Facing Facts in America

By Amanda Ripley

In America, subway bombs have been around longer than parking meters. Back when terrorists were called "radicals," in 1927, two explosions blasted through two midtown New York City stations late one August night, injuring 12. The bombs went off 10 minutes apart; one was strong enough to rip open the sidewalk on the street above. The city lunged into action. All 14,000 police officers were put on bomb duty to protect the city's water supply and public buildings, reported a New YorkTimes article from the time. Scores of New Yorkers carrying bundles were stopped and searched.

Last week, when London's transit system was wracked by four bombs, New York and other U.S. cities responded again with a mighty show of force. The Coast Guard escorted Staten Island ferryboats. The chief of the New York City police department promised there would be an officer on every rush hour subway train "for the foreseeable future." In Washington, cops clutching MP5 submachine guns strode through subway cars, and Capitol police searched tour buses.

The display was appreciated by many, but some found it hard not to wonder what will happen after the police go back to their day jobs. On TV, the usual cast of security experts roundly lamented insufficient funds for mass-transit security. Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware vowed to introduce a bill that would add $1.1 billion in new money and "make everybody stand up and be counted on it, goddammit." But without pausing for breath, everyone agreed there is really no way to prevent an attack from happening here. "Surface transportation is a killing ground," says Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corp.

The blasts in London provided a disheartening lesson: crude bomb attacks can kill dozens, even with 6,000 cameras in the subway system and a populace taught by I.R.A. violence to report suspicious bags. But just because Americans can't prevent all bombings doesn't mean they should do nothing--or everything, in feverish, sporadic security binges. "We should all take a deep breath," says Stephen Flynn, a homeland-security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "There is an ongoing threat, and we need a sustained level of involvement."

Since the 1995 sarin-gas attacks in the Tokyo subway and the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, some U.S. cities have quietly made smart improvements to their transit systems. Hundreds of police are now equipped with handheld radiation detectors. They do flag the occasional chemotherapy patient, leading to at least a couple of unfortunate strip searches in New York City, but that means the devices are working.

At least 15 Washington stations also have chemical sensors. That leaves some 30 stations unprotected, and the sensors are still not perfect. But they are a good--and expensive--part of a larger surveillance strategy. If a sensor goes off, Metro officials check out the platform using closed-circuit video. They scan for odd packages or riders showing signs of illness. The idea is to identify a problem--fast--so evacuation can begin. That's because while a train bombing is bad, a biological, chemical or radiation attack on a train is an epidemic snaking through a city via a web of underground tunnels.

Washington is among the first U.S. cities to run crowds of regular people through a mass evacuation. After the July 4 fireworks show, Washington officials tested their evacuation plan by clearing 540,000 people out of the National Mall in an hour. Still, the best defense, according to many security experts, is a civilian offense. Well before the London attacks, many cities had been recruiting riders as watchdogs. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING, posters remind passengers in New York City and Los Angeles. Last week Mayor Richard Daley deputized the people of Chicago: "If someone is wearing a winter coat in the subway, if you see someone dropping a package, it's better to call 911. That's all you have to do."

Of course, London officials had been making the same entreaties--for decades. And the campaign had gained new urgency with the Madrid bombings. Last week we were reminded that the populist strategy has its limitations. And so, the day after the bombings, London introduced controversial body-scan machines at the entrances to some subway stations. The machines see through clothing and detect anything that interferes with solar radiation reflected by people's bodies. But it will cost tens of millions of dollars to outfit every tube station. And it will, of course, do nothing to protect the sprawling bus system.

Most counterterrorism experts don't think high-tech bomb-detection solutions will ever work for public transit. Trains and buses are useful precisely because they are convenient, fast and cheap--and therefore hard to secure. That's why the oft repeated complaint that the government spends far more on aviation security than on transit is a bit of an oversimplification. It's true that the Feds have spent $18 billion on protecting planes and only $250 million exclusively on transit since 9/11. But that's partly because aviation is much easier to secure. And it's also because local officials have always picked up more of the costs for transit. When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was asked if he would push to raise transit funding after the London bombings, he demurred.

Indeed, it's hard to know how much we should spend until we decide on our priorities for protecting the nation's transport system--something Chertoff's department has not yet made clear. "That kind of road map is still missing out of Washington," says Daniel Prieto, research director of the Homeland Security Partnership Initiative at Harvard University. Sixteen times as many Americans take public transit every day as take planes. Does that mean the spending ought to shift to those riders? On Dec. 31, the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to provide Congress with a strategic plan for transit security that would guide budget decisions. Six months have gone by, and still no plan.

In the meantime, says Tom Kelly, spokesman for New York City's transit system, it's a constant struggle to steer clear of expensive gadgetry that doesn't work. For example: "One of the first things everybody said after 9/11 is that you have to run out and buy those bomb-resistant wastebaskets [for subway platforms]," says Kelly. "But then you realize that the blast goes up. So somebody on the platform wouldn't die, but somebody on the sidewalk above would."

Sometimes simple ideas make more sense. The day of the London bombings, New York officials cut cell-phone service in tunnels leading into the city--in case anyone was planning to detonate a bomb with a cell phone. Once we accept that some attacks are inevitable, we can do sensible things to limit the damage and disruption--like using blast-proof glass in buses. Even things like emergency lighting can save lives. In London, it took more than an hour to clear the Underground. Many could not get out of cars or navigate pitch-black tunnels.

"You have to broaden your horizons and not think of security as exclusively preventive," says Jenkins of the Rand Corp. It is a complicated idea, quite different from airplane security. But it is one we have had plenty of time to learn.

Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor turned high-end security consultant, happened to be eating breakfast in a London hotel when the bombs went off. He praised the calm, professional response he saw on the streets. But no part of him was surprised: "The attack was exactly what we were expecting back in the mid-'90s." --Reported by Jessica Carsen/London, John Flowers, Stephen Handelman and Nathan Thornburgh/ New York, Noah Isackson/ Chicago, Laura A. Locke/ San Francisco and Mark Thompson/ Washington

With reporting by Reported by Jessica Carsen/London, John Flowers, Stephen Handelman, Nathan Thornburgh/ New York, Noah Isackson/ Chicago, Laura A. Locke/ San Francisco, Mark Thompson/ Washington