PHOTOS, PAGE 1

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

This is a posting offered to the NY Times online 5.4.10, with added underlining and some additional thoughts.

Something is wrong, perhaps many things, with America's intelligence operations in regard to terrorism. You might say, well, everyone knows this, but why can't we change it, pronto?

Europe is much better at fighting terrorism and England is a particular example. They are doing many things right. For one thing, they realize that putting people through prison like screening at airports won't stop terrorism and is, in many ways, largely a cosmetic step to reassure the traveling public that vigilance is being used.

It is very common for travelers in Europe to be questioned, mildly, about where they are going and why. The intention is not to intimidate, but to watch closely for the travelers reaction. Here, we rely on top down management systems where the person who might actually meet a terrorist during his travels has no discretion, other than to report. We rely on “experts” to set up systems and then create drones to operate them.

I have a business associate who, somehow, made it onto a low level watch list in the UK. Several years ago, when his plane arrived at Heathrow, someone from British security was there when the doors of the plane were opened. He was asked if he was so and so (he said yes) and he was asked a couple of quick questions and allowed to go on his way. That was it, but an important security step had been taken (even if the person was no threat).

What does this say? First, the agent obviously had a picture of the man, so he knew whom to stop and question. Second, he knew which section of the plane he was sitting in, because he was at the ready, waiting by the door likely to be used. Overall, it shows the Brits were gathering and organizing information about this person. Had he shown any apparent psychological signs of stress, the agent would have radioed to immigration to pull my associate aside for further questioning.

Let me add that this man was nothing more than a straight forward business person with minimal business ties to part of the middle-east. Those limited contacts, all above  board, had evidently gotten him on the lowest level "watch list". This is an example of careful vigilance.

We, in the United States, need to study what they are doing in Europe instead of trying to make every third        ex-chief of police an "international security expert". We need to study what they do in Israel, too, and apply the best lessons here. We need to put our billions of dollars of investigative powers where they are needed, not into patting down infants in diapers (I've have seen this with my own eyes) and making sure that 83 year old great grandmothers don't take a nail clipper with them on an aircraft.

As a nation, we went into a state of national panic after    9-11, 2001. This panic was used, and is still being used, to justify "anything goes" in terms of security measures at airports, as well as to kick-start two expensive and deadly wars in which we are still engaged almost a decade later.

The eventual success of one of these apparently ad hoc terrorist attacks, like the one that failed over the weekend, is a dead certainty. It is only a matter of time and place and my best guess would be within the next 24 months, if not a lot sooner.

We were very lucky over the weekend and we were lucky with the Christmas pants bomber. We need to move our luck closer to the danger and stop these people from acting.The Times Square bomber should have been arrested in Pakistan or upon his return to the US.

Changing how we operate the vast security system will not be easy. It requires our government to recognize the seriousness of its misdirected efforts and leadership to, first, point in the right direction and, most importantly, consistent follow up to see that good plans are carried out.  It requires a recognition that we have sped headlong into the wrong direction and need to change almost everything. Otherwise, we will see not only successful smaller attacks, but successful large ones as well.

Doug Terry

CONTACT THE TERRYREPORT

       HOME PAGE

end