The Real Threat of Terrorism
On September 11, 2001 nearly 3,000 people were murdered by terrorists in the largest single attack upon the United States by terrorists in modern times. When people think of terrorism, they think of this attack, the bombing in Oklahoma City, the first attack on the World Trade Center. The news media fails to point out the terrorist attacks that occur nearly monthly, much smaller, but much more frequent.
The events of September 11 caused the American people to react, to demand that their government act in its primary duty, to protect and defend the United States. It has done so, at home and abroad. My intention in this essay is to point out my concerns with those activities here at home. My premise is this: The United States is preparing to fight a non-existent foe while constant and recurring terrorism goes undefeated and unprepared for.
The cornucopia that is our Federal government has opened up and wealth is pouring out of Washington to the states and localities to prepare for terrorism and terrorist attacks. So, what are the attacks that the government thinks will happen?
How many people have to remove their shoes at airports these days? One guy, a half demented convert to Islam was caught with a bomb in his shoe. Richard Reid was subdued by airline personnel and passengers on board a flight from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001. He has been tried, convicted and sent to prison. He is the only person ever found with a bomb in his shoe on an airline. Since the date he was arrested, hundreds of millions of airline passengers have had to remove their shoes for inspection. I personally know a woman who was wearing open toed sandals who underwent this inspection. I submit that the likelihood of a shoebomber is vanishingly small, and that the time, money and effort devoted to these inspections is a complete waste when compared against the potential threat.
A young man was recently arrested for placing box cutters and other materials on several planes that he had access to at a hub airport, where cleaning and maintenance is performed. The young man wrote the authorities to tell them his plans, then carried out the actions. Nathaniel Heatwole has been arrested, and will face Federal prosecution for his scheme. His case illustrates two thing. First, all the precautions taken for passengers and crew do not matter if the ground crews and support personnel are not also inspected. Secondly, the Federal Government is willing to spend millions of dollars and thousands of man hours to prevent box cutters from getting on aircraft. Is there anyone flying on a plane today who honestly believes that it could be hijacked by someone with a box cutter? The planes hijacked on September 11 were able to be used as tools for the murders solely because the crews were instructed to cooperate with the hijackers. That the hijackers had box cutters was incidental to the reality. Box cutters aren’t much of a weapon against forty, eighty, a hundred angry airline passengers and crew. The September 11 hijackings succeeded because the crew and passengers cooperated with their murderers in three of the four cases. Eliminate that cooperation, as I believe the new instructions state, and the potential for another similar scenario become markedly reduced. The hunt for box cutters is a waste of effort.
The Transportation Security Agency is devoting much time and effort to preventing past actions such as box cutter hijackings and shoe bombs. In fact, the likelihood of either ever being reenacted is slim, and other threats are not being addressed. The Customs Service, for example, has raided a number of airports and arrested hundreds of illegal aliens working in areas where they have almost unlimited access to planes. The arrest of Nathaniel Heatwole illustrates the vulnerabilities of that area. Yet a wholesale program to correct these security issues has not been undertaken by the TSA.
The TSA issues press releases detailing the quantities of “weapons” that it has confiscated from airline passengers, including at least one rotary saw. Yet, all this illustrates is how lax security was before September 11, not that there was any threat. Airline hijackings in the United States were nearly non-existent for the decade prior to 2001, despite the demonstrable evidence that loads of weapons and potential weapons were being carried by passengers unknown to the government and the airlines. I have to ask: Is the threat from hijacking reduced by all this money expended, all the hassle of passengers, and all the man-hours by law enforcement? The only two measures that would have prevented September 11 involved telling airline crews to stop cooperating with hijackers (cost=$0), and new cockpit doors (cost < $1,500 per plane). Everything else is a false pursuit of non-existent issues and false security.
Moving on from the airlines, we come to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), or as I call them Weapons of Mass Governmental Hysteria.
Bigger brains than I are devoting tons of governmental money, man hours, effort, etc. to preparing us for a WMD attack. And, little old me has gotten nearly tossed out of more than one training class and government sponsored seminar for suggesting that the risks are far less than they are being portrayed.
