The 'Bikini Principle' and Airport Security
March 21, 2006 — -- Last Friday, the news broke that 21 U.S. airport screening checkpoints had failed to detect test packages of chemicals and other materials that could be used to make an improvised explosive device.
To the credit of just about everyone, the public response has been metered and thoughtful, but there is no denying that the news sent a shudder running through all of us who fly and raised a worrisome question: In the quest to make sure the number of flying terrorists is zero, is our new airport security system effective or not?
Well, first a quick history, if you please.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, airport security screening in the United States was somewhere between a fraud and a very sick joke. Administered by a motley crew of poorly educated people, many of whom could not even functionally speak American English, screenings were performed by minimum wage workers who spent their time harassing legitimate travelers while doing next to nothing to stop dangerous items -- let alone dangerous people. So poor were the systems and rules used by the bottom-feeding contractors who ran the security checkpoints, that getting 19 mass murderers through such illusory barriers with lethal box cutters on Sept. 11 proved the easiest part of the enemy's task.
It's important to remember this harsh truth when we take the measure of any perceived failure by today's new federal force of airport screeners. In short, even though the system isn't perfect, we've come light years, and today we actually have a professional screening system with the ability and the intelligence to correct itself when needed.
'The Bikini Principle'
Although no one in Washington routinely uses the term "Bikini Principle" in public comments, it essentially describes our overall aviation defense philosophy: When you provide strategic coverage of the most important vulnerabilities, you've already won most of the battle.
None of the legislators or experts who helped create the Transportation Security Administration expected the new screening force to be a 100 percent perfect barrier against a would-be terrorist or murderer slipping through and onto a commercial jet with some sort of lethal weapon. Instead, the goal was realistic: Construct a screening system that provides substantial assurance to would-be hijackers or other terrorists that the chances for successfully slipping through with a weapon or a bomb are far too slim to justify the attempt. As I've pointed out before in this forum, the 9/11 criminals who attacked us worked hard for years to keep their chances of success at somewhere above 90 percent. But now, such assurance of success have been utterly destroyed by the post-9/11 changes made in the system.
Our prime aim in creating TSA was denying a terror team access to the controls of an aircraft. With hardened cockpit doors, vastly different crew training and procedures, the post-9/11 refusal of passengers to tolerate a suicidal takeover, and many other new barriers, we've essentially succeeded, even when one or more of those barriers doesn't work perfectly. In that quest (denial of cockpit access), TSA screening is only one of many defense measures.
However, the threat of suicide bombers who simply want to maim and kill (whether in flight or on the ground) is a major and immediate threat in the airport as well as the aircraft. Because the most important barrier to a would-be bomber is denying him or her the chance to get the explosive materials past the TSA checkpoints, that function now becomes more than just one defense shield in a system of barriers. Instead, it becomes a paramount function that has to aim at being a 100 percent barrier to bomb-making materials.
That's why last week's revelation is very disturbing. It spotlights a systemic hole in the security firewall, and one the TSA may be inadequately equipped to quickly close. In other words, this doesn't suggest so much a failure of individual TSA screeners or managers as it suggests a failure to design the right system of equipment and procedures to reliably detect the chemicals and compounds that could make an IED. The good news is that we now have an excellent force of hardworking and dedicated people wearing TSA patches who can quickly be retrained.
Ultimately, though, it's also important to remember that we face an enemy that wants nothing logical or tangible and seeks only to murder and destroy. Since that enemy will undoubtedly adapt its methods to test every barrier, our defense systems -- including airport defenses -- cannot remain static, no matter how effective they seem to be at any given time.
Everything TSA does, in other words, has to be considered a work in progress, and if we've now found a substantial hole in the barrier against IEDs, the fact that WE found it first and are moving rapidly to fill it is something to applaud.