Can U.S. Airports Prevent an Istanbul-Like Terrorist Attack?
SSI spoke with former TSA Assistant Administrator of Security Operations Mike Restovich to explain the challenges and solutions for protecting airports against such an attack.
Restovich said BDO teams are used aggressively in Israel because they are allowed to profile people. In the U.S., “you have to have suspicious behavior. It’s not based on anything other than that.”
Meanwhile, VIPR teams are made up of federal air marshals, TSA officers and inspectors, and local law enforcement. The units — outfitted in counterassault gear — provide a visible security presence in the public areas of the airports and perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks.
Restovich said BDO and VIPR units are still used, but not as much due to staffing shortages and lack of money. Then there’s the issue of long security lines, which has prompted TSA to move officers that would’ve been used on BDO or VIPR teams to security checkpoints to help with the flow of passengers.
There’s another hurdle: Restovich said that Congress believes the BDO program has not been successful because the teams have not caught a single terrorist. But in Restovich’s view, that’s a due to a lack of training and improvement of the teams.
“As agents look out into the crowd, they’re looking for suspicious activity,” he said. “If you can pick up on those signs with training and as you do more of it, the better you get over the years. Your skills are improved over time, and I just don’t know if TSA has spent the time and money to train and retrain those officers to make them really good at what they do.”
Another way to combat the threat is to get people through security checkpoints to the “sterile” part of the airport faster. That way, people are safer because they went through security and it eliminates the large masses of people gathering in the lobbies and outside the airport that serve as targets for attacks.
It’s important to remember that the best defense U.S. airports have against these types of attacks is their intelligence capabilities. Every major city has a Joint Terrorism Task Force that TSA receives input from on a daily basis, which Restovich said is “our bread and butter.”
In light of the Istanbul airport attacks, Restovich expects to see a resurgence of law enforcement patrolling the fronts of airports and the lobbies. There might even be TSA inspectors and air marshals in their VIPR gear patrolling, alongside with K-9s.
But Restovich has a painful reminder for Americans: Risk cannot be eliminated. It can only be reduced.
“What I think the issue is that with all the money that’s been spent since 9/11, that people understand very well that even though they’ve gone at it with a lot of money, they’re chasing something that cannot be obtained, and that’s 100% security,” he said.
Even if TSA implements BDO and VIPR teams, as well as K-9 units, it’s still never going to be enough to fully eliminate the possibility of an attack.
“The terrorists, the people that are planning these things have an advantage: They only have to be right once,” Restovich said. “The U.S. countermeasures have to be right all the time.”
Related: Delta Fliers in Atlanta Can Now Go Through Airport Security 5 at a Time
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