Thinking Outside the PC Box

For many years now, airplane passengers have been subjected to "politically correct" screening procedures when moving through airports to their boarding gates. Prior to 9/11, the FAA was in charge of the screening procedures in airports. Metal detectors were the most obviously used screening technology used. Carry-on bags were subject to search.

The major threats that were the focus in the early days of screening were hijacking airliners or terrorist bombings, such as the Lockerbie bombing of a PanAm jet over Scotland. After the UnaBomber threatened to blow up a plane leaving LAX in the mid-90's, all passengers were asked if they packed their own bags or whether they were asked to bring anything on board by another person. Everyone was treated the same. There was no profiling.

After 9/11, the TSA was created to take over airline safety and again all passengers were treated the same, even though all 19 hijackers of the planes on 9/11/2001 were male Muslim extremists from the Middle East, who took over the planes with small box cutters that were permitted to be carried on board in those days. After that, all passengers were prohibited from carrying on board any sharp instruments of any size.

Then after the Shoe Bomber tried to blow up a plane by igniting explosive material in his shoes, all passengers have been required to take off their shoes to pass through the X-Ray scanners.

Everyone has been treated the same. There was no profiling of those most likely to pose an extremist Muslim terrorist threat. To assure that no group could complain of discrimination, body searches and pat-downs of passengers have only been carried out randomly. This has
resulted in grandmothers and 3 year olds being randomly selected for more intrusive searches.

Political correctness, however, does not mean that common sense should be ignored, as it was with the attempted Christmas Day bombing by Nigerian Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who paid for a one way ticket from Amsterdam to Detroit with cash and had no checked luggage. Common sense might suggest selecting such a young man for closer screening, even without a government rule specifically requiring such action or having him come up for such screening according to the random counter used for "political correctness".

Since AbdulMutallab spent a considerable amount of time in the restroom just before the plane's descent into Detroit, airplane security rules were immediately changed to prohibit any passenger from going to a restroom within the last hour of the flight. In addition, since AbdulMutallab put a blanket over his lap when he returned from the restroom to hide his attempt at igniting explosives in his underwear, the rules were changed to ban the use of blankets over laps during the last hour. Again, everyone was to be treated the same.

In the first move toward more rational airport screening , the Obama Administration has recently taken a move toward profiling when it announced that passengers traveling from or through 14 countries to the US would be subject to enhanced screening. The 14 countries are Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. All countries but Cuba are mostly Muslim countries, which are either supporters of Islamic jihadist terrorism or have bases of terrorist activity.

Predictably, many of the countries on the list for enhanced screening have filed protests with the US government and organizations representing Muslims in the US have sent complaints to government officials.

While this new screening policy is a refreshing step away from "political correctness" and toward a more rational form of selecting airline passengers for enhanced screening, many commentators have called for profiling individual passengers who fit more closely the type of person who could pose a terrorist threat. Even the new procedures treat every passenger the same who is traveling to the US from or through the 14 countries on the list. Women and children will still be subject to same enhanced scrutiny as Muslim males of the ages of 18 to 40 years old who are traveling from or through the listed countries.

Is smarter profiling of individuals possible? Various media sites, research sites and other websites that discuss the data that would be available to use in profiling potential Islamic extremists show how difficult this task would be. One assumption that has been made by the Obama Administration must be dismissed from the government's thinking on the problem. John Brennan, the President's advisor on counterterrorism, stated in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in August 2009 that President Obama believes that we need "a broader, more accurate understanding of the causes and conditions that help fuel violent extremism, be they in Pakistan and Afghanistan or Somalia and Yemen."

Brennan went to say:

".... just as there is no excuse for the wanton slaughter of innocents, there is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death. Extremist violence and terrorist attacks are therefore often the final murderous manifestation of a long process rooted in hopelessness, humiliation, and hatred." http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-John-Brennan-at-the-Center-for-Strategic-and-International-Studies

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported to have recently made similar remarks after the Christmas Day bombing attempt. But the data gathered by those who have studied terrorists over the years clearly shows that lack of education and job opportunities are not traits shared by those who have led and/or committed terrorist attacks.

