Irrelevant, but irritating

calmom
Tue, 15 Aug 2006 06:55:43 +0000

Can someone explain to me why books and magazines pose a threat?

I think what happened is that the UK agents realized from an intercepted communication that the plane-bombing plot was imminent, and they went to round up their suspects but couldn’t find everyone, and weren’t even sure as to the number of suspects. So even though they said they had prevented the attack via the arrests, they weren’t sure they had everyone in custody, and so they thought it possible that some loose bad guys would go ahead and try something nefarious. They didn’t have time to come up with rules or give everything a lot of thought, so they just decided to ban all carry on luggage out of Heathrow. As draconian as that seemed, it was also the fastest/ most effective way to deal with a situation when they didn’t really know quite what they were looking for. Not only because it ensures that no one is carrying anything hidden onto the plane, but its a heck of a deterrent – once word got out that security was so intense at Heathrow, no wannabe terrorist would have risked an attempt.

It’s not a book or magazine or lipstick that’s dangerous, it’s what may be hidden within a book or magazine or hollowed out lipstick container. My guess is that the officials were about 70% sure that there was going to be some kind of attempt to use a liquid explosive, and 30% worried that they didn’t really have a clue, but something was up and imminent.

Long term, it is silly because if the policy is no-liquids, the terrorists will come up with a different plan. If the policy is no carry-on, they’ll try to plant an explosive of some sort in checked luggage – or they will just come up with better ways to sneak things on, such as secreted somewhere on their body. But short term, it wreaked a very useful havoc on airline boarding procedures, wrecking any possible plans to carry out the planned attack.

The 9/11 commission report contained an account of a planned hijacking in (I think) December 99 that was foiled simply because when Clinton was informed of the intelligence, he ordered a full scale alert at major airports & heightened security; and when the would-be hijackers saw the changes, they abandoned their plans. (The commission report suggested that if the Bush administration had the same ‘hair on fire’ response to the “Bin Laden determined to attack” memo in August of 2001, it is likely that upon observing increased security, the 9/11 hijackers would have been similarly deterred).

So while there is no way to be 100% safe, it is not entirely stupid to create a huge fanfare over security issues, and go way overboard in terms of security, just to scare would-be terrorists off. Obviously that can’t be sustained forever – but at least it disrupts things for awhile.