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Experts caution too that what security measures do exist here drape passengers in an illusion of safety. The reality is that U.S. airports have no systematic way of screening for explosives that a terrorist might want to sneak aboard an aircraft. Metal detectors might miss plastics or liquids used to assemble a bomb, as might bored, poorly paid and poorly trained operators of X-ray machines. At some U.S. airports, including Kennedy, checked-in luggage for international flights is sniffed by specially trained dogs or scanned by electronic vapor-particle detectors that can locate explosives. But if the explosives are in airtight containers, they may be missed.
Airline companies are intently focused on efficiency, which means minimizing the amount of time a multimillion-dollar piece of equipment is on the ground. But this short turnaround time might increase vulnerability. An arriving jet is swarmed by 50 or so mechanics, janitors, refuelers, caterers and ramp workers, not all of them airline employees. It's a period of nearly unlimited access by people who may not even know one another. FBI investigators are no doubt interviewing anyone who so much as came near Flight 800 as it was serviced at the gate at J.F.K.
American airline employees are also unaccustomed to recognizing suspicious behavior. For example, in 1991 Isaac Yeffet, former director of worldwide security for El Al and a 30-year veteran of the Israeli secret service, sent a TV producer with a hidden camera to buy tickets, using cash, at New York airports under the names of several well-known terrorists, including Abu Nidal. The producer did so, with ease. Yeffet says he pleaded in vain during congressional testimony after the Lockerbie tragedy for a more effective airport-security plan. "Unfortunately," he says, "it is easier to talk to a wall than to the FAA."
While no amount of fancy gadgetry will make our world completely safe from a fanatically determined terrorist, it could help. Such technology just happens to be very expensive, and the FAA has been reluctant to ask the airlines, many of which are strapped by debt, to make enormous investments in equipment that may soon be outdated, or that is not fail-safe.