CONSIDER THE TERRORIST ALARMS issued by the Bush administration in just the last week (May 18-24). Bush administration officials leaked word of an upsurge in threats. Vice President Dick Cheney said another terrorist attack in the United States is “almost certain.” FBI Director Robert Mueller warned a suicide bomber is sure to strike and probably can’t be stopped. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted it’s inevitable terrorists will obtain weapons of mass destruction. And officials said watch out for small planes that might be used by terrorists. Now consider Washington’s response. In Congress, Democrats are talking about the elevation of Tom Ridge, President Bush’s homeland security adviser, to cabinet status. They also want an outside panel, appointed by Congress, to look into intelligence failures prior to September 11. And the White House is interested in splitting the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two separate agencies. Sense a disconnect? The emergency is now, the threat is real and urgent, and terrorists could strike any time, anywhere. Yet the response is backward-looking and bureaucratic. Who actually believes the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security would have the slightest effect in thwarting terrorists in the foreseeable future? No one. What’s worse, there are two steps the administration refuses to take that would have an immediate impact. The first is arming pilots. This is such a simple solution to airline hijacking–such a powerful deterrent–that pilots and passengers overwhelmingly agree it should be done as soon as possible. In fact, practically everyone is on board, except the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the airlines themselves. And their opposition is downright inexplicable. When TSA director John W. Magaw appeared before a Senate committee last week, he was asked by Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia whether the arming of pilots would have made a difference in warding off the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11. “Well, it may have,” Magaw said. He went on to say things are different now. Cockpit doors are locked and air marshals are on some flights. But even a clumsy terrorist might succeed at jimmying the lock, and, besides, it’s not as if the pilot is going to hide in the cockpit while passengers are being systematically executed. If armed, however, the pilot could take on the terrorist. And realizing this, the terrorist might choose to stay away. Unarmed, however, a pilot is tempted to turn the plane over to the terrorist. Sure, it would be better if he resisted. But why put a pilot in that position when arming him with a handgun could prevent the horrible scenario from occurring in the first place? Magaw and the airlines have raised a series of silly arguments against arming pilots. Magaw told the Senate committee last week that the pilot should keep his attention on flying the plane, not on fighting a terrorist. Okay, but what about the co-pilot? He could step in, either to take control of the plane or confront the terrorist. Another fear cited by opponents is that a passenger might be hit by a stray bullet. That might happen, but it should be noted that most commercial pilots (70 percent) are military veterans. In any case, they’d be trained anew in firearm use. Opponents also say a bullet might puncture the plane, causing decompression. Boeing has shot down this fear and, besides, bullets effective only at short range could be used. It’s true a marshal on every flight would be a wonderful deterrent. But it would also be extravagantly expensive and would require the hiring of 50,000 to 100,000 marshals. At the moment, there are roughly 1,000 air marshals available for 35,000 flights a day. And the practice is for marshals to travel in pairs. So even if it were decided to man every plane, it would take months or years before enough marshals were hired, vetted, and trained, leaving most airlines vulnerable in the meantime. The second step is ethnic profiling. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta has adamantly refused to allow it at airports or other transit centers. And while his decision may be politically correct and pleasing to Arab-American grievance groups, it defies common sense. Virtually every bit of intelligence about potential hijackings, before and after September 11, has pointed to Arabs as perpetrators. All 19 of the September 11 hijackers were young Arab males. So why not concentrate on them instead of frisking grandmothers of Norwegian descent? “Scrutinizing Arab air travelers is no different from police departments who regularly narrow their search for criminal suspects on people of a certain race when the witness who reported the crime noted the perpetrator’s color of skin,” says Marc Levin of the American Freedom Center. And it could even be national rather than ethnic profiling, checking out people from countries with a history of funding or harboring terrorists. In the absence of official profiling, the task is, in effect, left to passengers. They have the option of demanding a suspicious passenger be escorted from the plane or leaving themselves. Or more likely choosing not to fly at all. We have a famous case of profiling by passengers and flight attendants that worked: Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Viewing him warily, they grabbed Reid instantly when he tried to light his shoes. Otherwise, the American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami might have gone down in the Atlantic. Security personnel had let Reid on the plane. Magaw and Mineta don’t have to be the final word on arming pilots or profiling passengers. They have a boss–President Bush. On his trip to Europe, Bush has blared one message over and over again: The threat of terrorism is real. Deal with it, he told Europeans. It’s good advice that applies here at home as well. –Fred Barnes, for the Editors
