Bonnie Michelman, ASIS President, based in Boston, USA, reacts to the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.
Over the past 20 hours our view of “normal” has forever changed. The breadth of emotions that has swept us cannot be described. People need to have someone or something to blame for this happening, not only the terrorists but many of us who try to protect our society. I watched colleagues at Logan as well as the other airports yesterday get targeted for security failures. Those failures belong to all of us in this nation, not just the security and law enforcement professionals. They go to people who resist better security, being inconvenienced, paying more tax dollars for improved national security etc. And there was no mention of the successes, ours and the law enforcement community for what we do prevent. That is an amorphous phenomenon that cannot be easily quantified or publicized. We know our industry and our work saves life and property each and every day. What we don’t know is how much we save and how often this occurs. The unspeakable events of yesterday have hit us all directly or indirectly. Personally I spent my day yesterday putting protection plans together for scared international patients, mobilizing supplies and transportation for 40 physicians and nurses we sent to New York, maintaining constant communication with the Boston office of the FBI, ATF, the Intelligence Unit of the Boston and State Police and being warned about my institution being the a major Boston target and the fear of bio-terrorism in addition to everything else. I had to take two of the most wonderful men in the world who work as ambassadors/concierges for my department and happen to be from Arab countries into seclusion and get them home as they were being harassed, threatened and suspected assault was inevitable. They looked in my eyes with tears and thanked me but told me they wished they didn’t have to leave. The people and package checks, I am sure made people even more scared than they already were. But after all, the Pentagon has even greater checks and that didn’t help them yesterday, did it?
