"Changes to airport security since terrorist attacks"

Saturday, September 9, 2006

Changes to airport security since terrorist attacks
'We've learned the lessons of 9/11' airport security officials say
By Daniel Silliman
The Clayton (GA) News-Daily


It used to be that when Atlanta Police officers were assigned to the
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport precinct, they knew it would be a
quiet assignment. They might give out a few tickets, on a shift. They might
stop a few people who had drunk too much on their flights. They might, on a
really busy night, stop someone trying to break into the vehicles in the
long term parking lot. 

All of that changed, five years ago. 

"Now we have to look for the cloak of terrorism," said APD Lieutenant John
Mathis. "Sometimes it's not that easy to see. Cars just pull up and there's
not a lot of detection."

Five years ago, 19 men hijacked four commercial airplanes and crashed them
into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington
D.C. and a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Sept. 11,
2001. On that day, security at the world's busiest airport was changed from
quiet precinct duty outside the city of Atlanta to the front line of a war
that doesn't necessarily have front lines, to the last line of defense
against an enemy that's hard to identify. 

"Before, maybe somebody was intoxicated. Now we have to worry about a car
pulling up to the curb. Now a car sits too long or a vehicle pulls up and we
have to think, 'Is that suspicious?'" Mathis said. "What is suspicious? All
police know what a criminal is, but might not be able to tell you what a
terrorist is. We have a lot of people that like to take pictures of
aircraft. Years ago that wouldn't be a problem, but now we know that part of
terrorism is surveillance and we see that and we have to go ask them who
they are and what they are doing."

Travelers too have grown more suspicious, in the last five years. 

Christopher White, a spokesman for the Transportation Security
Administration, the agency created by the United States Congress on November
19, 2001 that now directs airport security, said that in a security test
last year agents left baggage unattended to see how long it would take for
officers to catch it. The inspectors were stopped when they started to walk
away from the luggage by security conscious travelers and alerted that there
was unattended luggage.

"We couldn't even run the test because we were stopped so fast," White said.
"We have a vigilant American traveling public." 

The TSA considers a suspicious public to be one of the ways security has
improved at the Atlanta airport. Travelers'' awareness of their surroundings
and their security concern is one of many overlapping layers of security
improvements that have protected American soil from terrorist attacks since
Sept. 11, White said. 

The administration, responsible for airport security from "the outer reaches
of the airport to onboard the flight," has introduced a system of security
measures in the last five years in what White calls a "multi-layered
approach."

"There's no one layer that we're completely dependent upon," he said. 

The most visible layer, the one that every traveler is familiar with, is the
check point screening of passengers and carry-on baggage, White said. A new
baggage screening system, one of the largest in-line systems in the nation,
is being put in place at the airport. It is due to be finished in the next
year. The new system, called the Hold Baggage Screening System, will more
efficiently check baggage for possible bombs and free up space, man power
and money, TSA security director Willie Williams said. Each bag will be
scanned in about 45 seconds and either cleared or rerouted for further
checks.

The TSA has emphasized training, requiring their agents to undergo more than
double the amount of basic training that was required of contractors prior
to the attacks, White said. After the basic training, the TSA runs constant
tests and requires ongoing training and training exercises. Other security
layers include K9 dogs trained to search for explosives, air marshals,
optional training in self defense for flight crews, a federal flight deck
officer program that arms officers on some flights to defend the cockpit and
hardened cockpit doors. 

Because of the ease with which the 19 terrorists entered the cockpits of the
four planes in 2001, all cockpit doors have now been built to resist bullets
and explosives. 

"Prior to 9/11, the door was flimsy, basically just a piece of material,"
White said. 

The biggest improvement in airport security, though, the improvement that
has changed airport security from a procedure of reactive catch-up measures
to proactive measures that stop new forms of terrorist attacks before they
happen, has been the cooperation between the intelligence communities and
the security communities. 

"The number one upgrade since 9/11 is we have a seat at the intelligence
table. We sit right at the table with all the other members of the
intelligence community. We know what the threats are before they occur,"
White said. 

When Richard Reed attempted to light the fuse on a bomb hidden in his shoe,
on Dec. 22, 2001, airport security could only respond to the new threat they
hadn't know existed. Five years later, security forces responded to a threat
before anything had happened on an airplane or even in an airport.

"Richard Reed was on the plane. He had a shoe bomb on the plane. With the
liquid threat, we got the threat info on this in advance," White said. "We
had all 4,300 TSA officers trained on that threat literally overnight."

Margaret Barnette, Acting Atlanta Port Director for the United States
Customs and Border Protection, said the enhanced communication between
intelligence gatherers and security officials is important in helping target
security concerns.

"We use the intelligence to target suspicious passengers. There's better
targeting. We assess all passengers coming to the U.S. from abroad, but
there's better targeting now." Barnette said. "We've learned the lessons of
9/11."

The USCBP, the branch of Homeland security created Congress on Nov. 25, 2003
by merging US Customs, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Services and placed under the Department of Homeland
Security, employees about 30,000 people and is responsible for safety of all
the people on international flights coming into or going out of the US. The
USCBP checked three million passengers in the last 12 months, Barnette said.
The agency has an extensive tracking system of all non-immigrants entering
or exiting the country, with a photograph and finger prints from two index
fingers. In the five years since Sept. 11, the department has improved
security in four ways: By targeting threats, which Barnette believes is the
most important improvement, cross training all agents to do the three types
of jobs formerly done by the separate agencies, organizational streamlining
by merging the agencies and by implementing technological advancements. 

"At first we had three different agencies and everyone had their own things
and their own way of doing things," Barnette said. "Now we have one face at
the border. Our number one priority is anti-terrorism and protecting the
homeland from terrorist attacks."

The agency has three teams of K-9 dogs, one of which is dedicated to bomb
detection. They have cutting edge security technology, the latest X-ray
machines and cell phone sized radiation detection devises that are carried
by every agent on inspections of baggage and cargo. 

"We did have X-ray machines (on Sept. 11), but they weren't of the quality
we have now. But the radiation detectors, we didn't have those at the time,"
she said. "This was not a focus prior to 9/11. This is cutting edge
technology."

Technology will probably be the focus of advances in airport security in the
next five years, Barnette said. She believes that organization changes and
training changes have been accomplished, but that developing technologies
will advance in ways that will significantly increase security.

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