RETHINKING SECURITY
Recommendations from a former Northwest security chief
By John Boyce, Contributing Editor
November/December 2001
SAN ANTONIO, TX — Douglas R. Laird says terrorists are not stupid. He emphasized in an address to the 47th Annual Seminar of the American Society for Industrial Security, and in subsequent interviews, that while he guesses "that we’ve seen the last of the aviation terrorist attacks," he can’t guarantee that condition will hold if we aren’t vigilant.
Laird, a retired U.S. Secret Service agent,
is the former Security Director for Northwest Airlines and now vice president
of International Consulting Services, a security consulting firm headquartered
in Minnetonka, MN.
Noting the increased security at U.S. airports
following the attack and the increased presence of law enforcement and
National Guard troops, just like during the Gulf War in 1991, Laird, while
not endorsing guards and police as a panacea, draws a parallel to what
happened ten years ago.
"During the Gulf War," Laird says,
"there were close to 400 incidents of sabotage directed at American
institutions overseas. Of those 400 events —bombings, mostly —
none occurred at airports. The reason was that there was a heavy concentration
of police (at airports). The terrorists are not stupid. They went down
and blew up the city ticket offices. They study the system and they go
after the soft target. That’s what has people petrified now; our
government has no idea what the target is. You can’t protect everything."
"Airlines are tempting targets,"
says Peter Probst, an authority on terrorism and another speaker at the
seminar. If terrorists can hit airlines, he says, they can create fear
of flying, disrupt the economy, perhaps tip it into recession, erode public
trust of the government, and so on. That’s the terrorists’ goal.
While Laird and Probst think that subsequent
terror attacks are almost a certainty, they don’t think they will
be coming through aviation simply because of the heightened security at
airports. At least while the country is on high alert. But, Laird says,
the history of security in this country indicates that it is event-driven;
the country reacts to events such as those on September 11. However, any
relaxation of that security in aviation would have terrorists again looking
for the "soft spot."
UNDERSTANDING WHAT IT TAKES
Planning for Disaster
SAN ANTONIO, TX — Planning for disaster is neither a pleasant nor an easy thing to do but businesses must do it if they are to foil or at least survive a terror attack.
That’s the message from John Magaw,
acting executive director of the Office of National Preparedness within
the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in his presentation at the
47th Annual Seminar and Exhibit of the American Society for Industrial
Security here.
"Four things need to be done [by
businesses]," Magaw says. "One, plan. That’s difficult
because in business [planning] is taking out and not putting in. But
you pay me now or you pay me later.
"Two, training. It’s difficult
to get people away from what they’re doing today to train for
something that might happen.
"Three, you have to have training
exercises. Four, equipment. Gas masks and things like that have to
be purchased and you have to train with them.
Magaw points out the importance of setting
up a succession plan, should executives of companies not be available
in an emergency. Saying that 12 CEOs or presidents died in the World
Trade Center attack, Magaw asks rhetorically, "Do we have a succession
plan? Where do we set up [business] again?’’ Magaw also
suggests an incident command center should be planned for in the event
of an emergency.
Looking for what went wrong on September
11, Laird says there was plenty of blame to go around. "The FAA failed
because they set the (regulatory) bar at the wrong level to meet the threat,"
he says. "Intelligence agencies failed because they had no information;
law enforcement failed because they had people in custody that were involved
and never realized what the implications were. I mean there’s enough
blame for everybody."
But rather than spend a lot of time assigning
blame, Laird prefers to look at the current state of airport security
and the American public’s role in it. He offers some ideas on how
security could be improved and who should pay for it.
Laird says that Americans don’t understand
what airport security really is. They don’t understand that the height
of the bar that the FAA sets will have to be raised to what has previously
been an unacceptable level. The public is going to have to endure more
inconvenience — longer waits, body searches, etc. — than it
is used to and is going to have to pay for it. He doesn’t agree that
the FAA should take over screening at U.S. airports.
"I am a proponent of the European model
(of airport security)," Laird says. "You hear it in the news
all the time about doing it the European way but people don’t understand
what the European way is.
"In Europe, as in the United States,
the screening is done by private companies. In fact, the companies that
do the screening in Europe do the screening in the United States. The
difference is the security bar is set at a different level. It’s
not that they (the companies) don’t know how to do security, it’s
just that the security they do in the U.S. is prescribed by the FAA.
"So what are we going to gain by letting
the FAA take over security? I don’t think we gain anything. What
has to happen, as in the rest of the world, the FAA needs to write the
regulations, then it’s up to the private companies to carry out the
screening function to meet the level. Then there should be another government
entity — not the FAA, but from Justice [Department] or Homeland Security,
or somewhere — that’s independent of the FAA and makes the thing
work. You cannot have a situation where you write the regulation and you
enforce the regulation, because there’s a conflict of interest. I
can’t think of another country in the world where it’s done
by the same agency within government.’’
PAYING THE BILL
Security costs money — lots of money.
That, according to Laird and others, is the seed bed for the blossoming
of problems. Who pays? The government? The airlines? The passengers? Currently,
the government, through providing technology and oversight, and the airlines,
through hiring screening companies, share the cost of security at airports.
