"We Haven't Even Secured The [Airport] Perimeters"

Two years into the era of "homeland security" many experts and local officials say the nation remains deeply vulnerable to a domestic attack. Most worrisome, critics say, is the huge gap between the reassurances coming out of Washington and what's actually happening on the ground, reports Senior Editor Michael Hirsh in the September 15 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, September 8).

At airports, despite recent federal warnings about shoulder-fired missiles, "we haven't even secured the perimeters," says Rep. Bill Pascrell, a member of the Homeland Security committee. "And some 20,000 airport workers still haven't been screened.

The government is doing a worse job than Argenbright was," Pascrell adds, referring to the airline-security company that once handled most airports but was dismissed after 9/11.

Intelligence about the real threats out there also seems as sketchy as it was before 9/11. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told Newsweek that some success so far can be measured in the quiet since the terror and anthrax attacks of nearly two years ago.

"We know from [terror suspect] detainees they have at least postponed certain operations because they noted there was security," he says.

Ridge tells Newsweek that the mostly privatized seaports, as well as shippers and airlines, have to think about protecting themselves. "We need to determine whether or not the profit centers of this country are going to be responsible in large measure for their own security," he says. Critics say that security funding has been not just meager but irrational, with low-risk areas getting as much as high-vulnerability zones. Ridge, who last spring said he would reassess each region's needs on the basis of risk, now admits, "I'm not sure we're ever going to come up with a formula."

FMI: www.msnbc.com