The Things He Carried

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
Date: November 15, 2008 8:02:24 AM EST
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Subject: The Things He Carried


November 2008
The Atlantic

Airport security in America is a sham-"security theater" designed to
make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones
can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of
prohibited items-as our correspondent did with ease.

by Jeffrey Goldberg
The Things He Carried

If I were a terrorist, and I'm not, but if I were a terrorist-a
frosty, tough-like-Chuck-Norris terrorist, say a C-title jihadist
with Hezbollah or, more likely, a donkey-work operative with the
Judean People's Front-I would not do what I did in the bathroom of
the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, which was to place
myself in front of a sink in open view of the male American flying
public and ostentatiously rip up a sheaf of counterfeit boarding
passes that had been created for me by a frenetic and acerbic
security expert named Bruce Schneier. He had made these boarding
passes in his sophisticated underground forgery works, which consists
of a Sony Vaio laptop and an HP LaserJet printer, in order to prove
that the Transportation Security Administration, which is meant to
protect American aviation from al-Qaeda, represents an egregious
waste of tax dollars, dollars that could otherwise be used to catch
terrorists before they arrive at the Minneapolis-St. Paul
International Airport, by which time it is, generally speaking, too
late.

I could have ripped up these counterfeit boarding passes in the
privacy of a toilet stall, but I chose not to, partly because this
was the renowned Senator Larry Craig Memorial Wide-Stance Bathroom,
and since the commencement of the Global War on Terror this
particular bathroom has been patrolled by security officials trying
to protect it from gay sex, and partly because I wanted to see
whether my fellow passengers would report me to the TSA for acting
suspiciously in a public bathroom. No one did, thus thwarting, yet
again, my plans to get arrested, or at least be the recipient of a
thorough sweating by the FBI, for dubious behavior in a large
American airport. Suspicious that the measures put in place after the
attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost
entirely for show-security theater is the term of art-I have for some
time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness. Because
the TSA's security regimen seems to be mainly thing-based-most of its
44,500 airport officers are assigned to truffle through carry-on bags
for things like guns, bombs, three-ounce tubes of anthrax, Crest
toothpaste, nail clippers, Snapple, and so on-I focused my efforts on
bringing bad things through security in many different airports,
primarily my home airport, Washington's Reagan National, the one
situated approximately 17 feet from the Pentagon, but also in Los
Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, and at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton
International Airport (which is where I came closest to arousing at
least a modest level of suspicion, receiving a symbolic pat-down-all
frisks that avoid the sensitive regions are by definition
symbolic-and one question about the presence of a Leatherman
Multi-Tool in my pocket; said Leatherman was confiscated and is now,
I hope, living with the loving family of a TSA employee). And because
I have a fair amount of experience reporting on terrorists, and
because terrorist groups produce large quantities of branded
knickknacks, I've amassed an inspiring collection of al-Qaeda
T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable
Yasir Arafat dolls (really). All these things I've carried with me
through airports across the country. I've also carried, at various
times: pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust
masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers,
eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji
Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters. I was selected
for secondary screening four times-out of dozens of passages through
security checkpoints-during this extended experiment. At one
screening, I was relieved of a pair of nail clippers; during another,
a can of shaving cream.

During one secondary inspection, at O'Hare International Airport in
Chicago, I was wearing under my shirt a spectacular, only-in-America
device called a "Beerbelly," a neoprene sling that holds a
polyurethane bladder and drinking tube. The Beerbelly, designed
originally to sneak alcohol-up to 80 ounces-into football games, can
quite obviously be used to sneak up to 80 ounces of liquid through
airport security. (The company that manufactures the Beerbelly also
makes something called a "Winerack," a bra that holds up to 25 ounces
of booze and is recommended, according to the company's Web site, for
PTA meetings.) My Beerbelly, which fit comfortably over my beer
belly, contained two cans' worth of Bud Light at the time of the
inspection. It went undetected. The eight-ounce bottle of water in my
carry-on bag, however, was seized by the federal government.

On another occasion, at LaGuardia, in New York, the
transportation-security officer in charge of my secondary screening
emptied my carry-on bag of nearly everything it contained, including
a yellow, three-foot-by-four-foot Hezbollah flag, purchased at a
Hezbollah gift shop in south Lebanon. The flag features, as its
charming main image, an upraised fist clutching an AK-47 automatic
rifle. Atop the rifle is a line of Arabic writing that reads Then
surely the party of God are they who will be triumphant. The officer
took the flag and spread it out on the inspection table. She finished
her inspection, gave me back my flag, and told me I could go. I said,
"That's a Hezbollah flag." She said, "Uh-huh." Not "Uh-huh, I've been
trained to recognize the symbols of anti-American terror groups, but
after careful inspection of your physical person, your behavior, and
your last name, I've come to the conclusion that you are not a Bekaa
Valley-trained threat to the United States commercial aviation
system," but "Uh-huh, I'm going on break, why are you talking to me?"

...

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security





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