Will Gun Measure Threaten Amtrak Terror Attacks?
Just how much clout does the gun lobby have on Capitol Hill? This week may prove to be a crucial test: A House-Senate conference committee is about to take up a massive transportation-funding bill that is pitting advocates of gun rights against security-minded members worried about the threat of terrorist attacks on Amtrak trains. Tucked into the measure is a controversial National Rifle Association-backed amendment that would cut off $1.5 billion in subsidies to Amtrak unless the federally backed national passenger-train company reverses its post-9/11 security policies and permits train passengers to travel with handguns and other firearms as part of their checked luggage.
The idea of allowing guns on trains—something Amtrak banned after 9/11—passed the Senate by an overwhelming 68 to 30 margin last month and was hailed by the NRA at the time as a vindication of Second Amendment rights. But since then, the measure, sponsored by GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, has raised bipartisan alarm among House Homeland Security committee members, especially because Amtrak, according to its own account, is largely unable to check baggage (only 30 percent of stations can) and doesn't have the method to secure checked luggage in the same way airlines do. As company representatives wrote, checked bags are "significantly easier to access in transit or at individual stations than the secured baggage compartments of passenger aircraft." (Airline passengers are allowed to check unloaded firearms.)
"Deadly terrorist bombings of commuter trains in Madrid in 2004 and the 'commando-style' terrorist attack on a major rail station last November in Mumbai have emphasized the importance of passenger rail security in large urban areas," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Peter King, the panel's ranking Republican, in a recent letter to House conferees urging them to reject the amendment. According to Thompson and King, Amtrak has twice revised and enhanced its security policies in recent years after the Madrid and Mumbai attacks revealed a "significant firearm specific threat" from terrorists to passenger trains.
(In last year's Mumbai attacks, which Indian authorities have blamed on the Pakistani-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, 10 terrorists struck in 13 places in the city, including the city's main railway station, and killed 174 people. In the railway part of the attack, two of the terrorists indiscriminately fired at passengers with AK-47 assault rifles.)
Thompson and King argue that the new measure could make Amtrak similarly vulnerable. But NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam calls those arguments "bogus."
"This isn't something new," he says. "Amtrak would be reverting to its pre-9/11 policies." He also says that the Senate amendment wouldn't really apply to the heavily traveled Northeast corridor between Washington and New York, where checking luggage is largely not an option. It would only affect long-distance travelers such as those who take the train south to Florida for the winter, he argues, and "those people want to be able to defend themselves and their families … without being harassed by Amtrak."
The fate of the measure is now up to the House-Senate conferees; while the Senate version contains the "guns on trains" amendment, the House version has no such provision. Arulanandam says the NRA is "working the issue hard." But the ultimate call may be up to House leaders, like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who have to decide whether to heed the warnings of the chamber's homeland security experts—or please the gun lobby.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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