The failed Christmas Day 2009 bomber is the son of a successful Nigerian banker who went to an elite university in London and lived in a posh condo while in the UK. The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan about a week later was a physician from Jordan. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 2009 Fort Hood shooter, who killed 13 soldiers and wounded 30 more, was a military psychiatrist, who received his medical education from the US government. Bilal Abdulla, who was found guilty of two charges of conspiracy to commit murder in the three bungled car bombing attempts in Glasgow and London over 24 hours in June 2007, was a medical doctor. His co-conspirator in those attacks in the UK, who died in the Glasgow airport explosion, was Khafeel Ahmed, a doctoral candidate in engineering. David Headley (formerly known as Daood Sayed Gilani), a Pakistani-American Muslim who is charged with plotting to attack a Danish newspaper and helping the 2008 Mumbai plotters by scouting possible sites, is a Chicago-based businessman. Recently, five D.C. area college students were arrested in Pakistan when they tried to join the jihadist movement against American troops in Afghanistan.

The information about the American Muslim extremists mentioned above is set forth in a new study from Duke University and the University of North Carolina, funded by the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice. Information about this study can be found at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/1632/little-to-learn-from.-duke-unc-study-of-anti.

Osama bin Laden himself, the founder and leader of Al Qaeda, is a millionaire son of one of the wealthiest businessmen in Saudi Arabia. His second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an Egyptian physician.

None of the terrorists described above lacked education or job opportunities or suffered poor economic circumstances. Studies found throughout the Internet show that about half of the members of the terrorist organizations are very well educated. Many are medical doctors and engineers with advanced degrees. The other half may come from the poor economic situations as described by the Administration, but such conditions are certainly not typical of most terrorists.

Since these jihadists come from different countries, including the US and other Western countries, and different backgrounds, the only thing they share is an extremist Islamic ideological belief in:

"the desirability of puritanical Salafist Islamic reform in Muslim societies and the necessity of armed resistance in the face of perceived aggression."

Congressional Research Report entitled "Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving Ideology" dated July 9, 2007. http://terrorism.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=terrorism&cdn=newsissues&tm=108&gps=301_146_1030_634&f=11&tt=11&bt=0&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL32759.pdf

Salafism jihadism, as practiced by the followers of Osama bin Laden, has been described as "respect for the sacred [Islamic] texts in their most literal form," with an absolute commitment to violent jihad, "whose number-one target [is] America, perceived as the greatest enemy of the faith." These extremist views also reject democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafism_jihadism

If these radical beliefs are the only common trait that the terrorists really share, it seems very problematic that any effective profiling system for airport screening can be devised based on observable characteristics of people. This means that other forms of behavioral analysis and more efficient screening technology will need to be deployed.

Behavioral analysis has been used by criminal investigators for more than a century. It is commonly considered that the first attempt at "criminal profiling" in trying to define the type of person who might be a likely suspect was developed by Scotland Yard in the Jack the Ripper investigation in 1888. The FBI has been perfecting this technique for over fifty years. The use of this technique in criminal investigations requires developing the relevant facts of the crime involved.

To use this approach in detecting potential terrorists would require more information about likely subjects for enhanced screening than is generally known about airline passengers. As a result, those who have access to any information about likely subjects need to take note of suspicious behavior, such as: young men traveling alone, paying for one way tickets with cash, having traveled through certain countries (as the government has recently done) and with seat assignments near the windows over fuel tanks. There should also be easy airport personnel access to the broadest lists maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center. There seems to be no reason to cull the TIDE list down to smaller lists for use in selecting passengers for closer scrutiny, other than to avoid offending certain people. The alternative is to put everyone through the full-body scanners.

With regard to the use of technology, the Washington Post published a chart recently that illustrates the various technologies available for airport screening at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/12/29/GR2009122900419.html?sid=ST2009122902788

The comments shown in the chart relate to how effective the technology might have been in detecting the explosive material used by the underwear bomber on Christmas Day.

The only technology depicted in the chart that might have found the explosives in Abdulmutallab's underwear on Christmas is the cloth swab that would be swiped over carry-on bags and/or clothing and then put into a machine that detects traces of explosive material. However, the only additional technology that is being widely deployed in airports since the Christmas Day incident is the whole-body imaging machines that are raising privacy concerns.

There is clearly much more thinking "out of the box" that needs to be done by the airport security agencies.

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