It’s been a long time coming.
For almost 20 years, travelers passing through airport security screening in the US, except TSA PreCheck enrollees and small children, have had to suffer the indignity of taking their shoes off as part of the ultrastrict security measures.
Recently, however, reports of the gradual lifting of the shoe removal policy have begun to surface, to the enormous relief of the millions of travelers in the country.
It all started when a British wannabe terrorist named Richard Reid, monikered the Shoe Bomber after the fact, attempted to blow up an airplane almost 20 years ago by lighting a fuse bomb hidden inside the heels of his ginormous sneakers while flying aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami.
Fortunately for the other passengers, the Muslim jihadist had struggled to light the fuse, which alerted his co-passengers, who collectively subdued him with the help of the crew.
Upon examination, experts determined the bomb’s makeup — 10 ounces of explosive materials — could have blown a hole in the plane’s fuselage and caused the plane to crash.
Reid pleaded guilty to terrorism charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
The fact that the incident occurred just months after the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil further stoked the firestorm of paranoia engulfing the country at the time.
But unknown to most people, there was an even more sinister plot hatched by Muslim extremists prior to 9/11 involving the use of airliners as bombing platforms.
Called the Bojinka plot, it was a plan funded by Osama Bin Laden and designed by a Pakistani terrorist named Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.
The plot involved blowing up eleven airliners originating from various locations in Asia to the US simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean using small but strategically placed bombs made of a liquid material that could be smuggled undetected through airport security and put together inside plane lavatories using watches and batteries.
In December 1994, in a dry run, Yousef boarded a PAL plane in Manila bound for Tokyo with a layover in Cebu. While on board, he assembled a bomb in the lavatory and placed it under his seat before disembarking in Cebu.
The bomb exploded while the plane was en route to Tokyo, killing a passenger and injuring several others. Only the remarkable skill of the Filipino pilot enabled the plane to land safely in Japan.
However, before he could fine-tune and carry out the Bojinka plot to fruition, Yousef’s plan was thwarted when a small fire broke out in his apartment in Manila, where Filipino authorities discovered bomb-making materials and a laptop containing details of the plot.
The terrorist was eventually arrested in Pakistan and extradited to the US where he is currently serving a life sentence plus 240 years.
Perhaps one could say, in a poignant kind of way, that America’s national “shoecurity” policy was grounded on the fear of a Bojinka plot revival, reaching its apogee after the 9/11 attacks before running to seed as an anachronistic, over-the-top reaction from a bygone era of national paranoia.