Terror Plot Heightens Security at U.S. Airports

Growing lines of irritated travelers snaked through U.S. airports Thursday as people waited hours to reach security checkpoints, then had to dump their water bottles, suntan lotion and even toothpaste following the discovery of a terror plot in Britain.

Guards armed with rifles stood watch in several airports, and the governors of California, New York and Massachusetts said they were sending National Guard troops to bolster security.

The hours-old ban on all liquids and gels from carry-on luggage left little option but to throw away juice boxes, bags full of makeup, perfume and bottles of liquor and wine. Baby formula and medicines were exempt but had to be inspected.

"They're ridiculous, but that's part of the price you pay for traveling during a time like this," Julius Ibraheem, 26, a college counselor from Chicago, said as he stared at the long lines leading toward the checkpoints at O'Hare Airport.

At Baltimore/Washington Airport, security workers opened every carry-on bag that passed through one terminal, and all the morning flights there were delayed.

"It's better alive than dead," said Bob Chambers, whose flight from Baltimore to Detroit for business meeting was delayed more than an hour. "It's inconvenient, but we'll make it."

The plot targeted flights from Britain to the United States, particularly to New York, Washington and California on United Airlines, American Airlines and Continental Airlines Inc., a counterterrorism official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

U.S. authorities raised the threat level to "red" for flights from Britain, the first time the highest threat of terrorist attack had been invoked since the system was created. All other flights were under an "orange" alert - one step below red.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the plot appeared to have been engineered by al-Qaida, the terrorist group that hijacked two planes from Boston on Sept. 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York.

Lines were longer than usual at San Francisco International Airport, and red plastic bins were quickly filling up with cups of coffee and water bottles.

Kathy McMahon, 49, of Mill Valley, Calif., was frantically helping her daughter stuff sunscreen, makeup, contact lens solution and other liquids into every corner of her half-dozen suitcases to be checked as she headed off to college.

"I think it's ridiculous," McMahon said. "But we'll do it anyway. What are you going to do?"

At Kennedy Airport in New York, Sonia Gomes De Mesquita, 40, waited nervously to board a British Airways flight home to London. Her family had urged her not to fly.

"You wake up and what are you going to do?" she said. "The flight is today."

She said she checked all her belongings rather than risk having something confiscated. "I even checked in my book."

At Newark Airport in New Jersey, the security checkpoint line for Terminal B, home to most international flights, stretched the entire length of the terminal - roughly six football fields - and was barely moving.

Andra Racibarskas, of Chatham, was trying to get to Michigan to pick up her daughter from camp.

"Checking in was very easy. It took one minute curbside. It took one minute to get my boarding pass," she said. "This line is at least four hours long."

As the morning went on and more passengers became aware of the ban, the long wait in security lines at Atlanta's airport dropped from what at one point became a two-hour delay, airport spokeswoman Felicia Browder said.

Some passengers gave banned items away. Airport officials in Manchester, N.H., officials offered padded envelopes and paid the postage to mail items home.

At the Burlington International Airport in Vermont, travelers weren't happy to be leaving behind souvenir maple syrup jugs. In New Orleans, half-used bottles of hot sauce lay in garbage bins. Bottles of wine sat in the trash in San Francisco, south of California's wine country.