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Nov. 28, 2002
I hope you are all surrounded by friends,
loved ones and as many delightful smells as are now drifting in from
the kitchen.
Commercial airline pilots, and all of us who
pressed for them to be armed to prevent another 9/11 skyjacking, had
reason to cheer when the President signed the Homeland Security Bill
this week.
The Bush Administration is mandated to have
set up a Flight Deck Officer training program by the end of
February. But given the fact that Transportation Security
Administration Director James Loy and the airline industry are
opposed, and the fact that TSA gets to set all the rules and
requirements, you can bet that only a few of the most determined
pilots will have a gun in their cockpits by spring.
Thomas Quinn, director of the Skymarshal
program and described as a "key adviser" to TSA, says the
training will involve a lot more than just lining up the sights and
squeezing off a shot -- and that it will be more than the 48 hours of
training pilots want.
I suspect he and TSA will push for training
equal or greater than that set up for (and no longer required of)
Skymarshals -- although its far more difficult to control a terrorist
in a large aircraft cabin than to prevent one from getting through the
small door into the cockpit.
Put it this way: If pilots are armed,
why would Mr. Quinn's Skymarshals be needed? The No. 1 rule of
bureaucracy is to protect their own turf, and expand their budgets and
manpower so Mr. Quinn can be counted on to be certain that few pilots
are armed.
Nevertheless, unlike most laws, the mere
signing of the armed pilots provision will cause Al Qaeda to look for
softer targets -- like unarmed 747's carrying cargo rather than
passengers.
The way government works, I suspect that it's
going to be many months -- and years -- before the new law's
bureaucracy-shuffling will actually result in a more-secure homeland.
It's going to take a long time to get equal,
much less improved, performance from an amalgamation of agencies which
despise each other. "Despise" is not too strong a word
for bureaucracies whose turf has overlapped for years.
I got a first-hand glimpse of it years ago,
when four of us came back into a U.S. Customs checkpoint at El Paso
after a dove hunt deep in Mexico. One was the late, great
pistolero, writer and retired Border Patrolman Bill Jordan, who
recognized a former colleague wearing a Customs uniform.
Bill gave me a wink and walked up behind the
inspector, loudly demanding: "What the Hell are you doing
here, you Damned Traitor?" The guy whirled around, clearly ready
to fight until he saw how big Bill was -- then recognized him.
Obviously he had taken a lot of
not-so-friendly jabbing for having changed uniforms.
Now those two agencies and two dozen more
will be elbowing each other in the same tent.
Another hallmark of government is how quickly
new Administrations begin to defend the same agencies and practices
they were elected to reform.
For instance, Republicans -- and all civil
libertarians -- were outraged by Janet Reno's Justice Department,
especially its actions and cover-ups regarding Waco and Ruby Ridge.
The DOJ Inspector General just issued a
blistering report of the double standard of disciplinary actions
against DOJ brass compared to the treatment of the lower ranks.
The prime example was the gentle treatment of the six senior officials
who covered up the unconstitutional actions at Ruby Ridge -- where
Randy Weaver's son and wife were killed, and Weaver and a family
friend were severely wounded (which cost us taxpayers a $3.1 million
court settlement).
FBI Director Louis Freeh was severely
critized in the report for not only allowing the cover-up, but
promoting the culprits or letting them retire with honors -- even
allowing Deputy Director Larry Potts (who supervised both Waco and
Ruby Ridge) to have a government-funded party, with friends illegally
flown in at government expense.
But George W. Bush's new FBI Director Robert
Mueller III has criticized the IG's report and defended the agency,
claiming 1997 reforms corrected the problems -- in the face of ongoing
high level ridicule and harassment of an FBI Whistleblower who went on
CBS "60 Minutes" a couple of weeks ago.
It's the Washington Way.
. Last week I reported that we wouldn't be losing Bob Barr's services for gun owners. Among others, he will be lobbying and consulting for the American Civil Liberties Union -- and so, possibly, will former Majority Leady Dick Armey.
Those may seem strange bedfellows, but I,
too, have occasionally met with ACLU -- along with disparate groups
like Gun Owners of America and Eagle Forum -- when civil liberties
interests intersect.
I'm sure we'll all be working together to
quash the Total Information Awareness Project, being put together in
the name of terrorist control by Admiral John Poindexter and the Total
Information Office at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA).
Last week there were reports that the huge
database they are planning will include all our credit card purchases,
our employment and tax info, our travel arrangements, and everything
else about us that exists anywhere on any computer -- including, of
course, our firearms and ammo purchases. The objective will be
to identify suspicious activites that might indicate possible
terrorism.
Talk about Big Brother watching. This
will be "Uncle" watching -- not just just terrorists, but
all of us.
Funny, the Total Information Office acronym,
TIO, happens to be Spanish for "Uncle."
Somebody at DARPA has a grim sense of humor.
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