PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

Late word from Amsterdam is that Schiphol Airport has announced that it will now use full body scanning on all passengers headed for the US. Well, that barn door is closed, right? I feel better already.

Repeat after me, security “experts”: the problem with the Detroit pants bomber was not at the airport. Whatever method of screening you devise, including a complete strip search, can be gotten around by someone, at some time.** As the TerryReport has written many times since 9-11, the first line of defense against terrorism is long before anyone gets to the airport. We have placed far too much emphasis, and faith, in the idea that screening will do the trick. It won’t, as we now see once again.

The failure was within US intelligence agencies and, also, one of leadership and coordination. The leadership failure is perhaps the worst of all. Active, involved management makes certain that all parts of the machine are working together and that something that comes in from the bottom, a tip from the father for example, gets bumped all the way to the top, quickly. As far as we know now, nothing happened when the father reported his concerns other than filing the information into the computer base of potential problem persons. They might as well have written the guy’s name on a piece of paper and thrown it into the ocean.

Cracking down on the “general public” over the long term is the wrong idea. All it does is reassure the more nervous among us and make the traveling experience miserable for everyone. Carefully scanning 5,000 passengers getting on airliners is probably no more useful that careful scanning, at random, the passengers on 500 flights. Now that terrorists know they can find ways around the screening, they are going to be emboldened to try again and again.

We need a massive, full frontal assault on the failure to catch this guy either before he got to the airport or to deny him boarding on the aircraft. President Obama is an eloquent, noted speaker, one of the best we’ve had in any modern White House. Let’s see if he can back up his “speechifying” with some quiet rage to get action and get this things straightened out. Like Bush before him, Obama was off concentrating on other matters when a terrorist crept in during the middle of the night. It is daylight now and time for action.

Doug Terry, 12.30.2009

**The TerryReport can readily identify means by which materials could be smuggled, even through a full body scan or even, heaven forbid, a strip search, but we will never post any details online because it could provide ideas to potential terrorists. They’ve got enough bad ideas of their own.

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