US airport security is second to none. Iris scans, detectors of various kinds, pat-down inspections, screenings, biometrics and finger-print check-ins are increasingly current in US international airports. If you or your baggage have been in the vicinity of explosives or you are concealing a weapon, one or a combination of these security measures will be your undoing. Or one of the army of gruff, armed US visa officers or their CCTV colleagues will likely spot you and suspect you and you’ll be escorted into a side room full of even gruffer, armed colleagues where you’ll be forced to undergo further searches and tests and get a severe grilling by questioners before ever being allowed out of the arrival hall into America real. Even the dogs you find at US airports seem to be kept on their toes and appear to be on the permanent look-out for terrorists - scampering around as though the food they are given is drenched in Red Bull and their next dinner depends on their present alertness.

Compared to most European and Asian airports - perhaps with the exception of Tokyo Narita - USUS necessity for elevated security intensity.  airports lead the way in preventing the arrival of unwanted aliens. Generally, international travellers are happy to be seen as guilty before having to prove themselves innocent by being subjected to such security requirements - though fellow Brits I know whine about getting man-handled and barked at by brainless visa officers who’ve clearly never left their state let alone the US. Memories of the common horror of the twin towers is usually enough to facilitate comprehension of the US necessity for elevated security intensity.

US Homeland Security is likewise notable. No other country gets close to spending $40 billion year on year protecting its people as part of its national security budget - aside from military expenditure. 352.1 miles of border fence built, 17,327 border patrol agents, 1,172 new worksite enforcement investigations and 4,956 worksite enforcement administrative arrests are impressive stats which are likely to put off most home-grown Islamist radicals from metamorphosing into terrorists on US soil. Those that do try to kill or maim Americans are more than likely to get collared by security agents on tip-offs from insiders and informants within watched radical Islamist networks.

The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot was an Al Qaeda-style plot to detonate liquid explosives carried on board several airliners travelling from the United Kingdom to the United States and Canada. The plot was discovered by UK police before it could be carried out. 24 suspects were arrested in and around London on the night of 9 August 2006. The plot was designed to create a wedge between Britain and America - an attempt to kill thousands of Americans and other travellers in mid-air, possibly over Northern American territories by liquid explosives detonated by extreme Islamists who happened to be document-carrying British nationals and residents.

How were the terrorists to board the targeted planes? They were to board carrying with them British passports without visas - using the visa waiver scheme that exists between the US and other countries.

Europeans (and passport holders from Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Japan) are still allowed to enter the US for 90 days under the visa waiver scheme without having to previously apply for visas.  Amongst the 27 countries participating in the visa waiver program are nine who have been subject to either foiled or successful home-grown Al Qaeda attacks, including Spain (subject to the 3/11 Madrid attacks killing 191 people and wounding 1,755) and Britain (subject to the 7/7 London attacks by suicide bombers killing 56 people and wounding about 700).

There is very little stopping a passport holder from any one of these 27 countries getting on a plane to the US today and being passed through immigration because they have the right paperwork and they seem to be innocent tourists or business travellers. Nothing - save close co-operation between a visa waiver member country’s security agencies and US security agencies - stops an Islamist terrorist getting into the US, visiting a hairdressing supplies store or supermarket, fashioning an explosive device in the privacy of a rented house or apartment and creating a terrorist atrocity on US soil.

Right now - seven years after 9/11 - the home-grown terrorist threat in visa-waiver countries is just as much a US Homeland Security issue as is a radical Islamist in Baltimore surfing the web for ammonium nitrate. What is preventing a 7/7 in the New York subway or a 3/11 on American commuter trains carried out by British, French or German passport holders? It takes seven and a half hours to fly from London to New York - shorter than some of the road trips the 9/11 terrorists made whilst they enjoyed American hospitality before September 11th 2001.

Yes, the visa waiver program has been tweaked to increase security. ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) is a new fully automated, electronic system for screening passengers before they begin travel to the United States under the visa waiver program. All visa waiver travellers, regardless of age or type of passport used, must - under the new ESTA scheme - present a machine-readable passport. Depending on when visa waiver travellers’ passports were issued, other passport requirements may apply - some requiring integrated chip identification and others requiring a digital photograph printed on the data page. It is anticipated that ESTA will become mandatory for visa waiver travellers on January 12, 2009.

Still, despite major home-grown security issues in visa waiver participant countries, the visa waiver program has not been scrapped. Although the Transit Without Visa program (TWOV) and the International-to-International transit program (ITI) were suspended back in 2003, this action does not affect U.S. citizens or citizens from visa waiver countries. Visa waiver lives on.

