Tom Harkin: “I want to address for a few moments one of the issues we are going to be confronting both on our committees and I am…”

“I want to address for a few moments one of the issues we are going to be confronting both on our committees and I am sure in the Chambers of the House and the Senate in the not-too-distant future as a result of the tragic events of this week, and that is the issue of airline safety and what we can do in the future to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again or prevent any kind of hijacking of airliners in the future. It occurred to me as I began thinking about this--and I have been a pilot all my life. I have flown since I have been about 20 years old, both as a military pilot and a civilian pilot. I have my commercial license. So having flown all these years, I am quite aware of the different steps that need to be taken to provide for aircraft security. It occurred to me, while I was thinking about all of this, that over the last several years I have been to Israel on more than one occasion--two or three times--and with all of the terrorist activity that the Israelis have had to put up with over all these years, they have yet to lose an El Al airliner.”