[Infowarrior] - OpEd: The 10-Year-Old Terrorist Plot

[Richard Forno]

The 10-Year-Old Terrorist Plot
Security experts knew of this kind of plan, and have been urging carry-on
restrictions, since before 9/11. Why is TSA so late?
By Susan Trento and Joseph Trento

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-trento11aug11,0,5975663
.story?coll=la-opinion-center

ONE MONTH short of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the United States awakened
to news that British authorities had broken up a purported plot to use
liquid chemical bombs to blow up as many as 10 American-owned planes as they
flew across the Atlantic to the U.S. Officials and experts have said the
plot had the "hallmarks" of an Al Qaeda/Osama bin Laden plan.

The cable networks breathlessly reported new rules: For now, limited
carry-on luggage. Passengers may not bring on board any liquids ‹ water,
drinks, lotions. Only liquid prescription medicine or breast milk would be
allowed as carry-on aboard planes bound from Britain to the United States,
and on all U.S. carriers.

As usual when it comes to homeland security, the authorities are way behind
the curve.

It's infuriating. During the mid-1990s, the U.S. took into custody two
Kuwaiti men who had devised the technical plan for Operation Bojinka ‹ the
name for a plan to blow up a large number of jumbo jets over the Pacific. In
a test, the perpetrators in 1994 blew up an unsuspecting Japanese
businessman in his seat on a Philippine domestic flight by wiring a device
using a watch and liquid explosive disguised in a contact-lens case. This
proved to the terrorists that they could get explosives aboard undetected.

Thanks to Philippine intelligence, the U.S. eventually arrested the two
terrorists, Abdul Hakim Murad and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. The two told the CIA
about Bin Laden's plans to knock down big buildings using planes and blow up
airliners using small chemical bombs. That was in 1995. (Yousef was later
convicted in the U.S. for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.)

Thursday, the British arrested 24 people, including one airport employee.
Nine of those were allegedly set to board flights carrying mini-bombs
disguised as everyday liquids. The liquids were to have been mixed together
on board and turned into bombs. Authorities said the terrorist cell was
believed to have as many as 50 members.

A few hours later, the Bush administration put on a dog-and-pony show, with
elevated alert levels and the Department of Homeland Security barring
liquids on U.S. flights. The Transportation Security Administration
mentioned nothing about screening the 600,000 employees who work in U.S.
airports or the airport contractors who service the planes. How hard would
it be for one of them to substitute an explosive in a cola can or water
bottle, or even in the liquids used to clean the planes?

It was business as usual for the TSA: Give passengers and the public the
illusion of security but not the reality. One TSA official ‹ disgusted with
the agency's standard practice of putting on a strong show of security at
the passenger screening checkpoints while ignoring yawning holes in security
elsewhere in the civil aviation system ‹ has referred to it as "just more
eye candy Š feel-good stuff."

After spending $20 billion on aviation security, we still have not developed
a defense against ideas terrorists had six years before 9/11. It doesn't
require a genius to figure out that terrorists might try a version of
Operation Bojinka again.

There was a sense of absolute panic in the TSA's announcement that liquids
would not be permitted on airplanes. Yet security experts have been
recommending for years that carry-on baggage be strictly limited. In 2001,
the TSA did ban matches, box cutters and small knives. Then, in December, it
started allowing them again. Though chastised in the report by the
independent 9/11 commission for failing to act on information already in
hand, the TSA has never forbidden the types of liquids it is now temporarily
banning, even though it was fully aware of the Bojinka effort and Al Qaeda
and Bin Laden's penchant for going after targets until he succeeds in
bringing them down.

We were fortunate this time, but we can't depend that we will be again.