[Infowarrior] - Focused on 9/11, U.S. Is Seen to Lag on New Threats

[Richard Forno]

August 12, 2006
Domestic Security
Focused on 9/11, U.S. Is Seen to Lag on New Threats
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/washington/12homeland.html?ei=5088&en=1d8f
380806578498&ex=1313035200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 ‹ The Department of Homeland Security has taken
significant steps since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to make it much
harder to turn a plane into a flying weapon. But a nearly obsessive focus on
the previous attacks may have prevented the federal government from
combating new threats effectively, terrorism experts and former agency
officials say.

The arrests overseas this week of people accused of planning to use an
explosive that would be undetectable at airports illustrates the significant
security gaps, they said.

While the department has hardened cockpit doors and set up screening for
guns and knives, it has done far too little to protect against plastic and
liquid explosives, bombs in air cargo and shoulder-fired missiles, the
experts say.

The nation is still at risk from the same ³failure of imagination² cited by
the 9/11 commission as having contributed to the success of the 2001 attack,
several argued.

³They are reactive, not proactive,² said Randall J. Larsen, a retired
colonel in the Air Force who is chairman of the military strategy department
at the National War College in Washington.

Robert M. Blitzer, who served 26 years in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, including as head of its counterterrorism unit, said the
federal government had a serious problem because its personnel today turned
over far too quickly.

Mr. Blitzer, now an analyst at ICF International, in Fairfax, Va., said:
³They don¹t have enough continuity and knowledge to know what they¹re up
against. Stability is a big thing for identifying trends. It¹s not easy to
do. Sometimes all you have is just snippets of information.²

Justin P. Oberman, a former senior policy official at the Transportation
Security Administration, said the problem was not lack of imagination but
limited money available to invest in the technologies needed.

³Too much is weighted toward looking for knives and guns on people coming
through the checkpoint and screening every checked bag,² Mr. Oberman, who
left the agency last year, said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in a news conference Friday,
said the department was trying to stay ahead of terrorists.

³We¹ve spent about three-quarters of a billion dollars in research on
emerging types of technologies in explosives,² Mr. Chertoff said. ³And we
are constantly monitoring the world for developments that occur in the field
of improvised explosive devices, precisely so we can start to work on
countermeasures.²

But even at senior levels of the department, there is recognition that this
criticism is somewhat fair. ³D.H.S. has to be nimble in a way most
government agencies don¹t, and that has to be baked into our very DNA,² said
Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary, in an interview. ³I am impatient. I
don¹t think we have gotten as far as we need to go. We can do more, and we
can do better. And we must.²

The vulnerabilities are clear. A failed plot in 1995, incubated in the
Philippines, to bomb 12 United States commercial jets flying out of Asia,
centered on the use of triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, a liquid explosive
that may also have been the weapon of choice of the plotters in England. The
Department of Homeland Security has evaluated technology that it says will
search an individual bottle for liquid explosives, but it cannot search all
the bottles in a suitcase. It also cannot reliably detect chemicals that are
not explosive but become so when mixed.

The department is still evaluating technologies for foiling shoulder-fired
missiles, a favored tool of rebel groups against military aircraft. One
blinds missiles with an infrared laser; another option would be a
ground-based antimissile system near airports.

The Transporation Security Administration has the technology to inspect
small objects shipped as air cargo, but does not have the capacity to do so
uniformly.

Given the long list of possible threats, and the limited budget to buy
equipment to defend against them, it is essential not just to look for
threats, Mr. Larsen said, but also to evaluate each one.

Mr. Oberman, the former security agency official, said that part of the
problem was the mandates imposed on the agency by Congress ‹ like hiring
government employees to do checkpoint screening and inspecting every checked
bag instead of focusing the inspections on those considered the highest
risk. This results in inspection programs that are so costly there is little
money available to research into new threats.

When James Loy took over the security agency in 2002, he created a special
unit assigned to think like terrorists. ³It was all part of staying on the
edge,² he said.

But Mr. Loy, who became Homeland Security¹s deputy, was in charge of the
security agency when it took money that had been set aside for explosive
detection research and put it into the hiring of baggage and checkpoint
screeners, so that the agency could comply with the mandates.

³What doesn¹t exist yet is a risk management process,² said Penrose C.
Albright, a former assistant secretary for science and technology at the
Department of Homeland Security. ³In the absence of coherent analysis,
there¹s no way to prevent the system from getting whipsawed. So it¹s not
surprising that we end up spending a lot of money fighting the last war and
not addressing more modern threats.²

Mr. Jackson, the deputy secretary, and Kip Hawley, the current security
agency administrator, said they recognized that Homeland Security must
constantly adjust its game plan.

The security agency, for example, last year lifted the ban on small knives
and scissors, after Mr. Hawley said the department determined that the
hardening of cockpit doors and the presence of more air marshals on flights
reduced the threat. The time airport screeners had taken up looking for
these small items can be spent looking for other threats, like explosives.

The agency is working on a passenger screening machine that can create an
X-ray-like image to look for hidden weapons or plastic or liquid explosives.
The agency also has ³Red Teams² that invent challenges to test the agency¹s
response.

Mr. Hawley, in an interview Friday, said that airports were the last line of
defense in a system in which the first was intelligence, which had worked
well this week. Part of being prepared, he said, was what the department did
on Wednesday and Thursday, reacting swiftly to intelligence, and literally
overnight instituting major changes in screening protocols at all 765
checkpoints nationwide.

But Mr. Jackson, who took over as deputy secretary in 2005, said it was
clear that Homeland Security must move more aggressively and quickly to
search for new ways to detect explosives.

As a result, he said, he is preparing to announce a restructuring of the
department¹s Science and Technology division that will sharpen its focus on
the most urgent threats, like liquid explosives, that war games might
identify.

William J. Broad contributed reporting to this article.