When I was a kid back in Russia, my family would spend all our summer vacations in Yalta, a seaside resort on the Black Sea. One year, as we were driving to the airport for our flight back home, we were stopped by the police and diverted into the local botanical gardens. Together with several hundred other people, we spent the next several hours waiting for Brezhnev (the then Soviet president) and his entourage to drive from the airport to his seaside retreat.
The absurdity of treating everyone as a potential assassin resurfaced I my mind as I was reading about yesterday’s security breach in Newark and the ensuing pandemonium. The sheer absurdity of rechecking thousands of people and grounding hundreds of flights, even those on the other side of the Atlantic, is a clear sign that the Transportation Security Administration lacked an advanced emergency scenario plan and was acting on the spur of the moment. At least they were considerate enough not to ground ALL air traffic in North America until the poor chap, who had wondered through the wrong door, could be found.