Of course, the passengers pay indirectly through their ticket prices.
For Laird, aviation security should not
be a bottom line item. The airlines, for instance, should not have to
pay for the security personnel because market forces demand that they
pay as little as possible, and paying as little as possible is not the
way to hire and retain a well-trained cadre of screeners.
Laird highlights his point by noting the
irony of how the airlines have responded to September 11. The airlines,
obviously, were hit hard economically by the public’s general fear
of flying following the attack and they have cut thousands of jobs in
an attempt to compensate. Congress stepped in with a $15 billion bailout
plan.
However, Laird says, "As I speak, the
airlines are going to receive a $15 billion bailout but they are systematically
eliminating people that work in their security departments. They are eliminating
hazardous goods officers, cutting security employees such as security
coordinators."
Laird disputes the airlines’ current
claim that they never wanted to handle security — in the early ’70s,
he says, the airlines fought to do it — but nonetheless, "The
airlines, in my opinion, should never have been allowed to take it in
the first place because it’s a bottom line item." If, as the
Gore Commission said, the potential for terrorist attacks is a national
security issue, why are the airlines paying for national security?, Laird
asks.
Convinced that as long as airlines have
to pay the system won’t improve, Laird suggests that passengers pay
for their own security with a security surcharge tacked on to the price
of the ticket.
"The eternal question is always cost,"
Laird says. "There has been talk of a security surcharge (for passengers).
I think that makes a lot of sense.’’
In fact, Laird says, when he was at Northwest
Airlines in the early ’90s, the airline proposed to the FAA that
it be allowed to create a small surcharge by taking its number of passengers
and dividing that number into the security budget — $32 million in
1991.
Explains Laird, "We would charge each
passenger 23 cents. That 23 cents would go into an aviation trust fund
and at the end of the year, if it cost us more than $32 million, I’d
eat it. If there was less than $32 million, I would give the excess to
the FAA for R&D." The proposal died in bureaucracy.
THE HUMAN FACTOR
A Call for Universal Access
SAN ANTONIO, TX — If we want to
be sure that people who enter secure or sterile areas at all U.S.
airports are good risks for being there, we should have a national
standard for establishing the credentials for being there.
So says Douglas R. Laird, a retired
U.S. Secret Service agent, former Security Director for Northwest
Airlines and now vice president of International Con-sulting Services,
a security consulting firm headquartered in Minnetonka, MN.
As it is, Laird says, each airport has
its own criteria for certifying access to secure areas. "We should
have universal access," Laird says, "for airline employees,
pilots, flight attendants, mechanics so that they have an ID card
that is recognizable nationwide.
"I think there should be a national
standard enforced by the FAA.’’
Although there are a multitude of issues
that need to be addressed in permanently strengthening aviation security
in the U.S., the core issue has to do with human factors, Laird says.
In response to the potential for terror in the air, the U.S. has developed
some of the most sophisticated technology for detecting explosives and
trace elements in the world. However, it is humans who have to operate
and monitor that technology and that is an area that has been neglected.
"Nobody has done much with human factors,"
Laird says. "How much you pay and that sort of thing. We, as a society,
like technology and so most of what FAA has done has been on the technology
side.... We spend more money by putting in more equipment, but at the
end of the day, the most important function is human factors.’’
Turnover of airport security screeners has
reached as much as 400 percent at some airports and averaged 126 percent
per year in the late ’90s, according to an FAA survey. There are,
of course, many elements to the reason for that kind of turnover, including
working conditions and boredom, but the primary element is low compensation
for screeners. Laird doesn’t give a complete answer to the turnover
problem, but suggests that in some measure the job should be professionalized.
Harking back to the European model, Laird
thinks the FAA should license security screening companies and license
the individual screeners. But perhaps most important, he continues, the
screeners should be paid a living wage.
Laird says of screening, "I don’t
think there is anybody in this room, with the extreme boredom, that would
last more than six hours. You don’t pay me enough to do this job.
The stress is terrible.
"The selection process can improve
but with screening companies only wanting a warm body, they’re not
worried about the selection process, they’re worried about hiring
an individual.’’ The companies are more cost conscious than
they are safety conscious, he says.
EXPERIENCE
Europeans, Laird adds, pay their screeners
enough money so that they are trained well and retained long enough to
get recurrent training and become experienced at the job. Perhaps more
important, supervisors get extensive training. "At some airports
in the U.S.," Laird says, "the turnover is so great that all
they do is train people. They get good enough to pass the FAA test but
(because of turnover) they never get very good. I would liken it to taking
the driver test when you’re a kid. You pass, but you’re not
a very good driver. A couple of years later you’re better because
you have some experience.
Laird thinks the most important issue to
prevent another September 11 ("more important than anything else")
is the issue of making the cockpit doors on aircraft impenetrable during
flight.
"If you want to break a system,"
Laird continues, "you study it for a while then you find a way to
defeat it. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’re going to defeat
the system.... So what you want to do is ensure that there is a way to
get that airplane on the ground, and the best way is to put in the (reinforced)
cockpit door and reinforce the bulkhead.
"The technology is here now, it’s
just a matter of nobody wanting to spend the money. Again, money is the
root of all of this."
