The Council's year-long 9/10/11 Project will consider many of the areas that have had an impact on our nation's approach to security. As topics were discussed and considered for inclusion, the one event that changed the nation forever was 9/11, and the security beaches that led to it became the logical choice for our first monograph. Below you will the first introductory paragraphs of our Aviation Security monograph and an interactive timeline on which you can click for more information from our sources. We welcome suggestions on how this timeline can be more useful and comments on our monograph series.

Where We Were

On September 10, 2001, the Jones family decided to take a spontaneous cross-country trip to Disneyland. It wasn't particularly hard to purchase the tickets, and though a new school year had recently started, the parents felt that their children were young enough to miss a couple of days without much of an adverse effect, and besides-the rates were cheaper. So, with their 7-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter in tow, John and Mary Jones went up to the ticket counter, bought four tickets, told the airline clerk that they had, indeed, packed their own bags, and then those same bags were checked to California. The family gathered their personal belongings and trooped through the obligatory metal detector (as did friends, who had taken them to the airport and were seeing them off at the gate).

The metal detector they encountered was the only evident security around. The machines were a remnant of, primarily, a series of politically-oriented hijackings that took place from the late 1960s through the late 1980s. It was no big deal to go through them, and in fact, some didn't even work. The airlines controlled the detectors, but usually hired out the screening work, so contract workers waved the family through without much scrutiny.........Read more.