No Safe Place

The Houston Airport System had few answers late Tuesday morning. City aviation officials, minus director Richard M. Vacar, who was stuck in Montreal on business, were meeting with the Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines at both Houston airports to determine the next course of action. HAS spokesperson Tina Ceppi said both Bush Intercontinental and Hobby terminals were closed, and that all flights had been grounded by FAA orders. Ceppi was not sure how many planes en route to Houston were allowed to land here. Some landed at the two airports shortly after the New York and Washington, D.C., incidents, but others, Ceppi believed, were routed to the nearest cities. She urged friends and family of passengers headed to Houston to contact the airlines for more information. HAS had not yet done an accounting of all departures and arrivals at the city's two airports to see if any flights were missing.

In the meantime, stranded passengers from out of town were being directed to local hotels, while Houston travelers were sent back home. City aviation officials are asking people not to drive to either airport. Ceppi said it is aviation department policy not to discuss security issues at the airports. She also could not give an idea of when flights would resume. She said that was the FAA's call.

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By 11 a.m. the feeling of isolation was overwhelming. City Hall was virtually vacant, having shifted to the weekend duty of a frazzled guard manning a weapons detector. "I'm sorry," he apologized without need. "I haven't seen any of the news. I don't know what's going on."

City Hall's back entrance featured the oddest of sentries: cows. It was the immovable art collection to be shown off for CowParade Houston 2001. The reflecting pool resembled a pasture of gaily colored bovines, their leader nothing more than "E-moo-ly the major moo" -- with high-topped helmet and braided shoulder ornaments suggesting a pre-World War I Slavic general. In a corner, striped-top tents were being systematically dismantled by a team of immigrant workers.

Mayor Brown summoned the Houston media together -- not at City Hall but at the TranStar building on Old Katy Road, which houses the city's emergency command center -- to convey his message to a nervous public to stay cool and that all was under control.

"We want to remind everyone that we want to remain calm," said Brown.

Or, in the words of one local television newswoman reporting on a tropical disturbance several years ago: "Don't panic until we tell you to panic."

Flanked by his chiefs of fire and police, and other administration insiders, Brown went on live television at 11 a.m. to assure residents that he and his staff were all over the situation. And after summarizing what everyone already knew at that point, the mayor explained that there really was no crisis situation here -- sort of.

"The Houston Police Department and the FBI are currently conducting threat assessments to determine the potential for other attacks," said Brown. "And let me stress the point that, at this time, we have no information to indicate a problem here in the Houston area."

Brown announced that the city's emergency personnel were on a stand-by alert level, that security sweeps of all public buildings in the city had been completed, and that everything seemed secure. (Ironically, despite the presence of Harris County sheriff's deputies on the perimeter of the building, security at TranStar seemed extremely lax, as reporters were allowed to walk into the sensitive facility without once being asked for identification.) Brown also emphasized that no evacuations had been ordered. Still, if people felt like going home, maybe they should.

"We have advised employers to use their discretion," said Brown. "We'll do the same thing in city government."

Brown also disclosed that he had been part of a conference call with Texas Governor Rick Perry and the mayors of the other large cities in the state and that, just like Houston, all was quiet in the rest of Texas.

Throughout the press briefing, Brown had that customary deer-in-the-headlights look as he mulled over a simple question from the audience of a news conference reacting to the terrorist attack. Why had the U.S. security policy debate over the past few years focused on trillion-dollar missile shields, billion-dollar anti-narco-terrorism programs, and biological warfare defenses when the real threat turned out to be infinitely simpler?

Just hijack a passenger jet -- a flying bomb with full fuel tanks -- and crash it into the target du jour. Brown had sat on the cabinet of President Bill Clinton as the drug czar in charge of combating narco-terrorists. Surely he had some opinion on how all the law enforcement brains in the land failed to consider such a low-tech possibility.

You could see Brown's mental jaws chewing ponderously on the subject, masticating and then verbalizing. Blind spot? What blind spot?