Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: More security and less PC

Friday, Dec. 14, 2001 | 9:33 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION Norman Mineta has always been one of my favorite public officials. Few members of Congress have a better record of solid accomplishments than the man from California. Not only is he a fine public servant, he is also a true gentleman.

So after this kind of an introduction, what more can I say about the man? I believe he has gone off the diving board into the deep end of an empty swimming pool when promoting his politically correct interpretation of how to provide airline security. I heard him tell interviewer Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" that an elderly white woman from Vero Beach, Fla., should receive the same amount of security attention as a young Muslim man from Jersey City when both are boarding an airliner. From that point on in the interview, Mineta dug an even deeper PC hole for himself.

Somehow or another the secretary has allowed his childhood experiences as a Japanese-American going to a detention camp in Wyoming to affect his thinking on how to protect Americans traveling on airlines. No doubt, the picture of him in his Cub Scout uniform being relieved of his baseball bat by an armed guard, because it was considered a weapon, remains burned in his mind. He told Kroft about that happening as he boarded the train with his family for the forced trip to Wyoming. Our mishandling of the Japanese-Americans 60 years ago is a lesson that Americans refuse to repeat, but there is little evidence to relate that error to profiling passengers boarding airliners.

Jason Riley, in October, reminded Wall Street Journal readers that "Of the 19 hijackers responsible for last month's calamity, all were Arabic, all were practitioners of Islam and all came from known state incubators of terrorism in the Middle East. Of the 22 suspects on the FBI's 'most wanted' list of international terrorists, all are Arabic, all are practitioners of Islam and all come from known state incubators of terrorism in the Middle East." Riley went on to conclude that, "Those numbers dictate that any sensible domestic effort to expose terrorist cells would include concentrating on particular groups in particular communities associated with a particular culture. To ignore the fact that America's enemies in this war share a faith and ethnicity -- and that their actions, by their own reckoning, are ethnically and religiously inspired -- would be sel f-deluding and foolish."

As much as I like Mineta, and despise the way we treated loyal Japanese-American citizens during World War II, writer Riley shows more common sense than the secretary. I found nothing wrong with undergoing a special check at a London airport after an Irish Republican Army terrorist blew up a nearby barracks. I don't know if the terrorist looked like me but we did have the same surname.

The secretary could probably learn much from other countries where airline security has been most successful. There are some examples available but none stress PC more than passenger security.

Profiling has received a dirty name because it has been misused by some people in law enforcement. Despite this problem, wise and proper profiling has continued being used as a weapon against crime. If a call comes over the radio that a tall, white male dressed in a suit has escaped from police custody there is no need to waste time stopping a short or tall black male wearing a sweater.

We can only hope that Mineta gets back on the track of common sense before he goes any further with his ideas about how not to screen airline passengers. We have already learned that past practices and the Federal Aviation Administration's computer identification system is a failure. Mineta's hesitancy to change does nothing to encourage more Americans to travel by air.