PhotoDude.com

Tue. Apr 30, 2002

You're On Your Own, People

You’re On Your Own, People – While we can take pride in the work of our military and law enforcement officials in tracking down terrorists and their networks, when it comes to protecting us day to day domestically, like in our local federal buildings (we won’t even talk about airplanes), our government gets a a Big Red F.

"Security was so lax at four federal buildings in Atlanta months after Sept. 11 that undercover agents easily bypassed metal detectors and X-ray machines, according to investigators." How lax? Lax enough that you could have one individual do your recon and obtain access for the rest of an attack team: "In early March, an agent gained access to a federal building without going through a metal detector or putting his briefcase through the X-ray machine. Then, he persuaded the security employee to issue him a yellow building pass and an after-hours access code. The next day, the same agent used that pass to talk his way into a second federal building and persuade a security worker there to issue him a blue pass giving him free access to that facility. The GAO statement describes how the investigators then made counterfeit passes with commercially available software. They used fake names and photographs that were ’printed holograms,’ instead of actual holograms, which give the photo a three-dimensional appearance. Later in March, agents using both the fake passes and the real ones, as well as a phony request form, were able to move freely around the buildings, both days and evenings."

I’m appalled that security workers at federal facilities can be talked into giving people unrestricted access. No bribe, no coercion, just chit-chat. Some of the people who should have gotten the loudest wakeup call on 9-11, those who protect federal facilities that serve the public, appear to have reacted in the opposite manner: they’ve gone back to sleep. I should be reading in the paper about Judges who couldn’t get into the courthouse because they forgot their ID. These are people who can afford to do their job too well. There’s no downside to that, given their goal.

As I see it, there are at least three primary points where you can disrupt a terrorist group’s plans to attack our country: at their base of operations (as we did in Afghanistan), at our border entry points, and at the point of attack.

We fail, two out of three, and the third, the one that also impacts the security of every other nation by destroying the terrorist’s infrastructure, brings with it a world of diplomatic grief.

Time is a healer. But it’s also an anesthetic. I hope more pain is not required in order to bring effective action domestically. Because we’re clearly not there yet, in the air or on the ground.