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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Just days ago, national security executives met secretly with airline CEOs to warn them that al-Qaida may be planning to fire shoulder-launched missiles at commercial jets in the U.S. There's virtually no defense.
Nov 22, 2002 | The war on terror took an unsettling turn last week with the resurfacing of Osama bin Laden and the FBI's announcement that al-Qaida is planning "spectacular attacks ... [with] high symbolic value, mass casualties, severe damage to the U.S. economy, and maximum psychological trauma." The FBI identified the U.S. aviation industry as a prime target for al-Qaida, and although critics have complained the bulletin was vague, Salon has learned that in the days before it was issued, national security executives met secretly with top airline officials to discuss the risk that high-tech portable missiles might be used against commercial jets.
According to sources who attended it, the meeting was convened by the year-old Transportation Security Administration on the afternoon of Election Day, Nov. 5. It included Adm. James Loy, chief of the agency; President Bush's secretary of transportation, Norman Mineta; representatives of the Office of Homeland Security; and a group of 25 airline CEOs. Gathered in a secure conference room in the Department of Transportation Building in Washington, they heard evidence of the growing and intractable threat that shoulder-fired infrared-homing missiles pose to crowded commercial jets taking off and landing at U.S. airports.
Sources within the White House Office of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Salon the conference was prompted in part by a recent Senior Executive Intelligence Brief prepared by the CIA, which alerted top Bush administration officials and selected military leaders that terrorists have likely smuggled shoulder-launched missiles into the United States in recent months.
The news was ominous for the millions of people who fly on American jets each year: Every commercial flight is susceptible to an attack from terrorists armed with launchers that are small, relatively easy to obtain and surgically accurate. And even after a decade of research at the federal Aviation Research Laboratory in New Jersey, neither the government nor the aviation industry can do much to mitigate the danger.
Gary Stubblefield, who heads the security firm Vantage Systems in Scottsdale, Ariz., describes the shoulder-fired missiles as "aviation's dirty little secret." Todd Curtis, the creator of AirSafe.com and a former Air Force officer and Boeing safety analyst, adds this caution: If a "dedicated person wanted to shoot down a plane, there's nothing to stop them."
The weapons "are a serious threat, [and] not enough is being done to deal with it," retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for President Reagan, told Salon in an interview. "It's a simple thing to do. Airplanes have a schedule. They are at the same spot every day, [and] it's simple to fire [a shoulder-launched missile] from a boat or big truck."
Intelligence and security officials have long known of the danger posed by these missiles, but alarms began to sound after the recent discovery of al-Qaida training videos instructing terrorists how to fire the portable antiaircraft missiles and the capture of thousands of such missiles in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
The FBI issued a detailed bulletin on May 22, which was delivered to state and local police agencies via the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. In it, the FBI warned that al-Qaida might be planning to use shoulder-fired missiles -- formally called MANPADS, for man-portable air defense systems -- against commercial aircraft within the United States.
"A Stinger, an American-made second-generation MANPAD system, was used by anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan during the 1979-1988 Soviet occupation of that country," the advisory said. "Al Qaeda operatives and Taliban militia members are believed to possess a number of functioning Stinger missiles ship [sic] to Afghanistan during the 1980s.
"Given al-Qaida's demonstrated objective to target the U.S. airline industry, its access to U.S. and Russian made MANPAD systems, and recent apparent targeting of U.S.-led military forces in Saudi Arabia, law enforcement agencies in the United States should remain alert to potential use of MANPADS against U.S. aircraft."
The FBI's concern is well-founded. Shoulder-fired missiles have already been used to shoot down commercial aircraft outside the U.S., and the respected Jane's Intelligence Review reported last year that they are now in the hands of up to 27 terrorist groups. Reports from the CIA, State Department and other government agencies show that shoulder-fired missiles have already hit at least 42 civil aircraft since the 1970s. Of these, 29 aircraft -- 69 percent of the total -- were shot down. These attacks have killed well over 900 air travelers -- more than all the victims of notorious Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. Shoulder-fired missile attacks on civil aircraft have been launched from land and from water, upon takeoff and landing, and at altitudes reaching to 11,000 feet. While most of these attacks have occurred outside North America proper, the weapons have been used in Central America. The prospect of a shoulder-launched missile attack was a major concern of the FAA during the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta.
During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union freely distributed the portable missiles to allies and client states around the world. Introduced during the Vietnam War, these weapons first gained widespread fame in the war between Afghanistan and the former Soviet Union, where U.S.-supplied Stingers are credited with turning the tide against the Soviets. Of the more than 900 Stingers supplied to the Afghan rebels, many were never fired and remained available for use or trade. Unfortunately, these leftover missiles are not the only source that supplies the black market. In recent years, sophisticated new shoulder-launched missiles have been flowing into the world's arms markets.
In the mid-1990s, the international concern over the proliferation of shoulder-fired missiles led to the Wassenaar Agreement, an arms-control "honor system." Wassenaar does not prevent the sale of these weapons but instead promotes the "transparency" of arms sales to curb improper weapons transfers. Although well-intentioned, Wassenaar has failed to thwart black-market sales. Even when they're sold to legitimate governments for self-defense, there is no guarantee that such missiles will remain secure. In 1998, soldiers in the former Soviet republic of Georgia staged an uprising and seized a cache of the shoulder-launched missiles. Likewise, Chechen rebels obtained their initial supply of shoulder-fired missiles by overrunning Russian arsenals.
Even U.S. stockpiles are not completely safe. After completing an inspection of U.S. military storage depots, the General Accounting Office concluded that inventory control of domestic shoulder-fired missile stockpiles has been so poor that the military could not account for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of its portable missiles. One Army official quoted by the GAO said that it would be "pure luck" if none of the missiles were lost. Regardless of their source, shoulder-fired missiles are small enough to easily smuggle into any country, including the United States, and they're available on the black market for under $100,000 each. That's well within the reach of deep-pocketed terrorist groups, many of which earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year by dealing drugs and engaging in other illegal activities.
