COMMENTARY

The Real Threat: Bombs
By Randall Larsen
August 16, 2006; Page A10
Wall Street Journal

Members of Congress and the commentariat have consistently complained that airline passenger screening is only 80% effective in detecting handguns, knives and box-cutters. They demand that we make a significant improvement. But they have it backwards. Instead of a system that is more effective at detecting these unauthorized items, a system that is less so will, counterintuitively, make our airlines more secure.

A majority of security experts agree that the most serious threat involving our transportation system is a 9/11 scenario, with hijackers using a passenger airliner as an instrument of destruction. Yet there is also general agreement that the multiple security layers currently in place—passenger screening (albeit less than perfect), reinforced cockpit doors, armed sky marshals and pilots, in addition to the likelihood of passenger resistance if a plane is taken over in midair—have all but eliminated a repeat of 9/11.

Since the costs, economic and otherwise, of bringing our 80%-effective screening system up to 100% would be enormous, we need to reduce the focus on handguns, knives and box-cutters. Why? Even suicide-bombers want better than one-in-five odds of smuggling these items on board; and they know their chances of pulling off a 9/11-style attack are even worse. Achieving a 100% effective screening system against 9/11 weaponry would require the banning of all carry-on luggage and require a strip search of all passengers, a notion as unnecessary as it is ridiculous. Indeed, even if our current system were only 50% effective, it would still be enough to avoid a 9/11 reprise. Holding airport security hostage to this scenario is a serious mistake.

While the Department of Homeland Security sometimes seems to be a step behind al Qaeda, this is not the case for liquid bombs, the kind the London plotters had in mind. The head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, has been trying to move TSA's focus to this new threat since he took office last year. His initial attempts to do so were met with scorn. "TSA says it is OK to take knives on airplanes." Remember the headlines and guffaws, the lambasting from many in Congress? Of course, that was not what Mr. Hawley really meant. Rather, it was a matter of priorities: Shift the focus away from nail files and grade-school scissors and toward the far greater risk—bombs that are virtually undetectable by the technology currently in use.

He was right; we should make the best use of our limited resources to block this more likely avenue of attack. Foiling suicide passengers will require a new approach to security: psychological profiling; better identity verification systems; better technology to detect bombs in the cargo hold (not all of this cargo is checked luggage). The key is to invest in research and development, instead of rolling out systems that don't work but inspire unrealistic expectations. We've seen enough of that since 9/11. We may remain vulnerable for a good while, but this is a fact of life. Knee-jerk reactions to last week's headlines will make us no more secure. In fact, they will make us less secure by squandering valuable resources that could be put to better use.

Kip Hawley's priorities for TSA were spot on, though he was hamstrung by grandstanding congressmen and the press. Let us give him credit for being one or two steps ahead of the Islamofascist thugs, and let us support his current efforts. When defending passenger airlines, less is more—less focus on the type of weapons people would use to hijack airplanes will mean more security against the real threat: bombs.

Col. Larsen, USAF (Ret.), is director of the Institute for Homeland Security and the author of "Our Own Worst Enemy," forthcoming from Warner Books.