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At Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport,
security resides in a lot more than confiscating gels,
liquids and pointy objects. - This article, written from Linn’s perspective, is the second in a series based on Linn’s February trip to Israel as part of the Ultimate Counter Terrorism Mission.
- HSToday’s Anthony Kimery gets a first-hand look at Israel’s hundreds of miles of fencing
HSToday’s Anthony Kimery gets a first-hand look at Israel’s hundreds of miles of fencing
During their debate in Austin, Texas February 21, it was hard not to wonder just how much either senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-Ill) know about securing a border – anyone’s border. Both of them took aim at shooting down the concept of a tangible, physical barrier between the US and Mexico, opting instead to promote more reliance on gadgets. Never mind that both have voted in favor of hundreds of miles of physical fencing.
But now both of the Democratic presidential hopefuls were emphasizing increased reliance on the kind of innovation that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans for its 28-mile “virtual” fence, which it gave its final okay on this past week.
Project 28, as it’s known, relies on bells and whistles to deter and prevent people from walking across the border, rather than something physical to prevent unauthorized entry.
Similarly, Republican presidential frontrunner John McCain recently said that “in parts of our border … it's more effective to use vehicle barriers, sensors, cameras … but the fact is the border walls have to be built in urban areas because that's the only way you're going to stop illegal immigration."
According to a variety of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, fencing in urban areas has both prevented and deterred entry. The statistics bear it out, they maintain.
Clinton, on the other hand, said "let's deploy more technology and personnel, instead of the physical barrier. I frankly think that will work better."
Obama tended to concur. "There may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing," he said. "But for the most part, having Border Patrol, surveillance, [and] deploying effective technology - that's going to be the better approach."
Oh? Try convincing the Israelis that that approach is a good one.
The debate over a physical US border barrier no longer seems debatable in light of my fresh first-hand experience with the Israeli border fence solution.
Two weeks ago I returned from a grueling counterterror fact-finding trip to the Jewish state during which I was escorted by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials to see for myself, up close and very personal, sections of the nearly 400-miles of high-level security fence they’ve built since July 2003, as well as the incredible statistics that prove the difference the fence has made in preventing and deterring terrorists.
Sure, sure, the US hasn’t experienced the hundreds of terrorist bombings that Israel did by assorted terrorists who easily were able to walk across the lines of demarcation between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza prior to the physical barrier being erected, but if terrorists wanted to, they could just as easily walk into the US from Mexico, which authorities agree is a much more problematic border than the one the US shares with Canada. Tens of millions of people have already streamed across the southern border unchallenged.
Because there is virtually nothing to stop them.
But I wonder just how long it would take the US to build a secure border barrier once suicide bombers walk into the US from Mexico and blow themselves apart at shopping malls in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Seattle, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Miami, or any other large American population centers, and shred potentially hundreds of civilians with ball-bearings, six-gauge nails, large nuts, and other metal “shrapnel?”
That’s what was happening in Israel for the longest time. Dr. Kobi Assaf, head of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center, provided a briefing on the hospital’s preparedness for terrorist and catastrophic attacks. As part of that briefing he showed me an x-ray of a suicide bombing victim. At least a half-a-dozen large metal nuts were blown into just one leg of this young woman. It was horrific.
Now try imposing hundreds of similar ghastly wounds – many fatal – on US cities. Or imagine the scenarios described by former White House counterterror czar Richard Clarke in his January/February 2005 Atlantic magazine cover story.
“In Clarke's frightening scenario, a woman walks up to a crowded roulette table in Las Vegas and blows herself up - the first in a series of suicide bombings at casinos and amusement parks,” writes Katie Bacon in the preface to her interview of Clarke about his fictional story in which he looks back at the time between 9/11 and 2011. “Men with submachine guns enter five malls around the country and shoot shoppers at will. Bombs go off in subway systems in Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Terrorists armed with heat-seeking missiles destroy four 767s.”
While Clarke doesn’t make clear how all the terrorists in his fictional vision of the future got into the US, with the exception of a few who crossed over from Canada, US counterterror intelligence analysts HSToday.us frequently talks to on background said the porous Mexican border makes it “a particularly good ingress,” as one put it in spook parlance.
Albeit Israel’s security fence is a high-tech one with sensors and monitors, it’s a fence nonetheless, replete with enormous, castle-like structures at various points to largely prevent terrorist sniper fire from Muslim occupied areas primarily in the West Bank being directed down onto Israeli highways and into cities.
What’s more, this physical security that the Israeli’s have managed to erect along great swaths of their borders with Gaza and the West Bank was done in much less time … and cost.
Indeed. Since 1993 the US government has spent upwards of $25 billion to construct a hodge podge of largely ineffectual border fortifications. And it's nothing like what the Israelis built in far less time and, it appears, at a cost that will be much less than what DHS intends to spend on just its 28-mile “virtual” fence, the utility and practicality of which is still being questioned, despite DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff’s whole hearted defense of it this past week.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, recently expressed alarm over the Government Accountability Office (GAO) having found that Project 28 suffers from insufficient government monitoring and direction, and that “the poorly structured contract that prevented the line Border Patrol agents from pointing out obvious flaws and caused an overreliance on contractors has resulted in a system that has been described as providing 'marginal' functionality at best.”
The Committee's subcommittees on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism and Management, Investigations, and Oversight, held a hearing Thursday morning, Feb. 27, to explore problems plaguing DHS's southern border security initiatives, especially Project 28.
Largely because of the effective and efficient integration of its security forces and private security industry, Israel is paying about $3.7 million per mile for its fence – which includes all the techno-sensors and monitors that go with it - and the castle-like structures - once all of the engineering, construction, and operational costs are calculated. The plan calls for nearly 500 miles of fence, for a total cost of about $1.75 billion.
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