Having been given a steady diet of vague but terrifying information from national security officials about the possibility of dirty bombs, chemical weapons, biotoxins, exploding airliners, and suicide bombers, a nation of men and women like the Whitemans have shelled out hundreds of billions dollars to turn the machine of government over to defeating terrorism without ever really questioning what they were getting for their money. The scene of Joy Whiteman holding herself up with the walls of the body scanner while a crew of security guards, paid by taxpayers, made sure she didn't fall, seemed a perfect metaphor for what has transpired in the United States over the past ten years. Never mind that the Department of Homeland Security, which was responsible for setting airport security policy, was ridiculed by people at every other intelligence agency because it hadn't learned to hone its focus and still saw threats everywhere. Never mind that no terrorist had ever fit her profile or been foiled walking through a security scanner. Walking through a body scanner without her wheelchair was a small price to pay for safety. "I could have had a bomb or explosives."Ī decade of terrorism warnings about possible attacks in the United States had convinced Whiteman that she had much to fear. "Last time, they wheeled me through without looking at the X-ray," she said.
"These people are always one step ahead of us." "I could be carrying a gun or something." I don't want to blow up," she said when I asked about the hassle. What were the odds that she was a terrorist?īut Whiteman didn't mind at all. Others smiled in sympathy at the awkward sight.
#Top secret government facilities license#
Whiteman followed instructions, lifted her hands above her head, emptied her pockets of crumpled pieces of paper, then apologized for having left her driver's license in her purse rather than having it in hand for the guards to examine with her plane ticket. "Can you make it without pain?" a guard asked her.
Airport security guards folded her wheelchair and rolled it through the scanner, keeping an eye on the frail woman in a bright flowered jacket. She teetered slowly, in socks, through the security scanner at the Boise Airport in Idaho. Though she could barely walk anymore at age seventy-six, Joy Whiteman remained calm as she fumbled to remove her new white tennis shoes, lift herself out of her wheelchair, and grab the side of the X-ray machine. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at Thank you for your support of the author's rights. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property.
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