5 Years on, US Still Feels Insecure

"There is a tremendous amount still to be done," said O'Hanlon.

"There is a tremendous amount still to be done," Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday, September 4.

The Bush administration has created the Department of Homeland Security after the 9/11 attacks to shore up security and a National Counterterrorism Center to boost much-criticized intelligence services.

It has also arranged a partnership with more than 40 foreign ports so that US customs agents are allowed to inspect US-bound shipments.

But the larger part of security efforts concentrated on the aviation sector to avoid a repeat of the 9/11 nightmare, in which hijacked passenger planes were turned into weapons, killing nearly 3,000 people.

US airports have been equipped with state-of-the-art technology to detect dangerous objects and the government authorized the Transportation Security Administration to robustly expand its workforce.

Many expected the heavy surveillance of commercial aviation would discourage terrorist attacks involving aircraft or airports.

However, an alleged terrorist plot recently unveiled by the British police renewed concerns about air transport vulnerability and the capacity of terrorists to evade security measures.

Still Targeted

Peter Brookes, an expert at the Washington-based think tank The Heritage Foundation, stresses that the country remains "squarely in the terrorists' cross-hairs."

He said the battle against the ideology of Al-Qaeda terrorist organization has made no progress.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has admitted lagging "dangerously" behind Al-Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age.

In a study published a few weeks ago, The Washington Post said the US war on terror had become so vast and complex that it was difficult to know how it had made the country more secure.

An alleged terrorist plot to blow up US-bound planes in midair, recently foiled by British authorities, has entrenched the concerns of ordinary Americans.

Authorities warned in June that terrorists could plant a radioactive "dirty bomb" in container ship that would explode at a US port.

Chemical installations and nuclear sites have also raised concern among experts and lawmakers.

A February report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the federal government had identified 3,400 chemical installations that could be targeted and had launched programs to help the industry and local authorities to protect these installations.

Freedom or Security

"It's a parade of horrors," said Graves.

Americans have found themselves in an unenviable situation five years after the terrorist attacks as they cannot still reconcile between their personal freedoms and government measures that violated civil liberties on the grounds of shielding the country from the threat of terrorism.

"It's a parade of horrors," Lisa Graves, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP, referring to the media-exposed measures.

President George Bush has secretly authorized a super-secret domestic spying program by the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept communications without the court approval required under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The New York Times disclosed that the NSA has "directly" tapped the country’s main communications systems without court-approved warrants.

The Bush administration has also been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions under the pretext of terror combat.

Bush repeatedly opened his salvos at the media for exposing his clandestine programs, arguing they are crucial anti-terror tools.

Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has revealed that the administration concealed from Congress other intelligence and spying programs in possible violation of the law.

Last month, a US judge dealt a blow to Bush's attempts to expand sweeping presidential powers by ruling that his controversial domestic spying program was "unconstitutional."