Harry Mount - Weblog - New York

Please tick box if you know how to make a bomb
(Filed: 18/08/2005)

Before Euan Blair took up his job this summer as an intern working for the House of Representatives in Washington, he had to fill out aDS-157 visa form from the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.


Saddam Hussein: too old for the American anti-terrorist form

The DS-157 is a special extra anti-terrorist form that asks Euan to give honest answers to questions like "Do you have any specialised skills or training, including firearms, explosives, nuclear, biological or chemical experience?"

It's a pretty pointless form. If Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein were applying for a visa, they'd hardly tick the box marked "Yes - please explain."

But, in any case, they wouldn't have to.

The form is only for men aged 16-45 wanting an American visa. Saddam Hussein (b. 1937, Iraq) and Osama (b. 1957, Saudi Arabia) don't have to go through this extra level of American security. Euan Blair (b. 1984, England) and I (b. 1971, England) do.

This farcical situation - high levels of security for the law-abiding, with zero effect on the obvious suspects - is the norm in America now.

Critical as the American papers have been of Londonistan and the fact that our suicide bombers were home-grown, where America had to import theirs, the picture isn't too rosy over here either.

Since September 11, over $15 billion has been spent on homeland security. All that means is that $15 billion worth of bureaucracy has been piled onto day-to-day life, and America remains as open to terrorism as it ever was.

Every day, a banal new bit of heavy-handed security makes some everyday job unbearable.


Want to post a cuddly toy to your godson in Kent for his birthday? Two days later, back comes the cuddly toy with a picture of an aeroplane and a red cross across it, saying "Surface transportation only - Because of heightened security, the following types of mail may not be sent by air: all domestic mail weighing 16 ounces or more that bears stamps. Please take this mail, in person, to a retail clerk in a post office."

Suicide bombers in the Gaza Strip? Get all bus-drivers to ask anyone who looks at all bulky round the waist to get off the bus.

Want to see your accountant in his humdrum office off Times Square? Photo ID please.

And so it goes on and on.

The domestic war on terror is entirely unfocussed. It's a flabby, old, moth-eaten security blanket that clogs up the machinery of day-to-day life but does nothing to stop determined bad guys from sashaying through the holes.

And, precisely because the blanket brings such inconvenience to the innocent, the Homeland Security Department can comfort themselves that they've pulled off a real clampdown.

Each time another bomb goes off, the innocent cling to the blanket even more. Well, it seems churlish to complain about standing for an hour in queue in a post office to send a cuddly toy to your godson, when others have to go through much worse - like being torn to pieces on the Tube.

Issuing precise, catch-all prohibitions on the sort of post you're allowed to send, or precise age ranges for extra visas, just means that terrorists work out ways of getting round the restrictions. They develop 15-ounce letter bombs that you are allowed to send by plane. They train adolescents and geriatrics to become suicide bombers.


If security is tightened in one area, terrorists will target another

It's an extension of the Bolted Windows policy. That is, if you get extra bolts, alarms and shutters for your windows, you don't cut the amount of burglary nationwide; you cut the amount of burglary on your house. Burglars just start to look for the next-door neighbour who leaves his window open.

There'll always be an open window somewhere in a country as vast as America. If there's a security crackdown on the subway, someone will stick a bomb on a train. And when there's then a security crackdown on trains, they'll start bombing churches.

You don't stop burglars by bolting windows. You stop burglars by arresting them, or killing them.

If your burglars are terrorists, you catch them by going to war with them abroad, or by using intelligence to track them down in your own country. You do not catch them or kill them by restricting what they send through the post or what diplomatic forms they fill out.

When Osama bin Laden drew up the principles of al-Qa'eda in 1988, he envisaged it as "a pioneering vanguard, the spearhead of Islam".

And its targets have been spearpoints, aimed at targets with different and precise profiles - the World Trade Centre in 1993 and 2001, embassy buildings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, a nightclub in Bali in 2002, the Madrid overland trains in 2004, the London underground in 2005.

And spears go through blankets rather easily.

Do you agree/disagree with any of Harry's comments? Let us know at blogfeedback@telegraph.co.uk
8 August 2005: Washington weblog: Alec Russell
26 June 2005: Euan Blair takes intern role with US Republicans
12 March 2004: Massacre in the rush-hour
14 October 2002: 182 dead in club bombing