Mike Boyd: Too much focus on screening

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we're being regaled by claims of how much safer we are today than on that tragic Tuesday morning. We'll hear -- accurately -- how cockpit doors are now fortified. We'll hear about how airport passenger screening is now in the hands of a federal organization. And we'll certainly be told that these changes prove that what we've done at airports is making us secure from another attack.

Nothing could be further from reality. That's because we've focused too much on screening, instead of security. And we've focused on passengers, with insufficient attention to other parts of the airport where terrorists can get access to aircraft and terminals.

Not only that, but security screeners at two of the nation's busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests done in 2006 by the Transportation Security Administration's own special operations division. Sorry, but that cannot be described as "much better."

Passenger screening -- which has been the major (but certainly not only) focus of the TSA -- is not the real threat area. If a professional terrorist organization wanted to get something bad on an airplane, I maintain that it would have little problem doing so.

"Back doors" of our airports are not sufficiently secured. How much scrutiny is given to fuel trucks, construction vehicles, catering equipment and air cargo? They'll say the people involved have been given background checks, but those are of a nature that most of the 9/11 hijackers could have passed.

The solution? Simple. Having a TSA run by trained security professionals at all levels, with total performance accountability. Today, we have some Federal Security Directors at airports who have little or no security experience whatsoever. We've had TSA administrators with zero background in security. We have screeners who have no fear of failure, because they get "retrained," not fired, for major performance failures. What we have today is a bureaucracy that has been established more to find pointy objects than pro-actively identify and deter security threats.

Fix that and, yes, we'll be safer.

Michael Boyd is president of the Boyd Group, International, an aviation consulting firm.