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The 9/11 highjackers used deceit, anticipate pilot reaction, and knowledge of a predictable checkpoint screening process to accomplish their mission. Box cutters - their only conventional ‘weapon’ - were an almost inconsequential part of their plot. This is the reason for Secure Flight and watch list checking.
This weekend I’ll be celebrating that 233 years ago, the idea of a free nation became a reality. That a land of promise, opportunity, and choice – founded on God’s principals of right and wrong – became a living body, filled with the sacrificed breath of our founding fathers.
Beginning on July 29, commercial airline traffic to the US from Shannon airport in Ireland will have the advantage of full preclearance. This is a win-win-win for everyone. Passengers get convenience – they can make their travel plans direct from Shannon (or Dublin when the preclearance facilities open there in 2010) without any need to change planes at a busy US airport.
By Jena Baker McNeill
Yesterday, the Obama Administration hosted a closed-door conference on immigration reform. All too often “comprehensive immigration reform” has been another name for amnesty. A more appropriate agenda would focus on efforts to stop illegal immigration and secure the border, reform the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and open up more legal avenues by which to allow individuals to come into the United States.
This afternoon I had the opportunity to participate in a ‘Pen and Pad’ Session with Sec. Napolitano. I joined the session via teleconference, and, like her in-person appearances before the Hill, the media and speaking venues, the Secretary came through loud and clear on her key points and messaging.
In order to help the US travel industry promote American travel, should we use the federal government to tax Europeans traveling to America? Does it matter if in doing so we will create a sore point with our trans-Atlantic partners? Does it matter if in doing so the end result will be that Americans traveling to Europe will have to go to the time and inconvenience of getting a European visa?
Recently, I spoke with Francis Rose on Federal News Radio’s In Depth With Francis Rose, to discuss TSA’s new use of millimeter wave technology for the American rail system. Millimeter wave technology is a creative solution to keeping people safe with little to no distruption to travelers.
It’s official – the National Applications Office (NAO) is DOA. Yesterday’s official announcement by DHS put the period on the end of a sentence that a lot of us have seen written for some time. The disappointing part of this entire affair is that Sec. Napolitano made the only decision she could given the circumstances that were handed to her.
TSA initially supported Registered Traveler during the Tom Ridge era at DHS, as a method to target security resources on less-known travelers and to enable low-risk frequent travelers a consistent and fast security review. However, TSA washed its hands of RT in 2008, arguing it could never ensure that an unknown “clean skin” terrorist could exploit any security protocol change, leaving Registered Traveler as only a fast-lane program.
In retirement, I can still refer to “The War on Drugs” as “The War on Drugs,” a phrase not popular with the current administration. Despite what you want to call it, this administration made progress last week in narcotics enforcement when an inter-agency agreement was signed between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to substantially increase the number of ICE Special Agents with Title 21 authority.
As we approach the many threats that populate the contemporary landscape, every business needs a Continuity of Operations (COOP) plan. This is not just about terrorism, although that is clearly an issue, but about pandemics, floods, hurricanes, fires, and industrial accidents.
Tehran is currently running a master class in how not to manage a disaffected crowd; Pittsburgh would do well to learn from Tehran’s mistakes. Many will reject this, on the grounds that law enforcement in the West would never treat a crowd as the Iranian security forces, and particularly the baseej, have done. However, the indiscriminate use of force by police officers at incidents like the most recent RNC, the Poll Tax Riots in London or during the incident in Boston that cost Victoria Snedgrove her life, would suggest otherwise.
It is great to see that the continued myth that the government is set in its ways does not apply to TSA. Securing one of our old faithful resources, our rail system, is clearly high on the TSA to do list. Further, it is great to see the government using state of the art equipment to secure one of our nation’s oldest forms of transportation.
In short, the best made plans are only as good as they are exercised in advance of an emergency. On June 17, 2009, under the control of DHS, all government agencies exercised their Continuity of Operations plans (COOP), and I have to admit I miss those days of preparing for the worse. Testing yourself to see if your plans were successful, watching your alternate facilities actually came on line and never skipping a beat, so that the nation and government are without your service.
From radical Islamists planning to blow up two Bronx synagogues to a white supremacist attack on the Holotcaust Memorial in Washington to the World Health Organization’s declaration of an N1H1 Pandemic, businesses can no longer afford to be unprepared for crisis in their own communities. A Business Continuity Program, as we call it in the lexicon of homeland security, is no longer a “nice to have” option. It is a “must have” reality.
As the world continues to watch the unfolding situation in Iran and the massive protests over the disputed election results, the best quote about what is happening there was captured by Twitter and reported in today’s New York Times, “Ahmadinejad called us Dust, we showed him a sandstorm.”