Friendly Skies

Ever since the events of Sept 11, people have a heightened sense of security, especially when they fly. However, it turns out that terrorists, of a sort, used to commonly commandeer US airplanes. Apparently, throughout the 60s, it was common for people to bring a gun aboard, hijack it, and be taken to Cuba.

It was so common that there were forms provided indicating flight number and date provided by the Swiss government, which would represent the US, since the US had no diplomatic relations with Cuba. Cuba apparently thought this could be good business, and began to charge for sandwiches for the hijacked victims, and gave the bill to the State Department.

This was an innocent time. Most people thought of this as an annoyance, and little was done to increase the security. The airlines complained that the kind of security involved would mean checking each individual passenger, and each individual luggage. This was, they claimed, preposterous. So little was done.

Until 1972. At this point, people hijacked a plane and threatened to fly the plane into the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facilities if their demands were not met. Rather than an innocent flight to Cuba where no one was hurt, here was an incident that not only threatened the lives of the passenegers, but also to destroy a nuclear facility. Shortly thereafter, with the aid of Nixon, who was the only who seemed suitably concerned about this kind of terrorism, checks were made at airports.

This entire incident, which happened over thirty years ago seems to have faded from memory. I grew up In Oak Ridge, and though the only claim to fame was that it made nuclear fissionable fuels for the early A-bombs during the war. World War 2, that is. Since then, a more important part of government involvement in Oak Ridge was basic research, and as far as I know, nuclear fuel used for weapons was phased out.

Point is, I had never heard of this story, which would have only been four years prior to our family moving there. Of course, I was quite young at the time, and such stories aren't usually told to little kids, but I never heard it in high school either. In fact, I didn't hear about it until just this morning on NPR, which is why NPR is so amazing.

NPR can take something, say, terrorism in the US, and do something interesting, like see if this has ever happened before, and pull out a fascinating story of how our country used to be, and how hijackings used to be very common, and how little protection was offered because it was inconvenient. These are the kinds of stories that NPR excels at, and alas, mainstream news provides so little of. And it's the reason I like to listen to NPR.