[Infowarrior] - Heightened Airport Insecurity

[Richard Forno]

Heightened Airport Insecurity
Since British Arrests, Delays, Diversions and False Alarms
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101
529_pf.html

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 2, 2006; D01

A suspicious bottle of water, a child overheard saying he had a bomb, a
telephoned threat, locked lavatory doors.

Since British officials said they foiled a terrorist plot to blow up planes
over the Atlantic Ocean, hyper-vigilance aboard U.S. airliners has prompted
a rash of emergency landings based on threats that turned out to pose no
danger. The incidents suggest that pilots, flight attendants and passengers
are ready to err on the side of extreme caution in a period of heightened
anxiety in air travel.

With Labor Day travel this weekend and the anniversary of the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks around the corner, security consultants and
psychologists said passengers should expect more airline diversions, delays
and airport evacuations. The hair-trigger responses to perceived threats are
an unavoidable condition of the times, they said.

"If you are looking for suspicious behavior, you are going to notice things
and classify them as suspicious that otherwise you wouldn't be paying
attention to if you weren't on alert," said David Carbonell, a psychologist
in the Chicago area who works with people who are afraid to fly. "We have
the whole population of civilian fliers sort of on a war footing, the way we
expect soldiers on the front to be in. That is not generally a healthy
thing."

The anxiety began before dawn on Aug. 10, when Transportation Security
Administration officials prohibited many common items from carry-on baggage.
They banned all liquids and gels -- meaning no more bottles of water, hair
gel, lip gloss, toothpaste or gel shoe inserts. Officials said such things
could be used to disguise explosives.

At the time, authorities said they had to hurriedly prohibit such substances
because British authorities said plotters had planned to blow up
transatlantic flights with liquid explosives hidden in sports-drink bottles.

At news conferences, U.S. officials said they enacted the security measures
because some plotters could slip through dragnets or copycats might suddenly
pop up on a flight.

Three weeks later, the nation's top aviation security official said the
threat remains. "This continues to be a very serious threat and we are
taking no chances on the security of our aviation system," said Edmund S.
"Kip" Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration. "It would
be a mistake to conclude that because of the arrests in the United Kingdom
that we can lower our security posture."

Hawley said he wants travelers to look for suspicious activity.

"Americans are refocusing on what people in the government who work on this
every day know: There are terrorists out there who are trying to attack the
United States, and many are planning to do it through the aviation system,"
Hawley said. "A calm, alert traveler is one of our best security assets."

In the days after the TSA increased security, more than 10 flights were
diverted or searched, and at least one airport was shut down. On Aug. 16, a
flight from London to Washington Dulles International Airport made an
emergency landing in Boston because an unruly passenger acted up in the
cabin. The woman made references to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told crew
members that she had visited Pakistan and urinated on the cabin's floor,
according to an FBI affidavit. The woman, who is under evaluation for mental
illness, is being held on federal charges of interfering with a flight crew.
She had no connection to terrorism, officials have said.

More security incidents followed. A Delta Air Lines jet was searched after a
flight attendant became suspicious of a passenger who spent too much time in
the restroom and may have tampered with a smoke detector. An American
Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Tampa and was searched after the
crew found that both lavatories were locked.

An airport in West Virginia was evacuated after a woman's glass water bottle
and a container of face cleanser tested positive for explosive residue. The
FBI later determined that the woman had no explosives.

The next week, a Northwest Airlines flight returned to Amsterdam shortly
after takeoff when an U.S. air marshal became suspicious of 12 passengers
who passed around cellphones and ignored orders to keep their seat belts on.
The 12 were detained but released by Dutch authorities, who also said there
was no connection to terrorism.

Then came a series of emergency landings, searches and diverted flights on
Aug. 25.

A plane was extensively inspected after screeners at Houston's international
airport found a stick of dynamite in a bag that a student bought in South
America. The flight continued to Newark -- without the student or his bags
-- and was searched again. An Air Lingus flight from New York to Dublin was
evacuated at an airport in western Ireland after a bomb threat was phoned
in. And a Continental Airlines flight was diverted to El Paso after the
flight crew saw that a lavatory panel was missing. On Monday, a commuter jet
was diverted after someone found a threatening note on board the aircraft.

The news media covered all the incidents extensively.

Security experts said that they were not surprised by the diversions or the
evacuation of the West Virginia airport and that they expect more such
incidents. They blamed television coverage of the coming anniversary of the
Sept. 11 attacks and a surge of inexperienced leisure travelers who might be
nervous. They also worry about people who call in fake bomb threats so they
can watch the chaos they created on television.

"Everybody is going to be watching television about 9/11 and seeing pictures
of the buildings and people jumping from them," said Mike Boyd, a security
consultant. "More and more, they're going to be thinking that they're no
safer than they were, and that is going to make people jumpy."

Boyd and other security experts blamed the public's anxiety partly on the
response to the threat by authorities. Because the passenger screening
system is geared toward finding illicit items, not on identifying suspicious
people, authorities had no choice but to ban all liquids and gels from
passenger cabins, several security experts said.

"We've educated the public to be afraid of things," said Bob Hesselbein, an
airline pilot and chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's national
security committee. "Let's hope they never find a way to weave explosives
into clothing because it's going to be pretty darned embarrassing on an
airplane. . . . We are treating everybody as a potential terrorist, and that
breeds more fear."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company