Let us begin by assessing the realism of the threat. When we look at the terrorist campaigns around the world, the Intifada in Israel for example, we find the near complete lack of use by terrorist of anything remotely resembling what we call WMD. From a terrorist’s point of view, it is far cheaper and easier to use low tech methods of attack, like ramming a jet into a building, or loading a truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel and blowing it up. Over and over and over again, that’s what terrorists do.
The few recorded instances of WMD attack in the United States (and, yes, they do exist) involve small cult-like groups and very limited success. A cult in Oregon a few years ago used botulism at a salad bar to attempt to influence a local election. Several “white power” groups have been caught with the limited fixings for poison type WMD. These are the rare exceptions to the terrorism that occurs world-wide and in the United States all the time.
One arrest has been made in a series of actions designed to damage or bring down high tension electric lines in the Northwest. The ALF / ELF has conducted a number of actions, releasing captive animals, arsons and threatened bombings. The fringer Right-to-Life people have engaged in bombings and assassinations. These happen far more frequently than any alleged WMD threat.
The anthrax attack from the Fall of 2001 are a perfect example of why WMD is less of a threat than many experts maintain. Anthrax is not contagious. To kill thousands, thousands have to be exposed to the high levels of the spores required for infection. In the twenty or so known cases, about 30% were fatal. The CDC feels that another 50 total cases were prevented by the use of antibiotics. Hardly a catastrophe for America though very serious for those that died. Disease is a poor choice as a way to kill modern man. Biowar scenarios have always postulated a contagious illness, usually airborne, and hardy (able to survive in the varied climates of this country). There may be such an illness, hidden away in some military vault. This type of illness does not exist in nature. It has to be made, and that requires some serious laboratory work. It’s not something you do in your basement. It’s expensive, dangerous for those conducting the work, difficult to transport safely and effectively, and not very easy to spread.
The FBI, to date, has failed to determine who conducted the anthrax attack. They have pursued, single mindedly, Richard Hatfill. There exists some evidence that this could be related to an overseas source, but the FBI ruled out any possibility of a foreign connection nearly from the beginning. Other than irradiating mail, nothing has been done that would prevent a second such attack.
In addition, the CDC and the FBI have failed to explain the isolated and unrelated anthrax deaths of Kathy T. Nguyen and Ottilie Lundgren. Both ladies had no direct exposure to any of the letters. The best notion that the experts can come up with is that they were exposed by mail that had been exposed to the original letters. Nonsense! The limited number of actual infections due to direct exposure to the letters suggests that the anthrax was not that infectious. To then suggest that two people, and only two people were fatally exposed to infectious levels of anthrax spores through second or third hand exposure is laughable. If there were enough anthrax spores in the general mail to kill these two women, how come no one else got infected? Surely there had to be dozens of immunocompromised individuals, easily infected, exposed to the same quantities of spores as these two ladies. No, there is far more to this story, and the FBI may have thoroughly mucked up the trail, and failed in its investigation.
In Japan, the Aum Cult carried out nearly ten attempts to release WMD, including several attempts to disburse anthrax. Other than the final instance, all were unsuccessful. The Aum Cult carried out a Sarin Gas attack in the Tokyo subway in March 1995. 12 people dies and about 5,000 were injured. Most of the injuries and deaths were due to the complete lack of preventive measures by Japanese police and EMS. No attempt was made to contain the situation, and hundreds were contaminated by people allowed to flee uncontrolled from the scene. Despite the clear evidence that a hazardous material was involve, EMS workers failed to use any sort of protection and several died. This was, at its heart, a hazardous material incident, such as Tokyo sees several times daily. The disaster was caused by the response, not the attack.
Chemical terrorism… it conjures up photos of the villages of southern Iraq where Saddam gassed thousands of his own people, or the men from WW I who were gassed at the front. Poison gases, including nerve gases, may not be all that hard to create. They are hard to handle and hard to store in quantity. You risk gassing yourself long before you get to use it in an act of terrorism. The delivery of poison gas that we have seen historically was with artillery or specially modified aircraft. You can be sure that a group of Middle Eastern men dragging a howitzer into a park WILL be noticed. And crop dusters are not good delivery vehicles for most gasses, not without killing the pilot before he even gets off the ground.
Right now, the potential of a chemical or biological attack on the United States exists. It has already occurred and may again. Yet the facts show that all such attacks were small, and not nearly as deadly or effective as the experts would suggest.
