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Homeland Security
Aired August 05, 2003 - 14:06 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Logan and every other U.S. airport is on notice today to keep a sharp eye out for cameras and cell phones and any other kind of common electronic gadget that could be converted to sinister uses.
Joining me now with some insight is CNN correspondent former D.C. police detective Mike Brooks. I want to get to the electronics part first. But just quickly, respond to the piece we just aired about the behavior pattern recognition program. Is it really effective?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is the first time they've tried this our. I talked to folks from FBI's behavorial science program down in Quantico when I was with the airlines. Before coming to CNN, I was with Delta Airlines, managing their corporate security. We were looking for things like this to let our flight attendants and pilots, you know, ask if they see someone getting onboard, boarding a plane, what should they look, and the FBI's behavorial profiling people said it's very difficult to set up a profile of terrorist, of how they're going to act when they're in the airport, but these officers, I think it gives them another tool to come up, jack somebody up if they want and ask them a couple of questions. If they don't answer these questions in a way they think is appropriate or they run, which is a clue, then that gives them a little bit further steps to go ahead and investigate further.
Again, another tool in the tool kit for law enforcement.
PHILLIPS: I got to tell you, coming around the corner, heading to the airport, and I see them standing there, I'm like, oh, please don't stop me. It's like -- it's just another 10, 15 minutes of your time.
BROOKS: It is. But again, it's another tool. Whether this actually will work. They tried other things, facial recognition, those kind of things, which really haven't proven to be too effective, but there's also some other issues here dealing with civil liberties, and I'm sure the civil libertarians will be all over this.
PHILLIPS: Yes, they don't want people to be harassed. All right, let's get to electronic items. Cell phones, boom boxes, cameras, we may want to leave them behind. Why? Take us back maybe for a historical look first.
BROOKS: Leave them behind or check them in your checked luggage, because it will slow things down. We go back to 1994, 1995, during the Manila Air case, a person by the name of Ramsey Josef (ph). We've heard about Ramsey Josef. He's in jail. He was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Right after that, he fled to the Philippines, and from the Philippines to Pakistan.
But in the meantime, he was involved in a plot to down U.S. airliners in the Pacific rim. He even tried out a bomb from Manila to Tokyo, where he made a bomb using a Casio databank watch. Now these are the watches where you can program up to 20 years in advance. He retrofitted that particular watch and used that as a timing device for a bomb.
Now we look at the devices they are concerned about now, cell phones, cameras, boom boxes. These are some things that have been looked at in the past, but I think they went out and they found some intelligence during document exploitation, and they saw, they say, look, there might be wanting to retrofit some of these to be an improvised explosive devices.
So again, these are just -- it's another wake-up call, if you will, another vigilance alert, that from information that they have gathered intelligence they have gathered. But, you know, can they be used? Absolutely. I think what their concern is, that you might try to get a timing device through on one thing, an explosive through in another, and you know, and another component of the blasting cap or whatever in another. But they can all be made into an improvised explosive device if someone knew what they could be doing.
PHILLIPS: All right, this could be a long stretch, but we were even talking about it in the newsroom. Is it possible when you were head of the security at Delta, did this ever come up about making it a new rule to have no check-on baggage? Carry-on I mean.
BROOKS: Absolutely. No carry on. That was talked about, but it would not be practical, because then the time that it would take to load all of the checked luggage. You know, you can only have so many checked pieces when you go in, so that's why they still allow to you have some carry-on, but they do limb that it to two carry on items.
Another thing, you have X-rays when you go through the security checkpoint. There are some X-ray machines that will detect explosives in different colors.
But there's also, you have to ETD, the explosive trace detection machine, where they say, do you mind if you come over here, and they swab it, looking for any trace of any explosives. Then have your CTX machines. Those are the ones that they ask you to take over to the TSA personnel, and it looks like a big dumpster sitting out in the middle of the airport floor, with a little red and green light on top. That basically is a CAT scan for your luggage. As they put it through, they can look at that and they can -- if they see something that says, looks suspect, they can bring that up and actually enhance that to see whether is an improvised explosive device or not.
Right now, speaking as a former investigator and a former airline person, I think right now is probably one of the safest times in civil aviation that we have seen in recent years. PHILLIPS: And if you want to get through quickly, just wear the same clothes for your entire vacation, don't bring anything with you.
BROOKS: That's right, we look at taking off shoes, we see companies now are going to away from steel shanks and going into plastic shanks, just so you won't have that hassle going through and getting your shoes screened by TSA personnel.
