In an embarrassing and frightening story that broke early this week, the Transportation Security Administration proved once again that its agency is, at best, flawed.
An arm of the U.S. government, the TSA demonstrated its incompetence in a situation involving a 20-year-old student who placed box cutters and other banned items aboard two airplanes to allegedly test airport security.
According to an MSNBC news report, Nathaniel Heatwole, a Quaker studying at Guilford College in North Carolina, carried bags containing box cutters, modeling clay made to look like plastic explosives, matches and bleach hidden in sunscreen bottles aboard two Southwest Airlines jets. Heatwole told authorities he went through normal security procedures at airports in Baltimore, Md., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Once aboard the airplanes, he hid the banned items in compartments in bathrooms in the back of the planes.
Heatwole, who has a history of pacifism and civil disobedience typical of the Quaker religion (Heatwole is not a Quaker, but he attends a Quaker college and shares many of the tenets of their religion), also carried weapons onto planes on four earlier occasions, according to an article on Reuters.com. The article notes that on two of these occasions he left items on the planes that were found, while the other two times he took the items away with him.
While the very fact that Heatwole made it on these flights carrying such items is ridiculous enough, it gets worse. Bizarre as it may seem, Heatwole actually e-mailed the TSA Sept. 15 saying he had “information regarding six security breaches” at the Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore-Washington airports between Feb. 7 and Sept. 14.
However, according to the MSNBC report, the TSA did not send the e-mail to the FBI until last Friday. It was then that FBI agents located Heatwole and interviewed him.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, whose department includes the TSA, was quoted in the MSNBC article as saying officials “will go back and look at our protocol” for handling e-mails like those sent by Heatwole. He said officials receive a high volume of e-mails and had decided that Heatwole “wasn’t an imminent threat.”
Meanwhile, discovery of the items last Thursday aboard Southwest planes that landed in New Orleans, La., and Houston, Texas, prompted the government to order the airlines to search the entire U.S. commercial fleet of nearly 6,000 passenger planes, according to the article on Reuters.com.
What this whole messy, embarrassing fiasco will likely lead to is government officials from various agencies pointing fingers at both Heatwole and each other. What Heatwole did is clearly wrong, despite his claim that he was merely trying to point out holes in the airline security system through an act of civil disobedience. His actions created a dangerous situation for everyone on board the airplanes he took the items on, despite even his best intentions. That much is fairly simple.
The greater issue that begs questioning is how in the world someone (indeed, anyone) managed to board an aircraft with such potentially dangerous materials, especially in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, airline industry. Heatwole not only managed to board an airplane carrying a potentially dangerous item, but he managed to do it six different times. That figure it not only ridiculous, but it is absolutely unacceptable.
According to the Reuters.com article, Southwest Chief Financial Officer Gary Kelly said that the incidents demonstrated that the airline industry is “still not perfect” despite “significant improvements.”
Really, Mr. Kelly? What was your first clue?
Clearly, the TSA needs to continue to strive for “significant improvements” in airline security. If one individual can board various aircraft six times while toting banned items, dangerous items are likely being carried aboard aircrafts more frequently than any of us care to admit. While airlines and the federal government continue to grapple with the daunting task of making America’s skies truly flier-friendly again, the extra burdens they face are no excuse for poor airline security.
In fact, Israel, one of the most terror-targeted nations on earth, also has arguably the safest airline on the face of the planet. El Al, Israel’s national airline, has long been touted as the world’s safest airline despite (or maybe because of) its home base in a nation that faces constant threats of terrorism. After decades of terror-free flying, Israel’s government-run airline should serve as a model for the United States to follow.
Israel not only employs the use of government-linked databases, X-rays, metal detectors and other security technology, but it also relies heavily (and perhaps most importantly) on the expertise of well-trained security employees. These trained security officials not only use the technology available to them, but they actually overcome flaws in the system by outsmarting the technology they use and performing their own inspections when things seem awry.
As El Al Security Chief Isaac Yeffet noted before a U.S. House committee on improving air security in November 2001, “X-Ray machines can help in assisting the security people, but can never replace the qualified and well-trained personnel that can determine who is innocent, and who is not, by the interview process.”
Maybe the United States, a nation that places heavy emphasis on technology as the primary line of defense, should step back and take some advice from Israel. The TSA certainly must do something to change the way its agency functions, and it absolutely must redouble its efforts to ensure that the airline industry is safer than the past week’s events have proven.
If it doesn’t, the next Nathaniel Heatwole may actually use the items they bring aboard. And when that happens, the TSA will have only itself to blame.
Kari Bellingham ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.