Nuclear weapons could be a threat. Right now, we know who has them. An atomic bomb, if set off, would leave enough of a signature that we could determine the origin of the bomb. And that nation would cease to exist. Period. Opportunity exist to smuggle such a weapon into the United States, and that fact has been repeatedly pointed out. As far as I can determine, the inspection of cargo and shipping into the United States remains a low priority. As it should, because, here again, other terrorist acts are actually being carried out because they are easier, cheaper, and safer to perform.
I discussed the “dirty” bomb in this blog post on February 14. My conclusion: If you’re not blown up by the bomb, take a shower. It’s not that dangerous.
I’d like to talk about smallpox. The way the Federal Government has approached this issue defines precisely my disagreements with many of the experts on WMD.
Where did the money go?
Last spring, the Bush administration distributed $918 million to state health departments for homeland security, money it says could defray smallpox vaccination costs.
“We’re absolutely committed to working with the states to make this work efficiently and safely, said Tom Skinner, spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “There are a lot of dollar figures out there, some of which I believe do not take into account the infrastructure that’s been put in place.”
But that infusion of cash came with extensive demands, said Michael Richardson, acting health director for the District of Columbia. To qualify for the money, states and large cities such as the District submitted detailed plans for improving computer systems, training medical workers and adding emergency hospital beds.
“The word smallpox wasn’t even mentioned,” he said. The $10 million given to the city was spent stockpiling medications, hiring epidemiologists and other bioterrorism experts and upgrading the public health laboratory. Richardson said he does not know where the District will find the $3.6 million needed to inoculate 10,000 to 20,000 emergency personnel over and above the first group of 3,000 health care workers.
The money was used to add to existing bureaucracies, add personnel, new equipment, and to enlarge the little kingdoms of bureaucrats everywhere. Meanwhile, the EMT’s, Emergency Department docs and nurses, firefighters, and police, as well as the family physicians and their employees, who would see the cases BEFORE anyone else, got bumped to the bottom of the list for vaccinations, and now the list has been torn up.
Smallpox is no longer the “cause du jour” and support for prevention efforts has disappeared.
Is it still a threat? Remotely. Was the threat addressed? Not at all.
As I have pointed out to public health officials, if there is a major epidemic, and smallpox is a good example, they won’t need new computers or equipment. All of their existing resources will be devoted to the epidemic. All the folks handling VD notifications, or teen pregnancy prevention, or gun violence, will now have the epidemic as job one. Guess what? You don’t need to expand your kingdom for that.
On the other hand, if public health is just about VD notification, teen pregnancy prevention and gun violence, as well as bigger and better everything, then you’ve done well for yourselves.
West Nile virus is an epidemic in this country. Hawaii suffers from a dengue fever epidemic. Every year influenza kills tens of thousands, and costs the economy hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity. Do you feel safer because your public health department bought a new computer? I don’t.
SARS is coming back. Will the new office furniture help prevent deaths from that illness?
So, here’s my summation. The government is spending its resources trying to prevent the last attack, or to prevent attacks that will never occur. Terrorism occurs frequently within the United States and little is being done to address the existing acts of terrorism. I maintain that our focus and our resources are poorly committed to fight the things that are now happening, that are killing Americans today, that are costing Americans hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly.
The facts about WMD attacks that have occurred suggest that such attack kill far fewer than the experts would suggest, are much more difficult to conduct, and are very, very rare when compared to the vast numbers of terrorist attacks as a whole. We should spend far more time worrying about the stolen LP gas truck, or the Piper Cherokee left with its keys in it at a private flying club that the chance that al Qaeda will set of an atomic bomb on Manhattan.
Let’s be cold and calculating for a moment. Every Israeli knows someone killed or hurt in a terrorist incident. In order for that to be the case here, we would have had perhaps 1.5 million killed or injured in the last thirty years, and we are far from that figure. The truth is that we have had little to fear and we continue to have little to fear. And let us remember, that as Americans, we are as safe as we were on September 10, and as free. And… if we want to beat Bin Laden and all his evil kind, we must stay free, and free of fear. They can hurt us, but they cannot beat us. We were here before them, and we will be here after they lie in cold, unmarked graves.
