"This gesture security is inevitable. But it has barely any practical value"

Monday, July 2, 2007

This gesture security is inevitable. But it has barely any practical value
The flurry of precautions after terrorist attacks are almost always
charades. Real counter-measures all hinge on intelligence 
By Max Hastings
United Kingdom - The Guardian 


Pity anyone who must catch a plane or visit Wimbledon today, or indeed for
many days to come. Following Friday's London bombs and Saturday's attack at
Glasgow airport, security checks have intensified dramatically. Everybody
engaged in what is now a vast industry wants to be seen to be trying harder.

It is another matter, of course, whether all the conspicuous activity that
follows a terrorist incident adds a jot to public safety, to compensate for
the huge economic cost it imposes. Most security precautions represent a
charade. It is probably a politically necessary charade - we will explore
that issue in a moment. But we should be sceptical about its practical
value.

Gesture security attained its nadir in February five years ago, with the
deployment of armoured vehicles at Heathrow. It was possible to accept that
the security service and police possessed plausible intelligence that
terrorists were preparing to attack an aircraft with a missile. It was
impossible, however, to believe light tanks could play a useful part in
preventing such an action. Aircraft landing or taking off are within
comfortable range of a missile fired from well outside any airport
perimeter. Even if an obliging member of al-Qaida knelt with his launcher
beside a runway, it is unlikely he could best be frustrated by a 30mm cannon
fired from the turret of a Scorpion.

The Heathrow tank deployment was a political, not military, precaution. It
was designed to impress the public, rather than in the serious expectation
of stopping an atrocity. This was an extreme case of nonsense security, but
there are plenty of lesser ones every day in airport search queues.

A dilemma confronts the Home Office, intelligence services and police chiefs
every time a terrorist incident takes place. They know that, rationally,
there is little chance that imposing car checks at airports will accomplish
anything more than adding an hour or two's delay to every passenger's flight
time. Yet they are also acutely conscious that if they fail to be seen to
raise their game, and another would-be terrorist then crashes into a British
airport terminal, it would be a resignation issue.

The usual compromise is that extreme security checks are introduced for some
days following a major incident. Then, when the headlines cool and the
economic disruption becomes intolerable, security reverts to "normal". This
does not represent a logical approach, but it is hard to see any way around
it in a democracy vulnerable to media frenzies.

It is also hard for ministers and the police to pitch their public
utterances. A reasoned statement, following the weekend's events, might have
gone something like this: "After so much speculation about attacks on
Britain by terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction and biological
weapons, it is a relief to see these attempts made with weapons as crude as
cars filled with petrol and gas cylinders. The group carrying out the
attacks are grotesque amateurs. At worst, their efforts might have inflicted
the level of fatalities caused by a motorway smash." In reality, of course,
it would be unthinkable for anyone in authority to say anything of the sort.
Spokesmen must talk gravely about "a threat of dreadful carnage", because
anything less would sound flippant and irresponsible.

When a nation is in a state of declared war with a state enemy, the issues
are much simpler, and the public soon learns to understand them. When the
Germans began bombing British cities in 1940, anti-aircraft guns put up big
barrages whenever raiders were overhead. The belief that "we're hitting
back" boosted morale. It was soon discovered, however, that shell fragments
from the guns were inflicting almost as many casualties as German bombs, and
that scarcely any planes were being hit. Most batteries were moved to places
where they were less visible but might do some real good. Likewise, people
stopped abandoning their work whenever a raid was threatened and sought
refuge in shelters only if raiders were close overhead.

Yet conditions and expectations today, in times of peace, are very
different. Public safety is threatened only spasmodically, and in the most
erratic and unpredictable ways. What the army calls "point defence", meaning
the protection of specific buildings and sites against assault, is neither
feasible nor credible when the range of possible targets is almost
unlimited, and the economic life of the country must continue.

Most of us have become reconciled to the steel gates in Downing Street and
concrete barriers outside the Houses of Parliament. These are obviously
high-profile targets. There is a real prospect, rendered more vivid by the
people who crashed into Glasgow's terminal on Saturday, that terrorists
could try to use a vehicle as an assault weapon against Britain's most
famous national symbols.

Thereafter, however, common sense decrees that public buildings must take
their chances. It is not credible, for instance, to fortify all airport
terminals. We should recognise the searching of passengers for what it is, a
necessary gesture unlikely to stop a half-sophisticated terrorist from
smuggling some instrument of menace on to a flight.

All serious counter-measures hinge on intelligence: identifying potential
threats by surveillance and penetration. The security service deserves more
sympathy than it usually receives for its difficulties in achieving this.
The range of militant young Muslims now in Britain, both homegrown and
imported, is frighteningly large.

Since 9/11, MI5 has been deluged in money and has recruited thousands of new
officers, including a significant number of Muslims. But it takes years to
train such people and enable them to gain the experience to become Smileys.
More than that, they do not receive anything like the assistance from the
British Muslim community which they need effectively to contain the threat,
never mind defeat it.

It is difficult for intelligence officers to distinguish between militants
who merely talk big and those actually intending to commit acts of violence.
An MI5 officer described to me a while ago the problems posed by suspects
who behave normally for months, even years, before suddenly embarking on an
attack. Surveillance requires a massive commitment of manpower. Every day,
MI5 is obliged to make life-and-death choices about who it will continue to
monitor. The quality of police assistance is patchy, to put it politely, and
a source of much dismay in intelligence circles.

Although I am as sceptical as many people about the loss of civil liberties
in the name of anti-terrorism, it seems essential at the very least to
legitimise interception evidence in court proceedings. This is a much more
important tool for protecting the public than checking cars approaching
airports, and causes far less inconvenience to the innocent.

In the days ahead, we shall see plenty more gesture security, because that
is politics in the wake of a terrorist incident. We should recognise it for
what it is, however, and not confuse it with measures that serve the real
purpose of protecting us from violent fanatics.

Related Stories:

No Advance Intel on Glasgow Airport Attack
http://archives.californiaaviation.org/airport/msg41401.html

No Advance Intel Warning On London Car Bomb
http://archives.californiaaviation.org/airport/msg41379.html

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