TSA methods intrusive, fruitless, expensive

SeaTac airport was particularly onerous. I was directed through the metal detector, then the back-scatter radar with no explanation of options. Upon exiting the radar booth, I was directed to halt while the TSA agent waited for the results, whereupon he immediately manually searched both of my legs from the front on both sides up to where my thighs join my torso and then from the back to a place where the sun doesn't shine, all without my expressed consent.

I have a recently installed metal hip and some titanium rods in my lower back. Now, as a result, every time I go through a commercial airport in the U.S., I will be magnetically screened, irradiated with an inadequately studied technology, and felt up and down in intimate places. Declaring that I have some metal parts does not change this process. Even having to state this is an intrusion into my privacy.

The TSA agents are very polite and well trained. No matter how nice they are, many Americans will continue to be treated like criminals. The TSA has not turned up a single terrorist in over nine years of existence. They have "discovered" instances of someone with a few grams of marijuana or a wad of cash on their person, though they are not empowered as DEA, Treasury or any other type of law enforcement agent. This has been their only product. The cost to taxpayers for this "product" now approaches $8 billion per year. It is as ineffective as most of the other programs under the Department of Homeland Security, adding to the federal bureaucracy while doing little or nothing for public safety.

I am a former anti-terrorism coordinator with three decades in public safety and hundreds of hours of training in this arena. Terrorists can be profiled, and not just by racial or ethnic triggers. Foreign, domestic, white, black or in between, there are many more ways to arouse suspicion than race or ethnicity. In addition, every terrorist attack that has occurred in this country using commercial aviation could have been prevented by coordination of information among the disparate law enforcement and intelligence agencies that the American taxpayer already spends billions of dollars on annually.

Instead, Rep. Cissna, I and anyone who may have absent or replacement body parts will continue to be subjected to sexual assault, microwave strip-searching and the abrogation of our U.S. constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure and our Alaska constitutional right to privacy.

The stock responses of "You can choose not to fly," "You get more radiation from flying" and "I'll only be using the back of my hand" are smoke and mirrors. Alaskans cannot realistically choose not to fly. The health impact of backscatter radar exposure has not been conclusively studied. The back of someone's hand also has a front that makes intimate contact with your body when it is applied to your groin or chest.

The one instance where a terrorist put flammable material in his underwear and ignited it on an airplane would not have been prevented by current TSA practices but could have been prevented by coordination of intelligence information, as could the 9/11 debacle at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

As an American, and especially as an Alaskan, I am insulted and violated by this ineffective, costly, anti-American and blatantly thoughtless approach to public safety. Perhaps when the only tool you have, by choice, is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Even an American citizen.

Francis X. Nolan is a retired Anchorage firefighter and former fire/EMS battalion chief with three decades of experience in emergency preparedness, including terrorism response.