Reassess travel risks, Matheson says

Jim Matheson wonders whether too much taxpayer money is being spent to prevent a Sept. 11-type aviation attack instead of other types of security threats.

The Utah Democratic congressman on Thursday stressed the need for a risk assessment to help the country set priorities in dealing with potential airline security troubles, saying that "in my opinion, we kind of have a skewed sense of where we're putting our resources."

"And in some respect, I think we're fighting yesterday's battle in terms of worrying about someone getting on an airplane with box cutters," he told the Utah Business Travel Association at its monthly luncheon.

Improvements to cockpit doors have "already taken care of that threat in many respects, and I think we're missing other threats and how we allocate those resources. And that's something we need to talk about. We need to talk about whether we're focusing too much on one component of the industry and ignoring others."

During a question-and-answer period Thursday, Matheson acknowledged that such an assessment will be difficult.

"You don't just do a threat assessment in a week and say, 'Well, we've done it.' It's an incredibly complicated task. But until we do that, in my opinion, by definition we have resources going in a less-than-rational way," he said.

The congressman acknowledged that some people are working on that task and "I'm not trying to say that, 'Well, Washington is being dumb about this.' " But he said the federal government has been in a reactive rather than proactive mode when it comes to assessing risk.

"Of the $5 billion spent on transportation security, $4 billion is on aviation, and most of it is skewed on the Sept. 11 method of taking a plane and flying it into a building. We want to stop that from ever happening again, but there are these other threats out there in the transportation sector — as you've said, security of our ports and shipping — that I think deserve some merit and should get our attention," he said.

Americans should realize that risk will never be completely eliminated in a free and open society. "We don't have the financial or human resources, and we're not going to walk all over our civil liberties either to do that. So what we need to do is prioritize," he said.

He suggested screening of everything placed in airplane cargo holds at all the country's airports, embracing "trusted traveler" programs that allow people to provide personal information in exchange for speedier airport security screenings, investing in improved traffic control system equipment and employees and adding airports and runways.

The aviation industry has faced "a perfect storm of variables" in recent years, from Sept. 11 to an economic downturn, the Iraq war, SARS, the bird flu and higher fuel prices, he said. Before Sept. 11, the focus was on eliminating airport congestion. Now, he said, it's a matter of "how do we get people back on airplanes?"

---

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com