrorists may be likely to dress up as women, the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security warned last week. They also may try to
hijack planes in Mexico or Canada -- where airport security is less
stringent -- for use against U.S. targets.

The enemy we face is a shape-shifter. Think of the slippery god Proteus, in
"The Odyssey," who "took on a whiskered lion's shape, a serpent then, a
leopard, a great boar, then sousing water, then a tall green tree." Such an
enemy can be outwitted. But, as that great epic poet of war, Homer,
instructs, you have to hang on.

This is what Americans are beginning to understand as they approach
Thursday's second anniversary of Sept. 11. This is also why the most primal
question reverberating on a gut level in our country -- Are we safer now? --
is so tricky to answer.

Let's answer unequivocally, though. Let's answer with the ringing confidence
that Americans have always been able to muster: Yes, we are.

We are safer. When you ask public safety officials on the local, state and
national level whether we're safer, they respond with one word:

"Absolutely. I think there is no question," says Bill Wyatt, executive
director of the Port of Portland. Cockpit doors on airliners have been
reinforced and are now impenetrable. Airport security is far more
professional. In Portland, the checked bags of 12 million passengers a year,
arriving and departing, undergoes some sort of electronic trace-detection
process, sniffing for explosives. And planning is far along to install a
more sophisticated scanning system.

Coordination between local officials has improved dramatically. "Tabletop"
exercises to hone their reflexes for every permutation of disaster are
taking place on a regular basis, and that kind of colloquy can reveal chinks
in planning. When the question is asked, "Who's in charge of that?."
sometimes no one answers; other times, five or six people say, "Me," says
Elise Marshall, interim director of the new Portland Office of Emergency
Management. Either way, such rehearsals help to avert chaos.

There's still much more to do. On Friday, an inspector general's report
found that security at national parks and around national monuments is
pathetically lacking. Former Sen. Gary Hart recently warned that the private
sector is doing little or nothing to beef up security at chemical plants.

Meanwhile, aviation officials have a new threat to keep them up at night:
shoulder-fired missiles. More than a thousand of these portable missiles are
in circulation around the globe. Yet at least the FBI, for all of its
bumbles before 9/11, set up a sting last month that netted a man, charged
with trying to sell 50 of these missiles. That's progress.

Public awareness is invaluable. Just last week, an alert commuter noticed a
fist-sized bomb on a westside Max train. We're safer today because more
people are paying attention.

"In a post-9/11 environment, literally hundreds of thousands of men and
women go to work every day addressing the need to prevent a terrorist attack
or try to reduce our vulnerability to it," homeland security Secretary Tom
Ridge said last week.

That doesn't guarantee anything. But as the shape of the threat shifts, from
the humble potato to the shoulder-fired missile, we have to hang on, with an
indefatigable determination.

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