Our National
Security. Who is Watching?
In Canada and the United States, we citizens should
be feeling pretty secure about sovereignty and our
safety. After all, we have MANY agencies looking
out for us in both countries, guarding our borders
and keeping away those who would do us harm with
bombs, guns, drugs and so on.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection secures their
homeland by preventing the illegal entry of people
and goods into the United States. The CBP is the
largest law enforcement agency in the U.S. The
Canadian Border Services Agency is our federal
agency responsible for border enforcement,
immigration and customs services.
These organizations are the first-line defense, so
to speak, against the bad people and organizations
bent on destroying or terrorizing our way of life.
But we still have much more protection going for
us. The Coast Guard, the national security
agencies, department of Homeland Security, CSIS, the
FBI, ATF, the Secret Service, CATSA, RCMP, CIA,
state and provincial police, Departments of Public
Safety, Special Forces, all the military branches,
the SPCA, private investigators and locksmiths. In
northern Canada, bands of roving “Rangers”, a
part-time force, conducts surveillance or
sovereignty patrols far above the Arctic circle.
Made up of Inuit, First Nations, Métis and
non-Aboriginals, they assist the military operating
against any invaders that can keep warm enough to
operate at 50 below zero. And so it goes on and
on. There’s no way to calculate the number of
people employed by this massive,
“biggest-of-all-industries” in the western world.
At any given major airport at any given time, there
are “agents” in the security lineups patting down
passengers, looking in their shoes, scanning entire
bodies and opening luggage to confiscate shampoo and
toothpaste. Their mission is set in stone! Do not
allow anything on an airplane that could be used as
a weapon (that includes fingernail clippers) or in
the construction of a device capable of damaging
that aircraft.
Vancouver terminal YVR, photo by
Barry Meek.
So it’s surprising that with all this inconvenience
and trouble they cause for travelers, that an 18
year old student was able to board an airplane in
Edmonton last September (2013) with a homemade pipe
bomb. Security initially found it in his carry-on
bag, but he was informed he could take it with him.
Highly trained CATSA “agents” didn’t recognize it
for what it was. The young man declined to take it
on board. Off he went on a holiday to Mexico and
while he was gone, someone decided that it might not
have been a good idea to let him simply walk on that
aircraft. The Canadian authorities had to wait
until he returned to Edmonton, where the teenager
was apprehended by what sources described as a large
contingent of RCMP officers, which included a SWAT
team, bomb squad and an explosives-sniffing dog.
However, in their statement, the RCMP said: “Two
plain-clothed officers were dispatched, and the
suspect was apprehended without incident.” The
Canadian Transport Minister declared, “The safety of
Canadians and the travelling public is our
government's top priority”. The CATSA officer
thought, “I guess this means E.I. for me”. And at
the end of the day, the young student was allowed to
go home after paying a $100 fine, and was told to
donate $500 to a burn unit. Keystone Cops? Before
you start thinking that our Canadian security is
bad, what about this one south of the border.
About one month later, there was another newsworthy
“breach of national security” when a small airplane
flew undetected from Canada into the United States,
and continued all the way to Nashville, Tennessee …
a distance of 500 miles over U.S. soil. Nobody
noticed until well into the next day, several hours
after the plane had crashed on the Nashville
international airport. A 45 year old male rented a
Cessna 172 from the Windsor Flying Club, departed
around 8 pm, and disappeared into the night heading
south. Evidently, he crashed at about three in the
morning, the plane burned and the pilot was killed.
The reason for the flight hasn’t been established,
but the security concerns raised are the big
issues. Questions like, “how did this aircraft fly
500 miles into the U.S. and then circle and crash on
a major airport without anyone noticing?” Further,
in spite of the big fire, the air traffic
controllers never saw it. Just before 9 o’clock in
the morning, a departing G.A. pilot taxied past the
charred wreckage and wondered what it was doing
there. He reported it to the surprised tower
personnel.
There are a lot more questions in this incident than
there are answers, even at this point in time. The
NTSB is investigating but has already released, in a
preliminary report, all the facts stated above. You
can bet that several other agencies are involved,
looking for their own answers. I’d suggest the FBI,
the ATF, the Secret Service, Customs & Border
Protection, Department of Homeland Security, the
FAA, Transport Canada, the RCMP, CSIS, insurance
companies, the CRA as well as local police forces in
Windsor and in Nashville all have their people in
the mess. This is a big international incident!
You would think that with all the security measures
already in force, it couldn’t have happened in the
first place. Where were the F-16’s? Who was
watching the radar screens?
What’s been missed here? Is this issue of “homeland
security” just too big to handle? Would hiring even
more people solve the problems? Will these guys who
perpetrate international issues keep coming out of
left field and blindsiding us with more novel
ideas? Perhaps instead of frisking old ladies and
taking away their Mylanta and Tums in the airport
security lineups, resources ought to be re-deployed
to where they’d be more effective. Governments
tend to operate using knee-jerk reactions, then
wonder why the real problems don’t go away. Don’t
ask me what the solution is. I’m not making the
decisions in the first place. It’s not my job. The
whole “homeland security” idea needs some
re-thinking. And I’d suggest if the officials in
charge can’t figure it out, and come up with better
answers than telling us that “The safety of the
traveling public is the government’s top priority”,
then they ought to step aside and let someone else
give it a whirl.