PHILLIPS: All right, Mike Brooks, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired August 5, 2003 - 14:06 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Logan and every other U.S. airport is on notice today to keep a sharp eye out for cameras and cell phones and any other kind of common electronic gadget that could be converted to sinister uses.
Joining me now with some insight is CNN correspondent former D.C. police detective Mike Brooks. I want to get to the electronics part first. But just quickly, respond to the piece we just aired about the behavior pattern recognition program. Is it really effective?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is the first time they've tried this our. I talked to folks from FBI's behavorial science program down in Quantico when I was with the airlines. Before coming to CNN, I was with Delta Airlines, managing their corporate security. We were looking for things like this to let our flight attendants and pilots, you know, ask if they see someone getting onboard, boarding a plane, what should they look, and the FBI's behavorial profiling people said it's very difficult to set up a profile of terrorist, of how they're going to act when they're in the airport, but these officers, I think it gives them another tool to come up, jack somebody up if they want and ask them a couple of questions. If they don't answer these questions in a way they think is appropriate or they run, which is a clue, then that gives them a little bit further steps to go ahead and investigate further.
Again, another tool in the tool kit for law enforcement.
PHILLIPS: I got to tell you, coming around the corner, heading to the airport, and I see them standing there, I'm like, oh, please don't stop me. It's like -- it's just another 10, 15 minutes of your time.
BROOKS: It is. But again, it's another tool. Whether this actually will work. They tried other things, facial recognition, those kind of things, which really haven't proven to be too effective, but there's also some other issues here dealing with civil liberties, and I'm sure the civil libertarians will be all over this.
PHILLIPS: Yes, they don't want people to be harassed. All right, let's get to electronic items. Cell phones, boom boxes, cameras, we may want to leave them behind. Why? Take us back maybe for a historical look first.
BROOKS: Leave them behind or check them in your checked luggage, because it will slow things down. We go back to 1994, 1995, during the Manila Air case, a person by the name of Ramsey Josef (ph). We've heard about Ramsey Josef. He's in jail. He was involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Right after that, he fled to the Philippines, and from the Philippines to Pakistan.
But in the meantime, he was involved in a plot to down U.S. airliners in the Pacific rim. He even tried out a bomb from Manila to Tokyo, where he made a bomb using a Casio databank watch. Now these are the watches where you can program up to 20 years in advance. He retrofitted that particular watch and used that as a timing device for a bomb.
Now we look at the devices they are concerned about now, cell phones, cameras, boom boxes. These are some things that have been looked at in the past, but I think they went out and they found some intelligence during document exploitation, and they saw, they say, look, there might be wanting to retrofit some of these to be an improvised explosive devices.
So again, these are just -- it's another wake-up call, if you will, another vigilance alert, that from information that they have gathered intelligence they have gathered. But, you know, can they be used? Absolutely. I think what their concern is, that you might try to get a timing device through on one thing, an explosive through in another, and you know, and another component of the blasting cap or whatever in another. But they can all be made into an improvised explosive device if someone knew what they could be doing.
PHILLIPS: All right, this could be a long stretch, but we were even talking about it in the newsroom. Is it possible when you were head of the security at Delta, did this ever come up about making it a new rule to have no check-on baggage? Carry-on I mean.
BROOKS: Absolutely. No carry on. That was talked about, but it would not be practical, because then the time that it would take to load all of the checked luggage. You know, you can only have so many checked pieces when you go in, so that's why they still allow to you have some carry-on, but they do limb that it to two carry on items.
Another thing, you have X-rays when you go through the security checkpoint. There are some X-ray machines that will detect explosives in different colors.
But there's also, you have to ETD, the explosive trace detection machine, where they say, do you mind if you come over here, and they swab it, looking for any trace of any explosives. Then have your CTX machines. Those are the ones that they ask you to take over to the TSA personnel, and it looks like a big dumpster sitting out in the middle of the airport floor, with a little red and green light on top. That basically is a CAT scan for your luggage. As they put it through, they can look at that and they can -- if they see something that says, looks suspect, they can bring that up and actually enhance that to see whether is an improvised explosive device or not.
Right now, speaking as a former investigator and a former airline person, I think right now is probably one of the safest times in civil aviation that we have seen in recent years. PHILLIPS: And if you want to get through quickly, just wear the same clothes for your entire vacation, don't bring anything with you.
BROOKS: That's right, we look at taking off shoes, we see companies now are going to away from steel shanks and going into plastic shanks, just so you won't have that hassle going through and getting your shoes screened by TSA personnel.
PHILLIPS: All right, Mike Brooks, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
