My Mother, the Terrorist!

Upon my return from Vermont I uncovered incontrovertible evidence that the TSA believes my mother is a terrorist. As I was leaving, I sat in the airport with my parents. My mother and I watched some TSA guys going on break. One was a rather large young man, suffering from “Dunlap disease”—his belly “dun lapped over his belt.” I noted, then later tweeted, “TSA: Please hire guys who are more James Bond than Bob the brew-pub bouncer.”

I do realize that the TSA agents are doing their best to do their jobs. I also believe that they believe they are making us safer. I further believe that most people believe the TSA is making us safer—though folks who travel a lot seem to have extreme reservations about this. TSA agents can only do the things they are asked to do, and I fervently believe that the folks giving them orders really have few clues as to what they are asking of their employees.

In the picture above we have two glass jars. One, as you can see, is partially wrapped in bubble-wrap, while being completely done up in red cellophane. That’s an octagonal jar full of bath salts which I made and handed out as presents. I had one left over so I was bringing it back to Arizona. Done up identically was the jar below it in the image—though the inspection tape from the TSA obscures this fact. That jar contained some of my mother’s home-made raspberry jam.

I should note that both jars were loosely wrapped in bubble-wrap when I packed. I had not secured them with tape, just wrapped them and set them in my luggage. I should also note that I had a bottle of Scotch in my other bag, which the TSA also inspected. Both of these bags were checked luggage, and both included the bi-lingual TSA inspection notice, added after the fact to let me know someone had pawed through my stuff.

So, here we have a situation where the TSA is inspecting all “liquids” after x-raying the luggage. The agent pulls the jam from my luggage and decides to mummify it in inspection tape. Could be he did this to prevent the jam from getting all over stuff if it broke in transit. However, if that was his motive, why not do the same thing with the matching bottle of salts? (The Scotch, from the other bag, was in a special padded bag, which would have contained a spill if the bottle got broken.) The fact that the salts were not similarly taped (and just a tiny piece would have secured the bubble-wrap) suggests that courtesy and avoiding a mess was not the purpose here.

I think my mother is on a watch list. She is notorious for “forgetting” she has a small knife with her in her purse. More than once she has gotten such a knife through one screening checkpoint, only to have it confiscated as she is rescreened for a connecting or return flight. This can be the only explanation I can find for this extraordinary treatment of her jam.

And I have to go with that explanation, because nothing else makes any operational sense. Both liquids were in checked luggage, to which I would have no access during flight. It would be impossible, if they somehow contained an explosive, for me to detonate them. The jam, as it works out, weighs approximately 400 grams, which means it is five times greater than the PETN sewed into underwear of the Northwest flight bomber. Given this, and the fact that the jam was in the hold, and the Airbus 321 is a fly-by-wire plane, detonation of 400 grams of a jellied explosive at altitude would certainly have caused a massive decompression and likely would have severed control wires, bringing the plane down.

So, I would be at a loss here to explain exactly how sealing the jam in inspection tape would prevent or contain an explosion.

It obviously can’t. The only thing it can do is to serve as a warning to my mother that her terroristic ways have been noted and that she should stop doing what she does. Which, I guess, means making jam. Every time one spreads homemade jam, the terrorists win.

My point here is actually simple: there are no clear directives from on high in the TSA as to how to handle potentially hazardous materials. I get that they have to inspect liquids. Great. But would the inspectors know if a bottle of Scotch had been tampered with? If they didn’t open the jam, or didn’t open the countless bottles of maple syrup that go through that airport every day, would they know what the contents truly were? Sure, they could swab them and test them for explosives residue. Perhaps that was even done in this case, but this leaves us the question of why the mummification? If it was a courtesy, why not the other jar? And if it was meant to prevent my opening it, why bother when it’s in my checked luggage? And why not similarly seal the box with a knife in it that was right beside the jam, if you want to hamper mayhem in the airport after the luggage appears?

Tasking TSA agents with instructions that make no material sense is, in effect, crying “Wolf.” Useless directives will, someday, result in yet another directive being ignored or dismissed because it’s silly. And yet, that directive might well be the one that would prevent someone getting something on a plane that they should not.

Security experts have noted that they’ve been given an impossible task. It’s been likened to being a hockey goalie. They have to stop every shot. The attempted bombing of the Northwest flight was a shot off the pipe that landed on the goal line, but never trickled in. I’m glad it didn’t. And I do understand that because of that attack, folks had to be given things to do to make sure everyone knew TSA officials were on the case.

But this is akin to having a goalie react to things other than shots taken at him. If fluids in luggage are a threat, ban them. If toiletries (gels and liquids) are a problem: ban them. If shoes are a threat, have us all wear booties and check our shoes. If personal electronics are a potential danger—all electronics with countdown or alarm functions are detonation devices, after all—ban them. If limiting carry-on luggage to medicines, books and a toy for a child will make things safer, ban everything else.

These bans, of course, will never be set into place. Safety is balanced against convenience. Being blown up is the ultimate inconvenience, obviously, but the traveling public clearly doesn’t think the chances of that happening are very high. Rightfully so. They aren’t. Never have been.

I think the TSA officials should do the right thing and issue orders that make sense, to us, to their agents. Otherwise, terrorists like my mother will just continue to threaten us by doing nothing at all.