America Safer, Still Under Threat After Sept. 11

3/10/02 | Randall Mikkelsen

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With troops at airports and the Secret Service at major sporting events, Americans are living with tighter security six months after the Sept. 11 attacks but face the chill reality of ever-present threats.

President Bush hears constant reminders of potential attacks in his morning security briefings; a standby government is working in hidden bunkers in case of a doomsday scenario, and there remains a daunting list of things to do to protect the public from threats such as a "dirty bomb" that spews radioactive material.

Major tasks include improving inspections at borders to prevent would-be terrorists from slipping through and tightening security at the country's ports -- where millions of huge containers enter annually with minimal scrutiny, and devising an overall plan for domestic protection, analysts said.

"They (Americans) are safer today than they were on Sept. 11 and they can be one hell of a lot safer than they are now -- they must be," said retired Army Col. Ken Allard, a Georgetown University professor on technology and conflict.

The nation is three months into a high state of alert against attacks, with no sign it will be eased.

A January poll for the Pew Research Center showed that 38 percent of Americans worried that they or their families could be a victim of terrorism, down from 53 percent in late September. The number was higher in major East and West Coast cities, where 43 percent felt vulnerable.

"Every morning I wake up and read what they call a threat assessment," Bush said at a fund-raising speech on Monday. "I realize that there is a barbaric enemy that hates what we stand for."

SHORING UP DEFENSES

Since the Sept. 11 attacks by four hijacked airliners killed some 3,000 people in the largest single-day assault on the United States, Bush and the Congress have rushed to prevent further attacks.

The federal government took over responsibility for airline passenger security, placing thousands of National Guard troops at airport checkpoints and putting more marshals on flights.

The Secret Service took charge of security for the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl football championships, which took place without major incident and set a pattern for protection at selected major events in the future.

Bush also created a Homeland Security Office to coordinate civil defense and proposed $38 billion in new spending for domestic security during the 2003 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

That is on top of $11.2 billion already spent to put sky marshals on commercial flights, stockpile vaccines and medicines against germ warfare attacks and install monitoring systems to guard against bioterrorism.

But this is only a down payment, said Phil Anderson, a homeland security expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is the most complex problem the nation has had to address," he said. "It's expensive. It's going to be the price of doing business in the future."

VULNERABLE PORTS

He said ports remain particularly vulnerable, with the U.S. Customs Service able to inspect only two percent of cargo. Large shipping containers could easily hide a portable nuclear bomb, a dirty bomb or even people bent on harm.

In addition, the administration still lacks an overall homeland security strategy, one focusing on identifying and averting potential threats rather than broadly applying preventive measures against even unlikely threats, he said.

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is trying to implement these principles at the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico, where huge delays have crippled commercial traffic, by working on an identification system that can separate trusted, frequent travelers from others bearing closer scrutiny.

He has endorsed a similar system for airline security, which is now characterized by long lines at airports. But critics including John Magaw, Bush's new director of transportation security, have said a trusted flyer system poses an unacceptable risk of failure.

In fact, Magaw last month ordered commercial airlines to close VIP lines for valued business travelers.

Other problems include delays in deploying National Guard troops to help protect the borders with Canada and Mexico.

Ridge acknowledged last week that it was taking too long to put in place. He said at a National Governor's Association meeting he was hoping for the early establishment of a Northern American military command, with close ties to his office, to speed deployments.

Ridge has faced roadblocks carrying out another of his goals, consolidating government agencies dealing with border security, such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

A long-term homeland security strategy would be rolled out around late summer, Ridge spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

The high alert Ridge issued in December, initially intended to last through the holiday season and last month's Winter Olympics, remained in effect. "We will always be under some state of alert for the foreseeable future. We are not going back to pre-Sept. 11," Johndroe said.

The Bush administration confirmed last week that it had activated Cold War-era plans to keep a standby government at work in hidden bunkers outside Washington. They are there, an administration document says, in case of calamities including "terrorist use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) centered in Washington, D.C."

Bush told reporters last week he thought America was safer. "I know we've made America a tougher place to attack than before. It is much harder for somebody to get on an airplane to attack again," he said,

However, he said, "until this country has routed out terrorists wherever they try to hide, we're not safe."

[Grut]

Be nice if we'd actually caught somebody, though. Oh well, at least the hijack threat posed by 93-year-old grannies armed with nail clippers has been pretty much eliminated and there's always John Walker Lindh to get excited about.