That's the title of the featured Letter to the Editor in today's Washington Post. Disturbing. Here's the letter:

To the Editor:

I read with interest the March 9 front-page story, "Security Lax at Smallest U.S. Airports."

Two weeks ago, when returning from a ski trip, I flew out of tiny Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport in Colorado on Mesa Airlines for a connection in Denver.

My olive-drab parachute bag was singled out for inspection, and four Transportation Security Administration inspectors surrounded me and the bag while a fifth started looking through my long underwear and sweatshirts.

After the officers had examined every item in the bag, I asked a question and one of the officers replied that the security device detected pentaerythritol tetranitrate — one of the strongest explosives used today.

I was momentarily puzzled, then recalled that the same bag had accompanied me to Kuwait during Desert Storm, to Bosnia and to numerous training exercises where, as a Marine Corps combat engineer officer, I had been exposed to and initiated explosives and landmines.

Three points to this story:

• The security technology employed at U.S. airports is sophisticated enough to detect molecular trace elements of explosives.

• This technology exists in small, regional airports.

• Four days earlier, the same bag flew unimpeded on a United Airlines flight out of Dulles International Airport, the origin of American Airlines Flight 77 on Sept. 11, 2001.

Steve Brewer