Those who argue that the terrorists should never be able to disrupt long-held international friendships - nor should they be able to disrupt the day-to-day freedoms of civilized Western liberal democracies - seem to be winning the day. Of the top 50 companies investing in the US, all but two are from visa waiver countries - facility of international business with visa waiver is especially vital to US interests at a time of financial uncertainty and likely global recession. Tourism in the United States is a large industry that serves millions of international as well as domestic tourists yearly - by 2007 the number of international tourists to the US had climbed to over 56 million people who spent $122.7 billion dollars between them, setting an all time record. There are undoubted monetary and bonding reasons for travel to the US from visa waiver countries to be as hassle free as physically possible. The keep-visa-waiver school also argues that any self-respecting terrorist will be able to forge documents anyway - visa waiver is just one of many passport-displaying routes into the US - or will get into the US some other way; perhaps over the Mexican border or from Canada concealed in a truck.

On the other hand, it is easy to forget that Homeland Security is all about cutting down the terrorist’s options. Moreover, Americans are not as aware as they should be of how little in comparison to the USUK, for example, has been rising in recent years but hovers somewhere over 2 billion sterling per annum - miniscule in comparison to US national security spending even on a per capita basis. government visa waiver countries spend on Homeland Security. The defence, civil defence and anti-terrorism budget in the

Yet the UK - in spite of James Bond being a Limey - has major problems, particularly with its British-passport-holding Pakistani-origin population. In a covert enquiry, known as project Rich Picture, aimed at finding people who are being groomed for terrorism, and at identifying the Islamist extremists carrying out the recruitment, “up to 8,000 suspected Al Qaeda sympathisers” were being investigated in 2006 in Britain by MI5 and the British police in an operation to identify future terrorists. Though such covert work is happening in Britain, British politicians are mostly careful not to upset Britain’s Muslims - some capable of large block votes in swing seats, some with seats on councils or executives to decide and vote off MPs - and most British politicians tend to ignore the Islamist threat as it grows day by day. Some British politicians - look at the Scottish National Party’s leader Alex Salmond’s dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood front the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) - even stupidly appeasing and aiding the rise of extreme Islamism in Britain.

Right now visa waiver is not preventing but aiding these Al Qaeda-supporting British passport holders from getting on a plane to the US and forming a terrorist cell in the US. Worse still, some may already be in the US - I recall from days spent in Chicago how most of the Irish and Australian barmen in Chicago’s Irish bars were beyond their 90 days’ stay and how even the Poles in the northern suburbs (Poland is still outside of any visa waiver scheme) lived there for years with social security cards and driving licenses issued by Polish friends who had infiltrated the issuing authorities. These Poles, Aussies and Irishmen did not have the death-loving focus of irhabi terrorists and yet even they were beating the so-called system which US Homeland Security has to operate with.

Since 9/11, during George W Bush’s watch, there have been no major terrorist attacks in the US yet America’s Islamist enemies cannot wait for another chance. As a new chapter in American history dawns, either Obama or McCain need to seriously look at the visa waiver programme. They need to look particularly at visa waiver countries’ extreme Islamist networks and see how they can prevent these America-haters from getting on a boat or a plane to America, let alone setting foot on US territory. I’d go so far as to say that the US should aim to browbeat those foreign politicians and governments who appease and support extreme Islamism in visa waiver countries - showing them up to be the Quislings they are - so extreme Islamism cannot further embolden itself in non-Muslim lands.

The businesses who send executives to the US would not mind pre-screening in their own countries as business in America means a lot to them - an interview at the US embassy or, at least, the verification of their travel documents a certain time before travelling would be no real problem for their secretaries to arrange for them. If the respective US embassy saw fit to invite them back to answer particular questions then so be it.

Likewise, most tourists would not object to similar screening before travel. The US should focus particularly - forget the political correctness involved and damn the human rights whiners - on British Pakistani travellers and there should be increased co-operation between the various security agencies involved on both sides of the pond.

The 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot showed how close the extreme Islamists were to upsetting the special relationship between two dear friends - the firmest of allies. As friends we cannot allow a repeat event.

We as friends have more in common than the average Brit or American has in common with an Islamist extremist and we still stand shoulder to shoulder to strike down this common foe which wants to see us both dead. Dare I say it; the average American or Brit has ten times more in common with your average Frenchman than with an Islamist extremist. Give me Napoleon over the coward Zawahiri any day.

Americans and Brits - Americans and those from visa waiver program countries - should agree to adjust visa waiver now before the enemy tries to abuse the program again. Visa waiver was designed to facilitate travel between friends not to threaten either’s Homeland Security.

We, especially in Europe, have caught a nasty cold - it’s called extreme Islamism. We’ll deal with it - but don’t get so close that you catch the nasty version too. Heed my warning and tell your next President to heed my warning too. In the meantime, your remedies are most welcome as we go about testing our own to conquer forever this most disagreeable of infections.

Dominic Whiteman lives and works in London. He is the Director of the London-based Investigative Unit V7 - specialising in investigations for think tanks - and is currently Editor of the Westminster Journal www.westminsterjournal.com  

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