Travel

America's Time Bomb

The 44th president will inherit a number of serious domestic crises, but few are as potentially devastating as our unresolved answer to airport security

By: Nicholas Stein; Photographs: Dan Winters
Published: November 2008   [ Updated: Dec 7, 2008 - 1:15:44 PM ]

As George W. Bush leaves office this January, America's response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, remains, at best, unresolved. Military action in Afghanistan continues, as does our ancillary action in Iraq, with no end in sight. The mastermind behind the crime that killed more than 3,000 Americans, Osama bin Laden, remains at large. The Freedom Tower, designed to replace the World Trade Center, is mired in financial and legislative red tape.

EASY ASSEMBLY Over the course of a weekend, photographer Dan Winters used Google to learn which items to purchase at a local hardware store and convenience store to build a live bomb. While each of these ongoing embarrassments continues to cost the United States power, prestige, and financial security, none of them threatens the safety of the country as significantly as this simple fact: Our nation's airport-security apparatus still suffers from the same weaknesses it did before the Twin Towers were toppled. For this special investigation, Best Life interviewed a wide range of security experts, airline-industry analysts, and current and former officials at the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administraion. They all agree on one thing: We're no safer than we were before 9/11.

Since that catastrophic morning, we've seen the narrowly thwarted attempt of shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001; the female Chechen suicide bombers who successfully brought down two Russian airliners in 2004; the foiled plot by British Muslims to blow up as many as seven United States–bound passenger jets with liquid explosives in 2006 (they were sentenced in late summer of this year); and in September 2007, the foiled attempt by Islamic fundamentalists to target Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport in Germany. “Terrorists in general—and al-Qaeda in particular—have tended to come back to the same targets and the same methods of attack time and time again,” says Erik Dahl, an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and a former research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who spent 21 years as a military intelligence analyst. “And the reason they like to attack airplanes is that it is a relatively easy way to kill a lot of people.”

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, checkpoint security became a central focus of a new branch of the federal government, the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA replaced private screeners employed by the airlines with an army of federal transportation security officers (TSOs); invested billions of dollars on new detection equipment; and much to the chagrin and annoyance of passengers, significantly restricted the items that may be carried onto planes. What exactly have we received in exchange for nearly $30 billion of taxpayers' money, slow-moving security lines, surrendered shoes, and confiscated toothpaste?

“It's all 'security theater,' “ says Bruce Schneier, one of the world's foremost security experts, who actually coined the term in his 2003 book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. “None of these measures are designed to make us any safer. They are only designed to make us feel safer.”

But as you'll see, like most charades, the act has begun to wear thin, and the cracks in our national airport-security system are becoming hard to ignore. Here are the 10 security issues that the next administration must address…before it's too late.

1. Current Screening Methods Can't Locate Improvised Explosive Devices
As hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, an extremely powerful homemade bomb has emerged as the insurgency's weapon of choice: triacetone triperoxide. TATP, as it's known in counterterrorism circles, is made from acetone, hydrogen peroxide, and hydrochloric or sulfuric acid—all easily attainable at your local hardware store and pharmacy. The explosive device is simple to construct (as illustrated by our photographer Dan Winters's live bomb on the previous page), lethal (proved by London's suicide bombings of 2005), and simple to carry past airport security. Indeed, last November, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report stated that two of its investigators “demonstrated that it is possible to bring the components for several IEDs [improvised explosive devices; read: TATP]…through TSA checkpoints and onto airline flights without being challenged by transportation security officers.” GAO investigators obtained the components “at local stores and over the Internet for less than $150” and concealed them “in their carry-on luggage and on their persons.” Chillingly, the report flatly states that “in most cases, [TSOs] appeared to follow TSA procedures and used technology appropriately.”