Regarding your editorial 9/15/2001; "Safety in the skies is far from assured". How correct that headline is but the content misses the mark.

How can we best assure, long term, that commercial airliners will not be hijacked and used as weapons of destruction? First a look at history. Our current top down system of airport/airliner security is the responsibility of the FAA. Their system demanded all passengers and crew be disarmed and helpless while assuring the public that they,the FAA, had made air travel safe. This was proved false with the September 11 disaster. Instead of holding the FAA accountable, Secretary of Transportation Mineta established new guidelines, top down; in effect saying " Trust us , we will get it right this time".

Such a system is one of responsibility without accountability. Mineta, the guy in charge, didn't even act appologetic. He thinks the dog ate his homework, it seems.

If the new system again fails it will be" trust us, we will get it right this time" all over again.

Why not try bottom up, based on strict accountabilty as well as responsibility? Here's how that might work: Each organization providing air travel would be told " You are responsible for assuring the safety of all passengers as well as making sure your airplanes do not become weapons of mass destruction" And further, "if you fail in the above you will be held strictly accountable for all damage and loss of life.You are free to take all nessessary action to accomplish the job".

What would happen? Well, first of all, we would all be safe as possible and inconvenienced to a minimum because the carriers would want our business while at the same time avoiding incidents. How would they do that? Don't know, but how's this for a guess? Every appropriate crew member would be armed,all flights would have on it one or more passengers, identity known only to the airline, who are armed and trained to take out any hijacker.

Had the above been the case on 9/11/2001, would the hijackers have been on board? Doubt it. If they had gotten on and tried their tricks, the result would have been 19 dead criminals instead of 6,000 or more dead and billions of dollars damages.

Our great nation should be solving problems via careful assignment of responsibilities/accountabilities from the bottom up. It is the only way to solve such problems effectively over the long term. Protects our pesonal freedom too. Please think about that.

Richard O. Rowland, President
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii