Frisks and Risks

To those incensed about the idea of being frisked or scanned before boarding an airplane this Thanksgiving weekend, where where was your outrage over warantless wiretapping, kidnapping, torture and the ordered assassination of American citizens in the name of national security? The protests reek of hypocrisy and most of the people who're indignant would be the same ones screaming bloody murder if someone sneaked a bomb aboard a jetliner and blew it up.

And they're the first to accuse flaming liberals like me of being soft on terrorism when we question the effectiveness and morality of depriving Americans and foreigners of civil liberties and human rights in the name of an endless "war on terror." Of course we can never be 100 percent safe and some security measures are overly intrusive - I would not advocate body cavity searches if terrorists sucessfully smuggled explosives aboard by stashing it in their anuses the way drugs are often smuggled into prisons - but frisking or body screens are reasonable security precautions given the alternative.

The odds of your plane being blown up by a terrorist are infinitesimal, and passengers are far more likely to die in a plane crash due to a lack of maintenance of planes and poorly trained pilots because of profit-hungry airline companies and an appalling lack of goverment oversight due to deregulation that dates back to the 1970s. But there are fanatics who are intent on killing us something I have some small personal perspective on.

While a reporter in Connecticut, Jan and Matt Coyle were gracious enough to allow me to repeatedly interview them about their daughter Tricia, one of 270 people killed in the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. In the Lockerbie case, the bomb was aboard baggage and revealed an appalling lack of airport security which obviously didn't improve enough before 9/11.

Besides the occasional airport indignities, as a journalist, I've been subjected to daily metal detector checks and frisking before entering courthouses. It was often annoying, humiliating and time consuming. But as long as the object of the guards was to prevent me from bringing a weapon into court (courtrooms are often volatile places like when child molesters or murderers face their victims or victim's families) and not just to stop me from setting off the metal detector due to coins and keys, it made sense.

What we need are decently paid Transportation Security Administration personnel who are well trained and sensitive to the dignity and privacy concerns of travelers along with well trained air marshals. Combine that with intelligence agencies that coordinate instead of engaging the the turf battles that allowed the 9/11 hijackings so the terrorists don't get to the airport. And if they do, include reasonable profiling such as singling out citizens from countries like Saudia Arabia where 15 of the 19 hijackers came from for additional questioning, but not harassment.

But those steps would cost more money. It would mean higher airfares and taxes. And the same people bellyaching about a minor inconvenience would be complaining about higher costs.

Maybe the solution is to offer the option of a "no-frills, no-frisks" airline for those who want to save time and money, but are willing to risk life and limb. You take your ticket and take your chances.

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