Airport security uproar frustrates Obama advisers

Press Release

For a White House often accused of being lax on national security, the uproar over invasive security techniques at airports is a head-snapping swing in the other direction.

Firm pat-downs and new X-ray machines are part of President Obama's effort to redouble airline security after last Christmas's attempted bombing aboard an airplane landing in Detroit. That incident exposed Obama to scathing criticism from Republicans who said he did not grasp the terrorist threat facing the nation.

Now, the administration is under attack from the opposite direction, as some travelers complain that the latest measures go too far. That - and polls showing broad public support for the X-ray machines - has left some White House advisers feeling "frustrated," as one put it, by media coverage focused heavily on the treatment of passengers, rather than the dangers the measures are designed to prevent.

"Everyone is a little bit surprised that, less than one year after a suicide bomber was sent to the United States to blow up a plane over Detroit with a bomb in his underwear, we would be having the debate that we're having right now," another administration official said Monday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs faced a torrent of questions Monday about the screening procedures. He said the administration is "trying desperately" to strike a balance between achieving security and respecting individual privacy - a balance Obama pledged to restore as a candidate, after accusations that the Bush administration had tilted too far in the direction of security following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Yet the public does not appear as conflicted as the debate suggests: big majorities across party lines say the government should emphasize security over privacy, and they support the use of the new full-body scanners in airports, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll. Public support for the more intrusive pat-down screening is far lower.

Administration officials noted that, while the scanners were introduced with public events and warnings, the pat-downs were rolled out quietly, at first only in Las Vegas and Boston, "because we didn't want to give the terrorists the option of pulsing the system" to test it, one official said. The government "then stayed with that strategy during the nationwide implementation" to keep would-be attackers in the dark. But it also kept the public unaware.

Democrats, including Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), have been critical of the pat-downs, while Republicans who typically condemn the administration on national security matters have been less vocal.

"Basically they are doing the right thing," said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a sharp critic of Obama on national security. King said he supports the scanning machines and the pat-downs, which he has encountered during travel to and from his district.

The problem, King said, is "the way it's been communicated."

"They have lost control of the debate, which is really unfortunate because to listen to it you forget we were under siege," King said. "Somehow TSA has now become the enemy of the American people, which is wrong and it's unfortunate. The TSA was blindsided on this."

Amid the furor, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole called and personally apologized Monday to a cancer survivor who said a TSA pat-down had broken his urine bag.

Incidents such as that one - the 61-year-old man, Thomas Sawyer, said he boarded the plane soaked in urine, and received no apology from the TSA agent involved - have helped drive the narrative of an agency out of bounds. The story was fueled by pilots who demanded, and ultimately won, exemption from the screening, and by a drumbeat of attention from news sites ranging from the Drudge Report to the Atlantic.

Coming just as media outlets were dispatching camera crews to the airports for the holidays, it became a "confluence of things all happening at the same time, and the result was, people were asking a lot of questions about these procedures," one administration official said.

Now, the administration is making an effort to show that it understands what travelers are going through.

John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, "gets the full treatment" every time he goes through airport security because of the multiple hip surgeries and other metal devices he has had implanted over the years, a White House official said.

Gibbs said he was unsure of whether he had experienced the new security measures, but suggested he probably had. "I'm trying to think," he said. "Most of my travel is on Air Force One. I traveled to and from Atlanta a few weeks ago, and I thought I went through one of the AITs."

Both Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Pistole have had the screenings and pat-downs, officials said.

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