All Intensive Purposes

The same thinking that brought us "zero tolerance" policies -- a suspicion of government decisionmaking, and a desire to solve complex problems with simple rules -- informed TSA's current approach to airport security: lots of poorly trained, poorly paid security guards indiscriminately enforcing rules apparently aimed more at inconveniencing travelers in the hopes of thereby persuading them that someone is making an effort rather than at locating the very few travelers who pose a threat to the rest of us. The inconvenience itself is not irritating, but inconvenience to such ineffective ends is grating.

It doesn't have to be this way. The loathsome Marty Peretz describes how Israel screens airline travelers:

Israel's way of passenger screening is not as invasive as it is here. You don't have to take off your shoes. You are not obliged to remove your personal computer from its case. Every passenger who flies El Al, whether from Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv or from locations outside Israel, is put through a personalized psychometric at point of departure. This is not a machine test. It is an interview, short but probing, with questions that some may experience as a bit invasive, before the passenger gets to the ticket counter.

It is hard to imagine the current crop of Transportation Security Administration employees deployed in U.S. airports performing this delicate function. The interviewers are smart and young, mostly female, and on their way to other jobs. It was one of these El Al personnel who discovered, simply by talking with and closely observing a young Irish woman, that she had carried in her checked baggage a "gift" she had not seen, handed to her by a Palestinian boyfriend. She was also carrying his baby in her stomach. The boyfriend was a ... well, you understand what he was.

I have traveled to and from Israel on dozens of occasions. Each time I am a bit surprised and sometimes even thrown off balance by the questions. The volume of passengers at U.S. and big European airports might preclude relying on a system like Israel's--unless, of course, security service at airports and other vulnerable spots in society were to be made mandatory for a year or so. You can't imagine what a trained young person can discover in watching the subtle behavior of anxious people.

Here is a true story. Do you remember the days when student air discount tickets were available for almost anybody not obviously in middle age? Well, some twenty years ago, a friend of mine, an American who was living in Rome and working in advertising, was to meet me in Israel. He had purchased a bootleg El Al student ticket. When he arrived at Da Vinci Airport, he was greeted by a genial security officer. She looked at his passport and then his ticket. "Oh, you are a student," she exclaimed. "What do you study?" Fishing out of nowhere and quickly, Bill said, "Architecture." "So, tell me," asked his questioner, "when was Palladio born?" He did not get on the plane till the next day when his innocence of malevolent intent was vouched for and proven. Now that is security.

We could do the same in this country, if only our government took the threat of terrorism as seriously as Israel does and determined to actually do something about it.